I see the silly picture of everybody holding hands. What is it that makes everybody accept everybody else and willing to hold the next person's hand? To me, it would have to be the decision in the person's head that says I respect them, honor them, value them, allow them their opinions and feelings and accept the fact that compromises will have to be made in order to keep up the chain. Allowances will have to be made. Everybody is going to have to give up some things and adopt others. Everyone will have to put things in perspective. N stuff like that.

what really is suffering, how would you define it?


mj

I think the potential for suffering is a condition we accept when we enter into the limitations of this world and allow ourselves to descend from spirit into flesh...

It is different for everyone depending on what they are here to accomplish...

Suffering is painful... pain is a signal to the body that something is wrong... without pain the body would die very quickly... pain teaches us to study that which is causing pain and refrain or move away from it...

Suffering shines a light on things before us that we need to work through both physically and spiritually...

I personally don't believe there is an answer to suffering... just as there is no answer to sleeping... or breathing... or the passage of time...

Fear.

Yes.

Faith.

Rivendoah, I could not possibly agree more!

In the torture chambers there's a saying "Everyone has a breaking point, you just have to keep them alive"

Human beings are intelligent enough to think they are suffering even if they are in a situation where they actually aren't. This kind of impulse to feel as though things are painfull and could be better is easily the product of our survival stratergy.

If we don't like something, we recodnise that, then we change it to suit us. It's been happening for thousands of years and its obvious that we are very good at avoiding and removing suffering from our lives.

I understand physical suffering (starvation, torture...etc) and emotional suffering (abuse of any form) and I see people attempting to prevent and avoid it all the time.

The issue I see with this is that in these instances some suffering is unavoidable, while others are actually created by fellow humans themselves.

So, beyond the obvious actions of changing an external situation , working through emotional pain or removing oneself from an abusive situation.....I'd say the only way to "fix" human suffering is to just accept that suffering is a part of everyones life and that it's ok for it to be that way because that is the natural way of things.

Just my opinion, take it or leave it.

does a person need to be at a breaking point to begin to truly suffer?


mj

There are degrees of it aren't there, but in the idealisms of spirituality one rarely permits the mind to envisage the real depths of agony, sheer panic and the searing obliteration of insanity.

For me it's a simple imagining like holding a little newborn baby and sticking knitting needles in its eyes... and such is the definition of suffering... well the beginings of it anyway. Damn, I'm suffering now just evoking such an image, but this is really a pale inkling of what really does occur in the world... The imagery of actual events are far more grotesque.

It really is quite difficult to conceive the nature of this problem, that in itself is quite hurtful.