The lessons which life, guided by infinite intelligence and invested with infinite power as it is, seeks to make available to us through the turning wheel of destiny may bring suffering but they also bring the wisdom which will shield us from suffering in the future. This is possible only if we accept the suffering as self-earned, humbly study its lesson, and set to work on self-improvement. But if we are too proud, too weak, too foolish to receive the lesson, then the same suffering will reappear again and again in later years or later lives until we do. It will come as before through the same events, at the right time and in the right place. Whether it is life that punishes us through its eternal laws or we through our disobedience to them, we cannot dodge the step to be mounted.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 1 : Situation > # 392
