*Suffering

Another thing that people must give up is their suffering. It is very difficult also to sacrifice one’s suffering. A man will renounce any pleasure you like but he will not give up his suffering. Man is made in such a way that he is never so attached to anything as he is to his suffering. And it is necessary to be free from suffering. No one who is not free from suffering, who has not sacrificed his suffering, can work. Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time, one must begin by sacrificing suffering. Now, decipher what this means.

— Gurdjieff, in P.D. Ouspensky’s ‘In Search Of The Miraculous’