Cloudscape

Whatever you do, do not be stopped by suffering. If the only thing you can feel is suffering, then love your suffering, and it will no longer be suffering.

You will learn the most not through suffering, but through the enjoyment of as many experiences as possible, but only if that enjoyment is in the form of love rather than a need for distraction from suffering. Suffering merely occurs when we resist experiences when we are still to learn to love them. Being confronted with those experiences can help us to learn to love them, and it is so that to some, suffering sometimes seems the best way to learn. But this suffering is merely the resistance to the learning process.

Bliss in beauty is the triumph of love; suffering in beauty is its failure, but so too its triumph in bringing itself so far as to try.

It is true that we must confront this resistance in order to overcome it, but suffering in itself is just that which keeps us from beauty. Only once we have learned to love an experience have we truly found its beauty. Pain too must be loved, but just therefore it should not be suffered.

If you try to learn as much as possible, it may be that you will suffer the most, but nonetheless, do not seek suffering in itself, for when you suffer, your love becomes exhausted, and so too the will to love. But if you seek love rather than suffering, then your love may grow through its love for itself, until finally it spreads to things that you would otherwise have suffered and not loved.

A careful balance is needed between seeking more of what which you already love and seeking other things that you have not yet learned to love. Stay too much with the things you already love, and your love will turn to boredom. Explore too much, and your love will become harmed. Either way leads to apathy.

Too much adventure into the unknown, and we hurt ourselves through the suffering of too much pain; too little, and we hurt ourselves through the suffering of too much emptiness.

The greater your consciousness, which leads to sensitivity, the more you will have of either, unless it is paired with an equally great self-consciousness, which leads you to balance. People often suffer the most when their consciousness is greater than their self-consciousness. Consciousness helps us to be receptive, self-consciousness helps us to be in control.

Either how, things will always change, even if it is but through the duration that things remain the same. But even so, things always remain the same, even if it is but change that remains the same. You cannot be free from suffering nor find love unless you find balance between change and sameness.

Change too little, and the things you have will change by becoming monotonous, so that they become harder to enjoy; unless you either learn to enjoy the monotony, which is in itself also a change, or unless you change, so that your enjoyment may remain the same. Change too much, and the change will also become monotonous, so that it becomes harder to enjoy change, unless you learn to live with the monotony or stop changing, so that your enjoyment of change may remain the same.

Love may be lost either if it is not renewed through enjoyment or if it is harmed through suffering, and both will happen if there is too much sameness or too much change. In sameness, love the things you already love; in change, love things you have not loved before.

We must transcend our abilities to love but also preserve the ability to love we already have, so that its growth is not stalled, and this can be done if transcendence and preservation there are both enough, if there is balance between emptiness and fullness, light and dark.

See also:

Love and Suffering

Pain is our way of repelling what we do not want. Pleasure is our way of attracting what we do want, which may include the absence of something we don't want. Thus, both can be means of achieving the same purpose. The difference between the two is but that one painful and the other pleasurable. Thus, focus on what you do want, not on what you don't want.

The goal is always love. You can either search that which you love, or love that which you find. If there is nothing left which you love, for instance if everything causes you suffering, you have no more choice than to try to love that which you find, even if everything you can find brings you suffering. If you are suffering, it is not enough to accept your suffering: you must love it, especially if there is no longer anything else than suffering.

When you are in sadness, try to let go of attachment as much as possible: let go of greed, of anger, of fear. Let go of all things you tell yourself that must or must not be. Letting go of attachment is easier when sad, and in this way, sadness can come to its use. It can thus cleanse your being from impurities and, like winter, creates an emptiness from which new life can grow in spring. The faster you are able to let go, the less painful your sadness will feel, and the quicker it can also pass. Thus, do not resist sadness, but try to make use of it until it is gone. The use of sadness is to make one let go how things go, not as a punishment when things do not go your way. In your sadness, let go off all control and let everything be. Thus, it will come to its use.

Sometimes the best thing you can do when you are in sadness is to make use of your sadness' purification abilities, and the best way to do this is to turn inwards. Meditation, or, if you are religious, prayer, can be a good way to do this. In your sadness, you are more able to let go of control, thereby creating an emptiness within yourself. Learn to appreciate the silence this brings, and in that silence try to find grace.

Above all, when you are sad, think about what you want to do with your life. Sadness is an emptiness which creates a panorama within your mind. Hear the silence. See the darkness. Feel the cold. In this emptiness, find purity. Once you have done this, your sadness has served its purpose, and the light may come back once again.

It is only when one stops trying to resist one's sadness that one can be free.

Love your hate, lest in hating it you would let it grow. In so doing, however, remember that your hate is, nonetheless, something that is not meant to be, but do not attempt to undo it. Be objective, trying neither to kill it nor to make it grow, but merely observing and enjoying it in the current moment, as nothing more than a merely relative and transient experience.

Moreover, experience it in its context, neither focussing too much upon it nor too little; for hate is an enemy which will attack you in your back lest you are on your guard, but as the Hydra, it will also only grow stronger as you fight it. Instead, then, try to unify and reconcile it with your life, and your life with it. Let it be part of your life as long as it is there.

We resist suffering merely because suffering is per definition that which we resist, nothing more and nothing less. Suffering, then, is but resistance and otherwise nothing but an illusion. Pain itself is not an illusion, but if one will not resist it, one will not suffer from it. Do not resign yourself, but do not resist either.

Cherish positive emotions as love and hope, and they will grow. Pay no further attention to negative emotions as hate and despair, and they will dwindle. With positive emotions, I mean to refer to emotions that further growth, and with negative emotions, to emotions that destroy; in this sense, positive emotions need not always be pleasant, and negative emotions not always painful.
Remember to recognize negative emotions rather than repress them, but pay no further attention to them, for whatever thought one will pay attention to will grow.
Some negative emotions may sometimes partly feel positive. Despair often comes with a resignation which takes away our fears, while anger takes away our fears through defensiveness; despair, then, is an extreme of yin, while anger is an extreme of yang. While both these extremes should be avoided, the the yin and yang of these extremes can be used; thus, rather than decreasing the yin or yang of either extremes, perhaps we should complement them with their opposite.
We sometimes yield to them because, ironically, they give us a feeling of safety; if that happens to us, we should not repress the negative emotion but focus on its positive aspect of safety. Pain can bring us into a state of detachment; if we can preserve this state of detachment even when our pains have not been in vain.
Some people believe that only through suffering one can grow; I would say that suffering is, rather, a side effect of growth: suffering is resistance to growth. Hardship makes one stronger only if one learns to love what life brings you even in your hardship, even if that means to love your hardship in itself. One can grow only through love; but love can bring suffering along with it as it causes you to grow; remember therefore that love does not need to be pleasurable, and can just as well be painful. It is not an feeling in itself and can manifest in many kinds of feelings; but unless it is incomplete, love always brings us to greater beauty.

Greater beauty should be loved the most, but even so, we should all love all beauty we have the strength to love. We cannot love all kinds of Beauty at the same time, for to do so we would have to be infinite; we can but cherish the Beauty that we already see. We should not repel forms of Beauty that are hurtful to us when they befall us, but neither should we embrace them. For we may never be able to learn to love all beauty there is, as our time might be limited.