We generally all experience pain and suffering, whether it's psychological or physical. We may suffer the psychological pain of loss, rejection, loneliness, abuse, anxiety or depression. Physical suffering can be experienced with body aches, injuries and illnesses of many kinds. It may be questioned why a benevolent God allows us to suffer. Let's explore this from the Non-Duality viewpoint.

In Non-Duality pain and suffering can be understood as part of the apparent interplay of opposites within the infinite singularity of Being-Consciousness-Bliss. It goes like this. Infinite Being is formless and unexpressed. For Being to be expressed contrast is necessary, so this apparent world of interplaying opposites appears to show what is like Being/God and what is not like Being/God.

Let's break that down. There is One Infinite Being. We can call this God, Being, What Is, Isness, Consciousness, The Great Spirit, The Self of selves, and so on. The nature of Being is timeless, formless, stillness, peace, completeness. It is an unmanifest singularity. For it to become manifest (as the world we now perceive) there needs to be a contrast, an opposite, so that What Is stands out from what it is not. This apparent division of What Is into 'what is like it' and 'what is not like it' can be considered the creation of the universe. The division into opposites interacts and multiplies creating the world that we now perceive. In Non-Duality tradition it is described as the apparent interplay of opposites. I call it the World of Opposites.

From Being's Oneness there appears separation and distance. From Being's timeless Stillness and Peace, there appears movement and conflict. From Being's Contentment there appears pain and suffering. And so on, with Good and evil, Right and wrong, Love and hate, Harmony and disharmony, Freedom and limitation etc. The extreme opposite of the Oneness of Being is the hardened isolated selfish ego that focuses on itself against the Whole. We call its actions evil. It is seemingly so far from the love, peace and contentment of Being-Consciousness-Bliss that the ego appears as a reversed reflection of Wholeness.

There is no-one to blame for this apparent interplay of opposites. Rather it is for the seemingly separate ego to come to the realisation that there is only ever Being-Consciousness-Bliss, and the play of opposites and separation is not what it seems. Being can never divide itself into Being and 'not being', and nothing can ever be separate from the Whole. So the separation that gives rise to the world never really happens. It only seems to happen.

The individual that seems to go out into the world as the ego and becomes hardened and far from Being/God, faces pain and suffering in the clashing world of duality. It then rejects this and turns back to the oneness of the Whole, the Heart from which it came. Though truly it never left. It only felt like it had become hardened and separate and distant from the Whole. The Wholeness and Content Completeness of Being-Consciousness-Bliss is timelessly here all along.