Not the End of Suffering: The Collapse of the One Who Resisted

We often hear spiritual realisations described with words like "peace," "freedom," or "the end of suffering." And while those words might be true in a deeper sense, they can be deeply misleading.

Because what this path actually feels like (day in, day out) is not peace in the conventional sense. Not quiet. Not ease. It's not a warm arrival into comfort. It's something far more raw, more honest, more unraveling.

It’s not the end of suffering necessarily.

It’s the end of the self that was trying to manage suffering.

And it can be its own kind of agony.

When the structure of self—the one who survived, performed, obeyed, resisted, defended—starts to collapse, it doesn’t come with glitter and soft music. It often comes as exhaustion. As overwhelm. As intense emotional weather. Because suddenly there’s no more gatekeeper keeping it all in check. No more internal controller saying: "This is too much, this doesn’t belong here, hold it together."

Everything that was buried starts to surface. The backlog of grief, fear, anger, unmet needs. Old memories. Subtle contractions. Even the body responds—tension, inflammation, exhaustion, headaches, tight chests. Because nothing is being pushed away anymore. It's all just allowed to come.

What people call “peace” isn’t about floating above the pain. It’s simply the absence of resistance to it. No war with what arises. But that doesn't mean the pain itself goes away.

It’s not a blissful retreat.

It’s a full-bodied yes to everything that was once held at bay.

And that “yes” isn’t performative. It’s not some spiritual bypass. It’s the only thing that’s left when the pretending stops—when you’re too tired to keep holding it all up, and something in you simply gives in to what’s real.

There’s no fanfare for this.

No certificate.

No one clapping.

Just you, your heart, your body, trembling but open.

And life, relentless and intimate, happening without a buffer.

People think awakening is some grand escape. But it’s not.

It’s the collapse of the escape plan.

And what’s left is everything.

If there’s peace, it’s not because the storm ended.

It’s because you’re no longer trying to be separate from it.