Our great teacher, Pain

"No one lives on this earth without [pain]. It is the great teacher, although none of us want to admit it. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it in some form. Take that as an absolute. If we do not learn this all important spiritual lesson, at least one, maybe all, of the following things will happen:
1. We will become inflexible, blaming, and petty as we grow older
2. We will need other people to hate in order to expel our inner negativity
3. We will play the victim in some form as a means of false power.
4. We will spend much of our life seeking security and status as a cover-up for lack of a substantial sense of self.
5. We will pass on our deadness to our family, children, and friends

from page 37 of Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Inititiation, by Richard Rohr