“When Sorrows Come, They Come Not Single Spies, but in Battalions.”

Suffering always brings a myriad of questions we cannot answer: Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Why was what was so precious in my life so abruptly taken from me? Will I be able to survive this at all? How will I live from now on? When you are standing in the place of pain, none of these questions can be answered. Suffering often resembles fire. The flames of pain sear and burn you. The metaphor of the flame is illuminating because suffering often exhibits the exponential rapidity of flames; the pain can suddenly multiply within you. Like fire, suffering is a swift and powerful force. There is no distance between the spark and the flame. There is a hunger and passion in fire which totally take over, transforming something that was solid and stable into powdered ashes. Often the flame of pain can have a cleansing effect and burn away the dross that has accumulated around your life. It is difficult to accept that what you are losing is what is used, what you no longer need. The Daoist tradition has a wonderful understanding that in the human body and Spirit there is always a wintertime, when something is dying and falling away. There is always simultaneously a springtime, when something new is coming to life. When you allow your soul to work on that threshold where the old can fall away and the new arrive, you come into rhythm with your destiny.