I’ve been reading Bernard Ruffin’s Padre Pio: The True Story and (though it is almost as boring as the Bible) it has extremely interesting content (if there can be such a contradiction of qualities in a book, you’ll find it in these 319 pages).

Padre Pio was a Capuchin friar. Capuchins are Catholic fundamentalists not to be confused with monks. Capuchin are a branch of the Franciscan Order. It is a level of discipline and dedication that few of ANY faith can muster. They live with no possessions giving up EVERYTHING including will to the Catholic church. They live a life of complete abstinence, austerity and piety. They are as far beyond secular priests as priests are beyond everyday Catholics.

That being said, Padre Pio was the cream of the crop. His level of dedication afforded him a following that spanned the Western world. Bernard’s book talks about many of the miracles that 1st, 2nd and 3rd hand witness’ claimed he did. I don’t have any doubt that Pio was a conduit for some incredible force of nature (divinity?), but he was also surrounded by fanatics and superstitious country folks whose minds were still in medieval Europe even though it was the late 1800′s – mid 1950′s. One example of this archaic mind set is that the people of his local township, San Giovanni Rotondo (southern Italy) threatened to beat or even kill anyone who would dare take their blessed saint. Their passionate wrath is both amazing and sad, but I guess such possessive attitudes over local saints was common in that part of the world in that era. At one point the Mayor himself Mocaldi told the officials of the Holy Office that if they took Padre Pio away he would shed his title and join the mob himself. A local brick layer even pulled a gun on Pio and told him he was staying “dead or alive”!

Padre Pio, though cut from the same cloth as his beloved townsmen, was frustrated with their behavior. He was down right mean to those that gave him the glory instead of God. The most impressive thing to me about Padre Pio was not his miracles (these were amazing feats, no doubt) but his humility, compassion and dedication that for me made him a true saint. These (his level of submission to God) seemed to be the conditions that allowed him to be a vessel for such miracles. Ultimately, it is his love that converted so many.

His miracles included:
bi location, stigmata, healing, predictions, telepathy, the ability to know languages he’d seemingly never studied and virtually all the miracles that were performed by the Apostles in Acts.

Bernard’s book is worth reading if only to see the wealth of anecdotal evidence of Padre Pio’s works. If you are researching Pio’s life, look no further than Padre Pio: The True Story.

I was in prison for a terrible crime which I did not commit (reminiscent of a real life situation that has happened to my cousin). The emotions in this dream were absolutely real. When I woke up in my comfortable bed, I was very relieved that it was not real, but then I started to ask myself: how do I know that this bed is real? How do I know that my so called “waking life” is real?

Why do we so willingly accept our present situation as absolutely real? In my dream, I didn’t question the reality of my situation just as I do not typically question my waking life. How do any of us know what we see as “real” is not a dream?

Perhaps our minds makes this place real and conveniently misses the discrepancies of our reality such that we have no need to question it.

Neo: I thought you said it wasn’t real
Morpheus: Your mind makes it real
- the matrix

I’ve been reading a Padre Pio book. Padre Pio was a great Catholic Friar with remarkable dedication. At his level of dedication and devotion, he would pray for Jesus let him to help bear his cross. In essence we was asking for unimaginable suffering.

I am perplexed at the positive light given toward suffering. Catholic saints such as St. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and Mother Teresa revered suffering as it was an emulation of christ’s suffering on the cross (his suffering is considered a sacrafice to save the souls of all mankind – John 3:16 KJV Bible, for those who what more info). But if this world is illusion, what good is suffering? Why not just pass through never to return? Or come and go as one pleases and collect knowledge to become like a god. In the Bible the Devil “tempts” Jesus with something like this, to which Jesus replies, “Get behind me Satan.” No matter how good it looks, its still illusion.

In his book, The Yogas of Dreams and Sleep, Tenzin Wangyal mentions rising above both pleasure and suffering as they are each of Samsara, part of the great illusion of this world. In Hinduism, this is called Maya, the illusion of our self being separate from everything else.

The word Islam actually means “submission to God” in Arabic. All these religions address suffering as something that should be submitted to or allowed to happen not resisted but observed and in some cases even honored.

SUFFERING SUCKS
I don’t know about you but Suffering really, really pisses me off and I suppose that is not very holy of me. I am just saying how I truly feel at times. I hate seeing people around the world suffering (especially children). It makes me mad at humanity and mad at god. Sometimes I can’t help but think that a lot of it is just not necessary.

We don’t really have to suffer…

SUFFERING = GOOD/EVIL
But the more I learn about what science has discovered about physical reality, the more I realize that suffering really is apart of this reality. The duality of this reality (good/evil, light/darkness, valley/mountain) is why there must be suffering. It is in the fabric of everything here and there is nothing we can do about it but suffer. And I suppose that is why the saints embrace it and why sages of the east don’t resist it any more than they praise pleasure. Because it is an illusion (as a dream) compared to a truer more holistic place that is not afflicted with duality. These saints and sages see all physical reality as a type of dream for preparation of a greater here and now.

I attribute all suffering to ignorance (not knowing our true nature not so much stupidity). I believe it is the greatest atrocity humanity will ever have. Ignorance of our physical, subtle and spiritual true selves. Perhaps that is why we are here, to graduate from ignorance.

… YEAH BUT
Why doesn’t an omniscient/omnipotent God simply instantly give us a deliverance from ignorance and its symptom, suffering, rather than growing into some greater realization?

A: If a rose never blooms, can it still be considered a rose? Perhaps, we are here to experience the blooming of humanity.

It is so far pretty dry as it goes into Padre Pio’s parents life to start with.  I first read about Pio in a book called Holographic Universe, by Mike Talbot.  Talbot talked about Pio’s stigmata and ability to bi-locate.  Bi-location is something that his followers experience.  For example they claim that he actually appears before them and guides them through a tough time even when Pio himself has no knowlege of the event.  This is some that Faqir Chand and other Indian mystics and followers experience.  Although this is easily explained away by skeptics, I believe such a widespread phenomenon deserves some attention.

But so far I haven’t gotten to his miracles in the book.