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Author Topic:   Birth and pain
Ayelet
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posted April 05, 2014 12:39 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ayelet     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Why giving birth is so painful for the woman? Why were we created that way? What do you think?

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rajji
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posted April 05, 2014 01:19 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for rajji     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
"To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you." Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.…"

The answer to your question, as for me, lies in the scriptural reference quoted above.

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rajji
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posted April 05, 2014 01:42 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for rajji     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
It takes a lot of introspection to answer this question.Nobody else can answer it for you better than your own self.Good Question though.

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PixieJane
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posted April 05, 2014 01:50 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for PixieJane     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
You might find this of interest (starting on page 2):
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/why-is-human-childbirth-so-painful/2

quote:
The obstetrical hypothesis postulates that the demands of an unusual locomotor system increase the risk and cost of the reproductive process. If this is the case, evolution would favor human birth at earlier stages of development than in other, nonbipedal primates, and mothers with wider hips would experience decreased motor efficiency.

The obstetrical hypothesis is neat and readily comprehended, which helps explain its widespread acceptance, but new evidence casts doubt on it. A recent paper by Holly Dunsworth of the University of Rhode Island and colleagues reexamines the predictions and evidence supporting the obstetrical hypothesis and suggests an alternative explanation. For instance, human gestation is often said to be short relative to that of other primates, based on how much more growth is needed in neonates to achieve adult brain size. The shorter duration of gestation on first glance supports a prediction of the obstetrical hypothesis—that birth has evolved to occur earlier in hominids so that the baby is born before its head is too large to pass through the birth canal. Actually, the duration of human pregnancy (38–40 weeks) is absolutely longer than that of chimps, gorillas, and orangutans (32 weeks for chimps and 37–38 weeks for the latter two). When Dunsworth and her colleagues took maternal body size into account, which in primates is positively correlated with gestation length, they showed that human pregnancy is also relatively longer compared to that in great apes. No wonder that the third trimester seems so long to many pregnant women.

Another oft-cited fact supporting the obstetrical hypothesis is that, of all the primates, human newborns have the least-developed brains. Human babies’ brains are only 30 percent of adult size, as opposed to 40 percent in chimps. This difference in newborn brain size seems to suggest that human babies are born at an earlier developmental stage than other primates.
The catch is that adult brain size in humans is much larger than in other primates for reasons having nothing to do with birth. This means that using adult brain size as a basis for comparing relative gestation length or newborn brain size among primates will underestimate human development. But as one of the collaborators with Dunsworth, Peter Ellison of Harvard University, pointed out in his 2001 book Fertile Ground, the relevant question is, Given how large a mother’s body size is, how big a brain can she afford to grow in her baby? It is an issue of supply and demand. Labor occurs when the mother can no longer continue to supply the baby’s nutritional and metabolic demands.

As Ellison puts it, “Birth occurs when the fetus starts to starve.” From this perspective, the brain size of a human newborn is not small for a primate but is very large—one standard deviation above the mean. Body size in human newborns is also large relative to other primates when standardized for a mother’s body size. Both facts suggest that pregnancy may push human mothers to their metabolic limits


quote:
They have dubbed their hypothesis the energetics-of-gestation-and-growth hypothesis.

As the baby grows in both brain and body in the womb, its demand for energy accelerates exponentially. At some point, the mother reaches the limit of her ability to supply the fetus’s demands, and then labor begins. Even following birth, the big-brained, big-bodied newborn needs a loving mother who will continue to feed and care for it while its brain continues to grow at a fetal rate. In the womb, the fetus is basically part of the mother. Once born, the baby is effectively at a higher trophic level than its mother, like a parasite feeding on her, which increases the metabolic demands on her. However, the baby’s needs have shifted to include more long-chain fatty acids, which are key for brain growth. Since these are very efficiently transmitted to the baby through breast milk, rather than through the placenta, moving the baby outside the womb isn’t a problem.

The obstetrical hypothesis is not defunct; it is simply under question. But merely convincing those who were raised intellectually within this paradigm to consider an alternative hypothesis can be challenging. When she gives a talk about the energetics hypothesis, Dunsworth summarizes a conversation that illustrates this challenge:

***What always comes next is, “then why doesn’t the pelvis get wider to make childbirth easier?” And my answer is always, “Because it’s good enough. Witness over seven billion humans on the planet.” But that doesn’t satisfy most people who are moved to ask the question in the first place. And when they argue “the tight fit at birth is too much of a coincidence to ignore,” I ask, “Isn’t it just a coincidence that my finger fits perfectly into my nostril?”***


She’s right. Evolutionary adaptation doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough. Perhaps the female pelvis adapted to fit the size of the human fetus’s brain, rather than the female pelvis’s limiting the baby’s brain size. Still, we are left with no clear reason why a baby is such a tight fit in the mother’s birth canal. Pelvic size may be limited by something not yet taken into account in locomotor studies, such as speed, balance, or risk of injury. Or, perhaps simple economy keeps pelvic size close to neonatal brain size. The third alternative is that human childbirth was not always difficult and has only become so as improvements in diet have increased newborn body size. The obstetrical hypothesis and the energetics hypothesis are not mutually exclusive.

The evolutionary conflict that makes human birthing difficult may not be between walking or running and having babies, but between the fetus’s metabolic needs and the mother’s ability to meet them. Perhaps the problem isn’t only having—bearing—a big-brained baby. Perhaps the real problem is making one.


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PixieJane
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posted April 05, 2014 01:56 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for PixieJane     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
One of my favorite novels is White Oleander, and I loved this passage (for so brilliantly describing an experience with no romanticizing it, though I never assumed it was this universal, others have described similar experiences yet saying it left them feeling more connected to Life than ever before) on giving birth:

I couldn't stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was. That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should have spent an hour in a maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He'd have had to change his whole philosophy.

The mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain. Gasping on the bed, Yvonne bordered on the unrecognizable, disintegrating into a ripe collection of nerves, fibers, sacs, and waters and the ancient clock in the blood. Compared to the eternal body, the individual was a smoke, a cloud. The body was the only reality. I hurt, therefore I am.

The nurse came in, looked up at th monitor, checked Yvonne's contractions, blood pressure, her movements crisp and authoritative. The last shift we'd had Connie Hwang, we'd trusted her, she smiled and touched Yvonne gently with her plump hands. But this one, Melinda Meek, snapped at Yvonne for whining. "You'll be fine," she said. "You've done this before." She scared me with her efficiency, her bony fingers. I could tell she knew we were foster children, that Yvonne wouldn't keep the baby. She'd already decided we were irresponsible and deserved every bit of our suffering. I could see her as a correctional officer. Now I wished my mother was here. She would know how to get rid of Melinda Meek. Even in transition she would spit in Melinda's stingy face, threaten to strangle her in the cord of the fetal monitor.

"It hurts," Yvonne said.

"Nobody said it was a picnic," Melinda said. "You've got to breathe."

Yvonne tried, gasped and blew, she wanted everyone to like her, even this sour-faced nurse.

"Can't you just give her something?" I said.

"She'd doing fine," Melinda said crisply, her triangular eyes a veiled threat.

"Cheap-ass ************* ," the woman said on the other side of the white shower curtains. "Don't give the poor people no damn drugs."

"Please," Yvonne said, clutching at Melinda's white jacket. "I beg of you."

The nurse efficiently peeled back Yvonne's hand, patted it firmly onto her belly. "You're already eight centimeters. It's almost over."

Yvonne sobbed softly, rhythmically, hopelessly, too tired to even cry. I rubbed her stomach.

Nobody ever talked about what a struggle this all was. I could see why women die in childbirth. They didn't catch some kind of microbe, or even hemorrhage. They just gave up. They stopped caring whether or not the baby came. They knew if they didn't die, they'd be going through it again the next year, and the next. I could understand how a woman might just stop trying, like a tired swimmer, let her head go under, the water fill her lungs. I slowly massaged Yvonne's neck, her shoulders, I wouldn't let her go under. She sucked ice through threadbare white terry. If my mother were here, she'd have made Melinda Meek cough up the drugs, sure enough.

"Mamacita, ay," Yvonne wailed.

I didn't know why she would call for her mother. She hated her mother. She hadn't seen her in six years, since the day she locked Yvonne and her brothers and sisters in their apartment in Burbank to go out and party, and never came back. Yvonne said she let her boyfriends run a train on her when she was eleven. I didn't even know what that meant. Gang bang, she said. And still she called out, Mama.

It wasn't just Yvonne. All down the ward, they called for their mothers. Mommy, ma, mom, mama. Even with husbands at their sides, they called out for mama. Nine hours ago, when we came in, a woman with a voice like a lye bath alternately screamed at her husband and called for her mother. A grown woman sobbing like a child. Mommy....I was embarrassed for her. Now I knew better.

I held on to Yvonne's hands, and I imagined my mother, seventeen years ago, giving birth to me. Did she call for her mother? I imagined her screaming at my father, calling him worthless, a liar, useless, until he went out for a beer, leaving her alone with the landlady on a cold November morning. She had me at home, she'd never liked doctors. I could imagine how her screams and curses must have pierced the quiet of the walk street in Venice Beach, startling a kid going by on a skateboard, while the landlady smoked hash and rifled her purse. But did she call out, Mami, help me?

I thought of her mother, the one picture I had, the little I knew. Karin Thorvald, who may or may not have been a distant relation of King Olaf of Norway, classical actress and drunk, who could recite Shakespear by heart while feeding the chickens and who drowned in the cow pond when my mother was thirteen. I couldn't imagine her calling out for anyone.

But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood, women who let their boyfriends run a train on them. Bingers and purgers, women smiling into mirrors, women in girdles, women on barstools. Not those women watching TV while they made dinner, women who dyed their hair blond behind closed doors trying to look twenty-three. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition, get used to it.

They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us.

Yvonne was sitting up, holding her breath, eyes bulging out. It was the thing she should not do.

"Breathe," I said in her ear. "Please, Yvonne, try."

She tried to breathe, a couple of shallow inhalations, but it hurt too much. She flopped back down on the narrow bed, too tired to go on. All she could do was grip my hand and cry. And I thought of the way the baby was linked to her, as she was linked to her mother, and her mother, and all the way back, inside and inside, knit into a chain of disaster that brought her to this bed, this day. And not only her. I wondered what my own inheritance was going to be.

"I wish I was dead," Yvonne said into the pillowcase with the flowers I'd brought from home.

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PixieJane
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posted April 05, 2014 02:03 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for PixieJane     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
And I'm jealous of the sentient lizard races in my original scifis...they lay eggs that hatch...and that's how it SHOULD be done, not burst forth from your body like Alien. Here, from a rough draft of one of them:

Hezin (sentient alien lizard called a ziv interviewing a human who is now traveling with them as their species finds humans very difficult to understand, just as the reverse is true), "How exactly does one tell the difference between male & female among humans when their colors are chaotic and leg sizes about the same?"

"Color and leg length isn't part of gender in humans like ziv. Instead you look to the shape of the body, especially the hips and torso. You can't always tell this way, but usually you can. Men usually have a lot more hair on their face, or at least have to shave their face more. For some reason many women shave their legs while men just shave their face and let their legs get hairy. Men smell different, too, and so does the cologne they wear instead of perfume. Men are usually stronger, but not always. The main thing is that men have their genitals on the outside while women have genitals that are on the inside like a ziv."

"How are the eggs hatched?"

"They're not laid like ziv do, so the hatchling, called a *baby* hatches from the body."

[Silence, as Hezin twists in a way that expresses distress and even shocked horror.]
"And I think that's more than any ziv wants to know. And yet, despite this, humans are obsessed with sex, right?"

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23
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posted April 05, 2014 03:51 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for 23     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Well it's a combination of brain size (se PJ's article) which leads to babies having large heads but the other side of that is bipedalism of human beings. Obviously hips would have changed, probably narrowed, with evolution to improve walking and centre of gravity. Babies leaving the birth canal just didn't make the primary cut for evolutionary purposes and so there is now a clash between heads and hips which leads to pain.

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Ayelet
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posted April 05, 2014 04:14 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ayelet     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Thank you, PixieJane, for the wonderful examples from literature. Rajji, I agree that the pain is due to some evil that was made eons ago. The bible story is, for me, an allegory to something very real that occured in the distant past.
PixieJane, in the article you quoted there was a line that made an impact on me, and that was: "Birth occurs when the fetus starts to starve". We suffer as fetuses, and we don't even have the words to express it! Birth is pain and is coming out of pain. Why? Was our sin so terrible? I think a mlother's love is the most unselfish love. Your child isn't yours. You invest everything you have in him \ her. And you shouldn't expect anything in return. Only that the child should grow up to be a happy adult. That is the greatest reward for a mother.

In this life i am not going to bring children or get married. That is a decision i received due to my declining state of health. But I remember how, in better days, i so wished to have children on which to shower love. I also wanted to find my twin self. All this seems like impossible feets right now. But I don't understand how such an unselfish love should be rewarded by our creators with pain. I have to say i am dreading it, even more so because i am far from doing it. Seems paradoxical? But it is the truth.
Is it the sex thing we are being punished for? I heard about the theory by which once man and woman were one, and sex is actually our impossible need to return to that state. Is sex selfish? Are we punished for our lust, our needs. our small delight? Scientists may say we are programmed by nature to make our genes thrive, to promise continuation, and so are encouraged by the pleasure of sex. I think there is a point here, but that is not the whole story. Is this a world of suffering? This world with love and seas and oceans and birds?

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rajji
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posted April 05, 2014 04:31 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for rajji     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
In this life i am not going to bring children or get married. That is a decision i received due to my declining state of health. But I remember how, in better days, i so wished to have children on which to shower love. I also wanted to find my twin self. All this seems like impossible feets right now. But I don't understand how such an unselfish love should be rewarded by our creators with pain. I have to say i am dreading it, even more so because i am far from doing it. Seems paradoxical? But it is the truth.

My deepest regards for you.
I have also chosen the same path as you did.
But my reasons for it differ from yours.
I have nothing to regret for taking the path less travelled.The path you have taken is by itself the greatest Labour of Love!

This is a dedication for you.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

By Frost Robert

{{{ Hugs }}}

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Ayelet
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posted April 05, 2014 05:08 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ayelet     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by 23:
Well it's a combination of brain size (se PJ's article) which leads to babies having large heads but the other side of that is bipedalism of human beings. Obviously hips would have changed, probably narrowed, with evolution to improve walking and centre of gravity. Babies leaving the birth canal just didn't make the primary cut for evolutionary purposes and so there is now a clash between heads and hips which leads to pain.

That is very interesting, 23. It doesn't answer me, though, to why we were made to feel the pain. I know there is a reason for everything, that is part of my agenda, and so the subjective feeling of pain is not less important to me than the objective phenomena you relate to.

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23
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posted April 05, 2014 05:20 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for 23     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Er, the head can't get through easily? Hips and ligaments will stretch to a point and then it starts really hurting because the head can't get through?

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Ayelet
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posted April 05, 2014 05:22 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ayelet     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Rajji, thank you so much for the gesture. I send you my love.

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23
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posted April 05, 2014 05:47 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for 23     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Pain is a warning sign, that's all. Itching is as well, they use the same fibres. Pain comes from contractions that expel the baby from the mother's body and from the previous stretching I mentioned. It's simply an alert or warning for the mother to be ready for the birthing process.

If you want to add the Biblical perspective, then it's punishment from the original sin. Maybe there are philosophical reasons for it, I can't give you those, I'm not trained in those areas.

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Ayelet
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posted April 05, 2014 06:05 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ayelet     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by 23:
Er, the head can't get through easily? Hips and ligaments will stretch to a point and then it starts really hurting because the head can't get through?

That is most probable. Thing is, it doesn't explain why the divinities came up with that mechanism and not another. Why weren't our creators more merciful, and speared the woman the pain? But the answer that comes to my mind is that they were merciful. I think one cannot experience the world of matter and avoid pain. Perhaps I am wrong. My opinion is that in the spirit world there is no pain. But yet the soul keeps coming back here until she (the soul) learns enough to go on. Real happiness is spiritual and does not come from physical pleasure. Yet matter is condensed energy. So this is also a spiritual world. But the senses are so powerful that they can blind the soul. Only when the soul is strong enough can she resist the temptations of the lower self. I think starvation of physical needs can help connect with the soul and higher self.That is why, among other things, fasts are so healthy. It seems that every earthly pleasure brings pain with it.

I feel sex can be either holy or profane. I admit that i treat this issue in a bit of an extreme attitude. I don't mind what others do if they don't hurt no one. But i think the male-female is potentially a holy thing and i revere it as such.But i wish so much to stop the pain. What a stern teacher pain is! I wish to enjoy the beauty of the world without having to suffer. It is like being in a really good concert but having a really big headache! I guess i too have forgotten the spiritual world and myself. When the spirit rules, pain is gone. Spirit is the real source of everything we admire in this world. So all pain comes from blindness.

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23
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posted April 05, 2014 06:20 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for 23     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Ayelet:
[B] That is most probable. Thing is, it doesn't explain why the divinities came up with that mechanism and not another. Why weren't our creators more merciful, and speared the woman the pain? But the answer that comes to my mind is that they were merciful. I think one cannot experience the world of matter and avoid pain. Perhaps I am wrong. My opinion is that in the spirit world there is no pain. But yet the soul keeps coming back here until she (the soul) learns enough to go on. Real happiness is spiritual and does not come from physical pleasure. Yet matter is condensed energy. So this is also a spiritual world. But the senses are so powerful that they can blind the soul. Only when the soul is strong enough she can resist the temptations of the lower self. I think starvation of physical needs can help connect with the soul and higher self.That is why, among other things, fasts are so healthy. It seems that every earthly pleasure brings pain with it.

Just a few random thoughts:

My step-mother in-law said to me that she often converses with her grandmother who has passed on. I don't laugh about it and believe it actually, I believe there are links to other dimensions out there and thus I also have a belief in higher powers. She said her grandmother told her that on the other side there is only pure thought, no pain, no emotion. I don't know why I am telling you this, it vaguely links in to what you say.

Old fashioned Gods and even the OT Bible explanation don't spare pain in childbirth because they try to simply explain the existence of the pain.

And without a body, the mechanisms of pain are simply not felt because these mechanisms aren't alive and don't exist. Pleasure for humans exists for the same reason, because the mechanisms are there and alive to feel them. These are all human feelings or sensations or living sensations too. I don't believe they are connected to the soul except maybe in a psychological interrelationship sense - eg feeling empathy etc.

A lot of the major religions come from older times in sparser conditions. Look at the three monotheistic religions and they come from the desert in the Levant or Middle East. I'm not sure about Bhuddism but surely he had moments of detachment and contemplation as well. Creation of religion does not fare well today because of the layout of modern life for an average person.

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23
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posted April 05, 2014 06:25 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for 23     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_(philosophy)

An interesting start

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I'm so cappy
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posted April 05, 2014 06:31 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for I'm so cappy     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I don't intend to have children but I'd be thrilled to learn there are going to be artificial wombs in use. It would make things so much easier for women. I don't even wanna imagine how much a pregnancy and delivery suck. I still wouldn't go for it though

------------------
I'm sooo happy! I mean, cappy.

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23
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posted April 05, 2014 06:41 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for 23     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
If you're talking about an in vitro style artificial womb, then one of the things that will be missed out on is the intimacy you'll have with your unborn child. When that baby starts to kick within, it's a very spiritual moment, something that you know that is way beyond yourself. The rest of pregnancy sucks though LOL

Still it's definitely better than nothing for those who want children and can't.

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rajji
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posted April 05, 2014 07:30 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for rajji     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Ayelet-Those were some beautiful insights I must say.
My answer however may or may not match to your Train of Thought.
quote:
Is it the sex thing we are being punished for? I heard about the theory by which once man and woman were one, and sex is actually our impossible need to return to that state. Is sex selfish? Are we punished for our lust, our needs. our small delight? Scientists may say we are programmed by nature to make our genes thrive, to promise continuation, and so are encouraged by the pleasure of sex. I think there is a
point here, but that is not the whole story. Is this a world of suffering? This world with love and seas and oceans and birds?

No-Satan knows that sex is one of God's most precious gifts.
Satan is the ultimate liar and manipulator, so suffice it to say it is in his best interest to do all he can to sabotage our right image of sex.So the pain might serve as a reminder of trusting satan and disobeying Gods word.
Man and Women were indeed one-combination of masculine and feminine identities conjoined to make one whole self.
Sex could be a means to return to that stage but in my opinion it might involve lifetime monogamy or atleast repentance on our part for being promiscuous, just like each twinflame has only ONE perfect match in the entire universe!Sex is a sort of spiritual glue!which binds two perfect halves to the godly source.Sex is incredibly powerful, designed to usher deserving couples into profound oneness. Understand that there is a spiritual battle being waged for your sexual intimacy.

God said-
"Protect it. Nurture it with abandon. Enjoy it. Remain in it. See it as a gift. Allow me to heal where there has been pain. Seek me. Trust me. Love well."
So in essense, we need to discern who is reigning in our sexuality -- Good or evil?
we need to be careful that we are not sacrificing our sexual intimacy on worldly altars.Sex is after all a privilege.

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Ayelet
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posted April 05, 2014 07:49 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ayelet     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Rajji - it resonates with me. I cannot be with my twin self or twinflame, and don't quite deserve it right now, so i prefer my solitude.

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Ayelet
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posted April 05, 2014 08:03 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ayelet     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
23 - thank you for the link, and for sharing your thoughts. I am not religious in the sense of thinking there is one religion which is right while others are wrong. I don't go blindly after dictates. But I am very interested in religions and feel a very close affinity with certain spiritual teachers, as i believe there is truth in the religion. Of course the religion is being created to also answer the ephemeral needs of a certain society in a certain era, but it also has a timeless dimension, otherwise it would have been casted away altogether by all humanity. There are grains of truth everywhere to be collected. Just like a good piece of art is not casted away just because the fashion changes.

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Ayelet
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posted April 05, 2014 08:15 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ayelet     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Astrology is also a spiritual doctrine, an ancient one, and it's revived today.

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PixieJane
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From: CA
Registered: Oct 2010

posted April 05, 2014 09:23 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for PixieJane     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I personally don't assume that we have anthropomorphized creators who feel that humanity is the be all and end all of the Earth (let alone the cosmos). The Earth isn't the center of the universe, and neither is humanity. Therefore I don't wonder why there is pain, or pleasure as I don't look to "parental figures" that created the entire cosmos and treat us as children (be it overprotective or abusive or whatever). Even if I did then I'd have to wonder what it's like to "grow up" and pain must be part of that.

That said, I do consider it probable that other, including non-physical, dimensions exist with their own entities, a few of whom may take an interest in our species, and I can speculate a lot on that. I'm very wary of any being that claims to be our creator, and people have been warning humanity of such archons for thousands of years (I'll post a video in another forum and link to it in this thread later). I can see the possibility of how belief, which pain helps to foster, could feed such entities making them the ranchers and us the cattle. As some occultists say, "So above, so below," and as we do onto other life forms (including each other) on this planet--exploiting them in thoughtless and even cruel (and painful) ways--then entities from other dimensions that we can't comprehend are doing the very same thing to us.

Yet pain can teach compassion as much as it can give a taste for cruelty. And interesting enough plenty pursue pain, and not just masochists but people who seek challenges that test them which include pain and deprivation which tests themselves and grow stronger from it. Perhaps the ultimate quote on that is this:

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard." --JFK

Plenty also accept hazing, including some of the most brutal (that sometimes kills) or demeaning, and feel they've overcome by doing so. Plenty also seek to sacrifice themselves in some ways, including their very lives (though few are that fanatical--yet we do celebrate those who die for a cause, at least if we're sympathetic to those causes and/or allegiances). Suffering and martyrdom can be a mark of pride for some when done out of love, patriotism, religion, etc.

Also of interest IMO is enough of those who experience little pain and hardship sometimes have a hard time experiencing any joy simply because they become so jaded that they can no longer be thankful in any sincere way for what they have. It was mentioned thousands of years ago that feast days were extremely exciting to the common people because they were so special and anticipated for unusual indulgences while rulers who glutted themselves on food and entertainment everyday were typically jaded, and now today there are people saved by technology and plenty unknown to our ancestors who experience a life of incredible bounty free of the menial labors and extreme (or they would be to us) hardships who are nevertheless plagued by depression and purposelessness. What is there to look forward to? Hardly anything of significance for many, typically just crass commercialism and going through the motions (but again some find accomplishment through activities that are hard, even painful). As a society we've generally become as the rulers of old, jaded (and feeling entitled rather than grateful) in our wealth and unable to know joy as a result. Not everyone, but plenty, so maybe pain does serve to increase joy and happiness as well as teach compassion...though not everyone so benefits ('course not everyone protected from hardship gets all depressed and jaded either).

At least that's how it looks to me.

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Ayelet
Knowflake

Posts: 176
From:
Registered: Sep 2010

posted April 05, 2014 12:46 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ayelet     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by PixieJane:
[B]I personally don't assume that we have anthropomorphized creators who feel that humanity is the be all and end all of the Earth (let alone the cosmos). The Earth isn't the center of the universe, and neither is humanity. Therefore I don't wonder why there is pain, or pleasure as I don't look to "parental figures" that created the entire cosmos and treat us as children (be it overprotective or abusive or whatever). Even if I did then I'd have to wonder what it's like to "grow up" and pain must be part of that.

That said, I do consider it probable that other, including non-physical, dimensions exist with their own entities, a few of whom may take an interest in our species, and I can speculate a lot on that. I'm very wary of any being that claims to be our creator, and people have been warning humanity of such archons for thousands of years


I don't think we are the center of the universe, nor that we are the only beings.I don't think God or creators has a human form. And i definitely do not think we are treated as children. If we were treated like children then perhaps we were saved all the trouble of free will with its consequences! I believe there is one law, the law of love, and if one comes on its way, one experiences pain and hardship.I have experienced that, and i have no one but myself to blame. I believe earth is a school for souls. So perhaps we are children in that sense. But adults study too, don't they? It just that they don't have to. So i can see how one can feel school is not the best metaphor to describe the life of a soul on Earth or on other planets, especially since so many have bad memories from school and older persons who think they know best and limit the children's life.

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Jo B
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Posts: 482
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 2014

posted April 05, 2014 01:16 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Jo B     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I wanted to come out feet first.

The doctors were having none of that. Nor my mum!

I think the pain varies from woman to woman. Some women don't need any painkillers, epidurals or gas, some need it ALL. It depends on the size of the baby, whether the mother has given birth previously amongst other factors such as skills/attentiveness of the midwives themselves, position of giving birth etc.

Not that I've had kids myself.

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