January 28, 2026

Pain Is Present in All Spiritual Growth

Suffering is A La Carte at the Pleasure or Insistence of 
The Ego

 Rainer Maria Rilke viewed soul suffering not as a malfunction, but as a crucial, transformative process necessary for deep personal growth and artistic maturity. He advised embracing sorrow, loneliness, and heavy emotions in solitude, arguing that these moments allow the future to take shape within us. Rilke urged individuals to welcome "difficulties" as "strangers" entering the soul, rather than fleeing from them. 

Key Insights on Rilke's perspective:

• Transformation through Sorrow: Pain is seen as a moment of tension that changes a person for the better. He believed that "no feeling is final," encouraging endurance through difficult times.
• Solitude as a Tool: Suffering should be processed in solitude, which allows the soul to mature.
• "Live the Questions": Instead of searching for immediate answers to suffering, Rilke believed in living the questions themselves to eventually "live along into the answer".
• Meaningful Growth: He described sadness as a "deep and lonely" time when the future enters the person.
• Embracing Heaviness: Rilke encouraged taking the "heaviness" of life and returning it to the "earth's own weight," implying that suffering is a natural, grounded experience. 

In his Letters to a Young Poet and other works, he emphasized that those who suffer with patience and openness allow new experiences to become part of their being. 

The 29th Rule of Love 
(By Shams of Tabriz)

Destiny doesn’t mean that your life has been strictly predetermined. Therefore, to leave everything to fate and to not actively contribute to the music of the universe is a sign of sheer ignorance. The music of the universe is all-pervading, and it is composed on forty different levels. Your destiny is the level where you will play your tune. You might not change your instrument but how well to play is entirely in your hands