Difficulties Encourage us to Grow, Learn, and Get Strong
![]() Philadelphia, United States – July 5, 2013: The Love Sculpture by the pop artist Robert Indiana was placed in Philadelphia’s “Love Park”, officially named JFK Plaza, in 1976 as part of the U.S. Bicentennial celebration. |
“If you study without Love, your success will be problematic and temporary. Whatever work you do in the world, if you do not put the Divine in it, your success will be problematic and temporary too.
“All those who love God succeed. All those who fail, fail in their love of God. …
“Why is there suffering? Suffering is a refresher. If you have no suffering, twice bigger mishaps will come to you.
“Love is the quality that will connect you with God. A greater good than love you cannot find. And a greater mishap than to lose love you cannot get. When you lose love, you will find death.
“They say: No one can go to God if he is not pure. No one can go to God if he is not good, merciful, and reasonable.
“All tests that we get are to enable us. The difficulties and the stumbling blocks that you meet are an education means. Without suffering and tests, you cannot have any gains.
“In ‘Divine Love,’ I understand the following: I realize that all beings, whatever they may be, have equal rights to Divine Good. That kind of understanding is Divine Love. If you do not understand it like that, it is not Divine Love.
“Happiness can be achieved only when we realize that goal that God has put in life—and that goal is Man’s life in God.” ~Biensa Douno
Study Without Love
When you study materialistic subjects without love, you may have some success, but it will be limited, and incomplete. Only with love can you grasp the full truth of the matter. When you study spiritual subjects, it is unlikely that you will have much success at all if you lack love, especially the love of God.
Put the Divine in Your Work
There is an old story about a wealthy man who hires a local home builder to build a home. The builder does good work, but has not had a lot of success and so does not have much money. He decides to cut corners while building the house for the wealthy man so he will make more profit. When the house is finished, the wealthy man pays for it, then tells the house builder that the home is for him. “I know you work hard but don’t make a lot of money so I decided to build this house for you.” So the builder finds out that the house built in an inferior way is his own.
The point of the story is that we are all building our own homes, our own lives. If we cheat and look for shortcuts, it is ourselves we cheat the most. If we have love and put Divine Love in all we do, that would never happen. We would do our best in all our work. Most importantly, I think Douno is mostly reminding us to do our best with our spiritual growth and spiritual life. To mess up our physical life with bad karma is bad enough, but physical life is short, while spiritual life is eternal.
Connect With God
While some may think of it differently, the goal of spiritual development is to connect with God, learn from God, and ultimately become one with God and one will All. If that is not what we are trying to do, then it isn’t real spiritual development. The spirit is not a part of the body or the mind and it can’t be developed by our efforts alone in the realm of matter. It is only through that connection with God, primarily through the Spiritual Sun, that the spirit can truly awaken and grow. Just reading holy books isn’t enough. Just posting memes about how spirituality is so much better than religion isn’t enough, in fact, it is an indication of egotism, the opposite of spiritual development. So look to the Spiritual Sun and seek that connection with God.
All Beings Have Equal Rights
Douno says that with Divine Love we “realize that all beings, whatever they may be, have equal rights to Divine Good.” I can agree with that. It is important to note that he says all beings, not all humans, not all animals, but all beings which include plants as well. So the holier-than-thou vegans are not doing anything to encourage the growth of their souls, as they to are saying that some beings are more important than others, and eating some beings is just fine, but not others. That is not the truth.









