Suffering...

Here is an excerpt from The Gospel Explained By the Spiritist Doctrine on the subject:

"There are two kinds of suffering on earth; or, if you prefer, our trials have their origin in two different sources. The first kind has its cause in present-day life; the second arises from causes outside the present life.

In considering the troubles of earthly life, it is evident that a great number of them are the consequence of a person's own attitudes and actions. Many of us flounder because of our faults - we are victimized by our own thoughtlessness, arrogance, and ambition. Many of us destroy ourselves through lack of discipline and perseverance, and through bad conduct and an inability to control our own desires. Likewise, many marriages turn sour simply because they are built not by the heart, but by partners' calculating self-interest and vanity. So many disagreements and disastrous hostilities could be avoided with the help of a little restraint and more tolerance. In the same way, how many illnesses and diseases result from overindulgence and abuses of all sorts?

Families, particularly, pay a price for these failures. Parents find they are disappointed in their children because they didn't intervene early enough to overcome their children's harmful impulses. In spoiling or neglecting their children, these parents let the seeds of pride, selfishness, and foolish conceit take root in them, so that their hearts became dried and shriveled. Later on, when parents start reaping what they had sown, they will be surprised and at the indifference and lack of gratitude their children show them.

We ask each of you who has experienced heartaches because of disappointments and losses to study your own consciences closely, going back, step by step, to the origins of each problem that is causing you pain. More likely than not, most will be able to say: If I had done, or not done, such and such thing, I wouldn't be where I am today.

Who is, in such cases, responsible for the sufferings if not the person who suffers? In most cases, men and women are the architects of their own troubles. Yet rather than admit this fact, they usually find it easier and less humiliating to their egos to blame their troubles on fate, God, bad luck, or even on an unlucky star. However, this 'unlucky star' is actually no more than their own carelessness.

When we consider life's problems, we find that this kind of suffering makes up the greatest part of our problems. Only when we make the commitment to work at SELF-TRANSFORMATION, raising ourselves both morally and intellectually, will we be able to avoid suffering of this kind." (Chapter 5:4 Present Causes of Suffering)