Bitter or Better? Wisdom May Come Through Suffering

1. Bitter or Better?Wisdom May Come Through Suffering Dare County Public Libraries Kathleen Brehony, Ph.D.

2. Suffering, Loss & Grief Arise From Many Sources etc.

3. Important Self-Reflections What can I learn from life’s challenges? How can I reduce the negative effects of what I’m going through? How can I grow through my life’s inevitable losses?

4. Better or Bitter? The Phoenix

6. “The Gods have decreed that the ONLY true human path to wisdom is by way of suffering” Aeschylus, 6th-century B.C.E.“The Father of Tragedy”

7. Mystics of all spiritual and wisdom traditions agree that suffering is the only key that opens the door to transformation of the soul and psyche. The process of Enlightenment is the “Dark Night of the Soul” – John of the Cross “Pain is a treasure for it contains mercies.” “Spring seasons are hidden in the autumns.” -- Rumi “Suffering is the swiftest steed that brings us to perfection.” – Meister Eckhart

8. Buddhism’s First Noble Truth: Life is suffering: “The value of human life lies in the fact of suffering, for where there is no suffering, no consciousness of karmic bondage, there will be no power of attaining spiritual experience and thereby reaching the field of nondistinction. Unless we agree to suffer, we cannot be free of suffering.” -- D.T. Suzuki, Zen Master

9. “When sufferings come upon him, man must utter thanks to God, for suffering draws man near unto the Holy One, blessed by He.” – Rabbi Eleazar Ben Jacob (4th Century)

10. “…Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” – Bible, Romans 5:3-5

11. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller

12. “Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much are the three pillars of learning.” – Benjamin Disraeli

13. “The ultimate measure of man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

14. “What does not destroy me,makes me stronger.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche

15. Oh No! Not another one of life’s lessons!

16. Major Illusion: Things Don’t Change Most of us grow when life pushes us to do so What the heck is he talking about??!! You know what I’m going to do this weekend, honey? I’m going to grow.

17. It is not necessary nor desirable to romanticize suffering, but suffering is an inevitable part of life.

18. “I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers.” -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

19. Instead of learning through suffering, some people fall apart. Instead of growing, they become angry, jaded, self-pitying, pessimistic and close-hearted – stuck forever in endless Sturm and Drang. What makes some people better – wiser, more compassionate, more joyful in life while others become bitter through suffering? A Central Question!

20. Compassion is a central spiritual value, and we’re not here to judge who deserves it and who doesn’t. It’s important to show kindness and patience to people who have become hard because they’ve suffered. We have a responsibility to help.

21. Mark O’Brien – Breathing Lessons NO SURRENDER A Defiant WRITER concedes only what he must to the iron lung that sustains and confines him

22. Expansion of Consciousness

26. Buddhist Teaching Story explains consciousness: I Am Awake! “Buddhism begins with a man who shook off the daze, the doze, the dream-like inchoateness of ordinary awareness. It begins with the man who woke up.” – Huston Smith

27. What Does It Mean to be Conscious? • From the Latin conscius, meaning “knowing with others, participating in knowledge, or aware of.” • Includes all the things we are aware of and know • An understanding of “knowing that we know” • Sometimes builds slowly and sometimes comes like a blinding insight • Awakening • A dynamic process of growth, change, and evolution • Consciousness best defined on a spectrum or continuum rather than “all or none”

28. The Expansion of Consciousness Leads to:The Search for Meaning Frankl chose “to be worthy of suffering” – as Dostoyevski had once written – and rise above his outward fate, by making inner, conscious decisions about how he would respond to his circumstances. “Once an individual’s search for meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.” -- Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

29. Real Suffering Cannot be Avoided “Real suffering is an authentic and realistic response to the ragged wounds of living a human life. It’s also unavoidable and an essential part of every human life. Illness, loss of loved ones, disappointment, decline, death, limitations, and imperfections startle and shake us. But they awaken us to find meaning, dignity, and significance in our lives. They open the heart to pure compassion and newfound creative energy. Real suffering is useful. It propels us to new levels of consciousness and self-knowledge. It is through suffering and pain that we break down our habitual barriers between ourselves and others and allow for the entrance of a transpersonal, transcendent perspective: a full appreciation of our intimate and profound spiritual connections.” -- From “After the Darkest Hour” pg. 21

30. Neurotic Suffering Can Be Avoided Neurotic suffering offers no meaning. Jung called it “an unconscious fraud,” declared it bogus and with no moral merit. Neurotic suffering is a flight from the wounds of life and an unconscious – and unsuccessful – attempt to heal them. Neurotic suffering is a refusal to discover the meaning in our pain through a childish insistence that things should be as we want them to be and not as they are. It is expressed as self-pity and envy toward people whose lives seem better or less difficult. -- From “After the Darkest Hour” pg. 22

31. To Jung, neurosis itself must be understood, ultimately, as the “suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.”

32. Real versus Neurotic Suffering “Real suffering burns clean; neurotic suffering creates more and more soot.” -- Marion Woodman (Author and Jungian Analyst)

33. Real suffering is required for psychological and spiritual maturation. Without it, one would remain unconscious, infantile, and dependent. It demands questions: • Who am I? • What is my purpose here? • Where do I find meaning in my life? • What is my relationship to God or some higher, transpersonal power?

34. The Path to the Self

35. Teleological Process toward the Self

36. Michelangelo

37. The path of individuation: seek meaning rather than happiness “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”-- Viktor Frankl

38. On the True Nature of Reality Or The Absolute Truth About Life

39. The Wheel of Life

40. The Consolation of Philosophy (De consolatione philosophiae) Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480-524 C.E.)

41. Our modern world offers both the mindset and the pharamacology to diminish feelings that other generations may have used to initiate a personal journey of growth and change.

42. The Latin root of the word “Suffering” means “to experience” or “to allow.”This is not the view of our modern world that wants to forego all suffering before it’s meaning can be understood.

43. Sales of Prozac alone account for more than $2 billion dollars a year – one of the world’s most popular drugs. • Prescriptions for anti-depressants have tripled since 1996 as hundreds of thousands of people turn to pills to cope with life. • More than 1 million US children take an antidepressant – up 60% from the mid-1990’s

44. Approximately one fifth (20.5 percent) of persons aged 12 or older participated in binge drinking at least once in the 30 days prior to the (2001) survey. Although the number of current drinkers increased between 2000 and 2001, the number of those reporting binge drinking did not change significantly. • Heavy drinking was reported by 5.7 percent of the population aged 12 or older, or 12.9 million people. Source: US Department of HHS

45. The National Institute on Drug Abuse's 2003 Monitoring the Future survey of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders found that 10.5 percent of 12th graders reported using Vicodin for non-medical reasons and 4.5 percent of 12th graders reported using OxyContin without a prescription. • Each year, drug and alcohol abuse contributes to the death of more than 120,000 Americans. Drugs and alcohol cost taxpayers more than $294 billion annually in preventable health care costs, extra law enforcement, auto crashes, crime and lost productivity.

46. Holding the Tension of the Opposites:Between the alleviation of suffering and honoring the circumambulating path of individuation

47. We are not alone!Suffering is a universal human experience.

48. Everyone’s life is a drama The Story of Kisagotami “God sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike.” -- Matthew 5:45

49. Perspectives on suffering in the Judeo-Christian view are reflected in the Old Testament Book of Job Invented and Engraved by William Blake - 1825

50. Job is a successful man with every bounty life can bestow – still he is God-loving, “blameless and upright.”