SUFFERING as an OPPORTUNITY for GROWTH

a conversation with a bloggy friend...

HIS WORDS:

"I'm vague on it. As I see it, what you've got here is a way of looking at suffering that comforts you. It is founded upon your belief that we live in a benevolent universe. I have no such belief because (a) I see no evidence for it; and (b) it seems to me that you run into a lot of inherent contradictions.

Take your belief about suffering being brought upon those who are ready for it as a growth opportunity, for example. You appear to arrive at this belief based upon your observation of people who individually become ill for no obvious reason. As I ponder this, I think of entire ethnic groups that suffer famine or genocide, or the millions of sufferers in impoverished nations such as the one to my south, Mexico. According to your belief, it would seem that all of those sufferers during WWII or in the current wastelands of Darfur are enduring such horrors because they are all ready for growth. How extraordinary to posit that millions of people were lumped together in various times and at various places so they could suffer the same horrors as a growth opportunity. I can not imagine that they would see it this way. It frankly strikes me as a theory arrived at from a state of relative comfort, but, of course, I could be wrong because, like you, perhaps, I have never seen everyone I loved die or had everything I owned taken from me even while my own body deteriorated"

AND MY THOUGHTS:

Hmmmmm... This 'way' of viewing ~life~ didn't just 'come to me' from 'relative comfort' as you put it my friend, i think to honor this 'way of thinking' one has usually 'put in the hours'... It is not a prerequisite to suffer of course, for one's eyes to be opened, but does often speed the process up in my human experience, (as we can see in the history of mans suffering as you say) and it has indeed often been born of much heartache in history, even as it is being written now, i agree...

My personal awakening (of sorts, for want of a better word, because for me it is an on going process) was too born of some misery, if one chooses to view it that way...
which began with the loss of my dearest Dad unexpectedly when he was just 56yrs, which then went on to trigger a time when i was so broken by this loss that i seriously considered perhaps that it should be my time to leave this earthly place too... and if it were not for the fact that i had small children at the time, perhaps it could have been so...
This 'way' of viewing life was also born of my journey with cancer, as it has struck me not once, but twice...
This 'way of living' has been born of watching as one of my Auntie's died of an inoperable brain tumor and being unable to help...

It has been born of watching my Grandfather fight death even as he died, and of watching a young man show me by example, how to face death with no fear in your heart ...even as his physical heart failed him...

Privileged i am to have these people touch my life for they have been my teachers...

i have been there for friends as they lost their loves too and have stood by helpless, at funerals as no doubt so perhaps have you...
And in my limited traveling experience i also have seen the beggars and the hungry living on the streets in all their misery and indeed have seen poverty in my very own country too...

and so have i, as have so many on this dear planet, been touched by heartache and suffering and loss in so many different ways, for it has been mans earthly duty to do it in this way for eons (as you note)...

...And so for this awakening i will not be ashamed
...for i have learned through these experiences ...that it need not be so...

...and i have come to understand it to be a 'chosen form of learning' ...for it is the suffering and poor and dying who have taught me in all their suffering and loss and dying... that it need not so be so

For they have given me the gift and the privilege of sharing also in their Re-births...

This 'way' of thinking, indeed 'living' has been for me (but not for everyone) born of the dark places that i have journeyed to by myself, and with others... But it has been in these very places where i have also been unexpectedly touched by ~Love~ ...The deepest, purest and truest kind of love that takes you by the hand and gives you PROOF in no uncertain terms that life is a much bigger picture than just oneself ...

i am taught that life is a simple reflection of my most innermost thoughts...
and yes this can ~seem~ the ultimate contradiction i agree...

But i have personally learned through experience that the ways of man are hard only because he chooses it to be so, and that in some of the most impoverished places on this planet that some people live with a greater sense of personal ~peace~ than some of we more 'comfortable folk' will ever understand... To my 'way of thinking', indeed this striving to 'be', has been born of the many experiences that could have made me bitter and twisted (and indeed for a long time did, thus perhaps my reasons to draw cancer to me)... Instead i choose to SEE the ~patterns~ of my life and so see it reflected in the lives of those around me ...and (because i am a stubborn soul!) because i think on some level my soul has sometimes screamed for EXPLANATION (!!!) i have been given many examples of proof, both very 'real' and physical and more ethereal and spiritual ...

And so my dear bloggy friend it is ~here~ in this space that i often post these experiences...
often as a kind of verification... mainly to myself...

...and as i sit here writing these words to you, i send you my ~Love~ for you give me cause, to again, by no co-incidence, at this very moment in time, by posing such questions to me, to remind me, during these challenging times, as i engage in my human doubts (as it should be, for i choose to come ~here~ for this experience)...

...that i am indeed never alone in my trials, so Thankyou my dear bloggy friend

~Thankyou~ for sharing in the journey

<3