Pleasure blocks, but pain clears the way of inspiration.

Pain has a great power; the truth of God is born in pain, sincerity rises out of pain. Metaphysically, the heart is a gate, and the gate is closed when the feeling is hardened, and the gate is open when there is some pain.

Tagore says: 'When the string of the violin was being tuned it felt the pain of being stretched, but once it was tuned then it knew why it was stretched'. 

So it is with the human soul. While the soul goes through pain, torture and trouble it thinks that it would have been much better if it had gone through life without it. But once it reaches the culmination of it then, when it looks back, it begins to realize why all this was meant: it was only meant to tune the soul to a certain pitch.

Beloved Inayat Khan