Breakdowns and Breakthroughs



A friend-priest (a priest-friend, whatever suits him or you) blogged about "Growing Strong at Broken Places" (ascendesuperius@blogspot.com). It's a long but worthy read. I would like to quote some lines from that piece.

"In my experience as a counselor, I have increasingly grown convinced of – at least for me – an emerging paradox. Sometimes, in order for one to get a breakthrough, ironically all he needs is a breakdown. A breakthrough happens when one’s defenses collapse and one hits rock bottom. But before it can happen, one literally needs to allow that breakdown and collapse to happen. One allows oneself to be wounded all over again, at least temporarily, to revisit a past event, relive it with all its concomitant pain and misery, in order to rewrite that same painful memory and set out on the difficult path of writing new life scripts"

"Weaknesses and sins are not our real enemy. Our real enemy is what classical spiritual writers call “acedia.” Modern authors call it the “noontime devil.” And it is most operative when people lose verve and vitality to grow, - no, not despite our weaknesses, not because of our weaknesses, but beyond our weaknesses."

We usually get struck by things that are meaningful to us depending on the context we are in. When we are hungry, almost all food we see are delicious. But when our gall bladders are full, no food may seem palatable to us. And when we are hungry and thirsty for love, we have this tendency to believe that people (or our addictions) can fill such hunger and thirst. Those quotes above are meaningful to me now because they point to what I am going through.

We die when we resist to grow; but we need to die(temporarily) to grow. Being aware and embracing our weaknesses and broken places is a way of dying to ourselves. And growing beyond them is living!

In recent years, with the help of reliable and caring friends, I have become more aware of my issues. And it feels liberating to understand some , if not most, of them. I am starting to appreciate the reality that insights to our issues is not even half of the work needed to become better persons. It is the daily grind of living, not despite of, not because of, but beyond our weaknesses. Putting this to action excites me (and still scares me sometimes…hahaha).

In the past several months, my issues have glaringly resurfaced and I have been tested. I am not quite sure whether I have handled it well or not. It may take some more time to better comprehend it. But I am quite sure that there are new insights and perspectives I have learned from my recent experience. I have experienced a breakdown (fortunately not a total breakdown…hehehe) and the thought that in due time I may get a breakthrough excites me. I may be feeling better now but I am trying to convince myself that feeling better does not guarantee that I am getting better. (Conversely, feeling bad does not necessarily mean that I am bad or things are less hopeful). There is a lot of hard work to be done.

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