WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF SUFFERING?

From Self-Development and the Way to Power, by L. W. Rogers (2)

Why do we suffer in life? Because in the scheme of nature we are being
forced forward in evolution and we lack the spiritual illumination
that alone can light the way and enable us to move safely among the
obstacles that lie before us. Usually we do not even see or suspect
the presence of trouble until it suddenly leaps upon us like a
concealed tiger. One day our family circle is complete and happy. A
week later death has come and gone and joy is replaced with agony.
Today we have a friend. Tomorrow he will be an enemy and we do not
know why. A little while ago we had wealth and all material luxuries.
There was a sudden change and now we have only poverty and misery and
yet we seek in vain for a reason why this should be. There was a time
when we had health and strength; but they have both departed and no
trace of a reason appears. Aside from these greater tragedies of life
innumerable things of lesser consequence continually bring to us
little miseries and minor heartaches. We most earnestly desire to
avoid them but we never see them until they strike us, until in the
darkness of our ignorance we blunder upon them. The thing we lack is
the spiritual illumination that will enable us to look far and wide,
finding the hidden causes of human suffering and revealing the method
by which they may be avoided; and if we can but reach illumination the
evolutionary journey can be made both comfortably and swiftly. It is
as though we must pass through a long, dark room filled with furniture
promiscuously scattered about. In the darkness our progress would be
slow and painful and our bruises many. But if we could press a button
that would turn on the electric light we could then make the same
journey quickly and with perfect safety and comfort.

The old method of education was to store the mind with as many facts,
or supposed facts, as could be accumulated and to give a certain
exterior polish to the personality. The theory was that when a man was
born he was a completed human being and that all that could be done
for him was to load him up with information that would be used with
more or less skill, according to the native ability he happened to be
born with. The theosophical idea is that the physical man, and all
that constitutes his life in the physical world, is but a very partial
expression of the self; that in the ego of each there is practically
unlimited power and wisdom; that these may be brought through into
expression in the physical world as the physical body and its
invisible counterparts, which together constitute the complex vehicle
of the ego's manifestation, are evolved and adapted to the purpose;
and that in exact proportion that conscious effort is given to such
self-development will spiritual illumination be achieved and wisdom
attained. Thus the light that leads to happiness is kindled from
within and the evolutionary journey that all are making may be robbed
of its suffering.