All heroic tales throughout history have one thing in common: the hero is faced with an obstacle he has to overcome. The greater the obstacle, the greater the act of heroism required to overcome it. The hero’s journey is never easy or painless, otherwise, it wouldn’t be very interesting or believable, and by the end of it, the hero is transformed by the experience. Having faced adversity and overcome it, he emerges stronger and wiser than ever.
A life without hardship, pain, or failure is a life in which you learn nothing. It is adversity that forces us to grow and rise above our circumstances. Suffering (Saturn) is the greatest teacher and the only source of true maturity and wisdom. Once we have learned from it, suffering’s proper role is to create a tension that propels us forward into development and growth:
“It is the tension between the warring ends of the bow that gives the arrow the power to fly, as it is the tension in the strings of the lyre that gives rise to melody; this is what is meant by the saying ‘war is the father of all things’.”
—Iain McGilchrist
It is a sad reality, however, that adversity tends to destroy more people than it elevates. It is very easy, especially if one is unaware or doesn’t have a supportive environment, to sink beneath the waves and be overwhelmed by life. All too often, people procrastinate to escape the pain of dealing with their problems through the consumption of mindless entertainment or substance abuse.
By avoiding the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with our problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us.[1] Nietzsche proposes that the problem of suffering is its perceived meaninglessness, not the suffering itself:
“Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering.”
We need a justification for our suffering, a reason to persist; otherwise, we become prone to nihilism and a festering hatred of life. This existential longing of man has been abused by enemy programs to the fullest extent.
From birth, people have been indoctrinated to believe that the physical world they live in is only temporary and nothing more than a transitional plane to another, better reality. A so-called “true world” free of pain and suffering. This concept is commonly posited as the religious heaven, the worker’s utopia in communism, digital utopias (the most recent manifestation of this and what has come to be called transhumanism), and others.
Such worldviews attempt to give suffering meaning by promoting the idea that, as long as we endure our present suffering, at some point in the future we will find salvation in a reality devoid of it. As High Priestess Pythia has written in sermons past, these programs lead people to literally live for their deaths.
Suffering, however, is unavoidable. It seems that life is divinely designed to keep us in a perpetual struggle for self-improvement, a never-ending pendulum swing between joy and misery. For an individual to know joy, they must also know the pain of suffering, and the greater our capacity for one of these types of experiences, the greater our capacity for the other. Or as Nietzsche wrote:
“How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable and benevolent people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and evil twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together.”
Opposites are not resolved by eliminating the one we happen to dislike, any more than cutting off the south end of a bar magnet gets rid of the south pole; it just shortens the magnet.[2] In a very real way, suffering increases our capacity to enjoy life.
Pain, hardship, challenges—these are all names for the opposing force that we need in order to facilitate growth. Nothing can ever grow without resistance. A tree that has not suffered the force of the wind will fall under its own weight. Exposure to winds causes the growth of ‘stress wood’, which is the core of the tree’s strength and integrity.
The strongest and wisest people are the ones who have suffered the most. More than anyone, they have been purified by the divine flames of the crucible of life, forged into the people we see and admire today.
As we are all the heroes of our own stories, I implore everyone making plans for the upcoming year to make them bold and over the top. Instead of cowering from life and settling for what is easy to accomplish, we should run toward the fire and go through the crucible as many times as we can, so that we emerge stronger and more mature from each hardship we overcome.
You either succeed or you learn something. By succumbing to the grip of fear and not even trying, you lose twice.
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Notes & References:
1. Any attempt to avoid and escape from our problems will not only fail, but make them worse as they fester and compound under the weight of time.
“This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness…In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” But the substitute itself ultimately becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it was designed to avoid. The neurosis itself becomes the biggest problem. True to form, many will then attempt to avoid this pain and this problem in turn, building layer upon layer of neurosis…when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental illness we stop growing, we become stuck.”
—M. Scott Peck
All problems become smaller if you don't dodge them but confront them.
2. This is a quote by Iain McGilchrist that I adapted into the article for a smoother transition instead of quoting it directly:
“Opposites are not to be resolved by eliminating the one we happen to dislike, any more than lopping off the south end of a bar magnet gets rid of the south pole: it just shortens the magnet.”
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Academy of Ideas – Why You Should Seek Power, Not Happiness – Nietzsche’s Guide to Greatness
Academy of Ideas – Why Suffering can Promote Strength and Health
Academy of Ideas – How to Escape Mediocrity and Mental Illness – The Road Less Traveled
Personal Development | Occult | Meditations | Other |
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