Purpose

If you could find meaning and purpose to your suffering, you may not suffer so much.  However, human emotion does present a particularly difficult challenge to overcome while we are here learning and make no mistake, we are here to learn and perfect ourselves for the greater good of the whole.  From a very simple concept, does the darkness not define the light more acutely?  Test that...go look at the stars tonight and then answer.  Does adversity not help us to lend ourselves greater appreciation for serenity?  I want to share with you some excerpts from The Urantia Book.  However you may judge this work or not judge it, it contains wisdom and understanding.  The excerpt is as follows:

"...1.  Is courage ---strength of character---desirable?  Then must man be reared in an environment which necessitates grappling with hardships and reacting to disappointments.
2.  Is altruism---service of one's fellows---desirable?  Then must life experience provide for encountering situations of social inequality.
3.  Is hope---the grandeur of trust---desirable?  Then human existence must constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.
4.  Is faith---the supreme assertion of human thought---desirable?  Then must the mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever knows less than it can believe.
5. Is the love of truth and the willingness to go wherever it leads, desirable? Then must man grow up in a world where error is present and falsehood always possible.
6.  Is idealism---the approaching concept of the divine---desirable?  Then must man struggle in an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surroundings stimulative of the irrepressible reach for better things.
7.  Is loyalty---devotion to highest duty---desirable? Then must man carry on amid the possibilities of betrayal and desertion.  The valor of devotion to duty consists in the implied danger of default.
8.  Is unselfishness---the spirit of self-forgetfulness---desirable?  Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor.  Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake.  Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.
9.  Is pleasure---the satisfaction of happiness---desirable?  Then must man live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities.

Throughout the universe, every unit is regarded as a part of the whole. Survival of the part is dependent on co-operation with the plan and purpose of the whole, the wholehearted desire and perfect willingness to do the Father's divine will.  The only evolutionary world without error (the possibility of unwise judgement would be a world without free intelligence...The full appreciation of truth, beauty, and goodness is inherent in the perfection of the divine universe..."

So, we are here to learn, to experience and to begin to understand.  We wanted these experiences to help us better grow, reach and become ever more divine and closer to the Source.  We forget that the moment we arrive here and even that is part of the plan and purpose.  When you can view the challenges of your life, not from the personal space of insult and injury nor the perspective of victims and villains, when you can learn to laugh at yourself for the ego's desires and thoughtless seeming actions and you can stand in the face of those mired in illusion and know there is no sin committed because there is only love, you will have found a space of great peace from which your lessons mature from experience into ever greater and greater wisdom.  Then life gets even more interesting.  So, don't get too caught up in your own suffering as some personal cruelty meted out by some unkind and uncaring divine or evil source.  Let go of such thoughts and focus instead on the truth of that which you are truly learning.  If you don't get it the first time, not to worry, you'll get the chance to learn a lesson again and again until you are ready to move on. There is no failure in learning.  There is only failure when you never try and close yourself off.  You are loved in this universe and your every effort matters to the whole. ~Blessings of love and higher understanding beautiful dreamers.

(c) 2012 Jaie Hart (other copyrights not held by me are as cited).