“In the greatest sufferings you should say, “It is for the good.” It is a great thing, when you are in contradictions, to be thankful to God. Your character is being tried then. Why, you are not alone. Thousands and millions of people take part in the difficulties which you are in. Those who want to take up the New teaching should first be content with unfavourable conditions. Thousands of people are suffering around you and you are not paying attention to them. God has allowed you to suffer, so that you do not pay attention to the sufferings of others. Do not be discouraged and do not say, “Nothing will come to me.” When you thank God for the good, it grows. When you give thanks for the suffering, it goes away. When you do not give thanks for the good, it goes away. When you do not give thanks for the suffering, it remains and grows. These are four laws of Nature.” – Beinsa Douno (Harmonizing of the Human Soul, pg 76)
To give thanks for suffering is a hard ask but may be the very source of solace. We cannot fight suffering. We cannot even struggle with it. It is not something that can be grasped. It cannot to be put aside or forgotten. It has a singular quality of being. Being that is self-existent.
If the world teaches us anything it is when we suffer we are not alone. There is no life that is without suffering. This is Buddha’s first noble truth.
Can suffering be transformed? What would it be transformed into?
“The happiness, enjoyment and contentment life brings one gratefully accepts; but more valuable by far, once it is overcome, is the pain and suffering, for to that people owe what wisdom they possess. Spiritual science recognizes in wisdom something like crystallized pain; pain transformed into its opposite.” (R. Steiner, Supersensible Knowledge, Lecture II, GA 55)
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