Birth is a painful experience for mother and child. Growth almost always involves some suffering. As we grow older, we learn many difficult lessons. Uncertainty and mistakes inevitably accompany new experience. However, that is no reason to avoid new experience. The pain of growth yields the satisfaction of progress. The comfort of stagnation gives way to the odor of decline.

By suffering the consequences of incorrect action, we eventually understand what gives lasting joy and what causes pain. We learn to appraise our actions and motivations more realistically. Material values recede and transpersonal values gain in importance. We see that through suffering we learn compassion and develop a sweet-tempered disposition. The needs of others grow in importance as our own become less important. The experience of pain and loss adds to our sweetness.

The sugarcane should welcome the cutting, the hacking and the crushing, the boiling and the straining to which it is subjected: without these ordeals, the cane would dry up and make no tongue sweet. So, too, man must welcome trouble, for that alone brings sweetness to the spirit within.

Sai Baba Avatar

When we suffer pain, it is usually for our benefit. If we are given a chance to pay for our misdeeds --- and take it --- we are truly attending to our spiritual growth. Grace prescribed the cure; pain is the taste of the medicine.

If a mother has two sons and one of them is sick, she will give the sick son only bitter medicine, while she may give the other son anything that he may ask for. If she gives bitter medicine to one son and sweets to the other, it is not because the mother likes one son more than the other. The mother realizes that it is for the good of the sick child to take bitter medicine, and so she gives him a bitter medicine, but not because she likes him less

Sathya Sai Speaks 8