There are plenty of situations where suffering is necessary AND forced upon us. The only way someone could not suffer in those above situations is to just suicide. It’s not the ONLY result, there are probably plenty of adoptees who are happier in their new homes for example, but you certainly cannot deny that to move forward with life, suffering is sometimes necessary. Not everyone is lucky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism

Also: This.

I’m not going to get into a “who has more suffering credentials” contest, because that would defeat the whole purpose of not glorifying suffering.

I will say that I can identify with feeling like I was “forced” into crappy options and “had no choice” for survival reasons. However, I have found that as I came to hold the views of suffering reflected here, I found that more options opened up to me, and the options that opened up were much more desirable on average. That said, this is a work in progress, not something that happened overnight.

I maintain that most suffering is a choice – albeit often one we don’t know we’re making, individually and collectively. There are always other options, but when we’re mired in habitual thinking that says we “need” or “deserve” to suffer, those options will not be visible, and may as well not exist.

I “expect others” to do what works for them; that’s what self mastery is all about. If your present way of thinking and operating is creating the experience you want to have, then keep it up by all means! If it’s not; if it’s making you feel disempowered and unable to have any influence over what happens to you, then I’m here to say that there ARE other options.

Lastly, the examples of jobs taken above were all jobs of necessity, i didn’t have a choice, they weren’t “Challenges” they were the only way for me to survive.

I honestly think you need to review exactly how hard most people work, you write as if you live an easy life and as if you expect most others to have the same.

What you’re describing here is a challenge that one voluntarily accepts — which might be painful — but isn’t the same thing as, for instance, being tortured against your will. Voluntary challenges are just that, voluntary; we take them up because we believe the gain outweighs the cost. Challenges can be shared. I mentioned all this above.

I, and likely many of my readers, do not view the divine as something completely external to ourselves. Healthy disagreement is fine, but we’re not going to tolerate people coming onto our site and insulting the intelligence of ourselves and everyone else with a similar worldview. So let’s keep it civil in the future, mmkay?

However it is indeed, worth it. Necessary even, since most people wouldn’t push themselves to the extremes i have, unless there was a motivation like monetary reward. Salary. Pay.

There’s nothing dark or evil or even remotely spiritually related to the experience – suffering is simply that, suffering. You feel like you are sacrificing something towards a goal. For those who earn emotional strength and resilience this way too, it can breed great compassion as one always remembers how it felt to be in “hell on earth” when one started working in such a physically demanding way.

Simply put, there’s always something a little suffering will always give you – and that ONLY suffering can give you. That is emotional strength. Nothing else will garner that. Saying it always gives compassion is a misconception, especially when you start taking religion into focus with it.

How on earth are you supposed to identify a HUMAN capability and concept (Compassion) within an EXTERNAL non-human being like God? The stupidy of such a comparison astounds me.

Jim
YourVisionStatement.com