A Quote by Alan Cohen

Pain happens, but suffering is optional. When pain comes, make use of the experience, but do not wallow in it. When you accidentally place your finger in a flame, it is supposed to hurt just long enough for you to pull it out. If you think there is value in keeping it there, you will be a crispy critter. Pain is a minor element of life, unless you are indulging it. Then it becomes suffering. Get the message and then get on with your life, which is far more about joy than sorrow.
Pain in life is inevitable but suffering is not. Pain is what the world does to you, suffering is what you do to yourself [by the way you think about the 'pain' you receive]. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. [You can always be grateful that the pain is not worse in quality, quantity, frequency, duration, etc]
Pain by itself is merely pain, but the experience of pain couples with an understanding that the pain serves a worthy purpose as suffering. Suffering can be endured because there is a reason for it that is worth the effort. What is more worthy of your pain than the evolution of your soul?
Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is... The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds.
Grief does not end and love does not die and nothing fills its graven place. With grace, pain is transmuted into the gold of wisdom and compassion and the lesser coin of muted sadness and resignation; but something leaden of it remains, to become the kernel arond which more pain accretes (a black pearl): one pain becomes every other pain ... unless one strips away, one by one, the layers of pain to get to the heart of the pain - and this causes more pain, pain so intense as to feel like evisceration.
To diminish the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain, and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain.
Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus - a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you.
Pain (any pain--emotional, physical, mental) has a message. The information it has about our life can be remarkably specific, but it usually falls into one of two categories: We would be more alive if we did more of this and Life would be more lovely if we did less of that. Once we get the pain's message, and follow its advice, the pain goes away.
Resentment always hurts you more than it does the person you resent. While your offender has probably forgotten the offense and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain, perpetuating the past. Listen: those who hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment. Your past is past! Nothing will change it. You are only hurting yourself with your bitterness. For your own sake, learn from it, and then let it go.
Being a good steward of your pain. . . . It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows.
Growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize there are more flavors of pain than coffee. Pain does two things: it teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. And everything that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one way or another.
The work I do to let go of my suffering diminishes the suffering of the whole universe. When I have room for my own pain, I have room for the pain of others. Only then can I be transformed into joy. As I heal, the Earth heals.
Pain is a difficult companion. There's no getting around that. But, if pain is to be a companion, searching and discovering your own best ways to travel with that pain will lead you to the joy that you long to have. They are your paths, your ways and while my experience and the experiences of others may inspire you, ultimately it will be the choices you discover and make for yourself that lead you to certain joy in the midst of your challenges.
Pain is one of life's great lessons. You need to know how you'll react to the negatives in your life. Only then will you learn from the pain, and the next time it happens, you can speed up your healing process.
Our greatest hope is for the experience of joy, and often we are not as smart as we think we are when it comes to predicting what would bring us that joy. . . Hope that is attached to a particular outcome is looking for pleasure but fishing for pain, because attachment itself is a source of pain. It is best to hope for an experience of life in all its fullness-a life that can embrace both joy and sorrow, and will still be at peace.
In the central cases of physical pain, then, it appears that at least part of what is bad about our condition is the way it makes us feel. Here there seem to be no problems with a purely mental state account, no counterpart to the experience machine that could bring us to think that we are being deceived by mere appearances. [...] If I am suffering physical pain then I can be quite wrong about the organic cause of my affliction, or even about whether it has one, without that error diminishing in the slightest either the reality of my pain or its impact on the quality of my life.
PAIN was no longer a cause of suffering, but a source of pleasure, Because they were redeeming humanity from its sins. Pain becomes joy, the meaning of life, pleasure.
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