Bernie:
Pain and suffering are two different things. Pain is necessary. Suffering is optional. Pain protects us. Of itself, pain is not a bad thing. What you do with it is the issue. Eternity is not the problem. When it comes, take it one day at a time.
God to Bernie:
Dear Son, I understand what you are saying. I understand the differentiation between pain and suffering. Perhaps I should just say suffering and leave out pain. But for Our purposes, let's take the leeway to speak of suffering and pain in the broad sense.
Yes, suffering is an option. Options are not mandatory.
Suffering comes from resistance to what has occurred. What has occurred was not what was wanted. And there is protest. Understandable or not, the sufferer holds suffering in place with his resistance to what has come to pass. Your thoughts tell you to suffer and how much pain to set the precipitating event at.
There are also many ways to deal with pain and suffering. Numbness is one of them.
It is often said that time will heal. Time does not heal. After a while, a person comes to the point where he just cannot hold on to grief much longer, and little by little he moves on. That may take time, but it is not time that heals. A person allows the healing by preventing it less.
There is a tendency in the world to take pain and suffering as inevitable. You believe it is. The world would back you up in that. You can find much evidence to support this.
I am saying there is no virtue in suffering, and don't save a place for it. Don't contemplate pain as a benefit. Don't defend it. Yes, it may well serve, but I am talking about the folly of giving it a position in human life. You do not require suffering. It is not good enough for you. Joy is good enough for you.
You will not be bereft from lack of pain or suffering. Lack will not hurt you.
It is better to move to different thinking about pain and suffering and not consider them essential to human existence. They don't need any help from you. They don't need your consciousness on them. Attention to pain or suffering ahead of time comes from fear, not practicality. Thoughts of pain will not ward it off. Perhaps suffering might not be so rampant if it were not given a harbor.
Big thinking comes not from what has already been thought. You are a visionary.
And now I fold My arms around you. And now you are restored. You are inundated with My light, and now you feel lighter from the weight you have carried. Carry My light only and not weight. You are a bearer of light.