Finding Daily Inspirations: Spiritual Healing and Enlightenment Require Brokenness

Monday, November 16, 2009

Spiritual Healing and Enlightenment Require Brokenness

We live in a prison – not a palace – when our hearts have not been cracked open wide.
Buddha

Over twenty-three years ago, I lived with the illusion that I was in control of my life -- my perceptions and reactions. I had become a functional thought addict – an intellectual – and was generally disconnected from my own feelings and reactions.

And then – thought and intellect quit working -- Humpty Dumpty Will fell off the wall of his unconscious denial, and cracked wide open. All the best thinking and all the best reasoning could not put him back together again. I was permanently shattered.

Frequently my thoughts would fantasize about death, and taking my own life. The pain and fear was unbearable – massive waves of hopeless helpless torment and misery. Nothing I did could give any lasting relief.

In this brokenness, someone suggested some things, which I grabbed greedily:
1. It was suggested that I see a therapist who treated therapists. I made an appointment and saw him every week for nearly a year.
2. It was suggested that I attend a spiritual support group for persons struggling with similar problems. I dived in headfirst.

There was no way of knowing then that this cracked and broken condition would eventually bring me to where I have come in the last over twenty years. It has truly become a gift.

My experience, and my observations from watching others, has revealed several things:
1. All human beings are broken and cracked by their human experiences of life. Most people will never experience spiritual healing and spiritual enlightenment because it will never become necessary to do so. The pain and discomfort will never consciously “get that bad”.
2. The first step in spiritual healing and spiritual enlightenment is to experience consciously our being cracked and broken. Without knowing we are sick, there is no need for or interest in Presence and spiritual healing.
3. The way that the human brain prevents someone from becoming consciously cracked, broken and open is by the brain’s inserting unconsciousness and anesthesia into the painful rips and tares within the mind. The element inserted is thought – which causes a generalized and specific dissociation of ourselves from our deeper selves, and therefore, disconnecting a person from consciousness of their own pain.
4. Our heart must be broken in order for love to enter our being and begin to heal our brokenness. A higher Presence – God as we personally experience Him and Her, must penetrate our brains and hearts.

Spiritual healing and spiritual enlightenment involves a reconnecting of our inner selves with ourselves, with our God, and with other human beings.

As much as we are able, we need to allow ourselves to be “cracked” by increasingly experiencing life and our perceptions and reactions. Our brokenness will readily surface when we feel ourselves consciously, and connect conscious with our God’s higher Presence.

Feel ConnectLove. We are not alone.