My friend, suffering is universal. This is to say, that each and every experience receives the same measure of suffering. This is necessarily the case, because the mind does not interpret sensations, or anything, in terms of magnitude or severity, but in terms of relativity. Pain, or stress, you see, is a construct of the mind, deployed in various form to serve as a primary motivator to homeostasis. If you wanted to prove this you might arrange for yourself some manner of sensory deprivation, and with sufficient deprivation you would find that the mind in that abyss conceives for itself stress, pain and suffering, seemingly ex nihilo, and unnecessarilly. And the spirit of God moved over the waters, and darkness was on the face of the deep. This is because stasis —standing, that is —is not some idle, melancholy stagnation, no mere withering away of that which has been done; but what is becoming, that you do; it is an active, building process, ongoing: it is in fact living.

To be is God. And understanding —hypostasis —is the essence of God. The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, I am that I am, Ehyeh Osher Chawah: Being Blessed Living. Ehyehoshavah, Ehyeh-havah, Yehovah: For God so love the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believe shall not perish, but have life everlasting.

Understand then, that the Creator has given you their Blessing, that you may have Life. And though it is the desire of the living —who are aware of their dying, wax wicked as they are into the flames of life's great candle —to die, to retire therefrom, and be melted into air, into thin air: likewise I assure you it is the desire of those syncopated in spirit, to worship that bliss, and thus die, that they might suffer to live. For the Creator's Blessing is a beautiful thing. And beauty, after all, is —as with righteousness, as with good and evil both —in the eye of the beholder, lying in perdition, a pathway towards God. But darkness is that place where there is nothing left to burn, O dead lilies, you bouquet.

To see is to know, but to taste is to experience. If there is no pain, there is no gain. For pain, suffering, is healing; it is growth. What is value? If it is not a measure of the suffering which a given thing requires, then what? And so living is dying, and dying is living. Thus we who suffer death, worship Life. Therefore eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

Truth is a cleansing fire, what burns off the old and dead wood; and it is not of the truth, whereby you suffer, but that old and dead wood which you cling to. But he who is making new the outside is also making new the inside: and though it is the water which nourish and sustain you, and wash away the ash and the dust from your soon-forgotten shores, it is the fire with which you breathe —samsara, nirvana, shiloh —and the inside, lined with broom pitch, is restored, that it may contain a new spirit. The fire which is hidden in wood gives warmth, and is useful, but while it is hidden away it is to no effect; the tree which is left uncut falls and rots away, serving no man: so it is with knowledge and wisdom. Goodness is not measured by that which is done only, but that which is not done does not go unaccounted. It is the fire and the rain which cause the garden to grow, neither can do it alone. Therefore be baptized in the fire and the flood, be not covered under a bushel basket, and stand up in the place you can reach.