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So, were you able to identify your story? What is the message you keep telling yourself? Does it help our hurt you? Did you figure out from where it comes? This is called soul (psuché) work. It is essentially what psycho therapy is all about. The only difference here is that the objective clinical observer is looking for patterns from your past. In soul work however, we are actually gaining objectivity into our own life as we embrace the self-critical process.

How can we get out of our own way? It’s difficult and perhaps that is why it helps to have a clinical partner. Despite the difficulty, it isn’t impossible. A vital frameshift in thinking is first required. We must abandon the notion that our dark days are useless deficiencies that must be eradicated. This is like cutting off our arms which will enable us to climb out of the hole.

Intelligence is marked by the brains ability to recognize patterns and integrate seemingly unrelated things. We gain this skill over time though much of it is hard wired. One of my theories is that depression is a temporary inability or unwillingness to integrate necessary things and anxiety is the temporary over-integration of things. The depressed soul doesn’t want to connect any more dots, the anxious soul connects too many.

Putting this together we discover that in both cases, the categories we have used to integrate our soul and our life are now diminished. The frameshift comes the moment we realize that the goal is no longer to normalize backward into old paradigms of integration. Instead, the resolution to our dark days is found within categories that we may not yet possess, so we must be open to new categories. It’s the apprehension and application of truth that integrates the soul and life. In other words, we suffer because of something we don’t know or won’t do.

We don’t ordinarily seek out wider experiences of truth if not for our suffering. Thus it’s reasonable to conclude that the truth (which transcends us) is actually pulling us into itself. THAT IS AN UNCOMMON FRAMESHIFT! If true, then what or who is doing the pulling? If there is a pulling force or a “puller“, then there must be a purpose because the pull comes opposite of our gravitational trend. The purpose is to expand us.

Our dark days are not deficiencies, but required suffering through which we can know God and ourselves. They have a design and a purpose that can re-create us. Their existence means that we can never go back and now must set our sights on a future life formed by them rather than the life prior to them.