When the sharp edge of suffering presses upon the delicate nature of my heart, I am prone to react in ways that are devoid of the practice of the virtues. In the wake of this behaviour, that has destroyed any opportunity to develop, I then feel remorse and sorrow that I failed to cling to the virtues practices. This too is a precious opportunity to develop and I must not discount it, but I so long for the ability to avoid this step. I want to learn to endure the suffering, cling to the virtues that will infuse my speech and behaviour and confirm my nobility. As I consider these thoughts, the practices of perceptiveness chart a very clear path for what I must strive to embody. I am being asked to do something that I feel is superhuman but yet is something that we all have the capacity to do if we take the time and exert the effort to cultivate it. I am being asked to do that which is praise-worthy by a standard of judgement and reason of my intellect even though it is opposed to my natural human inclination or what is deemed correct and proper by the wider society. I must not behave or speak in such a way that is found to be unworthy by this very standard, even though it is in the direction of my natural impulse and desire. This is a high standard indeed and reminiscent of contorted mental gymnastics, but so necessary to being a means to establishing unity. In the face of suffering then I must look below the surface of things. It is on the surface that suffering occurs in all its harshness, but if I am able to look beneath it and discern some deeper, perhaps obscured meaning, if I can move beyond that space where my instincts are raging to respond, and causing such a din that everything else is silenced, and cultivate awareness, that sacred place where I may invite intuition to njoin in, perhaps I may achieve my goal. Quieting the mind and resisting our natural inclinations, to consider the way of righteousness is what all of the Divine Teachers have taught mankind. It is time for me to heed Their message.
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