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Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by jcutler12888
No worries. I agree with you but...
Don't grumble,
Give a whistle.
And this'll...
That rhyme has to make you smile.
Originally posted by Damsel
Name one situation where suffering is inevitable.
Originally posted by Bluesma
Originally posted by Damsel
Name one situation where suffering is inevitable.
Um.. what about...
Being forced into a big gas chamber with hundreds of other people, and your small children, being enclosed and having a relatively slow and painful death; while you and your children are crushed by peoples desperate flailings.
Or what about the pain of being raped by a grown man, when you are a very young child.
Oops, that's two. I'll stop there. But I could go on. Suffering is a part of life and manifestation in matter and physicality.
Originally posted by Bluesma
reply to post by jcutler12888
That doesn't really mean that suffering doesn't happen though, or that it is necessarily optional... or at least I wouldn't put it that way in words. I would instead say that even suffering can have a value in the big picture.
Originally posted by Bluesma
reply to post by jcutler12888
Well, I used the example because it happened to me too, at the age of 5.
However. I DO recognize what people try to refer to in these sorts of "optimistic" sorts of value systems.
There are ways to suffer less, in terms of time. This WAS in the past, it is not now, and though one could suffer still, you could also stop suffering. -I am keeping in mind the subconscious physical memories which are not so easy to erase).
There is also the fact that, if your abuse was regular and repeated (whether it was sexual or non-sexual physical violence) you usually develop coping skills, like disassociation, in which the actual suffering IS avoided, in a sense!
That can be a problem if you cannot get it under control, and continue to fall into disassociation at the drop of a hat for the rest of your life. But if you learn to master it and learn to produce it's opposite as well (arousal, fight or flight responses) and choose either at will , then it can be very useful!
This is one of the skills that many religious practices try to communicate, and one of the ways that a terrible experience like childhood abuse can be considered, in the long run, as a growing, valuable and educative experience.
That doesn't really mean that suffering doesn't happen though, or that it is necessarily optional... or at least I wouldn't put it that way in words. I would instead say that even suffering can have a value in the big picture.