Annotations for Topic: Suffering

You know, the sad thing is when we see your world, when we see the unhappiness and when we see the misery of your world, when we see innumerable peoples who suffer, often unnecessarily - because much of your sickness and illness and disease is brought about by man himself by his wrong thinking, by his wrong living.

Because until you have suffered, until you have sometimes at least felt the need for the things of the spirit, you cannot understand nor appreciate them. And it is true to say that oft times, those whose tasks are many and whose path is harder, oft times they have, through their very sufferings, greater opportunity to reach through the sensitivity of things to the realities of the spirit. Because these things of which I speak are invariably revealed more to those who, by suffering and complication and difficulty of life, have become sensitised to truth.

Because you cannot find truth if you live and only expect from life all that is good as the world sees it - for if you are to see the good as the spirit sees it, then truly you must have learnt through suffering and have become so sensitised to other people's sufferings and have such feelings within yourself, that you yourself have made yourself more ready to receive.

All the great teachers, all the great prophets, all the great great seers, all the men of great wisdom, spiritual wisdom - were men who suffered. No one who wants to do the work of the spirit must ever think that the road and the path is going to be easy.