No Pain - No Gain

I see that as I get older I'm not gaining more and more wisdom of many things but concentrating that wisdom into fewer and fewer concepts or facets or facts of my exististence.  There's a woman I know who studies fungal parasites.  She has a doctorate in fungal parasites.  A late dear friend was a doctor who was a famous authority on the skin-world barrier in infants.  I mean, c'mon.  Skin keeps shit out.  You give lectures all over the world on this?  I can sum it up pretty accurately: Skin keeps good things in and bad things out.

Anyway, every time I ponder the wonderful mystery of taking pain and turning into a blessing I'm astounded at how profound a concept this is.  I have a positive genius for turning pain into suffering.  

"Pain is Inevitable - Suffering is Optional. "  Little Stevie Seaweed.  

I have a positive genius for trying to ignore pain or believing that I can exert my will and force the pain into pleasure.  I cut my finger with a knife yesterday.  Did not care for the sensation.  Pain.  I can learn from the experience but the pain is going to come get me from somewhere, from so many sources, that I better get better at managing it and not be so worried about how to avoid it.  

"No one here gets out alive."  Jim Morrison

I imagine that I can change the world and then be happy.  But it's not by changing the world that I'll find happiness and awakening but by transforming my relationship with it.  Very often what nourishes my spirit the most is what brings us face to face with our greatest limitations and difficulties.  Again and again and again I have to remember that Wisdom is Knowledge + Experience.

Here's a Tibetan take on the subject: "Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and suffering on their journey so that my heart may be truly awakened and my practice of liberation and universal compassion may be truly fulfilled."

Today I can look back on what I perceive as the greatest tragedies in my life and see how those experiences led me to this time of my life and this time of my life is without a doubt filled with more contentment and peace than any other time that I can think of and I think of other times a lot.  

"No pain - No gain."  Mike Ditka (Actually I have no idea who said that but Mike Ditka came to mind first.)