Ending Unnecessary Suffering

How to Create a Powerful, Complete, and Peaceful Life

By: Peter Ralston

Narrated by: Ryan Paige

• Provides contemplative practices and exercises to help you recognize how you cause your own suffering

• Explores the dynamics of the mind and how it sets the stage for distress

• Explains how mental states of suffering are created and how to control your mind to stop those thought patterns and assumptions

Most of us believe that suffering is inevitable. Stress, shame, depression, grief, loneliness, disappointment, the feeling that life is incomplete—every negative experience contributes to the emotional and psychological pain that impedes our ability to live happy, fulfilling lives. But what if most suffering could be avoided? Is there an antidote to inner turmoil that can be learned and applied to everyday life?

In this groundbreaking work, Peter Ralston reveals how to free yourself from mentally created suffering. He explains how most creatures don’t experience suffering the way we do. They don’t worry or fret, fear the future, or imagine they are somehow flawed or less than they should be. Exploring the dynamics of the mind that set the stage for distress and that get us into trouble, he explains how mental states of suffering are created, how to recognize when you cause them, and how to stop suffering-inducing thought patterns and beliefs.

Sharing contemplative practices and exercises to help you end your inner turmoil and foster growth, awareness, and freedom, Ralston provides an empowering way to create a more complete, powerful, and peaceful life experience.

Critic reviews

“Peter Ralston has created a mighty tome that clearly lays out why we suffer, the mechanics behind our suffering, and solutions that we can actually use to end our personal suffering. The practices offered bring us to awareness, and that is a beautiful doorway to freedom from pain and freedom from suffering. In a day and age when we can experience many difficulties just by living life, Ending Unnecessary Suffering is a gift to us all.”

“Ralston has clearly outlined the cause of unnecessary suffering, which is the distinction between concept and experience. Concept separates us from experience, and this separation, he explains, is a major cause of suffering that is internally created. Experience is in the here and now and is closer to a state of being that doesn’t add to the limitations of concept that leads to suffering. He offers practices to move from understanding to a functional state of experience. There is much in this book to help you become a person who lives from experience if you follow the process he presents.”

“In this book, Ralston helps guide you through this journey of understanding concepts and emotions. He references his other work throughout; plus here and there, he throws in quotes from some exceptional individuals, from Albert Einstein to Nelson Mandela. What you’ll get out of this book is learning about the root of unnecessary suffering and how you can overcome the suffering in your daily life. I highly recommend giving Ending Unnecessary Suffering a read, even if you’re not even remotely interested in these types of books. I firmly believe that any reader can finish this book and walk away with something new, whether this be in terms of knowledge or in terms of attitude and mentality. But now, if you are genuinely seeking to end your unnecessary suffering, this book is a good start in reaching that point. This book will help guide you in reading a more peaceful life. I can personally attest that this book has helped me in ending my unnecessary suffering, so it is worth reading.”

you can choose to let go of what you're making up

this is not at all your typical self-help psychological treaties on easing suffering. Ralston presents a very intellectual approach to understanding your own mind and thoughts, some possibilities on how to work with them, and places responsibility on the reader to investigate further. this is less a how-to, and more a what-is-possible, though there are practical exercises to aid in your own investigation. Note to potential reader, this treaties is more about mental and emotional suffering (grief, anxiety, fear, unworthiness, self judgement, etc) than it is about physical suffering... although very applicable to the mental suffering that often comes along with physical suffering