By contrast, spirituality from above reacts to the rage that boils up in us by repressing or crushing it: “Rage is not supposed to happen. As a Christian I’ve got to be friendly and balanced at all times. So I have to control my rage.” Spirituality from below would mean questioning my rage, questioning what God wants to tell me with it. Perhaps my rage is pointing to some deep injury. Perhaps in my rage I encounter the wounded child in me that reacts with impotent fury to harm done to me by my parents or teachers. Perhaps my rage shows me that I have given others too much power over me. In that case rage would be the energy to free myself from the power of others, so as to open up to God. Thus rage isn’t automatically bad; it could be showing me the way to my true self.
Through my rage I come into contact with myself, through the descent into my reality.
Through my rage I come into contact with the source of my strength, as God’s spirit bubbles up within me. And so my rage leads me to God, who wishes to give me life. Rage defends me against everything that would take God’s life away from me. Wherever my greatest problem lies is also the site of my greatest opportunities; that is where my treasure is. There I come into contact with my true essence. There is something that wants to come alive, to bloom.
The way to God leads through the encounter with myself, through the descent into my reality.
I have served as advisor to a nun who often got depressed. Whenever she supervised or criticized a fellow sister, she fell into an emotional hole. She had hoped that meditation would free her from her sensitivity and depression. But in our sessions it became clear that this was her own choice. She wanted to use God to make her look better in her own and others’ eyes, to finally be liberated from her sensitivity. She wanted to use God for herself, to get over her depression by taking the path to God. But in our conversations it became clearer and clearer to her that this was the wrong way; and she discovered that she would find her way to God instead by the path of sorrow. When she lets herself into her feelings of depression, when she gets in touch with her total inability to overcome her sensitivity, when she admits that she has deeply wounded her fellow sisters, that they are simply hurting, then, on the basis of these feelings, on the basis of her powerlessness, she can suddenly experience a deep peace. Then she can let herself fall into God. She senses that she doesn’t have to overcome her sensitivity at all. She is allowed to be. She gives up the struggle and surrenders to God. That makes her really free. She now meets the real God, the God who takes her out of the depths, who pulls her out of the deepest mud, the God who goes with her through fire and water. Then she is suddenly touched in her heart by God. All her own notions of God fall away, and she can sense the real God who bears her, frees her — and loves her.
Dorotheus of Gaza once said: “Your backsliding, says the prophet (Jer. 2:19), will teach you.” The place where we slipped, where we fell away from God is where we learn a lesson of the kind that our virtues cannot teach us. The place where we meet our own powerlessness is precisely where we become open to God. God educates us through our failure, through our “backsliding.” Then God guides us on the path of humility that alone leads to God.
Dorotheus believes that even when we fall “nothing happens without God. God knew that it would be good for my soul, and that is why it came about this way. For in everything that God lets happen there is nothing pointless; on the contrary, everything everywhere is meaningful and purposeful.” Everything has a meaning, even our passions, even our sins. They direct us more strongly than our discipline to God as the only guarantor of a successful life. We can’t give any guarantee for ourselves. We will always fall again and again. But God leads us along the path beside all the cliffs, through all the backsliding and falling away.
At first glance many of the sayings of the ancient fathers may strike us as odd, and perhaps harsh and bitter too. But when we look and listen more carefully, they lead us into a world of love and compassion, of truth and freedom. They direct us into the mystery of God and humanity. That is why they are called mystagogical — they lead us into the mystery — and not moralistic. They don’t insist on correctness.
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
