Shortly after I began seminary, about a dozen of us attended a required weekend retreat put on by our sponsoring synod. The goal was to do a psychological assessment of us. We did written surveys beforehand which then were part of the weekend process led by a psychologist, who also happened to be a Catholic nun.

The goal was understandable. There was growing awareness of behavior problems and mental health issues among clergy and it was hoped this could somehow address these ahead of time. This event, however, just tried to do too much in too short a time and the responsible church officials didn’t really know what to do with the results.

As time went on, I came to realize that was true of the church’s approach to mental health in general. It knew that a fair number of pastors go off the rails in various ways but the church had no effective strategy to prevent this or deal with such cases, except to remove them from office. By that time, though, the damage was done, often to both the pastors and their parishioners.

On the other hand, aware pastors were increasingly recognizing that a fair number of their congregation members had significant behavioral and other mental health problems of their own. Sometimes they effected these members personal lives, but often they impacted the congregation when such people were parish leaders. Typically, clergy lack the orientation or skills to deal with such issues. It’s not what they signed up for, or were trained for, and not infrequently they become victims themselves of these intractable problems. Not a few congregations implode from such unsolvable conflicts.

After our seminarian retreat, we each received a copy of the report about us the psychologist submitted to the synod. Our sister/retreat leader didn’t mince words and it was rather brutal for most of us. But we soon realized that the synod really didn’t know what to do with the report except to put it in our file. Which was unfortunate, as it could have been the start of a helpful process of self inquiry, but the procedures were not in place for that to happen.

I remember one sentence from my assessment which has since come to symbolize for me a root problem for the church as a whole. “He needs to get in touch with his pain,” it said. At the time I didn’t know what that meant but it was somewhat unsettling. A more astute fellow student read it and said, “Well, that’s probably true for most of us.” Since then, I’ve come to realize he was correct.

In a number of my recent posts, including the last one, I have talked about how the church needs to redirect its mission and ministry. How it needs to give up its abstract concern with sin and instead guide people in the experience of transformation through a spiritual awakening to their true nature and oneness with God.

This, as I said last time, was what I believe Jesus’ Galilean ministry was about. In his various interactions with people, Jesus often first helped people acknowledge their pain. The story in John of the woman at the well is one of the best examples. After trying to engage Jesus in a theological debate, he redirects her to recognize her suffering from abusive relationships and being a social outcast. She is transformed by Jesus’ “living water” of honesty and acceptance. At the end, she rushes to town and says to the people who have probably shunned her, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” is a popular quote from Japanese author Haruki Murakami. He was writing about his preparation to run in the New York City marathon but the saying arises from Zen Buddhism’s understanding of everyone’s state in life. None of us can avoid pain. Where we have freedom is in how we respond to that pain: either with recognition and acceptance or denial and rejection.

Pain from stubbing our toe is easy to acknowledge, accept, and move on from. The more complicated pain comes from wounds to our ego inflicted from earliest childhood on. When these wounds are not fully healed, as is often the case, the pain remains but is hidden until something triggers it. This can happen years after the original hurt, which has often been forgotten. The emotional response (anger, fear, sadness, depression, etc.) often is out of proportion to the triggering event, startling those around us and sometimes even ourselves.

All spiritual traditions, not just Buddhism, recognize this reality: “Pain is inevitable.” The response to this in the modern secular West has been psychology and psychotherapy, which have been helpful to many. But they have arisen in part due to our culture’s failure, including religion’s failure, to appreciate the ancient wisdom and practice of spirituality.

As the word implies, spirituality sees “spirit” as our core reality, which is manifested or expressed through us as human beings. In the words of Teilhard de Chardin,

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

In the course of our spiritual awakening, we come to realize our ego is a virtual self, a creation of our mind, which is where our wounds reside. Our true self as spirit, however, is always whole, good, and loved.

At the end of the book of Revelation, John is shown “a new heaven and a new earth.” Included with that is “the river of the water of life.” There he sees that

on either side of the river is the tree of life … and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Since its beginning, Christianity has been obsessed with forgiveness of sins, spinning out convoluted doctrines and rituals for people to know and perform. Yet healing is an equally strong theme of the Bible and would be a much more powerful message and ministry today.

Much of Jesus’ ministry focused on healing of soul and body. It resonates in the Hebrew Bible, as well, especially in the prophets, including this famous passage from Isaiah often applied to the crucified Jesus and immortalized in Handel’s Messiah.

Surely he has borne our sicknesses and carried our pains … and by his bruises we are healed.

The simple truth discovered in spiritual awakening is that we are not the voices in our head. They, instead, come from the countless stories planted in our minds from birth by family, teachers, religion, culture, and countless hurtful experiences. Awakening puts them in their place and sets us free from their grip and the suffering they induce. That is healing and it is salvation. It is what Jesus meant when he said we have to lose our life in order to find it. For when the mask of our ego is removed, then our true self can finally live unbound, free, and whole.

In closing, I turn again to a quote I included in a post a few months ago from a video by Canadian spirituality teacher, Daniel Schmidt. For Schmidt, waking up saves not just us, but the world.

Awakening is the answer to all of the world’s problems on every level. All of the world’s problems stem from a delusion; the fundamental delusion of the mind. That delusion is that I am this limited character…. It’s this endless process of … going after pleasure, avoiding pain. And if we believe we are in this character, this conditioned pattern, then we suffer. And we create suffering in the world. The world becomes a reflection of that egoic consciousness….

So, when every individual awakens from their own character, then collectively we become free…. When each individual dis-identifies from their conditioned character, then they’re no longer acting as an egoic entity, and that brings about a transformation on the planet. This brings a New Earth, a new reality that isn’t an egoic reality.

Our awakening, then, our being reborn, is not just for ourselves but collectively it is indeed “for the healing of the nations.”

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