And you confirming my previous post, make me believe you do exactly as the self-mutilators. You want bad things to happen to you as you just explained, just so you can embrace life and religion more.
That's an erred comparison because I do not seek the experience of pain
for the pleasure of pain. I don't understand how after I've explained that it isn't the
pain I enjoy when bad things happen, it is the
opportunity to learn something from the painful experience. Do these self-mutilators sit there while scarring themselves and think "What does this teach me about what I am doing wrong in my life?". When I am in financial crisis I do not enjoy eating peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches for two weeks straight, I enjoy the fact that it makes me sit down at the table with my peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches (and milk, can't have PB&J without milk!) and a pen and tablet and go over where my spending went wrong, and how to safeguard against it in the future.
The principle goes along with something everyone is familiar with that when broken down in technical terms is very much like what I am talking about. Vaccinations. In broken down technical reality, we inject weakened bad viruses and diseases into our bodies so that our bodies can adapt and
learn how to defend against those in the future and protect ourselves. As I said above, when I experience financial crisis it is not that I enjoy the bad, I enjoy the opportunity for life to put the breaks on the situtation on my behalf, and make me stop and really better myself so that it doesn't happen again. Are people who get vaccinations and vaccinate their children because of that reason fit into the self-mutilators group?
So as you can see it is not a correct comparison to liken self-mutilation that seeks pain for the pleasure of pain, but it is the seeking of times of testing in order to learn and grow stronger both physically and spiritually.
I am sure you ment it with the best of hearths, but No one should be "happy" with a near death, experience. One can learn from it, but most often, these calm perfect(you call Divine) moments, also very often occur when you are in good health, without a near death experience.
One cannot simply look to the good to learn life lessons, it is often the bad that brings the strongest life lessons. That is why I seek both. I seek life lessons wherever they can be found, and because of this I am forced to embrace bad things in order to find the good even in those. If I had not grown up in poverty, I would not know the importance of neighbors helping neighbors and the strength required to live in a one bedroom apartment with three families. I would never have learned the depth of that personal community if it had not happened, and I would not be able to handle future times of dire poverty like that had it not happened. I've learned the value of hard work and sacrifice through it that isn't taught anywhere else. How can I learn stuff like that from good experiences? Can you honestly say that a person in good perfect health who works 9-5 every day knows the depth, appreciation, and value of life that the man laying in a bed with one month to live has?
I welcome all bad things so that I may overcome them, and learn the good from them. I thought that made me an Optimist?
Peace
Welcome to JCYouth! 
