'No Pain, No Gain'

The question here is no pain, no gain. Is it truly if there is no pain, there is no gain? Well, I believe that it is true. I believe that you do not have anything without work. I mean, look around us. We see people that are born into affluence and they have everything in the world. And what happens? The kid grows up, he goes up on the mountain, he meditates on his belly, and he sits there: "Ommmmmmm". Or he winds himself up on drugs in try to get a high. Why? Because he has no incentive, no initiative, no motivation, because he has had from the moment that he was born practically nothing that he was missing. And so what happens when people are put in that situation, sometimes their ability to grow and to do becomes atrophied. If you take a little child, and you put him in cast, and you leave him like that for four years, when you remove the cast they will not walk, because they have not learnt how, because the have not stood up and fell, and crawled, and stood up and fell again. In life, even though things happen, there are certain signes in the Zodiac that have perhaps more luck than others. And there are things that the Zohar talk about of children being born at the end of the month instead of the beginning of the month. And yes, there are certain factors where the Sun seems to shine a little brighter. But in my experience is that something that is not built, is not worked for, is not done with a little bit of sweat of one kind or another, is not appreciated, not by you. And when you do not appreciate yourself, when you do not feel that you have molded something with your own hands, regardless of what it might be, that you have not worked for it, that you have not taken something and built it. Yes, it is the same as getting a gift. It is wonderful to receive a beautiful gift, it is more wonderful when you work for something, and you see that with your own hands you have created something. I do believe that without what we call 'pain', like I said when we go to a gym, right? we lift these weights, and they are hard, or when you are walking on a treadmill, and you want to stop, and you just keep on going and keep on pushing forward, or walking up a hill. Life is walking up a hill. Most of us are walking up a hill. And if we do not see it today, we will see it tomorrow. There is no set place where everything is beautiful, and life just flows like this beautiful symphony, Sometimes you hit a bad note. And that time, and that walking up the hill, and that pushing forward and saying: "I do not care, I am going on. I am going to create something that is for me." When I go above that pain, when I go above that experience, that is when I can appreciate the gain in my life and in my spiritual development. Thank you!