Healing Work as Ascetical Work

and become too quick to engage in defensive behavior—whether that’s avoidance, or responding to others as though they had participated in our past unresolved experience.

Perhaps the most significant and beautiful outcome of the healing work is that we learn to give humanity a second chance. We need others, and we cannot complete our healing work by detouring them. As we heal, and decrease avoidance and protective behaviors, we will have new, positive experiences that gradually move to the forefront of our memories. The painful experiences that so dominated our lives take their place in the past and are put to rest. Indeed, humanity has the power to harm and to heal. The healing work helps us to be at peace with this paradox. By giving humanity a second chance, we get to experience its healing power.

Healing Work as Ascetical Work

It bears reminding that this healing work is ascetical. It is part of our spiritual life, not separate from it. When we commit to this healing work, we have the conviction that under no circumstances will we tolerate any obstacle standing between ourselves, God, and our neighbor. As readily as we begin to see the wounded aspects of ourselves, we will set upon the work of discovering their origins and identifying what we need to do to resolve them and free ourselves from their negative effects. It involves a grit and determination to leave no stone unturned in our inner world so that we might labor spiritually most efficiently in this limited time God has given us.

The type of emotional experiences we have had will largely