What makes struggle and suffering essential in our lives?

[HMD]

So, I was in the rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to give meaning to struggle, and I came across the question: Why is struggle necessary? I know for a fact that everything God created is perfect, so struggle is not a bug. But how? To make us appreciate things that are the outcomes of struggle? So that ease could exist alongside it as a duality? 
 

What I am trying to get at is perhaps if I understand why it’s there, then maybe I would be more motivated to struggle and weed out any laziness. 

[Leo Gura]

Try playing your favorite video game on God-mode, use all the cheat codes, and see how long it holds your interest.

Edited yesterday at 12:25 AM by Leo Gura

[HMD]

@Leo Gura Fortunately, I have already done that. I was so excited and addicted to this game (Bloon TD) and deleted it within 15 minutes of hacking it, with great regret. I never even thought about it again until today. 

Maybe if there was no struggle I would have killed myself. It's a gift. 

Edited yesterday at 12:38 AM by HMD

[Flowerfaeiry]

Basically because, through the struggle you prove to yourself your amazingness

[UnbornTao]

I'd say you do, for the most part. For example: Doesn't it seem that in the very act of dividing things into good and bad experiences -- which is necessary for you, by the way -- it already gives rise to struggle, among other things that you do?

A rock doesn't seem to struggle. Why is that? What is the case for us such that struggle can occur?

Edited 11 hours ago by UnbornTao

[HMD]

@UnbornTao Yeah that’s something I am wrapping my head around. Struggle seems to happen for us humans only. Like you said, a rock apparently doesn't struggle, it just is. No resistance. 

[HMD]

@Flowerfaeiry Can you please elaborate on this? 

[UnbornTao]

22 hours ago, HMD said:

@UnbornTao Yeah that’s something I am wrapping my head around. Struggle seems to happen for us humans only. Like you said, a rock apparently doesn't struggle, it just is. No resistance. 

And it seems to apply to living beings in general; we humans are just very prolific at it. It goes deeper than resisting one's experience, doesn't it?

Asking "What within our experience isn't completely at ease and free?" creates a contrast to better see the dynamic of struggle. 

Edited 4 hours ago by UnbornTao

[AION]

Imagine going to the gym and only look at the weights but not working out because if you start pumping some iron you might suffer.

The real suffering is to see others make progress and looking at yourself not making progress because you don't want to do the work.

Life is basically a gym to develop your soul. And to shine like a star knowing you will fade one day anyway, but just shining not the less for the glory of God.

Edited yesterday at 12:38 PM by AION

[Verg0]

Here a few quotes by Meister Eckhart who have helped me clarify suffering a bit: 

Nothing is sharper than suffering, nothing is sweeter than to have suffered.

 

If you love God and are ill-in God's name! If your friend dies in God's name! If you lose an eye-in God's name!!

 

Whether it be sickness or poverty, hunger or thirst, or whatever it might be whatever God has ordained or not ordained for you, or whatever God gives you or does not give you, all this is the best for you.

 

Every day we raise our voices and exclaim in the Our Father, 'Lord your will be done!' And when his will comes about, we get angry and are not at all satisfied with his will. Yet whatever he does should please us best of all. Those who really do take this as the best remain, in all circumstances, fully at peace. Now sometimes a thought comes to you and you say: 'Alas, if it had only turned out differently, things would be better.' Or 'If it had not happened this way, things might perhaps have turned out better. As long as you think this, you will never gain peace. You should take [God's will] as the best.

 

If you want to be son of God and you do not want to suffer, you are all wrong. In the Book of Wisdom, it is written that God tests and tries whether a man is just as men test and try gold and melt it in a furnace.6

 

Some people run in front of God, some next to God, some follow behind God. Those who run in front of God are the ones who follow their own will and do not want to acknowledge God's will. This is simply base. Those who go beside God say, 'Lord, I want only what you want. But if they are sick, they beg that God might want them healthy. This one can let pass. The third group follows behind God; wherever he wishes they follow him willingly, and these are perfect. About this St John says in the Book of Mysteries, "They follow the lamb wherever he goes (Rv 14:4). These people follow God wherever he leads them, in sickness or in health, in fortune or misfortune. 

 

Love God as much in poverty as in wealth; care for him as much in sickness as in health. Love him as much when being tried as when not, and as much in suffering as when free of suffering. 

 

If you really want to know whether your sufferings are your own or are God's, this is what you should observe. If you suffer for your own sake, however this may be, the suffering hurts you and is hard for you to bear. But if you suffer for God's sake and for his sake alone, the suffering will not hurt you and will not be hard for you, because God is carrying the burden. This is really true! If there were a man who wanted to suffer for the love of God and purely for God alone, if all the suffering came down on him at once that all men have ever suffered and the whole world had as its common lot, that would not hurt him or be hard for him, because it would be God who was carrying the burden. If someone loaded a hundredweight on my neck and then someone else supported it on my neck, 1 should be as glad to carry a hundred of them as one, because it would not be hard for me, nor would it hurt me at all. In a few words: Whatever a man suffers for the love of God and for him alone, God makes this easy and sweet for him. 

 

 

Hope that helps. 

[Princess Arabia]

Try separating a finger from your hand. Imagine you have succeeded (mentally). Now imagine trying to put it back on all by yourself. Wouldn't that be a struggle. 

That's what's happening here with the human energetic experience. We are trying desperately to put that finger back on not realizing it was never separated to begin with - just in imagination. 

We are suffering because we believe we are separate from the whole and it is a very painful experience. Quite different from when the body hurts itself. Those sensations are real and is felt because of identification  with the body, but the mental pain the mind suffers is being generated from the thought of it being a separate experience and the belief it holds that it must make things right because this isn't perfection already.

[Breakingthewall]

The reason for the struggle and suffering is evolution, it is the way that this dimension of existence that we call life has found to increase its complexity and depth. There could be other infinite dimensions of existence where there is no suffering or war, and there are forms of life where the suffering is very low. In humans it is exceptionally high and complex because our evolutionary speed is extreme. In lizards the suffering is very low and simple because they evolve very slowly.

There could be beings from higher dimensions, or simply different ones that find a way to increase their complexity other than through war. The possibilities are endless.

[HMD]

@Verg0 Thanks for the input. 

What I am getting from this is that suffering/struggle when tied to a higher purpose (for God) becomes easier. And anything that comes your way while serving God is bearable. Because it's for a higher purpose. That's one way to give meaning to it.