Spiritual practitioners, those who have really wanted to know and live life fully, have invited pain. Knowing fully well that the road they are taking would hurt them, they have still gone down those roads.
To the common man, pain is incidental, uninvited. It comes as a surprise: “Oh! Pain has come. From where? I didn’t ask for it.”
To the spiritual practitioner, pain is almost a target, pain is a value. He says, “I want it. Bring it on!”
Not that there is some great virtue in pain. It’s just that when you are going for pain, you are denying the bodily compulsion of seeking pleasure; you are getting disidentified. And once you are disidentified, then there is no need to seek pain either.
This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
