How hard is the spiritual journey or life?

The two main religious figures could not be more contrasting:

Buddha on the last night before enlightenment

Jesus the last day before all sins are forgiven:

Yet it would be wrong to think that Buddha's path was just sitting in a lotus for 35 years. He had the 6 years of austerity to begin with:

But you could argue these were a mistake rather than necessary for enlightenment. Buddha definitely said we did not need to do this again. And Jesus said that his sacrifice was the final one, and we did not need to do that again. However he also said that those who are persecuted in his name are blessed so persecution was not over.

In both religions we face a painful problem. In Buddhism it is attachment and in Christianity it is Sin.

The connection is that when we Sin we strengthen Attachment. If we are giving up cigarettes then every cigarette we have sets us back on the path to addiction. And every cigarette we resist is a step away from attachment. This pattern is the core pattern of Sin. Those things we know we should not do, but we do never-the-less lead us further into the problem; we are just delaying the day we must climb out of the pit. So what should we avoid? This is an incredibly subtle problem, but anything that leads deeper into addiction and attachment is not helpful, and anything that leads to an uneasy or troubled mind is what we do wise to avoid. The problem with attachments and addictions is that they offer us temporary respite from the troubles of our mind. But the cost is even worse agitation and craving in the future. We are always best stopping right now as this will be the easiest it will ever be.

Now reversing attachment can be incredibly painful, and the most is giving up a version of our self. The growing pains of letting go our self are never easy. Jesus dying on the cross and being resurrected is the classic freedom gained through letting go our past self. From the perspective of our past self it is the worst pain of all being abandoned and sloughed off, but the reward is a new self which our past self is almost completely unaware of and so cannot see why it must suffer and be abandoned so.

So life is actually a series of catastrophes as we shake off old attachments and grow into new ones.

I was told as a kid that life was a test and if we did well we went to Heaven. Well this is actually about the truth. If we do manage to shake all this old selves off and liberate each time then the reward very much so is the bliss of Heaven, If however we lose our way and become trapped in regret, negativity, cowardice, depression and unwillingness to move on then this is very much not Heaven.

So the spiritual journey and life will probably be actually quite hard, and while we will probably not face punishment roman style, we will all die and face the great separation from our most cherished attachment which is our self. the wise get to work on this one as soon as possible and don't wait for death to force the move.