Why, Specifically, Does Suffering Appear To Catalyze Spiritual Growth?

It seems to me that suffering brings one to one's knees in abject pain and confusion. At this point one is no longer trapped in the "common thinking" of the many--of society and culture--running with the hordes of mindless lemmings who follow along with the acceptable, conditioned norm. It is this mindless "norm" that creates the dissatisfactions of our lives and prods us to question ourselves, our choices, and the efficacy of the conditioning that all seem to accept so easily. Consumerism, debt, anger, failure, stress, world violence, abuse, being judged and judging, selfishness, "me-first-ism," thoughtless accumulation of useless "things," etc., all have taken their toll. As we look around and feel the futility of our unfulfilling and stressful lives, we realize the emptiness that we carry within. It is here that we begin the search for another way; we look for meaning and purpose in the midst of chaos. This brings us to self-examination, and soon the stripping away of the layers of our conditioned false self shows us another way--one of higher value and consciousness, a connection to our true nature. It is this core essence that gives us breath and life--our Source. Now we have begun to experience the expanding of our spirit, or spiritual growth. In facing the ugliness and uselessness of our ego-personalities, we are forced to change, becoming more and more awakened to our oneness with

All That Is. Now we begin to sense our connection to others, from whom we had been separated through our selfish interests. Every "Aha!" of insight brings us step by step closer to the One. The journey of awakening cannot be unbegun. I am Sirius

In suffering, one by nature calls onto Gods name even if not praying. And for some strange reason it seems to boost the moral or spirit. The sufferer realizes this and if the realization is strong enough then he repeats the practice and this is the reason for the spiritual growth. Basically it is the Gods name that catalyzes spiritual growth and not suffering. Suffering just reminds you that there is a catalyst.

That is a huge question especially without a book but I could sum it up in one sentence, and it does not come from the Beatles. I find it amusing that people are quting John and Paul and not John Paul. I am still looking for George and Ringo. I mean I am not quite sure they even used the best Lennon quotes. I might have gone with something a little more revolutionary like "We're as popular as Jesus." But, that is neither here nor there and if it makes sense to other then I imagine it makes sense to me too.

Here I go, preamble over, and no I was not trying to be negative, I just happen to admire the Beattles, own all their music, and even wrote term papers on them.

Now for spiritual growth:

Culturally speaking religions have developed out of the search for a connection to a higher being, a divine order to things, and a life after death.

That has led some cultures to claim divine providence and some rulers to claim a divine right to authority, the authority to rule other, to tell other what to believe and why to believe it.

Over the course of history this cultures and rulers have been consumed by other stronger cultures and religions and bits and pieces of those religions and cultures have been consumed in the process.

The one constant to most of these religions is the thought that there is only one God and that God has no sympathy for other Gods. The results of that is conflict, slavery, and genocide.

So along the way suffering has become an integral part of religion. It has even become a testament as to the strength of your faith in a religion. The longer you are able to endure hardship, the stronger your faith is.

Somewhere around the 14th century AD this even got to the point of self abasement or torture to reach a higher enlightenment or commitment to God. No reason to go into details but remember the Spanish Inquisition, The Crusades, The Salem Witch Trials, and the Puritan Ideal. They all basically lead you to the conclusion that suffering leads you closer to God.

Now, throw all that out and I will give you that last tiny piece of heart I have, cold as it may be.

Suffering makes one call on their heart , on their love, on that which makes them human, on that which makes them Godlike, and in that moment of suffering that heart lets them be Godlike, be human, be love. Take the suffering away and you may still find yourself believing in God, but the passion may not be there for you. Religion has much to do with love and how strong your love is for yourself, for your God, and for others.

When you invision God isn't that the kind of God you want to invision, one of love? I think so. And like most forms of love , it is tested and you suffer to keep it, because it makes you whole. It makes you love.

I know this sound simplistic and far reaching, but; some truths are that way.

So to give the Beatles their due, "All you need is Love"....

(I told you there were better Beatle quotes.)

And in case I was not specific enough, suffering catalyzes spiritual growth because we care so much for that which we hold so dear to us, and religion happens to be one of those things.

It seems to me that spiritual growth flows from two very different origins: Evolution and Revolution.

We evolve in our personal spiritual growth over time and with effort. We study, we cogitate, we try on different spiritual belief systems, refine our beliefs, and acknowledge that while we mostly may remain on our spiritual path, we cannot yet see where that path will ultimately lead us. The path seems arduous, but still encouaging, with occasional glimpses of light.

With suffering come spiritual upheaval. Sufficient suffering is a lightning bolt to the psyche. Suddenly the veil is lifted from our eyes, and we see the world anew. We see what is important, what is essence, and what is chaff. This can spawn our personal spiritual revolution. What spiritual growth may have taken years can now occur in just months, or weeks. We still must incorporate and apply our new value perspective, but now the vision is clearly within us. We now have an inner beacon, a guide to follow. We have seen the face of God, sometimes by staring death in the eye.

Both myself and my best friend have experienced the turmoil and the catalyst of being stricken with a life-threatening disease. The turmoil is obvious. The catalyst is that psychic lightning bolt that announces: Get your priorities in order! Know what matters and what doesn't It is a dramatic wake-up call that, for us, has led to dramatic spiritual growth, especally in our capacity to love and to welcome love, which we have had the fortune to share with each other and with those most dear to us. One way another, we both are and will be fine.

Spiritual growth is painful, like pushing one's self though a field of thorns, because we have to give up things that we have learned over decades to consider important.

The important thing about suffering is that it changes our concept of "painful". Any woman who has given birth knows that great pain changes your perspective on how difficult everything else is. When we suffer a lot, it makes spiritual growth less painful by comparison.

Also, relaxing our ego enough to have empathy with others can be very emotionally taxing, and requires us to accept that other people are as important as we are, which is also very emotionally uncomfortable. When we suffer it is natural for us to look to others to guidance for how to overcome the suffering, which forces empathy upon us.

Materialism and spirituality are two sides of all human beings. Growth of one (spiritual) is inverse to the (materialistic) growth of the other, which is experienced as sufferings.The ideal condition is to have balanced growth of both. Besides during sufferings,when all the hopes are lost , people have only one place to fall back , ie, God and this leads them towards spirituality.

One night I saw this shooting star and for some reason it made me think that it was the tear drop of God. Somewhere my Lord is teaching us. He is using different methods to teach the same thing though. I believe the whole reason for our existence is because God was suffering from loneliness, he lives through us, without us he is nobody. He wants us to know this, he wants us to feel what he does, the pain. To feel the pain is to understand him, to understand him is to know him. If we never lose, then we could not appreciate winning. We have all these great things in front of us yet the ways of the world makes them seem trivial. Look at all th e special people in our lives like friends and family. We should be telling people that we love them, but we have trouble doing such things. It's like these are our people you know, the people we have known our whole lives, the only people that know us. I'm going to stop right here, God drops a ladder that very few will accept. the highest form of reality and truth and that is to look at somebody and tell them you love them with all of your heart.

Heres an answer, from my heart and directly from my...keyboard:

suffering strengthens us, mainly because in the future we will mentally try to avoid the cause that initially made it happen. So in a mental state of ours, I believe this is somewhat a specific growth. We will eventually become stronger.

Suffering means One is in such a state of pain and misery that his effort to succeed in Material world , relations , family society are failure and full of disappointments. The agony felt by sufferer Clicks a way to inquiry Who s/he is and what is the World around . Suffering enables one to Move away from objects and gives a chance to be subjective. Whereas the Luxurious and comforts in life makes one attached to material world and comforts of it. It strengthens the Ego and Self. and Makes One Diluted in the world so much so that the State of Drunkenness arises. No chance to look within. It seems all is Heaven outside and Hazy inside.

We, as imperfect creations (no matter where your faith goes), cannot constantly grow without messing up. We're not plants, that have a set goal and set path, and just keep growing into a bigger, better thing. We have souls, and personalities, and with that comes constant change that can never be persistantly good.

To my religion specifically, of christianity, God makes us suffer and puts tragedy in our life becuase it stops us from ever thinking we have reached the ultimate standard with God. It tells us that we still need to grow more. It tests us and tells us which areas of our faith is weakest, and where and how we need to grow. For example, if my faith is dependant on emotion, and from that emotion my faith is based on (instead of the other way around), God might suddenly stop the emotion to warn me not to get dependant on that emotion, since emotion is ever changing and will not always be there to fuel my faith. Then, I can work on developing solid faith and emotion would not be as big of an issue.

However, suffering is not the ONLY way to grow spiritually. For example, if you feel so close to God that nothing could bring you down, that climax of faith and strengthened relationship with God can feed your passions and faith for God, which leads you to want to know more, want to grow more, and in result, doing so.