Spiritual concepts
Pain [emotional]
Initially, I had a definition of pain as being similar to Adversity, but I have realised that emotional pain has a very special effect on certain kinds of people.
Do we do things when we are happy? Well, of course we do, but we tend to do rather unproductive things from a creative standpoint like play with our dog, or relax in an armchair looking out the window, or dozing quietly in a deckchair by the sea.
Happiness seems to be, in many people, not a driver to creativity. For reasons which may appear bizarre, some of the most beautiful poems, songs and paintings were produced in conditions of unbelievable emotional pain. Very high emotion of itself is ideal for creating spiritual input, as it blocks out the ego and memory, two of the biggest blocks to spiritual experience.
But, you would think that euphoric happiness was far better than debilitating pain for producing works of beauty and joy. It is not. It is as if we seek in the truly beautiful, the truly heavenly, consolation for the hell we are in.
We seek contrast, and the farther into 'hell' we have sunk, the more likely it is that we can produce 'heaven' for others to enjoy. Unrequited love drove Yeats to produce some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. The anguish of syphilis drove Shakespeare.
It is little use, incidentally, artificially producing a 'hell' for ourselves, as some artists and musicians have recently tried to do - principally by taking drugs. It won't work, because it is self imposed, the ego is as strong as ever. Creativity only genuinely comes to those plunged into anguish which is not of their own making.
Having gone through this myself, I was left wondering whose making it was ....... there would not have been this website if I hadn't gone through hell. The Great Work has a lot to answer for.
Observations
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- A meeting with her dead mother and 'Jesus' helps resolve a dying woman's anger
- Angela Morgan - Work
- Artaud, Antonin
- Ashtavakra Gita - 01 Instruction on Self-Realization
- Aurelius, Marcus - Meditations - Desire
- Bhagavad Gita - The Tyranny of the Ego
- Blake, William - I heard the fury of the wind
- Boehme, Jacob - Aurora - Demons and adversity
- Bose, Sir Jagadis Chandra - from Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramahansa Yogananda 03
- Bose, Sir Jagadis Chandra - All pain contains an element of pleasure, and that pleasure, if carried too far becomes pain
- Bose, Sir Jagadis Chandra - Plants and perceptions - emotions and pain
- Bridges, Robert - Nightingales
- Brunton, Dr Paul - The Quest of the Overself - Mystery of the self
- Buddha - The Dhammapada - Magga-vaggo
- Chuang Tzu - Leaving things alone
- Clare, John - O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting
- Descartes, Rene - The subjective nature of perceptions
- Dickinson, Emily - Experience is the angled road Preferred against the Mind
- Dickinson, Emily - They say that ‘time assuages’ Time never did assuage
- Eliot, T S - Four Quartets - 05 East Coker III
- Epictetus - The Enchiridion - 10
- George Harrison - This is love
- Hegel - Philosophy of Mind – Appetite or Instinctive Desire
- Jeremy Bentham - The Principles of Morals and Legislation - On Adversity
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat - The Art of Being and Becoming - Blessed are the pure in heart
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat - The Mysticism of Sound and Music - On 'vibrations'
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat – The Art of Being and Becoming - The eradication of suffering
- Krishnamurti - The Network of Thought - Fear
- Krishnamurti - The Network of Thought - Fear, the pursuit of pleasure, and the burden of greed and pain
- Lowell, James Russell - Through suffering and sorrow I have passed
- Maeterlinck, Maurice - The Invisible Goodness
- Marvin Gaye - The world is just a great big onion
- Mechthild of Magdeburg – Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit - The calling
- Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals - Pain is the most powerful aid to mnemonics
- Nietzsche - The Gay Science - The poison which destroys the weaker nature, strengthens the stronger
- O'Reilly, John Boyle - In this brief life despair should never reach us
- Plotinus - The Enneads - As for violent personal sufferings
- Plotinus - The Enneads - It is certain that we shrink from the unpleasant
- Proust, Marcel - In Search of Lost Time Volume IV - On Pain
- Ramdas, Swami - Just as an unshapen stone can be fashioned
- Ramdas, Swami - When sadness and suffering become intense
- Randall Jarrell – I see at last that all the knowledge
- RobCast No.1 (My plant medicine journey with Ayahuasca and San Pedro)
- Ruskin, John - Extract from Letters to the Clergy
- Russell, George William - The Man to the Angel
- Saadi - The Gulistan of Sa‘di – 10 from The Manners of Kings Solitude
- Saadi - The Gulistan of Sa‘di – 12 from The Manners of Kings Solitude
- Samuel Johnson - On adversity
- Sefer ha-bahir – Para 34 – The Hebrew letter Chet
- Socrates - Axiochus 366 - The soul and Higher spirit
- Socrates - Epictitus The Enchiridion - Learning from experience
- Sri Anandamayi Ma - The purpose of suffering
- Sri Aurobindo - To Weep Because
- St Francis - Healing wounds
- Swedenborg, Emanuel - The Infinite - Why are we here?
- Tchaikovsky - Piano concerto no 1
- Tchaikovsky - 4th symphony
- Tchaikovsky - Marche Slave
- Tchaikovsky - None but the lonely hearts
- Tchaikovsky - Nutcracker
- Tchaikovsky - Piano trio in A minor
- Tchaikovsky - Romeo and Juliet
- Tchaikovsky - Serenade for strings
- Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake
- Tchaikovsky - Violin concerto
- Tchaikovsky - Waltz of the Flowers
- Tchaikovsky - Waltz of the snow flakes
- Tennyson, Alfred Lord - In Memoriam A H H - Life is not as idle ore
- Tennyson, Alfred Lord - In Memoriam A H H - Tis better to have loved and lost
- The Book of Baruch
- The Cloud of unknowing
- Theodore Roethke - In a dark time, the eye begins to see
- Travelling Wilburys - Not alone anymore
- Waller, Edmund - On the foregoing Divine Poems
- Watson, Sir William - Epigram - Lives there whom pain hath evermore pass'd by
- Watts, Alan - To strive for pleasure to the exclusion of pain is to strive for the loss of consciousness
- Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass - The pleasures of heaven are with me
- Yerka, Jacek and André Maurois - On suffering
- Yerka, Jacek and Etty Hillesum – An Interrupted Life
- Yerka, Jacek and Luigi Pirandello - Six characters in search of an author
- Yerka, Jacek and M Kathleen Casey – The Promise of a New day
- Yerka, Jacek and Rashani Rea - The Unbroken