It's experiencing we are here for. You cannot fail !

[Tyy1907]

Well said Doug

Pre-offended that's brilliant lol. Programmed to literally be offended by x y or z.
We can choose to look beyond the programming and see a misguided soul trying to find their way.

[O Donna]

Everything = experience

To say “It's experiencing we are here for” is a sub to that axiom.

The driver, vehicle, and path = Won/ One

Destiny achieved.

[Craig]

Sorry to go off topic, but I love your avatar, amazing.

[Javblanc]

And the key to experience is suffering. Suffering is necessary to become aware of what really matters. Contrary to what many people think, we are not in this world to be happy but to be wiser: to grow spiritually. And it is the case that there is no growing without suffering. Seen from our worldly point of view, every wound that life inflicts on us makes us weaker. From a higher perspective, it makes us stronger: we learn. In the spiritual dimension from which we proceed and to which we are destined, learning is theoretically. To really learn something you have to go through it, to put it into practice. And this can only be done in a dimension in which suffering is not only possible but inevitable: the material world. This is why we descend here over and over again.

“There is no growing without suffering" Hadewijch of Antwerp, 13th-century mystic and poet

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain" C. G. Jung (Contributions to Analytical Psychology, p. 193)

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it's not in order to enjoy ourselves" L. Wittgenstein

[thepainterdoug]

Javblanc. thanks and well stated. I often think on this. This is why i have come to the idea that everything is as it should be. That there is nothing to fix in a sense. Things play out and we live them and react to them.
A river running down a mountain gets blocked by a felled tree or rocks falling in its path, the river diverts around the obstacles and finds a new path and keeps running. All around the area things adjust to new variables. it benefits some things and lessens some previous but who is to say what those definitions are and mean. Was it a good or bad thing?

Pain is difficult , but growth comes thru pain. I dont really know why we are here either but this seems to be the reality we live.

[araucaria]

Posted by Javblanc (here)
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it's not in order to enjoy ourselves" L. Wittgenstein

Let me disagree with Wittgenstein, if I may. The French word ‘peine’ means both grief/pain and effort. The closest English has is ‘bother’: you bother yourself, it causes bother. So why bother? According to Henri Bergson, such effort is produced and required when the rubber of mind hits the road of matter. This is the creative process whereby we surpass ourselves, and, says Bergson, nature gives us a precise indication whenever we attain that goal, namely joy. Joy, as opposed to pleasure, is the feeling of triumph at having created something and getting somewhere: a milestone. Pain on the other hand is not a negative milestone, it is part of the process.

[Orph]

Not buying that train of thought at all. Yes, there are lessons to be learned in suffering. But I don't believe it's a necessity that we suffer just to learn. Does that mean a father has the right to beat his 5 year old son half to death?

"I'm sorry son, but the only way you'll learn to behave is if I beat your brains out". --- Whack, bam kick stomp.

Nope. Sorry. Doesn't fly with me. Like I say, lessons can be learned through suffering. But I also believe that sometimes suffering is just suffering with no lessons learned. ..... But, that's just the way I see it.

[thepainterdoug]

Orph

totally agree. But explained perhaps an analogy of a body builder or weightlifter sports person etc your muscles do not change or grow without a degree of pain and discomfort involved in the exercise required.

I read the meaning to suffering, pain, pleasure undue or not as both needing to exist to define themselves.

Araucuria/ love your comment, when the rubber of the mind meets the road of matter

[JackMcThorn]

Posted by Orph (here)
Like I say, lessons can be learned through suffering. But I also believe that sometimes suffering is just suffering with no lessons learned. ..... But, that's just the way I see it.

I think pain and suffering are not the best descriptors of what actual happens. There is a range of failure that does not equate to pain nor suffering.

The mind tends to remember when things go wrong moreso than when they go right. For example, if you have a bad experience; a person tends to share that with 3o people; on the contrary, if you have a good experience, a person tends to share that with 3 people. These are just averages and are not hard and fast. Remembering bad experiences does not necessarily make them pain or suffering; however, a person does not really want to repeat the experience the next time [potentially a lesson learnt].

In reading the op and the rest of the thread; I felt I disagree that there is no such thing as failure as I know failure pretty well - I thought. I do not necessarily associate failure with pain or suffering; but I do think failure is a necessary aspect of the learning process. So I disagreed that failure does not exist. I recognize failure as a learning experience [something that is more easily remembered]. Misplacing your wallet might be a failure because the pain inflicted in replacing important documentation is certainly real; however, one will learn quite a bit more about themselves going through a divorce.

I had attention deficit disorder and was a hyper active young lad through grade school ['til 8th grade]. The typical punishment I endured was kneeling in the foyer. The foyer was the main entrance to the home and the floor was these small ceramic tiles. A session of this punishment was usually 3o-45 minutes and given my high energy I frequently found myself in this position - so I didn't really learn from it. But it was certainly painful, once Mum said I was finished it took a little bit to stand back up and carry on smartly.

My daughter on the other hand was not hyper active and she was a good listener. She had maybe 4 incidents of melt-down from age 4-8. Around age 12 I took her phone away 1 time. She was a very good kid naturally and quite bright. She is in her first year of university now. I had no use for the punishment inflicted upon me and no intention of using it when I became a father.

So pain and suffering might really be extremes of failure but not the norm. Frankly, I am still thinking on the 'no such thing as failure' idea. It might be in fact the truth but still requires more thinking from my view.

[thepainterdoug]

Jack McThorn/ thanks the "no such thing as failure " comes to me initially from the NDE people. From the other sides way of reviewing our lives here.
i have thought on it a good deal.
In our earthly realm, we have language and have to decide on definition? What do we mean by failure , or success? there are many great artists that are considered failures in life and many successful financials guys that are viewed as successful. In what way? how do we view this all.

[Javblanc]

Since I was a child, I have a disease called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Although in my childhood and youth it made me suffer a lot, this illness, seen in perspective, has been a blessing for me: I think it has made me a better person.
My obsessions are very varied. But the compulsion with which I deceive them has always been the same: reading. I am a compulsive reader. Reading, I get rid of my obsessions, I evade myself. Shortly after entering the University, I won a literary contest called by a television channel, and I began to earn a living as a scriptwriter. Since I was in love, the theme of Soul Mates emerged as a backdrop for a feature film project. I started reading about it. The subject gave much more of itself than I imagined. And so, I went deeper and deeper into the bookish world of ancient wisdom. Although the disciplines in which I was digging were very diverse, for more than ten years my compulsion of reading took a well defined course. Little by little, in the manner of a giant puzzle (of, say, a landscape) whose innumerable pieces slowly fit together, a certain “landscape” gradually took shape in my head. (The book I have written is the detailed description of that landscape.) But above all, I believe that my suffering has led to a spiritual awakening in me. The spiritual awakening sometimes happens suddenly (especially among practitioners of certain meditative disciplines). However, in my case (if there has been such a spiritual awakening) it has happened slowly and progressively throughout my life.
Since I was a child I was in a spiritual path but without knowing it. The consequences of my still undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder made my day to day so difficult that I had to look for a spiritual escape valve for my suffering. Basically it consisted of the interiorization. My companions lived mostly on the outside, the characteristic of youth: they went out to dance with girls, they did team sports, in short they experienced what external life could offer them. I, on the other hand, due to my illness, I had no choice but to live inside, to seek refuge within myself through reading, art, writing, long walks alone on rural roads, surrounded by nature ( my illness made it impossible for me to walk in the city among people) ... In short, suffering forced me to mature spiritually, to deepen myself.
And there, inside me, I discovered unsuspected wonders, intuitions that were becoming certainties. Indemonstrable certainties of course (because the Spirit-related things happen in another plane different from the physical one where the phenomena are susceptible of demonstration), but corroborated by my constant readings of the ancient sages, many of which today we would integrate in the category of esotericism and for whose reading I learned languages. One of the biggest certainties that seized me is that I was not alone. I was alone only in appearance (my family did not understand me, I did not have friends, in fact I fled as much as possible from the humane treatment). But I had the certainty that "someone" accompanied me at all times, guided me when choosing my readings and the steps I should inevitably take in life.
For example, being in the worst moment of my illness, therefore in the lowest of my self-esteem and my desire to live, I happened to find out about a literary contest destined to find young writers for a television channel of recent creation (it was the time when Spain took the path of freedom and, with it, the oppressed languages: hence the founding of a Catalan-language television channel). Well, in that state of absolute demoralization in which I was, something impel me to write a situation comedy for that contest. I thought about suicide in my head, and yet in a few days I wrote several chapters full of humorous gags and witty dialogues starring a community of happy young people! When I finished and reread the writing I could not believe that I had written that divertimento in my depressed state! I guess those who gave me the prize would not have believed it if they had known how sad I was then ...
Anyway, it's just an example to say that I did not feel alone, that my impression was that I had written that sitcom to four hands, that "someone" watched over me and guided me in the course of my life. And this undemonstrable certainty has not left me since. This certainty includes the existence of God, of a spiritual path that we are here to travel and the notion of death as a simple transit.

[Javblanc]

We have not come to this world to be happy. We were very happy in the spiritual world from which we came. We did not need to come to this world to seek happiness. In fact, if you look back in human history you will see that in all times human existence was, for the vast majority, a continuous suffering (wars, diseases, famines ...). Only in our time people begin to allow themselves to be happy (and that only in the first world). So it's not happiness that brought us here. There is a phrase from a mystique of the 13th century that sums up very well the purpose of our existence: "If you do not suffer, you do not grow." We come to this world to grow, that is, to mature, to be better people, to evolve spiritually. And suffering is the touchstone for our growth. So imagine that you are in an exam, a difficult test. It's no use to lament, you have to try to pass the test. Try to do the right thing at all times and try to make those around you happy. Also try to be happy you. But know that pursuing your own happiness is not your mission.

Oscar Wilde, the famous English author, was an eminently frivolous, superficial man, a hedonist. But when he experienced suffering, his attitude towards life took a 180 degree turn. He himself explains it in "De Profundis", a long letter he writes from prison: "I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. I hated both... I had no idea that it was one of the special things that the Fates had in store for me: that for a whole year of my life, indeed, I was to do little else. But so has my portion been meted out to me; and during the last few months I have, after terrible difficulties and struggles, been able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden in the heart of pain... It is really a revelation. One discerns things one never discerned before... For the secret of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind everything... When we begin to live, what is sweet is so sweet to us, and what is bitter so bitter, that we inevitably direct all our desires towards pleasures, and seek not merely for ‘a month or twain to feed on honeycomb’, but for all our years to taste no other food, ignorant all the while that we may really be starving the soul.” If Oscar Wilde had not experienced himself (the experience of others is useless) that tremendous suffering; If he hadn't been kicked off the pedestal to which his talent had lifted him; if he had not known humiliation; if he hadn't spent those two years in jail, he would surely have remained the shallow, selfish, pleasure-seeking dandy that he had been until then.

[araucaria]

Posted by Orph (here)
Not buying that train of thought at all. Yes, there are lessons to be learned in suffering. But I don't believe it's a necessity that we suffer just to learn. Does that mean a father has the right to beat his 5 year old son half to death?

"I'm sorry son, but the only way you'll learn to behave is if I beat your brains out". --- Whack, bam kick stomp.

Nope. Sorry. Doesn't fly with me. Like I say, lessons can be learned through suffering. But I also believe that sometimes suffering is just suffering with no lessons learned. ..... But, that's just the way I see it.

Thank you Orph. Obviously I am not condoning any sadistic behaviour of the kind you are suggesting. But take a sports champion or a virtuoso musician: what you see is the perfection of many hours and years of sweat. The viewer gets the perfection without the performer’s sweat. But what you are describing is the middle man: the teacher or trainer, the coach. He is not – not necessarily – the sadist you suggest; all he is saying is, if you want to reach this level of achievement, you must put in this amount of hard work.


I hear you when you say, ‘sometimes suffering is just suffering with no lessons learned’. That is so true... at one level. At another level, you can always learn the lesson; it will always take the form: That was tough, but it was worth it. Some people go to jail to see why, as Javblanc explains.
Alternatively, you can set yourself a goal, and all the hard training is accepted as a means to that end; whatever the outcome in terms of results, one has the ultimate satisfaction, and joy, of having done one’s best.


Having said that, you touch on the profile of the parasite: one capable of coaching someone else to achieve, with little effort on their own part, and basking vicariously in that achievement. Or, as the case may be… casting them off as a failure. As the saying goes, Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach. This may be a definition of the rulers of the world. Find a new coach!

[thepainterdoug]

Javblanc. excellent stuff from Oscar Wilde.

Just want to be clear on something. There is no condoning. No condoning of so called bad or good behavior. No condoning of being a horrible person, selfish, violent and so on.

Its that no matter what you choose to be , your coming here and choosing to live in a loving light or a hating darkness has only consequence here, on earth.
be a thief, a murderer etc and you live a life in jail , on the run or a sad and guilty life of hell within.

Why I said ,"you cannot fail" is because when you cross back over, your equally loved as one regardless of your choices while encarnated.

And this info that I feel rings true comes from over 100 NDE experiencers.
What better source?

Susan Dyers channel is wonderful. He video below addresses this very thing

https://www.susandyer.com/blog/there...ce-realization