Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life

In “Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom,” poet, John O’ Donohue wrote, “though the human body is born complete in one moment, the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process.  It is being birthed in every experience of your life.  Everything that happens to you  has the potential to deepen you.” 

I know from the depths of my own life that his words are true.  I haven’t always known this.  In fact, it’s been a lesson which I’ve needed to learn over and over again before it finally settled securely into my consciousness.  My own heart has had to break more than once before I entertained  the possibility that the light that  came pouring through its cracks would not blind or burn, but illuminate.  

Playwright, Arthur Miller observed, “possibly the greatest truths we know, have come out of people’s suffering. The problem is not to undo suffering, or to wipe it off the face of the earth, but to make it inform our lives…” I’ve always been a reluctant student when confronted with the lessons of suffering and will never welcome this particular teacher.  Still, I’ve come to believe that its lessons are most always far more profound than those delivered by my gentler instructors.

While I fail to consistently keep it, I make this promise to myself  repeatedly, “I will open myself to the potential for wisdom that lives within each and every experience of  my life.”