The Pain that Heals

The demonic throng that inhabits the inner recesses of the mind is dominated by the spirit of fear. Fear is the inveterate enemy of progress in the lives of people. It immobilises us, allowing us neither to proceed upon our proper course, nor letting us investigate the world around us. It paralyses our endeavours and leads us to choose the status quo, the present situation, as the best for us, since it impresses upon us the conviction that any movement away from it is fraught with intolerable hazards.

Fear can be seen as the negative polarity of the virtues of prudence and providence. The prudent person looks before he takes a further step. He investigates the disadvantages of a course of action as well as its attractions. He waits for a propitious moment before venturing on a well-devised scheme of action. In the same spirit of responsibility, the provident person shows foresight in his expenditure of money and other resources. He knows the value of all created things and is a mirror in his own life of the divine providence of God. But neither prudence nor providence paralyses a person; they merely check impetuous attitudes that show themselves in the ill-considered actions and hasty words that we learn subsequently to regret. For once any thought or attitude escapes from the mind of the person who harbours it, it issues forth in deeds and words that can never be called back. Indeed, perverse thoughts themselves, if they are not contained in a morally orientated mind that is in prayerful communion with God, can affect the psychic atmosphere of the world, and lead to grave aberrations on the part of unduly sensitive, receptive people. It might be wondered how a mind in prayerful communion with God could harbour bad thoughts, but we have already seen how the darkness of the unconscious surrounds the light of the soul in which the spark of God burns eternally. The demons of the darkness issue forth as destructive thoughts with potent emotional charge, especially in times of severe suffering. Those who have the benefit of an active prayer life will not find themselves immune from the explosion of inner violence, but they are able to contain the charge by lifting it up to God. This is the way of transmutation that is a vitally important part of the ascent from darkness to light.

As I have already said, however, it is when perverse attitudes are actualised in deeds and words that their power assumes destructive proportions. They then can no longer be concealed within the psyche of the person but become elements of general psychic commerce. "Make no mistake about this: God is not to be fooled; a man reaps what he sows. If he sow seed in the field of his lower nature, he will reap from it a harvest of corruption, but if he sows in the field of the Spirit, the Spirit will bring a harvest of eternal life" (Galatians 6:7-8). The fruits of action, or karma in the Hindu-Buddhist tradition, are indeed irrevocable. They are the bricks and mortar of the edifice of suffering, and their transfiguration is the way of release from mortality to eternal life.

The virtues of prudence and providence cut down in this way the baneful karma, the fruit of ill-considered action, that selfish, unwise styles of living bring in their train. But when they reach an intensity such as to restrict the life of a person, so that he is prevented from going out into the world as an independent individual, they degenerate into fear. At this point there is no growth, and in any living system a failure to grow brings with it an ever-increasing tendency towards attrition and death. This is indeed the end of our physical bodies that have been fashioned with only a finite lifespan in view. But we have reason to believe that a deeper, more interiorly placed soul principle grows in experience even when the body disintegrates, and will indeed, "on the last day", see the resurrection of all physical matter into spiritual radiance. Fear depletes the soul of its radiance, and leads the body to a premature withering through disuse.

Whereas the prudent, provident person is informed by a sense of purpose, so that he husbands his resources with care and skill for the day of enterprise in the future, the person racked with fear clings desperately to the little he has, seeing only diminution and destruction ahead of him. Even if his "little" is in fact a vast fortune by the world's standards, it is still a pitiful accumulation insofar as it is of help to him. It is no great paradox that some millionaires are amongst the least happy people we know, whereas a widow with her mite's subsistence-allowance may be a focus of blessing for all those around her. The millionaire's identity revolves around his wealth; the widow's identity radiates from her soul, which is immortal. "Though our outward humanity is in decay, yet day by day we are inwardly renewed" (II Corinthians 4:16). But this renewal depends on an awareness of God and our ceaseless communion with Him in prayer. It is not to be seen as an automatic process any more than we can take our physical health for granted if we fail to obey the elementary laws of hygiene.

In the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), the kingdom of heaven is composed of those who use the gifts that God has given them. They reap their reward through their prudent and resourceful service. We all have to take risks, but if we use the inner gifts of discernment and intuition with which we have been endowed, we will come through the necessary perils of life in victory, and enter into our Master's delight. But the one who buries his talent in fear of its consequences is flung out into the darkness of hell. This terrible fate is to be seen not so much a punishment for an ill-used life as the inevitable result of living such a life. If we do not live our lives with purpose and courage, our personality does not grow. What does not grow declines and wastes away until all that remains is a dark, disintegrated chaos of conflicting attributes that were once the bricks and mortar of our personality. In other words, the life we lead is our immediate judge, with God in Christ as our advocate and healer when we eventually come to ourselves and begin to live properly.

Yet no one can come to an authentic knowledge of love except through fear; the full providence of God is known only to the person who is so distracted with fear that he is forced to open himself to the undemanding love of God. While providence and prudence are worldly virtues that ensure a well-ordered, prosperous life during times of equity and peace, it is by way of the darkness of paralysing fear that we pass beyond the desire for success to a knowledge of God in failure, that God Who is perpetually crucified until all men are lifted up to Him. What then is this fear and how does it originate?

Fear is, in essence, the result of an encounter with the other side of being, that which is not oneself, which is vast, all-pervading, and annihilating in tendency. As soon as a baby is born, it cries. Its cry is of distress, even terror; it is not one of the joy inherent in being born into the world. The infant has left the safe, evenly-conditioned confines of its mother's womb for the cold, indifferent, outer world. But even more terrifying than this change in physical environment is the dark psychic atmosphere in which the little child is now immersed. At first it is protected against the full force of this destructive influence that pervades the world of thought and emotion by the solicitude and love of those caring for it - if indeed such care is available. But it soon learns that this love is not to be taken for granted; it is not unconditional but depends on its own attitude and behaviour, first to its parents and later on to its peers and teachers. Once it arouses their antagonism, it will soon become aware of the frightening negative emotions of irritation and aversion. The end-product of this active dislike is punishment. In this way the law of cause and effect is learnt at a tender age: a man reaps what he sows. Sometimes, however, the seeds of disobedience sown by a small child are out of all proportion to the harvest of brutality reaped, because there are some people who are unbalanced psychologically, if not permanently then at least periodically during phases of physical or mental suffering. The negative emotions emanating from unhappy people add to the boundless psychic darkness that envelops our fallen world, and a small child is much more vulnerable to the impact of this destructive emotional force than he would be in later life, when he would have had the time and opportunity to develop the rational side of his personality. The young, in common with animals and the primitive peoples of the world, are extremely receptive to psychic impulses since they have not yet developed a strong ego consciousness. The ego, though destructive as the master of the person, is an essential part of the personality. When used properly, it is the soul's servant, and it protects the person against the invasion of harmful psychic impulses arising from outside. Without its constant presence, the psyche is liable to be flooded by the fearsome emanations that derive from purely human sources as well as the deeper, vaster psychic world in which we live our interior experiences. The revulsion we experience quite spontaneously when in the company of an emotionally disordered person who emits venom at those around him, even if we ourselves are detached from him in relationship and have no connection with his hatred, is due to the force of psychic evil that is channelled through him, and is an aspect of the darkness that pervades the inner world of our lives.

Fortunately this is not the complete picture, otherwise the whole human race would be lost in the infernal darkness that surrounds and envelops it. The psychic realm also contains beneficent forces in the form of the angelic hierarchy and the communion of saints, those great souls, some of whom we may have known in the flesh as our friends, who are about God's business in lightening the darkness of the psychical world and bringing protection and love to us who are so often bewildered and distraught with suffering. In the words of the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews (12:22-24), "the fully committed stand before Mount Zion and the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, before myriads of angels, the full concourse and assembly of the first-born citizens of heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of good men made perfect, and Jesus the mediator of a new covenant." It is these who illuminate the darkness of hell until it attains the glorious consummation of all things in God, when all duality is taken up into the unity of the Godhead. Jesus too teaches us never to despise one of those little ones, for they have their guardian angels in heaven, who look continually on the face of our heavenly father (Matthew 18:10).

Indeed, the small child with his pure psychic sensitivity is closer both to the angels and the destructive demonic forces than are its older brethren. The greater the acceptance and love the child receives, the closer is it linked to the forces of light; the more it is ignored and rejected, the more tenuous is its awareness of God and the more deeply is it immersed in the darkness of negation. Whenever a cloud of anger passes over an adult's face, the small child absorbs the force of the emotion, and it experiences the fear of punishment and rejection. Inasmuch as this awareness of psychic darkness, which brings with it the negative emotional response of fear, teaches the child the basic code of acceptable social behaviour, it has its place in the maintenance of order and the concern for other people's feelings. The fear of the Lord is, as the sages of Israel repeated in the Old Testament books, the beginning of wisdom. If a person turns away from the morally acceptable path, he excludes himself increasingly from his fellows and ends up in such complete isolation that the darkness becomes unbearable. Then he may be available to conversion.

But there is a much more sinister fear that overwhelms the person to the point of annihilation. This follows cruel, unjust treatment by evil people on a faceless victim. The worst examples of this vicious evil in our own century have been seen in totalitarian prison camps, the purpose of which has been to reduce the identity of subject people relentlessly to total disintegration. This is indeed the final test that we all, in our own way and time, will have to endure before we are able to discover and affirm the one principle within ourselves that cannot be extinguished - the spirit of the soul. It comes about in this way that fear is both the barrier to a full encounter with God and yet a necessary initiator and precursor of that experience. The type of evil that visits punishment of an unremitting, intolerable and unjustified cruelty on an innocent victim is the outpouring of a deranged mind, or else one in psychic contact with demonic forces in the non-material world that can influence unduly sensitive people.

As one enters the realm of the other side of being, whose nature is negative and whose end is the annihilation of all personal identity, one experiences a fearful void in which all one's attributes and associations appear to be lost. It was by those that one had previously held fast to reality, and now they are dissipated. Punishment, especially if remorseless and unrelenting, tortures the body and humiliates the deeper personality. We feel degraded in the eyes of other people, and therefore retreat from those whom we had previously regarded as our friends. We first experience the fear of punishment when we are small, helpless little children. Small children identify themselves with their frail bodies and the intimate contact they enjoy in the company of those close to them in blood relationship or deep emotional sympathy. This contact is primarily psychical, but, of course, it must be acknowledged corporeally also, for we, as people, function not as disembodied spirits but as ensouled bodies infused by the Holy Spirit.

The fear that assails the psyche hovers like a heavy evening mist that envelops the landscape and obliterates the earthly landmarks in a pall of dark shapelessness. Indeed, intense fear can blot out our normal consciousness to the extent that we may later fail to remember the cause of the fear. This is a psychological defence mechanism that shields the psyche by occluding from it events of unbearable savagery with an intolerable emotional charge. But unfortunately this highly charged material does not remain dormant indefinitely; it mills around in the depths of the psyche, "the unconscious" as it is usually called, acting as the "enemy, the devil who, as a roaring lion, prowls around looking for someone to devour," whom we have already encountered in these pages. In the end it can cause so much emotional disturbance that, if not brought into the open and healed, it can lead to both mental breakdown and bodily disease.

The fear that vindictive punishment brings in its train is related not only to our own threatened well-being and safety but also to our sense of acceptance by other people. The person who is being humiliated is seldom an attractive associate for the worldly wise. Jesus knew this and warned His disciples of His coming trial and condemnation, and that they would flee away from Him in terror. In the more mundane circumstances of everyday life, we simply walk on the other side, as the priest and Levite did when they were confronted by the man who fell among thieves. We do not want to know, not only because the humiliated are a nuisance, demanding our time and attention, as in the case of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, but also because we may ourselves be associated with them in the minds of those, important people whose worldly opinions we esteem. Poor Peter, in denying His Lord three times, clearly showed where his first loyalty lay - and few of us would fare better today. It is one thing to support victims of persecution verbally but at a safe distance - using them as a foil to beat a noisome political system with gestures. It is very different to harbour an escaped victim in one's own home, knowing that the reward for discovery would be ostracism by the community, severe punishment, and possibly death.

Fear of rejection is a terrible thing to bear. It is related to the fear of departure of those whom we love. The child knows these fears early in his life when those people with whom he had formed a warm and loving relationship move away from his orbit. This inevitable departure of people about their own business need not cause severe suffering if the child's parents and other close associates are affectionate and demonstrative in their love. But when, as sometimes happens, they are emotionally inadequate if not frankly uninterested in their offspring, the child experiences an unbearable sense of loss when someone who does seem to care suddenly goes out of his life. This is, in fact, a primitive experience of bereavement, but few attending adults would have the wit or sensitivity to appreciate the depth of the loss or of the inadequacy of substitutes. Relationships are all unique; a deep one cannot be perfunctorily replaced - indeed it is often irremediable, and a void is left to mark its memory. The experiences of rejection and the loss of someone for whom one cared deeply both reveal the essential emptiness of one's emotional life and point with frightening candour to the darkness that lies below the surface of frivolity and sociability that we present to the world. Indeed, this façade deceives no one more completely than the person who presents it. Our daily comfort depends almost entirely upon the way other people accept us - which in turn depends on the "image" we present to the world - and those few closer relationships that have an affectionate quality. When both are removed from us a terrible fear assails us, especially when we are small and not yet so mentally cultivated that we can lose ourselves in work and deliberation. The void left by the cessation of a deep relationship is like a bottomless pit that opens into the clear daylight of consciousness, but whose span embraces annihilation.

This is the ultimate fear, to be enveloped in such impenetrable darkness that one ceases to exist as a finite individual. Yet this apparent non-existence on a personal level is accompanied by a tenor of the void that surrounds one. This is panic, and not a state of oblivion or unconsciousness. The awareness of annihilation crowns the fourfold tenor of bodily destruction due to severe punishment, the humiliation of the ego that is a part of rejection by other people, the removal of the landmarks of intimate affection that follows the departure or death of the loved one in the experience of bereavement, and finally the total denial of the integrity of the person that can succeed events as separated in intensity as mere thoughtlessness on the one hand or, on the other, brutal punishment in a prison camp where the tortures of the damned are suffered. In the state of annihilation of the ego, one can begin to understand what hell means and to glimpse the agony of Christ in Gethsemane. It is the most terrible experience that can befall any human being, and yet paradoxically, those who have undergone it are the most privileged of people. They alone are able to understand the full meaning of resurrection, for a great truth has been revealed to them concerning the nature of ultimate reality.

I began this exploration of fear by contrasting the negative, paralysing effect of fear and the positive, constructive value of prudence and providence. Fear in everyday life is to be deprecated. It shows itself in timidity and arrant cowardice. The genesis of this negative approach to life's adventure is an ill-starred experience of fear in one's earlier days. We should not try to escape the thrust of terror in our lives or the fear that this engenders. Those who do apparently escape this experience are to be pitied, not envied, for they are deprived of a true understanding of reality. Life remains for them superficially orientated, depending on continued happiness for its maintenance. But those who have experienced terror and fear must not be dominated by the encounter. These harrowing, yet essential, ingredients of life have to be integrated into the personality, after which they assume the positive aspects of prudence, providence, compassion and finally love.

Perfect love banishes fear (I John 4:18), but overwhelming fear must be experienced and accepted before perfect love may be known.

This is the path of life; it is the way of transfiguration.

Whenever I experience fear, I identify myself with the weak and humble of the world. But may my sensitivity and vulnerability lead me to prayer and self-sacrifice on behalf of those less fortunate than I. As I give of myself to others, so paradoxically do I grow in strength until I can justly take my place among those who contend for the coming of the kingdom of God.