IT TAKES A LIFETIME

We cannot directly fight or separate ourselves from evil or untruth. -- Fr. Richard Rohr

There. That is a pure fact that we need to remember in order to stay focused on still more spiritual growth...on God. The word "directly" is the key.

In general, to attempt to repair a cracked relationship by talking about it is to break it completely. Mainly because our ego-based reasoning mind always legislates for itself.

We must go within our self to examine our soul in search of our wrong for it is our wrong that must needs be corrected. Our ego only sees outward...will only see you...will only recognize your wrongs as the source of the problem. And whatever the other is exhibiting, we will respond in kind...with both correctly identifying the problem while thinking it belongs solely to the other.

I don't believe freedom from that tangle can be done in a single sit-down think-through, write a little, pray a little session. It is a lifetime work. For our reasoning mind is ever with us, and our ego is reliant on and complicit with it.

Freedom comes through surrender...losing in a word. This is psychically painful. Which, according to me, hurts way more than physical pain. It is psychical pain that brings on our "dark night of the soul," which, we find after, is essential for still more spiritual growth.

According to me, there is no "the" dark night, there are as many dark nights of the soul as we need individually and personally in order to gain release from the self-protection that our ego promises. In other words, for us to get over ourselves.

That's why it takes a lifetime.

That's also why we need to remember that God is with us 24/7 always and all ways.

Thank you.