Suffering is human. It is not Divine.

It is like this: You are at the summit of the tallest mountain, and you are anchored securely to a strong rope. You cannot hurt yourself. You may swing from side to side, but only so far, and you cannot drop further than the length of the rope, for it holds you, and you are safe.

But if you are at the top of the mountain, and you do not know or believe that a strong rope holds you, you are in great fear. When the wind sweeps you away from the edge of a rock, the rope holds you just the same, but you associate falling with fear. You feel alone and entirely at the mercy of the wind and gravity and the rocks below and the decreasing distance and time between you and the unforgivingness of the terrain below.

But you cannot be demolished because you are held by a rope from above, an invincible rope from above. Your fear is unfounded. Nothing can happen to you. You can never be demolished. Only your body can. Just your body. Not you.

And that is true of all the other beings in the world. Nothing can touch them either; only their bodies.

Don't you know that energy is never lost?

You cannot evaporate. You cannot disappear. That which you are is eternal. No harm can come to you. Only you call your body you. Only you call your identity on earth you. You are mistaken about who you are and the extent of you.

There is a strong tie from Heaven that holds you. That is undeniable. But you deny it. So there is the rope itself and then there is your awareness of it. You may have heard about it, but you're not 100% positive that it's there. Other people may have faith in it, but you don't remember seeing it for yourself and dare not rely on it.

Meanwhile, you rely on your physical senses, and you rely on your body, as if bodyliness were the sum total of you.

Your fears are for your body or for the personal image you have portrayed yourself in the world. You can lose your body. But your body is irrelevant to the truth of you. You can lose your image in the world. Your body and the image you have of yourself can lose money, reputation, limb, and the physical presence of others, but not life. Not yours, not anybody's. Life you've got no matter what. You are life. You can never be separated from existence.

When you experience a loss that is great to you, you even express it in terms of the physical. You say your heart is broken. You have had a blow. You feel loss physically. You are so involved with your body.

Now, the body has its place, don't misunderstand Me. But it is yours only for a while. It has an expiration date. It is like a library book that you will have to drop off some day.

Yet it is only human to be affronted by that date and yet always thinking about it somewhere there in the back of your mind or even in the front, depending upon your circumstance.

In any case, the body comes to an end. And sooner or later, even if by default, you have only the tie from Heaven to rely on. Human volition just can't manage it any more. You are left with the Divine.

There is something in the human being that does not believe he will ever die. Deeply, he knows that that is the truth. Bodies come and go, but that which he is stays.