​We know by now that the most important thing we can do to help us grow on the sacred path is to align our personal will with God’s will. We know the steps we need to take which will help us achieve this: Ask for God’s graces and divine wisdom; release the barriers of the surface-self which stand in our way so we can more fully understand our spiritual path; surrender into God, which naturally leads to a desire to act by carrying His sacred essence into the world for the edification and peace of others.
 
But let’s face it—we’re going to mess up. A lot. It happens, not every so often but daily, usually several times a day. We all have shadow sides, parts of us that are more difficult to release than others. As we travel the spiritual path of ask, release, surrender, and act, we don’t leave each stage behind as we progress, but we take them with us as new spiritual tools. The cycle of ask, release, surrender, and act is continuous, an ebb and flow which isn’t necessarily linear. Sometimes we need to release before we even know how to ask. At other times—and more often than not--act comes into play multiple times. Each step will appear within the time and order necessary for your complete, unique transformation. 

Our quest isn’t flawlessness—if it was, we’d fall flat on our foreheads before our first step. Rather, our goal is attaining the highest levels we possibly can, which are those inspired and guided by Divine Will, designed specifically for our unique life’s path. In order to seek this place of alignment, this inner soul space, we must constantly seek a balance between our true selves and our understanding of the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit.
 
Soul space is a place we return to, again and again, each time we find ourselves falling out of alignment with God’s will. It’s a re-centering, a regrouping, a reconfiguration of spirit to Spirit. We must unify ourselves with God, creating this inner refuge of peace and tranquility no matter what the world outside is doing. When we allow our souls to expand and grow in unity with the Holy Spirit, suffering becomes sacred and joys are tempered with a knowledge that everything we have—indeed, everything we are—is a gracious gift from God. The inclination of the surface-self to become attached to both things and emotions will disappear, replaced with the memory of God’s blessings, a true understanding of our spiritual selves, and a surrender of our personal will into the Divine Will of God.

The theme of this week’s post is ... Sacred Suffering. Oh joy! Doesn’t that sound like fun?
 
I realize that most of us don’t want to think about suffering. Our goal in life is to avoid bumps in the road—that’s why we surround ourselves with as many luxuries, gadgets, and technological conveniences as possible. We certainly don’t want to devote even a moment of our time to musing over such discomforting thoughts.
 
But we must. To ignore suffering in the hopes that it’ll never visit us is futile and harmful. Life happens. Drama and trauma, illness and accident, disappointment and loss ... all these things can hit us hard, and at times we may not know where to turn or how to handle our grief—yet when we deal with it appropriately, even the most profound tragedy can become sacred. 
 
I believe that ironic twists of life can always be used for a greater purpose, even when these twists are ironies I would have preferred to avoid. As I was preparing this essay on sacred suffering, tragedy struck my personal life. All of a sudden, in the matter of one before-dawn phone call, my entire future changed. Plans, hopes, and expectations were threatened in an instant. I felt that on so many levels, my life suddenly wasn’t going to be what I had thought it would be.

St. Catherine of Siena wrote eloquently on the topic of suffering and how we can positively view our efforts even during the times we may perceive as the darkest and most difficult. In one of her many letters she stated:
 
            In fact, we earn merit because of the suffering we endure. This means that if
            we don’t sit down in apathy, or let our spirit become weary and discouraged, 
            or give up the practice of prayer, the struggle will bring us to true and perfect 
            virtue. Why? In times of struggle we come to know ourselves and our weakness
            better. And we come to know God’s goodness within us better ... So you see how 
            in times of intense struggle we become more perfect and prove ourselves in 
            strength.
 
In other words, once we’ve stopped clinging to our misery and release ourselves into God’s hands, our suffering takes on an entirely new meaning and we endure all things with patience and love, knowing that “in everything God works for good …”

God is a Deity of action and interaction, melding and shaping, and the goal of our spiritual lives is to imitate Him as fully as we can. When we reach the stage of act, we’re being called to become an enthusiastic participant in the shaping of Divine Will within our world. We can’t expect to ask, then sit back and let God steer the car. We may be guided, but ultimately we have to do the driving. Think of this guidance as the Divine GPS; we’ll be shown the way, but we have to grip the wheel in our own hands in order to get where we need to go. And we can be reassured that if we make a wrong turn, we’ll hear the intuitive Voice within urging us to change course. “Recalculating … recalculating …”
 
We’ve already spoken of how essential it is to release, using the analogy of the wedding vessels: we need to empty ourselves of all the toxic things in our lives so we can be receptive to spiritual filling. The key to that story is the simple reminder that if the vessels hadn’t been empty, they never would have been chosen to be filled with the Living Water. After we release, we then surrender to the unfolding process of spiritual regeneration.
 
However, there’s another mystery to unlocking the understanding of ourselves as receptive vessels. Once we’ve released and surrendered, we should now keep our vessels filled with the transforming Water of the Spirit -- a­­nd that Water must keep moving.

Once we Release, we naturally attain the next level: That of Surrender
  
At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between release and surrender. It’s true that the distinction is subtle, yet it’s markedly there. Releasing is letting go of something outside of God, whereas surrendering is a falling into God. 
 
The soul is in perpetual motion; “if she does not go forward, she turns back” (St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, 49). I touched on this briefly when I mentioned how crucial it is to fill our newly-cleared soul space with the light of the Diving Spirit; if we don’t, something else will creep back in, another barrier and block from our surface-selves. 

These “unclean spirits” dwell within us all as our shadow sides, and they need to be fully exposed to the Light so we can face them, release them, and replace them with good. A little parable describes this in vivid detail:
 
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.” (Matthew 12:43-45)