How
do you get well if you don’t even know you are sick?
 n The Living Flame of Love
Saint John of the Cross says that “it is impossible to perceive one’s
darknesses without the divine light focusing on them” (1.22).
This means, psychologically, that when you’re “sick” you cannot
see your sickness unless it is illuminated by a truth from outside
yourself.
In the spiritual sense, you would
have to willingly accept the way of spiritual
purgation (as described by Saint John of the Cross in The Ascent of
Mount Carmel) purely on faith before the divine
light has any chance to illuminate your soul and show you how
blind you really are.
So far so good, but what if faith
doesn’t motivate you? What then?
Well, in the colloquial language
of Alcoholics Anonymous, you must hit bottom.
Preferably, you will not hit with enough force to kill you, but you should
hit with sufficient impact to crack open your heart and let in a ray of divine
light to illuminate your darkness.
Technically speaking, this hitting
bottom is an
encounter
with the
unconscious.
If you hit hard enough, you might get arrested, or end up in prison, or find
yourself in hospital. Or, if you’re fortunate, you might catch on to
the problem before it gets too severe. You might only lose your job or suffer
a marital separation.
The problem is really a problem
with
repetition;
that is, because some unconscious conflict is too
fearful for you to speak about it openly and consciously,
it keeps getting played out in self-destructive
behavior.
So once you do catch on, you
have only one choice: face up to the fear. And I’ll
be honest here—facing the fear is a hard thing to do. But if you do
it with trust in God and prayer you have a better
chance than most people have. After all, why else are hospitals, prisons,
and divorce courts such big businesses?
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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