U know, it's funny... I've been thinking a bit lately about how I've essentially experienced everything at this point, and when my time comes, it won't be a bad thing.
As I see it, you don't actually need to go through a life event to experience it. You need to get perspective on something, see the forest for the tree(s), transcend the tree(s) and thus see it in context of the whole Forest. That's really all.
For example, to really "know" pleasure, joy, perfect happiness and ultimate bliss, you need to face and transcend their opposites. To know anything at full depth, you must confront its opposite. At that point you don't need them anymore.
All opposites ultimately co-depend, and are one.
If you've known total pleasure and bliss, inside and out, you know what true misery and suffering is.
If you've known real sorrow in your life, you *know* true happiness.
To know fame, fortune and total success in life -- is to know loneliness, poverty and abject failure.
To "know" life totally, to truly live -- is to know death, to have an intimate familiarity with it.
To know a single other person, inside and out, is to know yourself.
And to know yourself totally, inside and out, is to know everyone, to have a complete insight into the human heart.
If you want to "know" something, really "get" it at the level of transcendence, check out its opposite -- whatever that may be. Don't bother with the "something" itself.
It isn't itself.
Peace...
As I see it, you don't actually need to go through a life event to experience it. You need to get perspective on something, see the forest for the tree(s), transcend the tree(s) and thus see it in context of the whole Forest. That's really all.
For example, to really "know" pleasure, joy, perfect happiness and ultimate bliss, you need to face and transcend their opposites. To know anything at full depth, you must confront its opposite. At that point you don't need them anymore.
All opposites ultimately co-depend, and are one.
If you've known total pleasure and bliss, inside and out, you know what true misery and suffering is.
If you've known real sorrow in your life, you *know* true happiness.
To know fame, fortune and total success in life -- is to know loneliness, poverty and abject failure.
To "know" life totally, to truly live -- is to know death, to have an intimate familiarity with it.
To know a single other person, inside and out, is to know yourself.
And to know yourself totally, inside and out, is to know everyone, to have a complete insight into the human heart.
If you want to "know" something, really "get" it at the level of transcendence, check out its opposite -- whatever that may be. Don't bother with the "something" itself.
It isn't itself.
Peace...