So what did Nietzsche mean by "the discipline of suffering"?
There is no learning from destruction or pain and it is always philosophers that call it "wisdom". I have seen many who have been broken and shattered from loss and pain, and those that make it through always recollect this passage as "suffering".
One needs to remember that Nietzsche trained in the agonistic. In the actual translation it means "to be in battle, to be brought to your knees" and if it is true, he is closer to Heraclitus than any other philosopher-teacher.
It would mean that you take on (or off) what life brings and gives (or takes) to (and from) you. It is the human condition with all its fragility, seasons and decay that inspire the "creator".
"Suffering" sharpens the intellect and the passions, but it is the decisions that you make that will give you the "ownership of the self" to face life in all its terror and beauty; desiring to be neither a follower or leader.
That is the "discipline of suffering".
To look into it, to struggle with the forces, and to discipline yourself to mould, invent, create and travel your journey, your life.
How can you have belonging if you do not have an identity?
Not individualism, that is closely related to narcissistic seclusion, but individuation that connects you to the past and to the moment, to yourself and others.
How can this be done?
Only through the discipline and training of all the Promethean lessons that life offers to (and takes away from) those who remain in their moment, their world, their life. And "how much truth can you bear?" as someone who makes and invents, who travels the four compasses of the world without leaving the solitude of the trees and mountains.
I do understand by heart that the "discipline of suffering" is not your psychological interpretation of masochism/sadism (to "enjoy" pain) but rather to continue in the "agon" without avoidance, sedation, escape or withdrawal into a "shadow" (Jung).
Nietzsche refers to this type of thinker as one of the "gynopaethia" (the naked children, from Borea), one who faces life without an armour.
In Greek archetypes in life you have three muses:
the weaver, the creator, the maker
thelo: "I desire to be god"
moira (destiny), which in translation means to "stitch up"
Between these three, the desire, the will and destiny comes, into birth or death, the weaver.
But first you have to know how to weave, from "the discipline of suffering"
"The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that it is this discipline alone which has created every elevation of mankind hitherto?
That tension of the soul in misfortune which cultivates its strength, its terror at the sight of great destruction, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, exploiting misfortune, and whatever of depth, mystery, mask, spirit, cunning and greatness has been bestowed upon it - has it not been bestowed through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?”
“In man, creature and creator are united; in man there is matter, fragments, excess, clay, mud, madness, chaos; but in man there is also creator, sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divine spectator and the seventh day - do you understand this antithesis?” from "Beyond Good and Evil." (Nietzsche) The Discipline of Suffering
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