There Is Suffering And Then There Is Suffering

May 13, 2026 / JimLockard

“There are, then, two kinds of experiences which we call suffering — that which is totally unproductive, the neurotic state of meaningless depression, and that which is the essential condition of every step on the way to what C.G. Jung has called individuation.”

~ Helen Luke

When Ernest Holmes wrote that the world had learned all it should through suffering in The Science of Mind textbook, he meant the first kind mentioned by Helen Luke above. If we take it to mean all suffering, then we must also admit that our primary spiritual practice and technology, spiritual mind treatment, is insufficient to heal what needs healing. For we know that some issues within the human psyche are not healed by affirmation alone. Without the deep and often painful work of personal transformation where legitimate suffering occurs, we end up with the first kind of suffering – the unproductive kind.

Sadly, Holmes’ statement has too often been taken to mean that all suffering is unnecessary. When we fail to grasp the value of legitimate suffering, we lose our pathway to individuation, self-realization, enlightenment – all of which describe the same process of becoming aligned with one's fully authentic self.

Our ego loves to think that we do not need to confront our inner demons, our repressed shadow selves, our trauma responses, our deepest fears. The untrained ego blindly supports our current ways of being and belief, whether they serve us or not. We cannot transform what is deeply held in our psyche without going through the resistance of the ego and getting the deeper work done. Such work is painful and involves legitimate suffering, the struggle to reveal what we have spent so much energy hiding.

While it is true that many, mostly superficial things can be changed through affirmation alone, what is deeply repressed in the psyche cannot. For those issues, one must metaphorically put on the miner’s helmet and begin digging. This kind of work is always painful, often significantly so.

“I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering…. but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are.”

~ James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

We in New Thought have almost universally turned away from the truth that suffering, or the pain of deep work, is an essential aspect of transformative change. I have come to believe this approach effectively refutes a belief that Spirit is within us. If I am unwilling to experience the suffering of doing deep work, yet continue to affirm a change at depth, am I not effectively expecting some outer power to intervene? Am I not simply praying for Spirit to change Its relationship to me regarding the issue at hand?

“God can only do for us what God does through us.”

~ Ernest Holmes 

Because Spirit can only do for us that which It can do through us, attempts to circumvent the essence of The Science of Mind never work. Deep work is needed to clear the way for Spirit to do for us by revealing and dissolving false and repressed beliefs which have accumulated blocking the flow of good in our lives.

The avoidance of the legitimate suffering of doing deeper work inevitably leads to the unnecessary suffering of the continuing neurotic state described by Helen Luke in the opening quote. We get stuck in meaninglessness, in a sense of disconnection, in denial, and in depression or aggression. Then, maybe we try to convince ourselves and others that all is well with us, making life both more stressful and more frustrating.

The truth is that many of us, the teachers of New Thought, have failed our students by supporting a belief that affirmation alone is sufficient for transformation and deep healing to occur. The accumulated evidence is more than sufficient to show that this is not the case. Too many of us have failed to heal deep issues because we have not been encouraged to do the difficult work necessary for such healing to occur.

“If you want to get anywhere, honey, if you want grow up, if you want to open to life, if you want to be enlightened, then you have to learn to befriend suffering.”

~ Joanna Macy

We are human beings, so we tend to look for the easy way out. We often accept the balm of being taught how simple and easy change can be – to simply treat for it. While this can be true for surface issues, it gets murkier when we examine deep issues. We hit an inner wall of resistance which conscious thought alone cannot penetrate.

Being spiritually mature means that one recognizes the challenges of life and is willing to do the deep, often painful, work of healing. This is the path to what we call spiritual realization and what Carl Jung called individuation.

“No freedom is possible, no authentic choice, where consciousness is lacking. Paradoxically, consciousness usually only comes from the experience of suffering and the flight from suffering is why we often elect to remain in the constrictive yet familiar old shoes.”

~ James Hollis, Jungian therapist and author

Our goal is not enlightenment or individuation as such. Our goal is to live each day and experience life as it is, from our authentic center. This includes coming to terms with our unfinished business. That means the things we have not attended to in our lives, the unhealed issues which continue to affect us from our unconscious. This is an issue for individuals and for every level of community in our world. Denial is a powerful drug. We are all suffering because of what we have not done individually to heal our consciousness and what we have not done collectively to heal our collective consciousness. And, I might add, from what we have not done correctly.

We are living through a time where we are increasingly reaping the consequences of unhealed individuals, communities, societies and cultures which support denial and empower fear and dysfunction. This is no time to be living an unhealed life.

May we, each of us, then all of us, discover a path to deep healing. Our teaching includes such a path, if we can learn to teach it honestly and openly, and to become better students.

“Suffering that is not understood is hard to bear, while on the other hand it is often astounding to see how much a person can endure when he understands the why and the wherefore. A philosophical or religious view of the world enables him to do this. And such views prove to be, at the very least, psychic methods of healing if not salvation.”

~ C.G. Jung Collected Works 18, para 1578