How should we handle the suffering of others?

Outwardly, pretty much the same way believers in dualism do.  Be kind. Be supportive. Help if you can. Listen. You know all that stuff.

When you're beginning to see that the world is illusion, it's easy for ego to come rushing in to flippantly declare all the suffering of the world as false, also. Ego is masterful at taking a fact and spinning it to get you to keep perpetuating the ego thought system. 

Ego's thought system is founded on a belief in separation. And when a person close to you believes s/he is suffering, there is nothing more divisive than to glibly announce to the person that they are simply imagining it! See what I mean? Yes, it's true that there can be no suffering in God, but none of us truly is convinced that this all is illusion. None of us. Even the writer of this blog. 

Mind exists OUTSIDE time and space. When I talk about the mind, I'm not talking about the brain. Mind is not contained in brain. The brain is part of the body mechanism, through which mind expresses its belief system. When mind is truly reawakened to Reality, it only rarely sees a reason to appear as a body within the dream world. Put bluntly: if you still woke up this morning in a body, you still believe in the dream.

Thus, for one dreamer to tell another dreamer that suffering isn't real just isn't helpful. It's counterproductive. 

So what SHOULD we do?

We ASK. While we listen to our suffering companion, while we hug them, while we assure them that we are there to help, we are ASKing inwardly for help in seeing the situation through the Vision of Christ. Because Mind is One, when one person ASKs for Vision, he is ASKing for all of humanity. 

One final reminder. The more one practices ASKing for Vision, the more one feels reflections of the Peace of God. When our mind is peaceful, Truth can flow unimpeded. A peaceful mind is much more helpful in times of suffering and turbulence. Don't join in the suffering of the other. That's false empathy. Simply be there, be kind, be gentle, be receptive. Get your own mind calmed down. And into your peaceful mind will come an answer. I can't predict what it will be; each situation is different in this world. You may be directed to say something, to give something, to do something. You may be directed to do nothing! But, what is so startling in these situations is that if you do it right, when your direction arrives it is unquestionably exactly what is needed. You actually become an 'instrument of peace' and a worker of miracles.

TRY it.