Maybe pleasure is not the friend and pain is not the enemy...

[WHO IS]

As much as people hate suffering/hardships, it is in suffering/hardships one grows the best as a person. 

When one lives in "happy-times" at all times, one doesn't grow as a person as much as one does in hardships.

Maybe pleasure its not the friend and pain is not the enemy... 

Edited December 30, 2019 by WHO IS

[purerogue]

Don't think that you would be able to handle pain without pleasure to appreciate progress. 

Edited December 30, 2019 by purerogue

[Eph75]

Yes, anxiety is your friend, it tells you what you should do, which decisions are right (they are the difficult ones) and in working on that you grow.

But we learn to run away when anxiety shows up, we crawl back into our safe shells and we take the easy way out, we choose the comfortable safe decisions that we know we already can handle abd therefore ensure stagnation in growth.

Learn to love anxiety, redefine it in your mind to being a growth possibility and a lot of positive things will start to happen seeminly without any effort. 

Realizing this also makes you realize that the struggle against what you intuitively know is right is an inexhaustible source for suffering and stands for the most negative energy/effort spent achieveing nothing at all. 

[rNOW]

When something happens in accordance to our desires, we call it 'pleasure'. 

When something happens in opposition to our desires, we call it pain.

In reality, the thing that happened is neutral. It is our labeling of them that is pain or pleasure. So in reality there is no such thing as pain or pleasure. What is pain now, can become pleasurable next. What is pleasurable now, can become painful next. If someone punches my face and a couple of my teeth fall off, I would call it pain. If my teeth are rotting and painful, and they fall away on their own, I would call it a relief. So everything changes as context changes, and every context changes at every single moment. 

Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is how we forget to live with awareness. Even seeking pain and avoiding pleasure looks different, but is the same lack of awareness. So seek nothing. Avoid nothing. Insist nothing. Resist nothing. Be nothing. Become nothing. Just observe whatever is happening in front of you, and do what is necessary for you to do. 

[wavydude]

Pain is not the enemy, I often find pain enjoyable when I know it leads to growth. Suffering is the enemy.

[mandyjw]

Hike up a mountain, swim in freezing cold water. Was it pleasurable or painful?