Necessary Suffering With Mirabai Starr

Everything Belongs: Living the Teachings of Richard Rohr Forward

Center for Action and Contemplation

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 723 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2024

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the goal of the spiritual journey is to understand suffering? In this episode, we're joined by Mirabai Starr as we continue our chapter-by-chapter exploration of Falling Upward with Chapter 6: "Necessary Suffering." This episode explores how loss, suffering, and grief can be a transformative spiritual path, leading to deeper connection with the divine and a more authentic self, by urging us to confront pain and surrender to a greater reality. Before we dive in to the interview with Mirabai, CAC staff catch up with Richard at his hermitage to hear his reflections on the sixth chapter a decade after he originally wrote it. Mirabai Starr is an award-winning author of creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She taught Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. Her latest book, WILD MERCY: Living the Fierce & Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, was named one of the “Best Books of 2019”. She lives with her extended family in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Resources: A PDF of the transcript for this episode is available here. Grab a copy of the newly revised version of Falling Upward, with a new foreword by Brené Brown here. To learn more about Mirabai Starr and Wild Heart, visit her website here. Connect with us: Have a question or thought about this season that you'd like to share with us? Email us: podcasts@cac.org Send us a voicemail here: http://www.cac.org/voicemail

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation.
0:04.0	To learn more, visit cac.org.
0:07.6	The term necessary suffering sounds like a cruel joke or a way to excuse the subjugation of other beings.
0:15.5	Or perhaps the motto of dental offices everywhere.
0:19.9	Approaching necessary suffering from another angle, we recognize
0:23.1	that simply by being human and engaging with reality, we are bound to suffer. As agents of love,
0:31.3	healing, and compassion, the suffering we meet becomes a necessary dance partner. Whether we acknowledge it, bear it, or crumble
0:39.7	under it, life meets us with suffering. Father Richard minces no words on suffering. He is said that
0:48.5	we suffer any time we are not in control. Suffering can shut us down or soften our hearts, and if tended to, it can put us
0:57.5	in solidarity with the suffering of the world. Necessary suffering can be both the crucible and the
1:04.2	gate to the unified field. In today's conversation, it is with that spirit that we sit in Richard's Hermitage and crack open the conversation on Chapter 6, Necessary Suffering.
1:17.9	We delve right into suffering, circling around both legitimate and illegitimate suffering, being in solidarity with suffering, and how embodied practice is essential to integrating
1:29.9	the necessary suffering of our lives.
1:35.0	From the Center for Action and Contemplation, I'm Mike Petro.
1:42.1	I'm Paul Swanson.
1:43.3	And this is Everything Belongs.
1:50.7	Richard, we're so excited to be here with you sitting outside in the breeze on your porch,
1:56.3	taken in the beautiful New Mexico fall afternoon. And today we're going to be talking about necessary suffering.
2:04.2	One of my favorite things that Carl Jung ever said,
2:08.4	and it's always fascinated me,
2:10.6	is he says that neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
2:17.1	I got so excited when I read this chapter because you open it by saying,
	...

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