Why does pain exist?

[UnbornTao]

@Someone here

What is pain made of? How does it exist?

If your intention isn't to contemplate it, enjoy it. You're manufacturing it because it serves the maintenance and promotion of your self. But this is just an answer.

Edited April 30 by UnbornTao

[Razard86]

If you were an infinite intelligence everything would be exactly the way it is right now. And since you are it is the case. Taking full accountability means realizing everything is our own work as consciousness. Everything we ever experience is consciousness. And that is all that is going on.

Also ignore Leo's statements about consciousness not caring about your complaints. Consciousness cares about your complaints, it's just...um your complaints stem from ignorance so it isn't going to take your complaints under advisement. If you raise your consciousness to Infinity you would agree with everything and see it as perfect. So it does care, it just knows that everything is perfectly designed and why would you change something that is perfect because it cannot be understood by a lesser intelligence? You wouldn't. 

 

[An young being]

12 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

So it does care, it just knows that everything is perfectly designed and why would you change something that is perfect because it cannot be understood by a lesser intelligence? You wouldn't. 

True, at some point in life, you would realise or even experience that God has the power to change anything, even the entire universe for you, but it doesn't, simply because it disturbs the harmonious experiences in simple terms.

[Princess Arabia]

12 hours ago, An young being said:

That's why you need to move towards spirituality.

Spirituality is filled with desires. What do you think meditation, raising of one's consciousness, the cleansing of chakras, shadow work, listening to gurus, going to satsangs, chanting, repeating mantras, sitting in silence, is, plus a lot more. They are things people do to get something in return. It's just masked by seeming to be more important than the worldly desires. Desire is desire no matter which way you look at it. It stems from a dissatisfaction of one's life. Seeking for a better experience.

[An young being]

42 minutes ago, Princess Arabia said:

Spirituality is filled with desires. What do you think meditation, raising of one's consciousness, the cleansing of chakras, shadow work, listening to gurus, going to satsangs, chanting, repeating mantras, sitting in silence, is, plus a lot more. They are things people do to get something in return. It's just masked by seeming to be more important than the worldly desires. Desire is desire no matter which way you look at it. It stems from a dissatisfaction of one's life. Seeking for a better experience.

Spirituality uses desire as fish food to help you move out of the sea of desires altogether.

[An young being]

52 minutes ago, Princess Arabia said:

It stems from a dissatisfaction of one's life. Seeking for a better experience.

Yes, it's true. Desire is not that bad. Without it, your experiences will be very limited. Desire creates new pathways for life.

Spirituality teaches you that desires for pleasures without effort, desires for the sake of yourself brings you more suffering than joy. When you desire for the sake of other's welfare, there will be more joy than suffering, especially when you remove expectations of the end results out of it.

[seriousman24]

22 minutes ago, An young being said:

Yes, it's true. Desire is not that bad. Without it, your experiences will be very limited. Desire creates new pathways for life.

Spirituality teaches you that desires for pleasures without effort, desires for the sake of yourself brings you more suffering than joy. When you desire for the sake of other's welfare, there will be more joy than suffering, especially when you remove expectations of the end results out of it.

Won't that potentially make the other people lazy and therefore create suffering because they'll become less compassionate because apparently you can only have compassion for suffering, listen, empathy and compassion is also for others pleasure and bliss.

[seriousman24]

3 hours ago, Razard86 said:

If you were an infinite intelligence everything would be exactly the way it is right now. And since you are it is the case. Taking full accountability means realizing everything is our own work as consciousness. Everything we ever experience is consciousness. And that is all that is going on.

Also ignore Leo's statements about consciousness not caring about your complaints. Consciousness cares about your complaints, it's just...um your complaints stem from ignorance so it isn't going to take your complaints under advisement. If you raise your consciousness to Infinity you would agree with everything and see it as perfect. So it does care, it just knows that everything is perfectly designed and why would you change something that is perfect because it cannot be understood by a lesser intelligence? You wouldn't. 

 

Does lesser imply that it is less deserving of perfection or is that it's perfection that we suffer, doesn't the meaning of the word suffering lose it's value then when it's called perfect or is it still perfect because suffering fulfills its own condition/purpose and is therefore perfect, I'd like to be able to call it imperfect too because it makes me happier to be able to rebel, not because I'm angry but because it makes me happy although I'm fine with anger too.

@Someone hereOne of the ways to have only pleasure is to simply make the action of surviving more pleasurable at the time it's necessary, so you're trying to cross the street, I lookout for passing cars because it's more pleasurable than not looking, I don't put my hand in a burning stove because it's more pleasurable to do so, I don't stab myself because it's more pleasurable to do so, I go to bed because it's pleasurable, it is more pleasurable to not hurt myself than it is to hurt myself.

I myself am still not sure what true function suffering serves since you should be able to interrupt a behavior that is leading to your death by simply injecting a higher pleasure to change your action, like lets say overeating, you'd stop overeating because its even more pleasurable to stop eating than to eat more and so on applied to any action.

One of the made up hypotheticals is because the natural imperfection of suffering makes pleasure itself evolve and that would be the only reason it can accidentally exist, yes suffering is an accident and "god" is wrong all the time and so is perfection if it really is infinite and perfect it would call suffering a really perfectly horrific and undesirably imperfect mistake, make no mistake people suffering is wrong and bad and don't be scared to admit it because after all if you really need suffering as you say than this fear which another suffering should also be respected, checkmate.

I still can't understand why suffering would be necessary but at the very least I don't think pleasure itself by itself has the capacity for erasure, the ability to remove something or change direction does seem much stronger in suffering so there's something related to that, while pleasure can also erase and change the direction of some pleasure that is currently happening suffering does it better and faster so therefore because there is such a thing as the pleasure of erasure and removal and acceleration of change suffering can exist but only exclusively fueled by pleasure, the property of suffering itself is to remove itself or something, it does not want something or itself and pleasure can't do that as well, maybe someday it will and I don't see why we have to go through this either when it's so apparently obvious.

Edited April 30 by seriousman24

[An young being]

9 minutes ago, seriousman24 said:

Won't that potentially make the other people lazy and therefore create suffering because they'll become less compassionate because apparently you can only have compassion for suffering, listen, empathy and compassion is also for others pleasure and bliss.

I am not able to fully understand what you are trying to say. There are many ways to help people, medical or monetary help to those who are on the verge of dying, material help to those in need of basic things and those in need of good education and spiritual or psychological help. How do such things make others less compassionate? I believe such deeds inspire others to be selfless as well.

[seriousman24]

6 minutes ago, An young being said:

I am not able to fully understand what you are trying to say. There are many ways to help people, medical or monetary help to those who are on the verge of dying, material help to those in need of basic things and those in need of good education and spiritual or psychological help. How do such things make others less compassionate? I believe such deeds inspire others to be selfless as well.

Correct. That's like the diamond sutra that says those who understand it will be immediately enlightened or something, the riddle to solve in the diamond sutra which is about compassion or whatever sutra I read was that one should learn to teach others compassion, compassion is the compassion for others compassion therefore creating an infinite virtuous loop, when you become compassionate for other compassion you cease to exist because now you are compassionate about someone else, but if you are compassionate about someone's compassion that means you are compassionate about the compassion for someone else's compassion which is also being compassionate towards the compassion of compassion and so on out of existence, since nothing exist except for compassion now, it's kind of silly and it's my own interpretation of it.

It's just the same as any ultimate system, it could be love or even suffering it seems to become a loop and I assume if it closes and ceases to exist than it becomes irrelevant because we don't have to pretend that something that has stopped existing actually does exist in some secret way, we can only exist and nothing else hence the supposed meaning and essence and necessity and function of suffering which is that which deletes itself from existence curiously enough except if you mix it up with its opposite duality which by the way also doesn't exist because it creates those ultimate loops from above, pleasure can only be itself too it wouldn't go and mix itself with other pleasures or with sufferings because it would already be perfect otherwise if pleasure is not perfect than it's not actually a ultimate pleasure, ultimate pleasures can't exist because they become or are isolated from all other things too just like suffering can't do it by itself since it deletes itself when it is alone since that is it's reality.

[An young being]

5 minutes ago, seriousman24 said:

Correct. That's like the diamond sutra that says those who understand it will be immediately enlightened or something, the riddle to solve in the diamond sutra which is about compassion or whatever sutra I read was that one should learn to teach others compassion, compassion is the compassion for others compassion therefore creating an infinite virtuous loop, when you become compassionate for other compassion you cease to exist because now you are compassionate about someone else, but if you are compassionate about someone's compassion that means you are compassionate about the compassion for someone else's compassion which is also being compassionate towards the compassion of compassion and so on out of existence, since nothing exist except for compassion now, it's kind of silly and it's my own interpretation of it.

It's just the same as any ultimate system, it could be love or even suffering it seems to become a loop and I assume if it closes and ceases to exist than it becomes irrelevant because we don't have to pretend that something that has stopped existing actually does exist in some secret way, we can only exist and nothing else hence the supposed meaning and essence and necessity and function of suffering which is that which deletes itself from existence curiously enough except if you mix it up with its opposite duality which by the way also doesn't exist because it creates those ultimate loops from above, pleasure can only be itself too it wouldn't go and mix itself with other pleasures or with sufferings because it would already be perfect otherwise if pleasure is not perfect than it's not actually a ultimate pleasure, ultimate pleasures can't exist because they become or are isolated from all other things too just like suffering can't do it by itself since it deletes itself when it is alone since that is it's reality.

It's a pretty good thought process, but what I am referring to is Karma yoga. Although compassion creates waves of more compassion, it is your intention that matters and not the necessary result. If your intention is pure and selfless, and you have put great effort in achieving it, even if it means helping a single ant, you will reap the same or even more benefit than helping the whole world escape destruction, if it's done with selfishness and less effort.

[seriousman24]

27 minutes ago, An young being said:

It's a pretty good thought process, but what I am referring to is Karma yoga. Although compassion creates waves of more compassion, it is your intention that matters and not the necessary result. If your intention is pure and selfless, and you have put great effort in achieving it, even if it means helping a single ant, you will reap the same or even more benefit than helping the whole world escape destruction, if it's done with selfishness and less effort.

I have to agree since our thoughts, emotions and sensations are just as karmic as anything else.
Since selfishness and less effort has been defined as less good than it's opposite this is the resulting thought process that comes out, as long as I know the definition I automatically agree with anything anyone says even if I might be inaccurate, any disagreement is just to have something to stand on to have an enjoyable discussion.

 

50 minutes ago, An young being said:

I am not able to fully understand what you are trying to say. There are many ways to help people, medical or monetary help to those who are on the verge of dying, material help to those in need of basic things and those in need of good education and spiritual or psychological help. How do such things make others less compassionate? I believe such deeds inspire others to be selfless as well.

Because if you are getting perfectly served then your satisfaction will paralyze you from being compassionate to others since all your needs are met  but of course you are intelligent so you do know that true compassion would never allow others to just become demonic from receiving compassion but I also assume that if any random being took it upon himself to just be compassionate for someone's suffering they might actually create more suffering instead because they lack understanding of what pleasure/joy/love happiness means and how it relates to the suffering because they'd become over focused on removing the suffering without replacing it with joy, their intentions might be pure but they're imperfect because suffering doesn't exist in a vacuum, denial from "pleasure" is also a suffering so an unintelligent/unskilled being trying to be compassionate won't have the insight/skill to be effectively compassionate towards someone else because it might only understand basic sufferings and basic "pleasures" are not even mentioned in this call for compassion so while the person might look harder at sufferings whenever their compassion causes more suffering for others and for himself they won't be paying enough attention to "pleasures" for a long time therefore creating more suffering because their compassion isn't complete in a practical sense even if they were to apply it to themselves since anything beyond the basic pleasures might get discarded, like the pleasure of philosophy, video games, sports, different passions, the same kind of over zealous behavior that some people from some religious organizations seem to display because of their over focus on suffering like some Christian devotees that have to be way to serious all the time because of said compassion which is not what you mean at all likely it's just an attack on how compassionate itself means in practice which I have little practice of, I'm mostly theory.

Edited April 30 by seriousman24

[An young being]

7 minutes ago, seriousman24 said:

Since selfishness and less effort has been defined as less good than it's opposite this is the resulting thought process that comes out,

In my opinion, I don't see them as less good, instead I see the opposite of them as ways to have a better experience of life and one closer to the expansive nature of the universe. 

12 minutes ago, seriousman24 said:

Because if you are getting perfectly served then your satisfaction will paralyze you from being compassionate to others since all your needs are met  but of course you are intelligent so you do know that true compassion would never allow others to just become demonic from receiving compassion but I also assume that if any random being took it upon himself to just be compassionate for someone's suffering they might actually create more suffering instead because they lack understanding of what pleasure/joy/love happiness means and how it relates to the suffering because they'd become over focused on removing the suffering without replacing it with joy, their intentions might be pure but they're imperfect because suffering doesn't exist in a vacuum

I do agree with you that a closed minded, less intelligent person has higher chances of creating more suffering even if they didn't mean to, that's why it's important to be free of expectations for the help you provide.

Even if you see suffering arising because of your action, you learn from it to become more open minded instead of emotionally being affected by it, when you are without expectations. Even an open minded, intelligent person can make a wrong calculation and lead to the destruction of the world because of his actions, but he won't be affected as long as he is without expectations.

[seriousman24]

@Someone here
There are practical examples when it comes to suffering of how pleasure interrupts it, in surgeries drugs that have pleasurable effects take away pain, the same happens in extreme situations, adrenaline but also in extreme anguish the only move left is to seek a sensation beyond it because there's nothing else so maybe that's what happens too when we come to infinite pleasure the only way to make it even more infinite because pleasure is greedy like that is to add a little suffering to create a more than infinite pleasure, now it gets divided in 2 because of that little suffering and now we have 2 infinite pleasures, that's my silly theory of how it's even allowed to exist in any form but then again this theoretical infinite pleasure can just get interrupted by another pleasure instead of interrupted by a pain/suffering sensation, but an infinite pleasure would never need anything other than itself and even if there was a different pleasure that can then add to it there is nothing to bind them because two separate infinite pleasures aren't going to collide to create 2.

So if we assume reality is perfect and therefore infinitely pleasurable what could happen is that we have a 3rd pleasure connect these 2 infinite pillars of pleasure, but since they are already perfect and infinite the only way to connect them is to hurt them with suffering, this suffering is the infinite pleasure of separation of the 3rd pleasure, this 3rd infinite pleasure's property literally hurts others because it is simultaneously breaking their infinite pleasure by connecting these 2 different pillars of pleasure which would otherwise be isolated from each other because they are already infinite and don't need more, perfect existence does not exist seem to exist in this sense because it seems non interactable by itself. Sorry for the disorganized thoughts, its just really complex.

[seriousman24]

2 minutes ago, An young being said:

In my opinion, I don't see them as less good, instead I see the opposite of them as ways to have a better experience of life and one closer to the expansive nature of the universe. 

I do agree with you that a closed minded, less intelligent person has higher chances of creating more suffering even if they didn't mean to, that's why it's important to be free of expectations for the help you provide.

Even if you see suffering arising because of your action, you learn from it to become more open minded instead of emotionally being affected by it, when you are without expectations. Even an open minded, intelligent person can make a wrong calculation and lead to the destruction of the world because of his actions, but he won't be affected as long as he is without expectations.

True, but now he might become burdened by the expectation of having no expectations and furthermore for you to sustain a state of no expectations I assume that you have to exert effort which we usually do when we expect something, but you're probably referring more to expecting a reward or being afraid of a wrong result which you wouldn't need to since you'd already assume it to be the nature of expectations and intentions.

I've just said a whole lot of nothing and even if I'm not entirely accurate in understanding what you actually meant its all for the sake of interaction, that's my intention , hoping to get a reward and a result but not being scared of not getting it either. It's a game.

[An young being]

2 hours ago, seriousman24 said:

True, but now he might become burdened by the expectation of having no expectations and furthermore for you to sustain a state of no expectations I assume that you have to exert effort which we usually do when we expect something, but you're probably referring more to expecting a reward or being afraid of a wrong result which you wouldn't need to since you'd already assume it to be the nature of expectations and intentions.

I've just said a whole lot of nothing and even if I'm not entirely accurate in understanding what you actually meant its all for the sake of interaction, that's my intention , hoping to get a reward and a result but not being scared of not getting it either. It's a game.

It in fact requires a lot of effort to become a person without expectations. Vairagya is said to be one of the means to achieve a state of no expectations.

When the act of writing itself is joyful, the expectation of a reward need not be necessary. I too expect people to interact with me, but there are several magnitudes of expectations, and I believe I fall in the category of lower levels. We needn't become a perfect monk destined to escape all of life's suffering. Life is a game of relativity, it's not necessary to attain perfect monk state, but greater the effort, the more blissful our life experiences can be.

[Vibes]

8 hours ago, Razard86 said:

If you were an infinite intelligence everything would be exactly the way it is right now. And since you are it is the case. Taking full accountability means realizing everything is our own work as consciousness. Everything we ever experience is consciousness. And that is all that is going on.

Also ignore Leo's statements about consciousness not caring about your complaints. Consciousness cares about your complaints, it's just...um your complaints stem from ignorance so it isn't going to take your complaints under advisement. If you raise your consciousness to Infinity you would agree with everything and see it as perfect. So it does care, it just knows that everything is perfectly designed and why would you change something that is perfect because it cannot be understood by a lesser intelligence? You wouldn't. 

 

@Razard86 Looking from a point of view of progression it makes sense. Coming from nothing to mastering survival, then God knows what next. Right now I see the world and there are more people suffering and in shit conditions than masters of survival and spiritual masters, but if there is progression then in a few centuries humanity will evolve more = less suffering and more harmony all around. Assuming that because we went from caveman to living comfortably with more enjoyment in life.

But is there progression really? Now things start to twist. You say nothing ever happened, so history is imaginary as much as my birth and as much as everything else, just different kinds / levels of imagination? 

If God creates through a snowball effect kind of thing, then there must be progression and it makes sense to say that now is perfect because it's all there is and a future doesn't exist. Or is God creating right now without any cause for the creation? In other words I'm not here because my mother gave birth to me and all the history of the universe backed it up. All that is imagined right now.

If I drink poison now, I'll suffer a few seconds from now. Even tough it's all imaginary, all have consequences and I'll experience everything as real... Seems like there's no escape.

 

[Razard86]

9 hours ago, An young being said:

True, at some point in life, you would realise or even experience that God has the power to change anything, even the entire universe for you, but it doesn't, simply because it disturbs the harmonious experiences in simple terms.

Yeah the universe is so interconnected in  a complex way that, humanity just discovered quantum physics officially on December 14, 1900. And now in 2024 they still cannot make sense of it and how it connects on the gross/physical level. Over the years they have started to see the symmetry but they still have not be able to run enough tests to get enough information to see enough of it to create a model that can explains how it all works. 

Once quantum mechanics fuses with mysticism is where the real discoveries will be obtained and humans will make a huge jump. Just got to get humans out of paradigm lock, even human spirituality is full of paradigm lock.

Edited April 30 by Razard86

[Razard86]

57 minutes ago, Vibes said:

@Razard86 Looking from a point of view of progression it makes sense. Coming from nothing to mastering survival, then God knows what next. Right now I see the world and there are more people suffering and in shit conditions than masters of survival and spiritual masters, but if there is progression then in a few centuries humanity will evolve more = less suffering and more harmony all around. Assuming that because we went from caveman to living comfortably with more enjoyment in life.

But is there progression really? Now things start to twist. You say nothing ever happened, so history is imaginary as much as my birth and as much as everything else, just different kinds / levels of imagination? 

If God creates through a snowball effect kind of thing, then there must be progression and it makes sense to say that now is perfect because it's all there is and a future doesn't exist. Or is God creating right now without any cause for the creation? In other words I'm not here because my mother gave birth to me and all the history of the universe backed it up. All that is imagined right now.

If I drink poison now, I'll suffer a few seconds from now. Even tough it's all imaginary, all have consequences and I'll experience everything as real... Seems like there's no escape.

 

It's an infinite perspective, what is true is depending on what perspective/model you are using to look at it. What I have noticed is you lot on these forums are too paradigm locked, you don't have the ability to jump to different perspectives. You don't because you don't contemplate enough. If you just take what is being presented to you, and don't question it then you don't really understand, what you have is memory not understanding.

It's not your fault because the school systems of humans teach that learning is memory. Learning is NOT memory, learning is understanding. What is understanding? The ability to communicate from different perspectives something. To fully understand something is not just to know all the ways something is right, it's also to know all the ways it can be wrong/misinterpreted, and all the limitations of the knowledge as well.

This takes a LOT OF CONTEMPLATION!!! Understanding cannot be given to you, you have to earn it through hours of questioning on end to figure it out. Many people on here are just parrots that repeat what they hear, and if you question them they will try to strategically hide the fact that they don't have understanding by repeating the same talking points (it happens in politics as well). Talking points is how someone disconnects from a conversation to save face by not addressing what is being communicated but to instead defend their position. 

It's annoying because people who are not aware of how debates and discussions work won't even be aware they are doing it, and can honestly think they are being honest because they don't contemplate. If you don't contemplate, you will be an unaware dishonest person who latches onto beliefs and parrots them and tries to spread them even though...you don't actually understand what you are talking about.

How to test if you know something? Can you explain it in multiple ways? Do you know the limitations of that knowledge? Do you understand where people make mistakes and get confused? If you cannot answer these questions.....then you do not understand. And if you demonize understanding ......you are a lost cause. Anyone that demonizes understanding and meaning is a fool. Why? Because meaning is a creation of a higher intelligence. Only a creator can create meaning. Human intelligence always creates meaning whether you are conscious of it or not. So if you demonize meaning and understanding...you are fooling yourself in the funniest way possible. 

But hey you can always use meaning, to not understand meaning which is the same to use understanding to not understand understanding. And this is what someone does when they demonize knowledge and meaning.

Edited April 30 by Razard86

[Carl-Richard]

Why did God create mildly uncomfortable feelings, like feeling sweaty or itchy?