Hello, friends. And welcome back to spark my muse I'm Lisa cologne delay. And today I bring you soul school lesson 2 43. I'm gonna be sharing with you a book that I really love and keep close by the inner voice of love by Henry now. And this is a short book that is lovely to pick up and just read little nuggets from I'll read the introduction to you. So you know exactly what I'm talking about, what sort of book this is in the introduction. Now in writes this book is my secret journal.
It was written during the most difficult period of my life from December, 1987 to June, 1988. That was a time of extreme anguish during which I wondered whether I would be able to hold on to my life. Everything came crashing down my self-esteem, my energy to live and work. My sense of being loved. My hope for healing, my trust in God, everything here, I was a writer about the spiritual life known as someone who loves God and gives hope to people flat on the ground. And in total darkness,
what had happened? I had come face to face with my own nothingness. It was as if all that had given my life meaning was pulled away and I could see nothing in front of me, but a bottomless abyss. The strange thing was that that happened shortly after I had found my true home. After many years of life in universities, where I never felt fully at home, I became a member of LAR, a community of men and women with mental disabilities.
I had been received with open arms, given all the attention and affection I could hope for and offered a safe and loving place to grow spiritually as well as emotionally. Everything seemed ideal, but precisely at that time, I fell apart as if I needed a safe place to hit bottom. Just when all those around me were assuring me, they loved me, cared for me, appreciated me. Yes. Even admired me.
I experienced myself as a useless, unloved and despicable person, just when people were putting their arms around me. I saw the endless depth of my human misery and felt that there was nothing worth living for just when I had found a home, I felt absolutely homeless just when I was being praised for my spiritual insights. I felt devoid of faith, just when people were thanking me for bringing them closer to God, I felt that God had abandoned me.
It was as if the house I had finally found had no floors, the anguish completely paralyzed me. I could no longer sleep. I cried uncontrollably for hours. I could not be reached by consoling words or arguments. I no longer had any interest in other people's problems. I lost all appetite for food and could not appreciate the beauty of music, art, or even nature. All had become darkness within me. There was one long scream coming from a place I didn't know, existed, a place full of demons.
All of this was triggered by the sudden interruption of a friendship, going to LAR and living with very vulnerable people. I had gradually let go of many of my inner guards and opened my heart more fully to others. Among my many friends. One had been able to touch me in a way I had never been touched before our friendship encouraged me to allow myself to be loved and cared for with greater trust and confidence. It was a totally new experience for me. And it brought immense joy and peace.
It seemed as if a door of my interior life had been opened a door that had remained locked during my youth and most of my adult life. But this deeply satisfying friendship became the road to my anguish because I soon discovered that the enormous space that had been opened for me could not be filled by the one who had opened it. I became possessive, needy and dependent. And when that friendship finally had to be interrupted, I fell apart. I fell abandoned, rejected and betrayed. Indeed.
The extremes touched each other intellectually. I knew that no human friendship could fulfill the deepest longing of my heart. I knew that only God could give me what I desired. I knew that I had been set on a road where nobody could walk with me, but Jesus, but all this knowledge didn't help me in my pain.
I realized quite soon that it would be impossible to survive this mentally and spiritually debilitating anguish without leaving my community and surrendering myself to people who would be able to lead me to new freedom through a unique grace. I found the place in the people to give me the psychological and spiritual attention I needed during the six months that followed. I lived through agony.
That seemed to never end, but the two guides who were given to me did not leave me alone and kept gently moving me from one day to the next holding onto me as parents hold a wounded child, to my surprise, I never lost the ability to write. In fact, writing became part of my struggle for survival. It gave me the little distance for myself that I needed to keep from drowning in
my despair nearly every day. Usually immediately after meeting with my guides, I wrote a spiritual imperative, a command to myself that had emerged from our session. These imperatives were directed to my own heart. They were not meant for anyone by myself in the first weeks. It seemed as if my anguish only got worse. Burial, places of pain that had been hidden to me were opened up. The fearful experiences for my early years were brought to consciousness.
The interruption of friendship forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there to choose in the face of it all, not death, but life. Thanks to my attentive and guides. I was able day by day to take very small steps towards life. I could easily have become bitter resentful of depressed and suicidal that this did not happen was the result of the struggle expressed in this book.
When I returned to my community, not without great apprehension, I reread all that I had written during the time of my exile. It seems so intense and raw that I could hardly imagine it would speak to anyone but me, even though bill Barry, a friend and publisher at double day, felt strongly that my most personal struggle could be of great help to many
people. I was too close to it to give it away. Instead, I started to work on a book about Rembrandts painting the return of the prodigal son and found there a safe place for some of the insights I gained for my struggles. But when eight years later prompted by my friend, Wendy Greer, I read my secret journal again. I was able to look back at that period of my life and see that it was a time of intense purification that had led me gradually to new inner freedom, a new hope and a new creativity.
These spiritual imperatives I had put down now seem less private and even possibly have some value to others, Wendy and several other friends encouraged me not to hide this painful experience from those who have come to know me through my various books on the spiritual life. They reminded me that the books I've written since my period of anguish could not have been written without the experience I gained by living through that
time. They asked why keep this away from those who have been nurtured by your spiritual insights. Isn't it important for your friends close by and far away to know the high cost of these insights? Wouldn't they find it a source of consolation to see that light and darkness hope and despair, love and fear are never very far from each other. And that spiritual freedom often requires a fierce, spiritual battle. Their questions finally convince me to give these pages to bill Barry and make
them available in this book. I hope and pray that I did the right thing. So as I pick out a few of these to read to you, remember that they are journal entries, he writes them to himself, but that kind of intimacy and how they're written helps us to fairly easily apply them to ourselves. And perhaps that's why I enjoy this tender and intimate book so much. It's truthful, it's vulnerable. And it's always brought me a kind of special comfort.
The first one on page three is just two short paragraphs. It's entitled work around your abyss. There is a deep hole in your being like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it. So that gradually the abyss closes since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it.
These are two extremes to avoid being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal. As now in encourages himself in this type of journal, this type of reflecting on what he has just been going over in spiritual direction with his guides and helpers. I find that a lot of the things he mentions are things that are very akin to my own experience and my own wounds or troubles.
And I hope that you find connection with them too. This book again is called the inner voice of love. A journey through anguish to freedom. This one's on page six, trust the inner voice. Do you really want to be converted? Are you willing to be transformed or do you keep clutching your old ways of life with one hand while with the other, you beg people to help you change. Conversion is certainly not something you can bring about yourself. It is not a question of willpower.
You have to trust the inner voice that shows the way you know, that inner voice. You turn to it often. But after you have heard with clarity, what you are asked to do, you start raising questions, fabricating objections, and seeking everyone else's opinion. Thus, you become entangled in countless often contradictory thoughts, feelings, and ideas, and lose touch with the God in you. And you end up dependent on all the people you have gathered around you.
Only by attending constantly to the inner voice. Can you be converted to a new life of freedom and joy? The final one I'll read today is called keep returning to the road to freedom. It's from page 38. When suddenly you seem to lose all you thought you had gained, do not despair. Your healing is not a straight line. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself, all is lost. I have to start all over again. This is not true.
What you have gained, you have gained sometimes little things build up and make you lose ground for a moment, fatigue, a seemingly cold remark. Someone's inability to hear you. Someone's innocent. Forgetfulness, which feels like rejection. When all these things come together, they can make you feel as if you're right back where you started. But try to think about it. Instead as being pulled off the road for a while, when you return to the road, you return to the place where you left it,
not to where you started. It is important not to dwell on the small moments. When you feel pulled away from your progress, try to return home to the solid place within you immediately. Otherwise these moments start connecting with similar moments and together they become powerful enough to pull you far away from the road. Try to remain alert to seemingly innocuous distractions. It's easier to return to the road when you're on the shoulder than when you're pulled all the way into a nearby swamp
in everything. Keep trusting that God is with you, that God has given you companions on the journey. Keep returning to the road to freedom. That's a very touching entry now in rights to himself, keep returning to the road to freedom. And sometimes the healing process, which involves pain and leads towards wholeness and freedom can be an on again, off again, not straight line journey, listening for the inner voice of love and starting again. And again is normal.
And part of the process now when encourages himself to not be discouraged and to continue on, and hopefully his words can give us hope today. His words have such power and strength today because he was earnestly seeking healing. He was searching for God's love and trying to receive it as best he could. His development is really amazing to see if you haven't read return of the prodigal son that he speaks about. That is a really amazing book.
It was part of the fruit of this six month period of anguish and his best work. Most people say came after this time of anguish. I hope today you can feel blessed and encouraged to step back on the road to freedom. And I wish you blessing and peace.