Pain and suffering, joy and wisdom

It is human misery and not pleasure which contains the secret of the divine wisdom.  All pleasure-seeking is the search for an artificial paradise, an intoxication, an enlargement.  But it gives us nothing except the experience that is vain.  Only the contemplation of our limitations and our misery puts us on a higher plane.
- Simone Weil”

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 18:14

I’ve still been contemplating the 4-part series on Job–more than a month later.  In part 2 of the series, it was briefly mentioned that in the midst of pain and suffering, exists the opportunity to explore the “secret of…divine wisdom.”  Reading the book, Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil has only extended this thought process.

Simone Weil was a woman of extreme intelligence and brilliance.  She was born in 1909 and in her 34 short years, Weil’s mystical contemplations well grounded in philosophy and theology, were explored in humble service, hard labor, painful suffering, and social activism.  Admittedly, my brief words here cannot fully capture the mystery and depth of what I’ve come to learn of her life through her writing with the beauty of her writing truly containing insight and glimpses into The Divine.

As much as I’d like to avoid pain and suffering, and as much as I would wish that pain and suffering might not be experienced by any living being, I can’t help but come to the realization that it is the very suffering I strive to avoid which moves me beyond my own self-imposed limitations to something greater–something outside myself.

Now, I readily admit that others suffer more than I.  The question I must ask myself is, when I’m in the midst of a bad situation, am I emerging on the other side with a greater awareness of reality beyond myself? Or do I find myself focused on the hurt, pain, or guilt that I have been or am experiencing?  Is my focus outward or inward? If it is outward, then my awareness of others, the world, and matters of the Spirit can only increase–without limitation.  If my focus is in inward, then I am undoubtedly limited by my self–I have created my own impenetrable boundaries. While the Spirit resides in me, how can I reach the Spirit’s source if my self has put up a wall around it?  It cannot be reached.

What about pleasure?  Is it an artificial paradise as proposed by Weil?  I would not be so quick to pursue pleasure as I would be to pursue and experience of joy.  True joy can only be appreciated when compared to sorrow or pain.  And then when I yearn to experience true joy, where is that joy found?  Where do I look for joy?  Joy cannot be found where one looks for pleasure.  If I look for joy in material things, or even in the acceptance and affirmations from others, my joy is dependent on those things.  But if I search for joy in the midst of sorrow and pain, then the Spirit intervenes to reveal the “secrets of divine wisdom.”