I can't universalize this, nor can I explain the necessity of some suffering that other people undergo. However, I have found, again and again, that the most horrible periods of suffering I undergo are the only times that bring me wisdom. Almost two years ago, I began what I can, without exaggeration, call a journey through hell. Whether one considers hell to be a real place or state or simply some affliction of the brain is, for the moment, irrelevant. I had, as many of you know, thousands of panic attacks, two hallucinations and constant terror and despair that I honestly cannot put into words. I'm still recovering from this and I'm not sure that I'll ever fully recover. Yet it was from these horrors that I was transformed from a person with a decadent mindset into the morally strict person I've become. I've noticed the same pattern on a more short-term scale. Often, only after my very worst panic attacks does the underlying fear lessen.
What led me to start this thread was what I experienced last night. I was in a state of despair as I lay in bed. I was crying, felt that my life was hopeless, was considering atheism and even suicide. My mind began to wander into philosophy, and I fell asleep just as my mind was making some progress. This morning, I awoke with a flood of philosophical insights more profound than any I have ever known. Is this a spiritual phenomenon? Am I somehow cleansed or enlightened only through agony? Is there a biological explanation for all of this? I'm still a Christian, by the way. Without going into details, my insights of this morning showed me the impossibility of atheism- or so I believe. Was this the Holy Spirit giving me truth or was this some unconscious fear at work? I'm interested in the opinions of anyone who isn't simply trolling (you know to whom I'm referring). Thank you very much.

__________________
"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

Suffering teaches you lessons just about universally (not that all the lessons you learn are true... but that's another question).
As a child, for instance, if you touch a hot pan, you learn not to do that anymore because it hurts.
I was told time and time again about going to college, saving money, and accepting help when it was offered... but until I actually lived on my own without doing those things and felt a sense of frustration and purposelessness, I never truly learned anything.
What suffering is more generally is learning to prioritize... I used to smoke pot. Eventually I decided that it was not as good as I once thought and that it was a waste. So I dropped that priority.

When you suffer in a way similar to how you did, it is like that... except not as concrete. Your lessons become more abstract ones about meaning and spirituality and a million whys.
What it all eventually comes down to is prioritizing your options. Why dispose of a belief system if it ultimately helps comfort you? It is better to adapt that system to whatever new information or suffering has altered in your life. The mind is quite good at that. Religion has always been a tool for humans to keep their feet on the ground with (though it may not always seem that way).

But all in all, the more experiences you have, mental or physical, the more wisdom you will acquire... provided you pay attention to all of them rather than just those that reaffirm your old data. Suffering is just one of the more noticable experiences... the hardest one to ignore. Thus it tends to teach you a lot... Though too much of it can crush hope and warp your perspective.
So I don't recommend a steady diet of suffering. The occasional suffering you are bound to have is substantial.

__________________
"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

As I believe JavaBlack stated, the lessons you learn through pain are often the most profound as they are either a culmination or relief of periods of suffering.

Another possibility, which JavaBlack didn't touch on, is the nature of the suffering itself. When in a state of suffering, you see things from an uncommon perspective. That in itself may be enough to introduce yourself to new lines of thinking with which to develop new philosophies.

I by no means intend to make a light topic of your "inner demons" Force-of-the-Truth, but have you ever read into the life of Isaac Newton? We all know he was a brilliant man in terms of his mathematical works, but what many people don't know, is that he also struggled with demons (so to speak) his entire life. Your posts where you mention the darker side of your life reminds me of Newton, and so you may find him an interesting study.

That's also true. We see a lot of the lack-of-perspective on the forum when a well-off person villainizes the poor or when a poor person makes little of the things people have to put up with when they earn money.
A lot of times it's simply because the person has no frame of reference for ow the other feels. A change of circumstance can often be a very eye-opening thing.
And in some cases this happens in a way that seems totally new.

__________________
"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

I might be a bit like Newton, though I tend to think I more closely resemble Kierkegaard and Kafka in terms of my personality. Does anyone have an opinion on whether my experiences have been spiritually or biologically based? I assure you that I won't be offended by any opinion. I concede that I may be a lunatic. Were my "insights" of this morning really insights? I need someone else's perspective, I think.

__________________
"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

I'm admittedly biased, and thus I am always going to look for a physical answer. Objectively though, I feel that spirituality is a very personal matter. So as long as your beliefs don't obtusely conflict with physical explanations and "feel right" to you, then I see no reason why you shouldn't experience and interpret them as being of a spiritual nature.

To really discuss opinions on the matter, I'd say you would really need to present your "insights" more concisely than in your original post. My method for determining the possibility of truth regarding your new ideas would begin with a question: Can the new ideas be tested in any sort of way to see if the ideas can make any sort of predictions or describe some phenomena? From there I would probably apply a more structured logical analysis. This would serve to benefit in two ways: first, it would force putting the ideas into concrete terms, and secondly, it would have the benefit of exposing any obvious flaws.

You guys have given some very thoughtful answers that I don't think I can improve on. I just had a thought, nothing that answers anything fully.

Seems as if nature itself teaches the value of suffering in many ways. A muscle doesn't grow and get stronger unless you break it down with weights, and then rest. Everything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger is true for much of nature in that our bodies, plants, animals etc... develop in accordance to the harshness of the environment or the attacks of bacteria which develop immunity, etc...

Even learning or practicing a sport is suffering to one degree or another, but the results can be incredible.

As a whole, society even adapts and changes when faced with various kinds of sufferings. -even to the point of analyzing itself and recognizing problems that must be dealt with. So... on a purely philosophical basis, I think suffering often results in good, even if the suffering itself is very difficult to go through.

__________________
www.theradioprogram.com

The conclusions I came to this morning were based, at least in part, on the understanding I already had that all is one and that, if there is a God, it is a semi-pantheistic one comprising that reality. I then added to it my understanding of ethics, specifically that we call good whatever satisfies our wishes. I concluded that, since some of our preferences are satisfied in a long-term way, perfection does exist and therefore, a God of some sort must exist. I further concluded that the devil is not a being but rather a self-negating principle, since, if evil consists of the non-satisfaction of wants, then an evil being could not want anything, including the ability to intervene in human affairs. My conclusion was that God has personal being, since personal being is a part of reality, but that personal being is only one of an infinite number of ways of seeing God. I further concluded that to state, "The devil exists" is rather to state, "Something exists that resulted in the total non-satisfaction of a wish". As such, since we do not possess infinite knowledge, I think that we wish ignorantly and thereby create evil, or more precisely, an absence of goodness, and that all, even that which we now see as evil, can ultimately be seen as part of a semi-pantheistic God. Perhaps I'm crazy, but these were my conclusions.

__________________
"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

That just sounds like your run of the mill breakdown. One of my buddies had one while working as a Private military advisor in Rwanda. Sounds like he had the same exact thing. Just a mental breakdown from stress. Hell, I had a minor one when I was in.

__________________
Patriotic Dissentor and Lovin it!
Death to those who Oppress and threaten the True People.

Aside from the utility of suffering not being infinite, it is also not universal.
Just as too much strain at once can damage muscles, too much suffering at once can crush your spirit. Over time, either might heal (the spirit is more resilient than the body... technology and medicine might change that). Some things that don't kill you reduce your net potential physically. A blind person can learn to do many things, but will never be able to do things that require sight without human, animal, or machine assistance. But the effect on the mind is unpredictable.
Suffering of that degree can lead to despair, especially if it follows and is followed by a chain of suffering... or if suffering is something completely new to you. On the other hand it can lead to new perspective.
I've seen my mother go blind. At the point where one becomes dependent on others, the perspective appears to be mixed. Sometimes astonished by the kindness of strangers, others by the incompetence of friends. All in all, much of the world seems uncaring, even like an obstacle. The government supplies them with what they need... but at the cost of giving up any ability to work for themselves (working = no more Medicare = death, since no job they can get would pay medical bills). The church offers fellowship and volunteers and gives them a place to volunteer... but often people cannot be counted on and social gathering politics are always annoying. But on the other hand, most other things that go wrong seem light in comparison to losing sight.
So it seems to me that when suffering is so bad as to the point where you lose independence, whether a physical or mental disability, that creates more despair than strength. Perhaps someday technology will make it so that all disabilities and all levels of severity will still allow for independence. But for now, we're still working on it.
But this theme goes on. The poorest people in the world especially and to some extent our own working poor have little autonomy. Resources are power. At the poorest levels risks must be taken to rise, and there usually isn't much to risk- and risking it typically does not effect only you. Upon losing a risk, you have less control... and you learn... but what you learn is not to take risks... you learn to abandon hope. In third world countries, even well-placed risks and good fortune and timing cannot move a person into a place of greater autonomy.
So there are limits to how good suffering is. If it is constant, if it is too much, then the damage can outweigh the boost... but that is healable. However if the damage chips away at your autonomy, you lose a lot of humanity. We are lucky to live in a society that has the resources and compassion to minimize the loss of autonomy. But loss of autonomy can be psychological as well as physical. It blows my mind that some would like to see our society devolve to a third world way of allowing people to lose all autonomy and that we can just ignore those living in countries where their autonomy is crushed.
Suffering only teaches when there is something to learn and only when prior experience has set you up for what it has to teach you. Otherwise it can be destructive.

__________________
"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III