This is a hard claim to listen for. People say, well, but I could continue knowing physics. Yes, but a human being thinking from fear and a human being thinking from gratitude does not go to the same place, even if the information on which their thinking is based may be the same.
Bill. You also talk a lot about suffering.
Julio. Yes.
Bill. In that sense, it seems in many ways to be very Jungian. Jungians would say that individuation comes not out of the escape from suffering but is within the context of suffering itself.
Julio. I would say that suffering fulfills a role. It’s a key element of human experience. The illusion of a life without suffering produces, in itself, a lot of suffering. Let me work with an example. Suffering is to the soul, for me, as pain is to the body. It’s a warning system. When we grow, we have a little pain. We have pain like an announcement of danger in our physiological being. It’s the same thing with suffering. Our soul is being threatened by new possibilities or concerns, and we suffer a little bit. I think learning to suffer, in a way, is learning to live. Now, unfortunately, particularly with the New Age movement, there came this idea of a life without suffering. I think this is a narcissistic idea which equates to death. Suffering fulfills a role.
Now, are we aiming for suffering? No, we are not. Are we aiming for lack of suffering? No, we are not. We say any serious process of reflection, any serious process of building your biology, any serious process of learning emotionally will produce moments of suffering, and I think this is perfectly okay. In that sense, what Jung was pointing to, for me, is right on.
Bill. So, how would you translate that into an organization’s suffering?
Julio. Well, for example, if you physically live in pain, it doesn’t mean transformation; it means that you are living in pain. If an organization lives in suffering, it doesn’t mean anything. If the suffering is brought to a context of reflection and practice, it can generate a new future. So, in other words, if suffering is used as a revealing force, it’s enormously powerful. You may have organizations where people are suffering, for instance, because they’re not listened to. Now, they can keep suffering because nobody is willing to listen, and in that case, suffering is not doing its job. But if we are willing to listen to it, it can be enormously revealing and get us into new and different actions.
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