Suffering

93 posts · 11 participants · started Sep 14, 2017, 7:12 PM

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   BonitaParticipant
   Sep 25, 2017, 9:44 PM

   Thanks for participating Mark.

   I just thought of another impetus for physical evolution caused by suffering in our current society.  Right now many suffering people are migrating to new countries and cultures.  Those that assimilate are contributing to genetic diversity, which has potential for evolution.  Still trying to come up with other ideas though.  Evolution is so slow . . . some things may be happening in our generation caused by suffering in previous generations, but we’re not really aware of it.

    

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   GeneParticipant
   Sep 26, 2017, 6:44 PM

   I copied the three sentences below from paper 100 thinking or better yet assuming that the context being used could be altered from their focus on pleasurable activities to suffering.

   I think it is reasonable to take the belief that suffering has meaning and value so I just mentally inserted suffering idea below in key phrases omitting pleasurable activities for example and to me the teaching could easily be applied to suffering.

   What do you think – too much of a stretch??

   (1096.7) 100:3.2 To the religionist the word God becomes a symbol signifying the approach to supreme reality and the recognition of divine value. Human likes and dislikes do not determine good and evil; moral values do not grow out of wish fulfillment or emotional frustration.

   (1096.8) 100:3.3 In the contemplation of values you must distinguish between that which is value and that which has value. You must recognize the relation between pleasurable activities and their meaningful integration and enhanced realization on ever progressively higher and higher levels of human experience.

   (1097.1) 100:3.4 Meaning is something which experience adds to value; it is the appreciative consciousness of values. An isolated and purely selfish pleasure may connote a virtual devaluation of meanings, a meaningless enjoyment bordering on relative evil. Values are experiential when realities are meaningful and mentally associated, when such relationships are recognized and appreciated by mind.

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   BonitaParticipant
   Sep 27, 2017, 1:31 PM

   Gene wrote:

   I think it is reasonable to take the belief that suffering has meaning and value . . .

   Oh for sure, it is useful to look for meaning in suffering, but not like Job did initially.  Job finally got it right when he decided to embrace suffering and thereby was able to transcend it.  I’ve adopted the attitude where in the face of suffering it’s best to give thanks for it.  Someone taught me that years ago and it works.  As soon as you give thanks to God you’re inviting him to be a partner in it.  That’s what Job finally did.  Instead of looking for scapegoats or cursing God for his ill fortune, he embraced it and discovered the living presence of God in the process.  I think that’s because of the mental shift he made from coveting that which has value to appreciating help from He who is value.  It puts a whole new meaning on things.

   148:6.3 While Job did not, through suffering, find the resolution of his intellectual troubles or the solution of his philosophical difficulties, he did achieve great victories; even in the very face of the breakdown of his theological defenses he ascended to those spiritual heights where he could sincerely say, ‘I abhor myself’; then was there granted him the salvation of a vision of God. So even through misunderstood suffering, Job ascended to the superhuman plane of moral understanding and spiritual insight. When the suffering servant obtains a vision of God, there follows a soul peace which passes all human understanding.

    

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   ArnoParticipant
   Sep 29, 2017, 9:20 AM

   Bradley, thank you for initiating this wonderful topic and, Bonita, for your much appreciated added insight, as well as the various input by all who have participated so far in this discussion on Suffering.

   I have lately come to brood a lot about the meaning of suffering in general as well as on personal level (recently diagnosed with stage 3 colonic cancer,) and tried to make sense of it all within the context of us living in a friendly universe. I’ve got hold of my UB and started at the Topical Index at the back with suffering…

   From having become a reader/believer just more than a decade ago, I just couldn’t get a grip on the whole experience. Sure, certain insights penetrated my mind, but overall I just couldn’t put the puzzle together … until yesterday when I was checking my inbox and noticed this incredible insightful discussion. Your discussion on Suffering has just underscored again the old axiom of in the number of councillors there’s great WISDOM.

   I so much appreciate all of Your input — I’ve gained greater understanding ????

    

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   ArnoParticipant
   Sep 29, 2017, 9:40 AM

   Apology: Bradley should read Bradly

6. B

   BonitaParticipant
   Sep 29, 2017, 11:16 AM

   I’m sorry to hear about your suffering Arno, yet glad you’ve found a little solace.  Not to minimize your story, but yesterday I was thinking about this very thing.  I was wondering how I would react if my world got rocked by news like you got.  I have to say that it would give me great sorrow at first.  I think it would take a long while to overcome the shock and readjust my outlook.  It’s easy to talk about this stuff, but when the rubber actually meets the road, I think most of us do a very long skid.  I know I would both skid and spin before gaining any composure or hope of insight.  Suffering is real, and if it doesn’t knock you for a loop, then maybe it’s not suffering, but rather a temporary misfortune. So when real suffering happens to me, which it will, I’ll come back here to get inspired by all of you.

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   GeneParticipant
   Sep 29, 2017, 2:23 PM

   For what it’s worth:

   My wife had stage 4 colon cancer 7 years ago

   she is here and ok today

   there was suffering for both of us

   and probably some personal  growth as well

    

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   BradlyParticipant
   Sep 30, 2017, 9:46 PM

   Friend Arno….I am very moved by your sharing here and wish you all the best in your fight to tarry here to further serve a little longer!

   I have faced my own mortality these past few years…more than once.  And while I was not particularly distressed by such probabilities and inevitabilities for my own sake, still…..I love this life and so many people in it….and the world of sky and wind and rain and snow and mountain and surf.  But I spent much time considering how those I love and serve now would or might suffer by my departure.  A view derived from self importance perhaps?  Ultimately such concerns led me to a closer walk and lots of prayer to better trust our Lord with ALL his children in His Love.  I know all must suffer their own repercussions, all lovingly provided and/or attended by our faithful guides into love, truth, beauty, and goodness.

   I have survived long enough to see my grandchildren’s TA’s arrive and mutually discover angels, heaven, God, love, generosity, and hope together in inspiring ways.  I’m glad for such a gift….it has helped me to know how strong the chain of my clan remains, generation after generation….and even the lost who suffer most are in God’s good hands….may all black sheep like me find their way home as I did on this side of graduation.  What a wonderful thing family can be.  Embrace those you love and love you with all the love you got Arno…and God bless you and all of them!

   "Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."

9. S

   starvisionParticipant
   Oct 10, 2017, 9:22 PM

   I don’t think… I know.  I don’t think I know either :)

    

   When going into a subject like suffering I like to start with a joke.  Suffering is something I see but purposely don’t highlight in my day to day life.  When at times the spirit within reminds me of my place, I try to understand for a moment how incredibly bad that must be.  I only feel grateful that my life in this moment is great.  I’m guessing that when you lay down to sleep and it’s just you, that you talk to God.  At that moment you are breaking the gate and asking for truth.  That truth becomes your moment to live beyond mortality.  We all do it, but purposeful prayer skips across the boundaries and ends in the arms of God.  It is your moment to become and endure the outcome.  Not to be so poetic or artistic but every moment you are aware of yourself is a moment you exist as one with God.

    

   Suffering. I am not too acquainted with that reality in my life.  However, I always feel bad every other moment.  Why is that?  That would be sufferings question.  One might suffer a bad pizza.  One might suffer a bad job.  One might suffer the loss of a leg.  I suffer guilt of not suffering.

    

   When feeling bad… try your best to put yourself in God’s arms.

10. S

    starvisionParticipant
    Oct 10, 2017, 9:50 PM

    This is a perfect opening for the raffle.  Your soul rings true.  The shadow of respect knows it’s place.  ::I kneel to the Father:: Your place is deserved among those that sing the hidden songs of the trinity.  Now, I will be serious.

    Those moments where you wonder what you are, are moments of soul discovery.  Oh, how they were not expected and were brought as of a dream.  As when you were young and now are brought against it.  You need not vanquish fear, it will leave of it’s own volition.  The love that you have has become your place.  Rest.

     

     

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    AndréParticipant
    Oct 20, 2017, 8:54 AM

    Hi everyone,

    Physical and spiritual duality are part of our reality.  ^{56:1.5  | 42:11.1}

    ^148:6.2  The mission of suffering.

    Physical suffering versus spiritual suffering.

    ^148:6.11 Then Jesus made this final statement: “The Father in heaven does not willingly afflict the children of men. Man suffers, first, from the accidents of time and the imperfections of the evil of an immature physical existence <physical>. Next, he suffers the inexorable consequences of sin — the transgression of the laws of life and light. <spiritual>
    

    I am brainstorming ideas to isolated or shedding light of evidence about a physical result of suffering and the spiritual result of suffering.

     

    Physically you put your hand on stove , burn yourself and it is an automatism you get it out.  Seems obvious because it is not done  consciously.

    Spiritually …. seems nonobvious.

    Who can fill the blank, please?

    André

     

     

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    BonitaParticipant
    Oct 20, 2017, 12:10 PM

    andré wrote:

    I am brainstorming ideas to isolated or shedding light of evidence about a physical result of suffering and the spiritual result of suffering. . . . .Spiritually …. seems nonobvious. Who can fill the blank, please?

    Doesn’t the quote explain it?  It says: “the transgression of the laws of life and light.”  There is another quote very much like that:

     p555:1  48:6.22 Law is life itself and not the rules of its conduct. Evil is a transgression of law, not a violation of the rules of conduct pertaining to life, which is the law. Falsehood is not a matter of narration technique but something premeditated as a perversion of truth. The creation of new pictures out of old facts, the restatement of parental life in the lives of offspring—these are the artistic triumphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turning, premeditated for an untrue purpose, the slightest twisting or perversion of that which is principle—these constitute falseness. But the fetish of factualized truth, fossilized truth, the iron band of so-called unchanging truth, holds one blindly in a closed circle of cold fact. One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth.

    The perversion of truth goes against the law of life, the law of light and life. The law of light and life is the divine law, God’s will.  The result of trying to live a perversion of truth, going against the divine law, is explained in this quote:

     p42:7  2:7.6 Intellectual self-consciousness can discover the beauty of truth, its spiritual quality, not only by the philosophic consistency of its concepts, but more certainly and surely by the unerring response of the ever-present Spirit of Truth. Happiness ensues from the recognition of truth because it can be acted out; it can be lived. Disappointment and sorrow attend upon error because, not being a reality, it cannot be realized in experience. Divine truth is best known by its spiritual flavor.

    The result of spiritual suffering appears to be disappointment and sorrow.  If it isn’t corrected, eventually the result is self-annihilation.

    (1452.4) 131:8.6 “They who know the laws of the Eternal are wise. Ignorance of the divine law is misery and disaster.

    (39.2) 2:5.3 The Creators are the very first to attempt to save man from the disastrous results of his foolish transgression of the divine laws.

    (1660.2) 148:4.3 “Evil is the unconscious or unintended transgression of the divine law, the Father’s will. Evil is likewise the measure of the imperfectness of obedience to the Father’s will.

     

     

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    AndréParticipant
    Oct 23, 2017, 10:50 AM

    Beloved Bonita,

    #28265 and #28266

    Doesn’t the quote explain it?

     Yes … but backing up that quote with the ones you find out give me ignition to re-engage conscious processus whom run idle without grid connection on that specific inquiry.

    Law is life itself.

    Evil is a transgression of (law) life.

    Falsehood is not a matter of narration technique but something premeditated as a perversion of truth.

    Happiness ensues from the recognition of truth because it can be acted out; it can be lived. Disappointment and sorrow attend upon error because, not being a reality, it cannot be realized in experience.

    Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.   Helen Keller

    Thanks Bonita,

    André

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