Cloudscape

You can either accept or resist an experience, and if you resist, then that too is an experience, and there is nothing wrong with that. The point is, you can either run from an experience or stand before it and look it in the eyes, and like the monsters in our dreams, the more we'll run from them the more frightening they'll seem, but look closely and you'll find that they're just baby goblins with toy clubs. You can either accept or resist an experience, and if you resist, then that too is an experience, and there is nothing wrong with that, either. The point is, you can either run from an experience or stand before it and look it in the eyes, and like the monsters in o ur dreams, the more we'll run from them the more frightening they'll seem, but look closely and you'll find that they're just baby goblins with toy clubs.There is nothing to be afraid of, not even fear itself. The only difference it makes if one is afraid is that one is no longer conscious of the real nature of one's experiences. Like when one is running from a monster, one faces away from it and so no longer sees what it really is, let alone see it for what it really is; likewise, if one is afraid of something, one tries to become unconscious of it - and it works, but not with the desired effect. Suffering is, in effect, is ignorance. And that's what people just won't get. If you face your fears, they'll disappear. But what does that mean, facing your fears? It means you accept them, and whatever it is you fear, not resisting. Usually, people are incapable of both accepting their fears and at the same time enjoying. It is in our nature. When we enjoy life, we try as hard as we can to forget our fears because those might interfere with our happiness. We cannot accept our happiness and at the same time that it might disappear. This brings us into a perpetual cycle of joy and suffering and hope and despair, and the only way we can break free from this cycle is to dispense with the illusion that there is any such thing as good and bad. This liberation is a painstaking process that can only be achieved by suffering - that is, in the sense enduring - those things we cannot accept, and learning to love those things and seeing their beauty. If we drop the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, we will regain Paradise. That does not mean we must cease to distinguish light from darkness, but that we should condemn neither. Do that which is most beautiful, and it will create more beauty. But let us see what is most beautiful with our hearts, and not with our minds. Only the mind knows such duality between good and bad because only the mind sees in black and white.

If you hate yourself, you can never be happy because you will not allow it, and only when you love yourself will you think yourself worthy of happiness.

Suffering forges your soul, hammerfall after hammerfall; brutally and mercilessly, but effectively.

Just like true courage is not about being without fear but conquering it, true strength is not about being without pain but enduring it. To do this, one has to accept that it is there, and that it is something one creates oneself -- and that if you will, you can kill whatever you create.

Your tormentor is your best teacher.

… but you can hardly stand it though. By now you know It's not going to stop Till you wise up." Depression is caused largely by a hate for either oneself or for one's life -- these are one and the same because one's life is part of oneself; it is part of one's own qualia. It follows that only when one hates oneself, one will suffer, and hate is a craving to make someone suffer. Essentially, one gets what one wants. Similarly, any negative feelings at all are caused by anger at oneself or one's life, be it at a conscious or more subconscious level, and the opposite also counts: "Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them." — Leo Tolstoy Every feeling you have, you either choose for at the moment or at some earlier time. You ordered it, so to say, like a package.

Sometimes suffering is the quickest route to happiness. Sooner or later, you come to a point where you come to see the beauty in your suffering -- and as you do, you'll also see that there is beauty in everything. Maybe pain is instrumental in achieving enlightenment.

Every emotion has positive and negative components combined to a whole - and in a way, these are indissolubly one. Even when you'll feel very bad, in a way you will always still enjoy feeling bad -- thus, within all suffering, joy is embedded. This makes every emotion beautiful; even despair can taste like the sweetest wine. Cherish your emotions - all your emotions - in a loving way, and you will come to live in perfect harmony with them, and so too with your life. Suffering is the unwillingness to accept a situation. Any feeling one accepts will no longer be perceived. This is how one can enjoy physical or psychical pain, which gives an explanation for masochistic behavior: any pain can be converted into pleasure if one accepts it. Bearing this in mind, one will no longer perceive any emotion as painful. “Negative” emotions do not exist, except as emotions which one does not accept. This avoidance of emotions comes to expression in fear: suffering is fear. All suffering can therefore be overcome by overcoming fear. But even fear is not in itself a negative emotion: it could be said that fear in itself not just an emotion, but the state of avoidance of an emotion. Accept your fear, and this fear will be turned into energy. Suffering does not exist: it is but a memory or an anticipation. At the moment itself, there is no suffering - only afterwards there will be the remembrance of suffering that was never there. Live in the current, and you will find that the illusion falls away. And while you are in pain, focus on how the pain feels right now, rather than on how it felt just a second ago or will feel a second from now, and you'll find that pain doesn't hurt at all. There is no true suffering in the whole universe at all -- but only as one suffers enough this dawns upon one. There is no good or evil, no joy or pain; for there is good in evil and evil in good, and joy in pain and pain in joy. It is your own wish if you see the evil or the good in things -- the only true evil, then, is the delusion that there is any evil at all. More on this subject on my online diary: http://nielsvandamme.weblog.com/2008/3/Pain-is-a-Delusion.html http://nielsvandamme.weblog.com/2008/3/The-Joy-of-Pain.html http://nielsvandamme.weblog.com/2008/3/Black-Light.html