How about pain?
We can sort of index them using anecdotal sampling. Science can see and measure associative effect.
But something that is pure belief can also be indexed with anecdotal sampling; and associative effect measured scientifically.
So where is the boundary of “real”?
(Just for reference, this is a phenomenological puzzler. It is not saying these things don’t exist; but instead ponders the nature of their “reality”)
© 2026 – SoulSequel
50 responses to “Is suffering a “real thing”?”
Pain is real. Suffering b is optional
@Scarlett
I’ve heard that one b4. What do you think turns pain into suffering?
Think about pain also. It would seem self-evident that it is real. But if we had to prove that it was by what standard would we do it?
It’s a very personal and subjective thing.
Even if subjective, the people experiencing it should not be called liars.
@Jear77
Well, science doesn’t call your subjective experience a lie. It just patently refuses to acknowledge/consider it!
We are NEVER going to be able to control what others say. So find a response, a philosophy, that doesn’t result in weeping open psychological wounds — or a need to go to war — every time someone might say what Humans are prone to say!
@griz not necessarily. Doctors can’t give out prescriptions for diseases/ symptoms they know to be patently false. If pain couldn’t be acknowledged, why is there such a thing as pain medication?
@Jear77
Sometimes symptomatic control can be helpful. For actual recovery; as a soother; and/or for the betterment of the prescribing physician’s bottom line.
And consider that the same powerful pharmaceuticals that helps the stage 4 cancer patient, would likely have similar effect on the intolerable pain felt by some upon hearing “Merry Christmas”, a non-preferred pronoun, or anything that might warrant re-evaluation of a currently held salvational belief/ideology.
@griz for the most part, doctors would do well avoiding prescribing pain meds. They’re addicting.
@Jear77
Some will.
But the sheer number of people who get addicted under a Dr’s prescription would seem to tell a different story. How many movie/rock stars have OD’ed with drugs prescribed them?
Plus, I believe most health-plans pay a Dr more if they prescribe or refer to someone who will prescribe. Noble intentions aside, people are still just people.
Really, I view “the spiritual” as “anything internal”. Thoughts, feelings, sensory data.
Declaring something as unreal is, its’ self, a natively odd statement. As both Heaven and earth have strong realities. As does death and hell.
As a child of God in the Kingdom, we have to alter our perceptions in many ways, and come to judgements in many ways. What is true on earth may not be true in Heaven. And what is true in Heaven, may not be true on earth.
Yet, where is Heaven… it is within.
Within and among us.
Where is the boundary of suffering with pain being real? Last night I was in the middle of grocery shopping and reaching for my favorite coffee on the top shelf. I was climbing on the two bottom shelves when I heard a popping sound in my hip and pain up my back. I let out a scream that brought a store worker to discover me in mid-climb on the store shelves. —– Much like when you catch your small child climbing the pantry shelves in your kitchen.
I was unable to walk without pain!!!
I did not get the coffee I was reaching for. The store provided a motorized chair and my groceries were transferred from my cart to the chair’s basket. The motorized chair was fun to drive all over the store. I had a blast!!! I could not reach my usual brands, but a comparable brand was within reach. I got through check-out and to my car where a store worker helped load the groceries into my car and to return the chair to the store. At home, Immortal Pirate brought the groceries into the house. Yes, I was in a great amount of pain with a hip that is wearing out, but I had a fun “Motorized chair/cart” experience.
@ladybarbara
Ouch!
I’ve had joints go out like that before. It’s no picnic — and the pain is very experientially “real” to you.
Whether it’s “real” in a scientific context is another thing, and what my original post was about. For example, hypnosis properly done, can have all the pain receptors in the brain firing, but no sensation of pain registered. So is such pain “real” — or any less “real” in a scientific sense than a pain someone feels?
But back to your pain; ouch! Even with wear-and-tear on joints (which I have a good amount of), the muscles are often contributing culprits to what we register as joint pain. For if it was just the joint, it would be like that all of the time.
Hot baths, some frankincense oil rubs (check the Pirate’s booty!), massage, muscle relaxants and competent chiropractic adjustment have “fixed” a lot of apparent joint-pain in me and kept alive the illusion that I can still over-work myself like a younger man!
@griz The ball joint at the hip is bumpy with wear and is grinding at the pelvis socket. It shows up on x-rays. Muscle rubs do little or nothing to stop the pain and the pain is always there. There are times that I step up a step with that leg and something pops out of joint. This was one of those occasions. I could go to a chiropractor and have it pulled back in place, but I don’t like going to doctors and chiropractors. I choose to limp on it and it will work it’s way back to the socket. Usually, I will turn just so in bed and hear the pop, as it settles back in place. To me it is just part of life. Medicare will replace the hip joint, but I am not ready to face that. I will put it off until there is no other choice. I am not suffering. I just watch how I step up a step.
As for hypnosis, I have not been successfully hypnotized — that I know of. Well there was that time that one of my husbands made me go on stage and be part of a hypnotists show. I weighed 110 lbs. and my husband had hope that I could be hypnotized into not eating, so my weight would go down to 90 lbs. I went along with the show voluntarily doing all that was asked of me. (I was once a stripper and have a move that removes my dress in one wave of my arm.) The hypnotist said that I would be feeling very hot, so hot, so hot. Sooooo hot! I knew what I was doing and went along with it and did the arm wave — removing my dress in 2 seconds, leaving me on stage in some undies that I had purchased from Victoria’s Secret. The hypnotist couldn’t get me covered up fast enough and I thought it was funny, but I did not laugh. I was supposed to be hypnotized. He ended with a suggestion that every time I was hungry I would suddenly feel full and not eat. Then he woke me up. I went along with that, as well. I knew what I was doing and purposely starved myself down to 87 lbs. — until my husband was worried about having me hypnotized in the first place. There was no real hypnotizing me. I just screwed with my husband’s mind with it. I got to wear children’s clothing for a few months and purposely chose to wear “Underoos” underwear — which is nowhere near as sexie as the Victoria’s Secret lingerie. The Underoos had cartoon characters on them and I lounged around in Spiderman pajamas. I loved to screw with that husband’s mind and make him feel bad for wanting me to be underweight. I do not believe in real hypnotism.
Suffering is not necessarily the same as pain, although the two are nonexclusive of one another. One could suffer in pain, as would someone afflicted with a debilitating illness or life ending disease such as stage 4 cancer.
Pain, in and of itself, can just be temporary and treatable with drugs for such, or with time and rest.
Suffering is a state of being. One might suffer under the yoke of slavery, as were many people of all races did through out history, from the Hebrews in the Old Testament and their time in captivity in Egypt, to the Africans who were enslaved by their own and sold to the English and brought to the Americas (north and south continents).
One might suffer under a totalitarian regime such as North Korea, Soviet Union, Red China, or Communist Cuba. The people of Germany suffered under the Nazis…all examples of suffering as a state of being.
Pain is real.
Suffering is real.
One need not necessarily be in pain to suffer.
@immortal_pirate
A well considered response.
Pain is the physiological response. Suffering is a state of being, that may or may not involve the physiological response.
Can psychological suffering cause physical pain? I think so, if persisted in for long enough. Our brains are very good at constructing the Illusions we attach enough meaning to.
Your thoughts?
I saw one study for hypnotherapy where a chronic pain patient was scanned for pain receptor activity in the brain before and after treatment. The pain receptors were still firing but the patient was acting as if the pain was not real.
It’s like that old Star Trek episode at the OK Corral. They are in a mental construct, reacting to as if it is real. The illusory bullets kill only because they think they can. Spock hypnotizes them so what they thought was real, no longer is.
But Chekov is still dead, killed by an imaginary bullet. But when reality is reinstated he is suddenly alive: because the girl he was infatuated with in the alien construct, was more real to him than the bullets!
To the other half of your question concerning beliefs, if you’re saying that both pain and suffering are unreal, you would also need to say that faith and beliefs are also nonsensical.
@Jear77
What I’m saying is that which we attach enough meaning to, becomes our reality.
Change the meaning, and change the reality.
(With no claims or disclaimers as to how far this can reach)
But then the reverse would also have to be true for you. If you want to call pain and suffering real you must also called faith and belief real!
@griz it may be real but it’s useless as fuck
@Jear77
You still use them.
You just transferred “what they are in”, from the infinite to the finite.
(Although if they were in religionor a book, you’ve just transferred from one finite to another finite)
@griz faith, to be of any use needs to be able to heal more often than we blink. people being raised from the dead by its power (not medical science) should happen more often than we breathe. Food duplication by people of faith should be so boring and commonplace it should cause people to yawn. The news shoukd be filled with tales of people walking on water to lull us asleep at night. Casting out demonics should be so normal that no one gives a second glance when such things are beibg done in the subway or street corner. Instead of doing labor, a house should be able to be spoken into existence, and an entire street paved if moving literal mountains should be able to be accomplished with a word. None of these thing happen… can happen.
@Jear77
It takes little intelligence to parameterize anything out of consideration — or existence??
What if the healing, is only once for every other blink? — excluded.
What if it is still a valid healing, but not the specific one we fancy we want? — excluded.
What if it doesn’t happen in the time-frame we dictate? — Excluded.
What if it doesn’t solve a need we could solve ourselves if we got off our butt? — Excluded.
What if it doesn’t get the media spotlight pointed at us? — Excluded.
What if it doesn’t give us instant and effortless victory over/reward in everything? — Excluded.
What if every mountain doesn’t flee from from where we fancy we want to walk? — Excluded.
Have I accurately captured your new philosophy?
(Or is this really just the same old philosophy always ascribed to, overseen by a new butt-naked emperor?)
@griz then we would be truly able to live in this iteration for hundreds – if not thousands of years even with all your exclusions. The people who were buried or cremated would suddenly reform from nothingness from centuries ago,. We’d bump elbows with the likes of Plato, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, George Washington, Socrates, and thousands of other notable figures throughout history. Starvation would not be a word, so long forgotten that we wouldn’t even have a word for the slightest twinge of hunger. We can do things we want… but if we WANT the mountain to literally throw itself into the sea, there should be no problem doing so! And because there are cellphones everywhere. we WE are the media – sharing on G+, facebook, twitter, reddit, and dozens of other social media sites, so even your exclusion there is excluded.
@Jear77
My positive transformation into what I am today came with a few simple realizations or rules.
1. Absolutely nothing was going to grant me the power/ authority to reorder the greater external reality to my liking.
2. That becoming a sour bitter angsty despondent depressed unemployable curmudgeon in response to this was not an effective strategy; short mid or long term.
3. That I had great freedom and power/ authority to reorder my inner reality so I wasn’t constantly at odds with things I had no power to change.
4. That this could be facilitated and even preternaturally accelerated not by a religion or a book, but by a set of core teachings and precepts corrupted by people via religious process: for the apparent purpose of trying to produce minuscule exclusions to rule 1.
@griz without the guidelines i have set, i see any power wishing to set forth rules, regulations over our lives as selfish and evil.
@Jear77
So if you cannot be in charge of “the Order of Things”, that makes anything else that might be. . . Satan to you as God???
@griz if you’re trying to do a Milton, i don’t get your point.
@Jear77
If Milton showed up, it was of his own accord.
I was just commenting on your apparent manifest process of late: essentially if you cannot be God, then God must be your Satan.
I must say, that’s quite an ambitious project of ego.
@griz the choices for me to regain faith are simple: either i become so obscenely rich, i never have to do anything i don’t want to do, or i get the power to instantly change my reality by my words, i.e. the creative power of god. Anything less is a waste of god’s time, as it will have failed because it will not redeem my time. Since neither is possible, it’s not in the cards.
@Jear77
The problem with money and power, is that “faith” is then in them and not in anything able to transcend them.
They are “the rat race”. So one never transcends the rat race and instead, becomes more deeply imprisoned by it. Any “enemy” no longer needs to risk face-to-face altercation with you. They just mess up your money or power and you descend into chaos of your own accord. (And because no transcendent faith beyond “objects” has been nurtured, one is more incomprehensibly lost and miserable than ever before when those externals are removed.)
You are in a situation where your “required act of love”, cannot be bestowed upon you because it would be one of the most unloving things someone could bestow upon you.
Now if you were to get your internal faith in things transcendent in order . . . then you would likely be better able to wisely administer the external distractions of wealth or power.
In my life, which I’ve shared was an echo of where you now are, I didn’t start generating and accumulating wealth, until I abandoned the notion that wealth was going to solve all my problems (or prove “the parent” loved me??)
@griz tell that to the homeless, the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the down and out, those who are unemployment and underemployed. Use your message to eliminate poverty in its entirety first. Then and only then come back to me with that
@Jear77
They’re not here at this moment.
You are. And in some small way, are looking for reprieve from your “suffering”.
So we’re back to the extremist philosophy that a small fix is worth nothing unless it magically fixes “””everything””” without effort or process.
@griz my point is i need proof that i can take to the bank. If 73% of homeless (one point above placebo) improved their lives, in a study of… 10,000 people even that’d be acceptable. One person’s story of getting on their feet statistically isn’t worth mentioning – compared to the mass of humanity that has lived before now, and is currently living
@Jear77
Jear. . . .
Are you on the path you are on right now . . . because you had proof you could take to the bank that it would be a successful life-strategy??
@griz actually i am employed (currently), and am sure if i mess things up, i’d (likely) be able to find something else, a groccery store or something, so while i am not comfortable- i do have a semblance where i can live hand to mouth.
Keep in mind the study i propse, the people would be only given a bible and lessons on how to read it properly, as well as being told to have a food attitude, zero financial assistance because the point is that the attitude would perform the miracles you soeak of
@Jear77
If you are sure that model is unworkable, why the expenditure of so much effort to try to prove it unworkable? One isn’t so driven to prove . . .things they know but rather things they are uncertain of.
I’m glad you’re back into the gainful employment cycle. That should already be increasing the available and free serotonin in your system. Which means if you do lose this job you will be more likely to quickly rebound.
As for not being comfortable. Remember that just 70 years ago people were getting by with just $1/day, adjusted for inflation. Even the worst-off of us, are comparatively better-off than those just 70 years ago — and better-off than roughly 80% of the world’s population.
@griz you’re the one who said/ implied attitude is most of the battle. Such an experiment should be simple to perform.
And there was a typo – a good attitude is what it should have read.
That aside, we have to deal with where and when we are. Everything costs – either money or opportunity.
@Jear77
And the idea of everything costs either money or opportunity is what? 50 years old? 1000? 10,000? People have faced the same challenges for millions of years — just dressed up slightly differently.
The “woe is me” attitude is just so lame! As is the “entitlement” and “king me” attitude.
Adjustment out of them IS the major part of the battle!
@griz i’m offering god a scientifically statistical way of proving himself once and for all. Only a coward deity would turn it down. And since god knows everything, such a study should be underway, and its results published today!
@Jear77
Doesn’t the Bible say that our greatest wisdom is but foolishness in the scope of God?
So how do you think a parent should respond to a child giving them a foolish way of “proving” they are loved? (Like letting them eat or do whatever they wanted).
I would return to the observation that adjusting out of childish attitudes, remains one’s greatest struggle. But once accomplished, the attitude is more, “I can’t believe how long that child’s attitude held me captive, and how much better things are now”.
@griz no proof, no dice.
@Jear77
Waiting for proof to start living is a poor strategy.
Plus we’re talking about a child’s foolish impression of proof. A double-bad strategy.
@griz such devotion doesn’t come cheap. I’m the ultimate loan shark.
@Jear77
Count the cost.
But it’s more like an investment than a loan. The cost can seem high going in; but in hindsight is piddly.
And if one invests poorly (in a religion, in a book), all they will ever see is the cost and not the gain.
@griz i have. Nothing can be worse than what goes on here.
@Jear77
It does sound like you seen just the cost and not the gain.
I’ve mentioned before that I think the investment strategy used was a bad one.
@griz opinion… no proof. I will counter with my own: A proof that comes after the fact one lives their life… is a WORSE strategy to live one’s life! People need to do what makes them happy OR it needs to prove itself in scientifically valid ways to show that his ways are better (i.e. above placebo) for EVERY aspect of life. Any deity who can’t understand point that is evil and does deserves neither recognition nor worship.
@Jear77
As I’ve borne witness to before, all of the benefits that keep me in the black (physically, psycologically, spiritually) are already in my account and earning interest! I’m in outrageous profits, even without the alleged kick-ass retirement plan!
You invested in false patents. It’s no wonder you are bitter. But that does not mean that you still can’t invest wisely, in something that will pay off in surprisingly short order as ideologies angst and bitterness fall away away, and meaning greater-than-self make suffering far more endurable.
@griz one person, one instance, one example does not a pattern make, nor a single testimony a case. And at day’s end even if it did, forget not you are mortal – in this iteration at least. Because you can’t (won’t) do the single thing to prove your immortality (ya know the scene where Obi-Wan turns off his light saber to get struck down by Vader… and then visits him afterwards) – all your words are pointless
@Jear77
If one success shouldn’t prove anything neither should one failure!
But one person overcoming trial and suffering makes a watchable news story and a box office hit.
Hardly pointless or worthless.
@griz you’re the one who claims that god’s supposedly upset about the loss of one person. Not in my eyes. Doesn’t care a damn about the chess pieces here.
@Jear77
When have I said this?
And if the chess scenario concerns you, you have every freedom to not be the pawn of an ideology, or rooked into not thinking for yourself.