Finding Meaning in Difficult Events

FINDING MEANING IN DIFFICULT EVENTS The _following principles ~e.based on holistic depth psychology, especially from its approach to human life as an artwork. This view sees the human life-span as an opportunity for continuing education. 1) My life history contains potential for meaning t~ough deeply understanding the events 1 of my life. 2) ~mingly ordinary events in my life carry an additional truth which, can be recognized and ~nde:stood. It is as if every surf ace event in my life . 1s paralleled by inner-depth processes movmg below the surface of my consciousness. 3) Getting in touch with these "additional truths" or "inner-depth processes" can help me to see a continuity in my life that has a direction and makes sense in some way. In this way, a message inherent in one event may have a message for my life as a whole. 4) These inner processes weave and blend together in ways that the surface events cannot, often showing up in my creative dreams. Each mini-process exerts its pressure on my psyche. The many pressures merge together to synthesize the inner mix of how much I will expand or contract, forming my mood and my character over time. 5) In working to overcome illness and catastrophe, issues may be raised that reach beyond the physical condition and suggest changes_ to the direction and conduct of my whole hfe. An event may have a particular message concerning the way that my life has been lived up until now. This message should be heeded at least as much as one of my dreams. 6) If healing takes place too quickly or is too effectively achieved by an external intervention (e.g. aspirin for a migraine, surgery for knee pain, etc.), nothing new will be learned and the inner message may be missed. If I learn nothing from the rapid healing of an illness (accident, injury, etc.), the inherent message may reassert itself. 7) If, on the other hand, an accident or illness is taken into my internal process, and is allowed to tell me its reason for being, I can absorb its n:essage into my life. It may then often depart, since the message for the conduct of my life has been received. 8) Sometimes the continuity of inner work leads to unexpected realizations. The depth process underlying a physical condition may develop so strongly that it leads to new circumstances and new meanings that could not have been envisioned at the beginning of the quest. A subsequent physical condition may appear which I must also absorb at interior levels into the meaning that is unfolding in my life. 9) A negative event or illness can be considered a:1 e~sen:ial pa~t ~f the process of finding drrectlon m my life, m large part because it was not immediately healed, or only incompletely healed. 10) I may find, for example, that a difficulty is not to be eliminated but in some form is to have a permanent place in my life history. An illness may become a permanent part of my life simply because no means of healing it is found. Not being able to eliminate the condition, I become forced to draw on the native ingenuity of life to find a means of living with it. 11) This may bring with it unexpected strengths and new possibilities. Oi.aracter qualities such as perseverance of effort, courage, steadiness, openness to change, and so on, may become better developed as a result of a healing need. This native ingenuity may have become developed only through the suffering and need engendered by my difficulty. The difficult situation has united with me to produce a new being able to respond to life with dignity. 12) The essence of healing does not lie in the efficiency with which my life can be restored to its strength. It lies in the meaning that is added to my life as I suffer difficulty. This added meanin? c-:n pivot my whole understanding of what hfe 1s, and change my entire attitude towards my life. It is an art to approach life in such a_deli~rat:, conscious way and comes only a~ ~ fmd interiorly the message carried by a difficult event, absorb it, and allow it in its own timing to disclose its message for my life. .!Uaptetif,y ~a/;E,i 'Dawi 'Wo[ft.'13ls:,,nfr_Jrom ~ tlie Musage of [{[nus• f,y Ira Pro!JOffi puh.in.'Ifie Jilnu:riu:B'Ilieosopliist,SpriT191984 1pooitive and negative events, changes, accidents, physical illneM, emOtional ups,et. etc.