Suffering is inevitable. The question is how to make it useful, and in particular, how to transform it into presence. The first step in this process is not to express the suffering externally. Of course, we still experience it, but we act as if we were not suffering; that is, we do not grumble, or become mad, or seek sympathy, or anyway show our suffering. This has the effect of causing an internal division of ourselves into the part which is suffering and the part which controls the expression of the suffering. The second part is outside the suffering, and so it can begin working to change the suffering.

This leads to the discovery that the greater part of our suffering is imaginary; that is, it is caused by things which are entirely within our control. Emotional suffering for example is sometimes based on what others think about our actions, while the truth is they probably have other ideas about us. There is sometimes basis for suffering, that is physical pain, or intense emotional pain - but what happens we make it worse by thinking about it.

Seeing imaginary suffering for what it is causes it to diminish and gradually disappear. This is also true of what can be called unnecessary suffering. Some suffering is a necessary payment in order to achieve an aim — for instance, if we want to get to the top of a mountain, we must accept the physical suffering of the climb — but much of our suffering serves no purpose, and so is unnecessary.

After unnecessary suffering is observed, what is left is real suffering. The real can be used for something higher in oneself and the imaginary will lead nothing for oneself.

The separation of ourselves into two parts which occurred at the beginning with non-expression now becomes crucial to further progress, for the next step is to accept this real suffering and to stop fighting against it. Real suffering never involves all of our being; in fact, in the absence of imaginary suffering, the part outside the suffering inevitably proves to be by far the greater part of ourselves, and this part can accept the unavoidable suffering of the lesser part. Reality is what it is suppose to be. It is quite useless to go against what has been dealt to you. The best thing is to go forward with our lives. However, this is not a passive or resigned acceptance. Part of acceptance of the present situation is accepting the possibility of change in the future, and of our responsibility to make efforts toward that end.

Once we have done our best to detach ourselves from the suffering and accepted it, we can now work on use it for something useful. It involves seeing the suffering in the context of universal laws, of seeing its beauty. And obviously such things are not possible for an ordinary man. Most of the steps we can accomplish through regular psychological work, but transformation of suffering needs something else, something higher – such as "presence". In fact, they are two aspects of one thing: Divine Presences transforms suffering, and transformation produces Divine Presence.

Actually if we do our best to transform suffering then Divine Presence will flow from this. But it is not only suffering which can be transformed; beauty and pleasure can also be transformed into Divine Presence by the same techniques. However, because our lower selves assume that pleasure is theirs by right while suffering is something to be avoided or at least worked with, we must first learn to transform suffering. The endeavor is to become skilled at transforming all our experiences into Divine Presence.