Do not all ways point to no way?

Clouddust,
conscious, awake 'growth' starts only when what was felt to be suffering becomes living ordinary life as it comes moment after moment. Instead of complaining about it, wanting to avoid it, calling it good and bad, etc. one lives it as divine life, with Faith that it all comes from God (What Is, All There Is, Life, the Absolute, the Source, Love, all forms and beings). That's what the moral of the story of Job, in my understanding. Irrespective of what our minds (thought patterns, beliefs, concepts, etc.) tell us, there is only One No-thing going on, only one Reality. We are all living it Right Now.

It is essential therefore to distinguish between circumstances (where do they come from, anyway?) and how we respond to them, e.g. physical pain can be accepted more readily when one does not blame anything for it. Only when one surrenders to God's Will the spiritual path gets on solid ground. What seemed to be wrong and unjust, etc. now is accepted as life itself happening. You know then that God is and always will be with you. Because It is you!

SUFFERING
Is just one of the many paintings on the canvas of life and what is painted is often not unlike the works of art by a master.
Each gives rise to our emotions.
Our Totalness, being the medium upon which the scene is painted as well as the scene, encompasses all equally regardless the gravity of what is depicted. It Is as happy with adorable kittens or the majesty of Archangels as It is with a Christ nailed to the cross.
One may ask, why or how could this be?
Because the one asking is not an isolated one but One with All there is, and that Totality is the Love that allows all scenes to be painted upon It.
Proof! Do we need proof of this?
Just look around at life, there is the evidence to show that this is so.
But our resistance to any painting delivers the same result as that of the critic, we find fault, and in that very act of finding fault is the disconnect from It, or from the Love that welcomes the art, from the sincere appreciation of the scene regardless what it contains or depicts.
So by not loving All of life's art we are unwittingly in a land of believing we are separated from this very canvas of life, which is also what we are, therefore we are trying to disconnect from what we are.
When we do this pain ensues.
It is not unlike the newborn being separated from the mum.
However, the baby still cries in her mother's arms but she instinctively knows and feels the love contained in those arms and breasts.
When we as mortals can know the Love that supports us then we start to know that this Love is not separate, It is not foreign, It Is what we are.
All scenes are different but they are still painted upon Us, and when we can love them regardless what emotions they give rise to, we find something quite remarkable, we find we are much, much more than the painting of that scene that holds those (believed unwanted) emotions, we find, and also then know that we are the embodiment of that Love.

The breathtaking scene that can take our breath away that we stop to view while driving, we believe it's the splendor from the very top of a range that we see that moves our heart. Or the way that small puppy tilts her cute little head and fixes her loving eyes upon our face that gives rise to our emotions of love, we firmly believe it's the puppy doing that, don't we?

They are our excuse to feel what we are.
Conversely, labelling an unwanted is our excuse to feel what we are not.

I wrote this just before seeing Tony's post

If I may interpret bee’s eloquent post in my own thoughts, it would be say that suffering is sign that we are in resistance to what is, or in other words, resistant to God’s will. From my point of view, the opportunity that suffering may afford is not really to build character but rather to see the identification our separate individual self is a limited view. Of course, we are probably talking about the same thing for what is meant by building character could very well entail transcending it.

Maybe transcend was not quite the right word - but yes, I agree that we are only able to perceive through measuring, comparing and contrast. You cannot have black without white but how could either one exist without the unbound essence by which all things unfold? It seems to me that everything we think or perceive can only appear through this essence or presence. Perhaps it could be said that the infinite appears to us as the finite. So to get back to what I think was the topic; does suffering build character? Who is it that suffers or has character? Isn’t it just the finite mask of the infinite? It appears we get lost in the words and concepts of the mask and not see that it is all the grand play of the infinite.

As I reread the posts I realized that I side stepped the right and wrong issue. I feel that right and wrong only exist in this finite, conceptual plane of consciousness. They are like sub-plots playing out just as they should relative to whatever their context. All of these stories with their various sub-plots and characters are in essence plays of the infinite consciousness, at least, that is how I see it.

The retreat sounds nice! Nice points that deserve several read-overs My ability to participate is greatly reduced since returning to work but maybe its a retreat in its own way

Suffering builds character several ways:
Reliance, strength and experience. The "Grand Play of the Infinite," may be to grow us up. Mask or not, all experience is beneficial to us and to others.