3rd Henri Nouwen lecture

THE SPIRITUAL PATH AS A PATH TO HEALING


Anselm Grün o.s.b.


The real disease modern society suffers, according to the Swiss psychologist Jung, stems from the fact that he has cut himself off from his Godly nature. We have become estranged from ourselves, far removed from our God-like nature, our true nature.

At the same time there is a suspicion that there is another dimension, the spiritual, the transcendent, the Godlike one. But that dimension is not experienced in this world. The words spoken about God don't touch the soul. And neither do the words spoken by God in the Holy Scriptures. If the words do touch the soul, they remain falling stars burning on their way through darkness. But they don't change our life. Many people nowadays look to psychotherapy, the esoteric or to other religions for help.

Why do they bypass the spiritual pathways that Christianity offers them? Have we lost the right language or do we follow the spiritual pathway in an unconvincing way? I would like to present you with a few thoughts about the spiritual pathway as the road to recovery, as I have experienced it in the tradition of Christianity and especially of the Benedictine life.

I don't want to use the spiritual path as a means to something else. We don't primarily follow the spiritual path to become strong and healthy, but to search for God. But on this path to searching for God we get blessed, because God is the God of blessings and salvation. I have only emphasised 5 sections of the spiritual path. They are also places where we become aware of God's presence.


1. Prayer and self-awareness


Prayer, as the first monks interpreted it, was not in the first place a prayer for healing. Many pray to God to free them quickly and painlessly from their diseases and aching symptoms such as fear, depression and anxiety. People use God for their own advantages. It is demanded and expected of Him that He uses His skills as a great physician and magician to heal them without any effort on the petitioner's behalf.

But firstly prayer means that I present my life to God. I can't pray to God without facing my own reality. While praying, I come face to face with my dark side, my repressed anger, my disapointments, my pain, my fears, my discontent, my sorrow, my loneliness. To me praying means that I show God my real identity.

Only when I expose the real me, will praying give me inner peace and tranquility. What I hide from God, I shortchange myself in the quality of my life. I can't experience God if I only show Him my good side. When a person tells me he is not aware of God's presence, I always ask him: are you aware of your own presence? You cannot be aware of God if you don't see yourself, if you only use your mind to see God. Show God also your dark side; then you can have an exchange with God.

If I show God all of myself, I will experience God's unconditional love. I experience God's all embracing, healing and loving presence. God does not judge and criticise me and liberates me from my critical superego which derides all my thoughts and actions. Praying means removing all criticism and showing God my life like a trusting child would. This would remove all the pressure to rid myself of my fears and to overcome all my inadequacies.

I know I am totally accepted by God. This makes it easier for me to accept and love myself. And it makes me feel humble. Humility is the courage to face one own's humanity. This is a prerequisite which allows us to have an authentic connection with God. Humility is essential on our spiritual path. My fragmented self will be healed and perfected if I know myself to be fully and totally loved by God.

God's love keeps the shattered fragments together. If I expose my wounds to God's love instead of trying to heal them myself by constantly touching them, they can be restored to health. There is a tendency nowadays to treat one's wounds very aggressively, to analyse them, expose them, work on them. Praying is a gentler treatment. I regard my wounds without touching them. I trust that God's healing love will touch and infuse my wounds. Then I will experience my injured self as healed and whole.

2. Experiencing the inner source


Many people nowadays complain about stress, burnout and exhaustion. For me stress is always a spiritual problem. We try and manage by using our own strength. Prayer is the path to the inner spring. Inside us the spring of the Holy Spirit flows over. If I am in contact with this spring, if I work from within it, I can perform many tasks without getting exhausted. My internal spring is eternal, because it is spiritual. Many people are exhausted because they have a harmful lifestyle. They work with the motto: "Hopefully I do everything well. Hopefully I don't make any mistakes. Hopefully we won't get into conflict". With such life patterns we are soon out of breath and burned out.

According to Evagrius Ponticus prayer leads us to the inner place of contemplation and peace. Evagrius calls this place "God's place" because God himself lives there, and "Jerusalem", because it is a place of peace. The mystic tells us that there is already a place in us where there is complete peace, where God is already in us. But we are separated from this quiet place, separated by the internal and external noise of our worries and problems which lie like a thick layer of concrete between our heart and this internal place of peace and quiet.

Prayer penetrates this concrete layer and enters this internal place. In this place where God lives, other people don't have entry and we are not touched by opinions and condemnation, neither by desires and expectations, rejection and hurt. There we are whole and complete.

In spite of our fears, we may experience that in our inner self we are whole and complete. That experience is indestructible. The pain only touches our emotions, but not our true identity, not the inner reflection God has formed of us. Prayer is the way to the inner place of wellbeing. In the Eastern church especially, the Jesus prayer is the path to the depth of the heart where Christ himself lives. It is a place of gentleness and compassion, of love and freedom. Our own guilt has no entry. In this place we are blameless and pure, without sin. On December 8 the church tells us this in our celebrations of Mary of Immaculate Conception, who is an example for us through Jesus Christ who delivered us.

3. Transformation of my wounds


Each of us has been wounded. Everyone, during the course of their lives has been hurt. Nowadays a lot of people remain anxious about their wounds. They can't resist trying to expose all their childhood wounds to be able to cope with them. Perfection and success are behind this. We think we have to rid ourselves of all our unhealthy wounds. But this path leads to a stalemate. Coming to terms with our wounds is the Christian path. According to Hildegard von Bingen, by becoming truly human we transform our wounds into pearls. How is this possible?

The transformation of my wounds into pearls means in the first place that I regard my wounds as precious. My wounds make me sensitive to similar ones of my fellow humans. I understand them better. And where I am injured, I touch my own heart, my real identity. I surrender the illusion that I am perfectly healthy, strong and complete. I acknowledge my broken self. This enables me to remain vital and more human, compassionate and gentle. At the sites of my injures lie also my treasures. That's where I am in touch with my real identity and my vocation. There I also discover my potential. Only the injured doctor is able to heal. The ancient Greeks knew this. The transformation of wounds into pearls also means something else to me.

The most precious pearl which we have to look for in our lives is God. I experience God most truly at the sites of my wounds. What do I mean by that? My wounds lead me to God. Take my fear for example. If I struggle against my fear, I'll keep on being pursued by it. If I take my fear to God, if I examine what exactly I'm fearful of, what the core of my fear is then I penetrate it ever deeper. And at the bottom of my fear I'll experience a deep, inner peace. At the bottom of my fear I'll experience God as the One who accepts me with my fears.

I'm in God's capable hands with my fear. And the same goes for my hypersensitivity: I recognise it. In spite of my spiritual path I'm still hypersensitive to criticism, rejection, not being noticed. If I accept this, my hypersensitivity will penetrate ever deeper in my wounded heart which longs for love and unconditional acceptance. Then my wounded self gets a gut feeling that God stretches his fatherly and motherly hand above me, touches me tenderly and tells me "I'm with you. You don't have to be as strong as you'd like to be. You are good as you are. As you are, you are valuable to me. Just as you are I love you/you are my beloved".

Another example is the high rate of depression from which so many people suffer nowadays. Many want to get rid of their depressive illness as soon as possible. They fight their depressive feelings. But that closes the path to their own inner sanctuary and to God. A predisposition to depression is not something we choose. But when I am depressed, my path to God goes straight through the depression and not around it. Because of depression my ego no longer has the illusion that I'm always in a good mood, that I can always be positive, that I'm in full control of my life.

I have an Achilles heel, an injured place. I don't have to cover it up and to fence it off. It is precisely the entry to God. I experience God especially in that place. And when I experience God, when my wounds and I become one with God, then I can experience this union as salvation. Being united is being whole, being complete. I think that mankind's real healing takes place in its experience of God. And this experience can't be forced. We can prepare ourselves but God keeps surprizing us. We can expect and trust that God will show Himself, even while we are weighed down by the burdens of our life.

When we experience God, we are united. But the next moment we experience God as remote. This makes us feel devastated. We have to live with this tension: between our closeness to and distance from God, between good and poor health, between light and dark, between strength and weakness, between love and emptiness.

4. Healing rituals


The Christian tradition doesn't give us only pathways to healing but also pathways which lead to a healthy life. A spiritual life challenges us to also live a healthy life. An authentic aspect of this Christian dietetic (=the ability to live well) is the healing ritual. Rituals open the heavens above the often grey sky of our daily lives. In the middle of our doubts about ourselves and our life, rituals give us the certainty that we shall be victorious. Rituals are always physical. I light a candle. In the morning I make a gesture and so present myself to God. I pick up a cross and hold it tight.

Jacob anoints the stone on which he has slept and dreamt about the ladder to heaven. He treats it with gentleness, care and attention. The simple solidity of the stone becomes a sign of the tender love with which God surrounds him. Jacob chooses the stone as a memorial. Rituals remind us that God is present in the midst of our daily lives. The ritual brings God into our inner place. The healing and loving presence of God enters us and reaches to the very core of our heart.

Rituals give us structure. Especially when the soul is unstructured and torn as with for example, people with borderline personality disorder, can rituals have a healing influence. They create order in one's soul. They give stability to people with depression. Rituals give me the feeling that I live and that it is worthwhile to be alive, because my life is a celebration, a celebration of union with God. And rituals make it clear that my life has value and meaning.

An important ritual in my life is raising my hands to heaven to make me realize that it is not important what I achieve today. Who I am is not determined by my appointments; I would like to open the heavens above the world. It is worthwhile to live this day. I would like to lay my very personal pathway in this world. Only if my life has meaning can it be whole.

5. Liturgy and the church year


In every liturgy we can experience healing of our wounds. When we pray, sing and are silent together, we help one another to imagine and become aware of God's presence. We are surrounded by God's healing presence. It is a healing space in which our heart comes to rest. Especially during the celebration of the eucharist can we experience that Jesus Christ heals our wounds. During the communion Jesus touches us just like he touched the sick two thousand years ago. If I approach him paralysed with fear, he tells me in the communion: "Get up, take your bed and walk".

If I approach him like the haemorrhaging woman did, burned-out, spent, empty and despairing, because nobody pays me any attention which I crave, He touches me and says: "I'm glad that you are here. Go in peace. You are healed, you are loved. Accept my love but also the love which comes from your brothers and sisters".

C.G.Jung calls the church year a therapeutic system. It is a pathway to healing, a pathway on which we experience all the highs and lows of our life, knowing that Christ accompanies us. We show Christ all our wounds during the church celebrations so He can heal them. Now, during Advent, we can experience the healing power of the church year. Advent is the time to turn our addictions into our heart's desire. Many people these days are addicted, not only to drugs and alcohol, but also to gambling, recognition, work, relationships and being important. Addiction is always surpressed longing. Advent will put us in touch with our longing.

Desire is the most valuable characteristic which mankind carries within itself. It is the anchor that God has thrown out into our heart to remind us that our heart finds its peace only in Him. Because of our desire, part of us is beyond this world and the world has no power over it. Desire makes the person holy. For the person who is in touch with his desire, problems, illness and injuries become relative. He even notices that everything he suffers increases his desire. His desire brings him in touch with God. Desire is the pathway of God that He himself has lain in our heart. When we become aware of our desire, we become aware of God; then we experience God in the midst of the frozen darkness of this world.

At Christmas we celebrate our own creation. Christ is born in us. Because of the celebration of Christ's birth we can get in contact with the Godly child within, with the authentic and untouched image that God has formed of us. Christmas means that we are not stuck in our past, in the history of our wounds, our failures, in the brokeness of our life. God himself celebrates a new beginning with us. God himself is born in us. And because God is born in us, everything becomes good; the stable in us is lit up, poor become rich, loneliness embraced and wounds healed.


Translated by Mirjan McKeough