Tag Archives: joy

The Joy of Suffering

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This past week I have received a number of emails from friends as far away as Portland in the USA and Legos in Nigeria. Since they know my husband is Dutch and we live on the German-Dutch border, many are writing to ask if we and our family members are okay after the recent Malaysian airline crash in the Ukraine. (Yes, we are.) On top of this terrible tragedy are the wars raging in Gaza, Iraq, and Syria to occupy us and the news media.

Yesterday I met Simi for the first time. She is a 7-month old solid soul who has nothing but gurgling smiles for the world. Her mother between bites of ice cream became quietly despondent. “Hasn’t the news been terrible lately?” she asked.

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Yes, the news has been terrible. The news is always terrible. That’s what news is. Terrible. It is either full of suffering or full of rich, happy, famous people. Sometimes it is full of rich, unhappy, famous people suffering. But usually it consists of poor, unhappy, non-famous people suffering.

If the news is making you feel sad, then there is probably something you need to feel sad about in your own life. A man I met recently said that he had been so sad about the plane crash that he left work early. He didn’t know anyone on the plane, but after talking about himself for a while, I began to realize that he was mostly sad for himself. Doing the same job for 18 years, he dreamed of moving to Italy and starting his own export business. He soon admitted that he was too lazy and complacent to change his life. His sadness seemed to be more about how his life was like a plane about to crash with no escape hatch.

I call this “the comfort of familiar suffering.” So often we are afraid to change our life because we fear what suffering might come to us as a result. Better to stay where we are. At least we know what the suffering we are enduring now feels like! We know how to talk about it for hours and soothe ourselves with fantasy and addictions. Everything is in place and under control to help us feel comfortable in our suffering!

Assagioli's notes on joy from his archives.

Assagioli’s notes on joy from his archives.
Joy as a Duty:
The duty to be joyous
in every circumstance
and condition.

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Strong Will Alone is Like Pushing a Car Uphill

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Strong will alone is like pushing a car uphill.

Strong will alone is like pushing a car uphill.

Roberto Assagioli wrote about four aspects of will. Today I want to focus on strong will, the others being skillful, good, and transpersonal (Cosmic or God’s will). We all have these aspects of will, in various degrees. Will is energy and usually one aspect is more developed than the other. The idea is to make all the aspects equally balanced.

Strong will is not your ability to force your will onto others. This is the Victorian idea of strong will. Strong will is to direct, not impose. In fact, most people see strength as the only aspect of will. But when the will is only strong, it can actually cause failure and harm to yourself and others.

Strong Will is the Fire in Your Belly

Strong will is really about fire. How much fire or drive does your will have to carry out a decision? Perhaps you can remember a time when your strong will surged forward. It might have been a crisis, when you felt that you had to say “No!” no matter what the consequences. Times when you felt there was no other choice in a matter and your determination seemed to propel you forward towards a desired goal.

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