QA177 QUESTION: I’ve gone through a half a century of living, and I’ve been successful from a financial standpoint. Now all of a sudden, I feel as though I’m going through a complete rebirth, especially in the last six months. And I feel as though I’ve wasted a lifetime up to this point. I’ve become much more assertive, much more questioning; it seems like almost everything I touch at this point is lucky. And yet I seem to be leaving the people and the friends behind that I had before and am seeking new ones. Is this a necessary part of growing up, if you will, that you must hurt the past to seek out the new?

ANSWER: Sometimes this is absolutely inevitable in a person’s growth process. Human beings are still in their inner state of duality, and they have not transcended yet to the state of unity, in which hurt is no longer in the scheme of things. When one is deeply involved in one’s confusions – as the whole of mankind is – hurt is sometimes inevitable.

It is only a question of which hurt is growth producing and which hurt is a product of, and leads to, further sickness. This is just as the physical body has these different kinds of pain: the growing pain, the pain of healing, or the pain which is an expression of the downward curve of breaking down. Anyone who has been sick has experienced both. In the first part of the illness, the kind of pain that is a breaking down, and the next, the regenerative part of the illness where the pain of any wound, for instance, has a healing pain. There are different kinds of pain.

It is exactly the same with the spirit and the soul: sometimes the hurt is a result of long past and chain reactions that you can only eliminate by going to its very end, and that leads to a pain or hurt. It seems that this hurt is inflicted now by a certain act, but it is really the product of some things that were way, way, way back.

The confusions and the manifestation of problems and conflict in all the people involved simply become manifest at a period when the soul is already on its way to a higher state of development, of finding a deeper reality within the scheme of things. If such a hurt is not committed for the sake of spiritual growth, it is a very cowardly sentimentality and has nothing to do with real love – for real love can hurt.

Real love has a robustness about it that realizes the first law is growth. And anything that stands in the way of growth cannot be a valid thing in itself. When such an obvious change takes place in a person’s life, it is a wonderful sign that should be rejoiced about. Because the guidance is strong and the determination of your spirit must have been very strong to bring this about in such a way.

Hurt is not always as bad as it seems and usually it really is not bad at all, such as the pain of parting and the pain of letting go of something one has been accustomed to. If the people involved have any amount of health, they will soon feel it is right that way and will themselves go on to something else for them that is right.

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