CHAPTER 1

INNER WORK IS GOD'S WORK:TRANSFORMED FROM WITHIN

Start close in,
Don't take the second step
Or the third,
Start with the first
Thing
Close in,
The step you don't want to take.

—David Whyte

Dr. Charles Brewer was one of those professors that students loved and feared. Ifelt both privileged and punished taking his Experimental Psychology class whileattending Furman University from 1974–1978. His tests were known to stump eventhe brightest students, and his lectures were animated but dense. Students werealternately laughing at his antics or panicking about the material beingpresented.

I showed up one day with a particularly malnourished imagination, having been upmost of the night working on an experiment that involved rats and conditioning.I have no idea what question I asked, but after Dr. Brewer answered it, hewalked over to my desk, stood within inches of me, stared down his verystraight, thin nose, looked through me with his intense eyes, and delivered hisfamous saying, "Everything is related to everything else, dammit Ms. Sander, anddon't you ever forget it."

Somehow this statement began to worm its way into my heart and mind. As myjourney with spirituality and psychology continued, I came to believe thatspirituality and psychology are intimately connected. Good spirituality isinnately therapeutic. The experience of God, felt, lived, and embraced should,indeed, heal us. Good psychology, depth psychology, should not be restricted tosolving problems of daily living, but should also be attending to the uniquesoul of the individual. So related are these two disciplines that I imagine themlike a double helix DNA molecule, one thread informing the other until there isno artificial divide, no turf war. These disciplines have evolved beyond thedualism of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and we know now that we canallow for a personal, mystical experience of the Holy, at the same timebelieving in the scientific knowledge we have of the human psyche.

My personal/professional work as a therapist and spiritual director has onlyaffirmed this belief. I have, from my professional beginnings, had the dissonantexperience of trying to separate these two fields. Why? Because my therapyclients who were willing to explore their spiritual beliefs healed more quicklyand reported experiences of transformation. Those seeing me for spiritualdirection expressed a greater sense of wholeness and healing when they allowedtheir psychological work and wounding to enter into the process.

Over time I added one more thread to the helix, the body. That sacred placewhere our psyches, souls, hearts, and minds are housed, our bodies don't lie.They store memories and experiences, and paying attention to our bodies canoften lead us to our own truths. Sometimes on the journey of transformation, wehave to focus on one thread at a time, as if untangling this triple helix. Welook at the psyche, the spirit, and the body separately, not because they areseparate, but because it makes dealing with a complex system manageable when wedo. The deep healing comes, though, when we start to integrate body, mind, andspirit. It doesn't matter which thread—body, mind, or spirit—we start withfirst. In the end, we weave the pieces back together into a beautiful helicalcreation, stronger now with each strand healed.

This process of healing and being healed, of living into our uniqueness andfullness, is, to me, the greatest joy in life. We are all trying to find our wayback Home, home to our holy nature, and this is how we do it, healing thread bythread. I believe this kind of personal transformation requires three things ofus: courage, perseverance, and community.

Courage, because one of the hardest things we do as people who believe intransformation is to look at the truth of ourselves. Being vulnerable andtruthful with ourselves, God, and others is courageous work. Sometimes theprocess of this inner work, the process of claiming our personal truths can feelnegative, dark, and full of grief. For some of us, it is even scary to look atour light and our strengths. Somehow we know that our lives will change if weclaim and share our stories and our personal truths. We also know that we can'tcontrol how they will change, and giving up that control can be frightening. Itcan also be freeing.

That is why perseverance is necessary. Transformation is not an easy process andthere is no quick fix. Changing any system is always difficult, and changing ourinner system might be the most difficult change of all. I credit my mother withhelping me at a young age begin to understand the process of transformation. Hersymbol for transformation was the butterfly. Every imaginable presentation ofbutterflies adorned our house—paintings, sun-catchers, napkins, bathroomwallpaper and towels, figurines, tchotchkes, clothing, jewelry, and tote-bags.And though the beauty and color of butterflies surrounded me in my home, Ilearned that the process of becoming one was not easy. I watched this happen onetime when I was in grade school and I had a terrarium in my bedroom. Inside theterrarium was a caterpillar cocoon on a stick. I awoke one morning to see thetip of a wing sticking out of the cocoon. When I came home from school that dayand raced up the stairs to my bedroom, just a fraction more of the black wingwas visible. "Mom, why is this taking so long?" I yelled. She came up to myroom. I still remember what she said to me. "Becoming a completely new creatureis slow work, Amy. Maybe the butterfly is tired and needs a break. Don't worry.The butterfly knows that it was meant to be a butterfly, and it will continue tocome out of that cocoon when it is ready. It will persevere." And like thebutterfly, sticking with the process and believing we are worth it, we will comeout transformed into our own unique Self.

In the two decades that I have worked with the transformative process, theaspect that seems the hardest for some of us is belonging to and participatingin community. Most of us need support and encouragement, so having a sense thatwe are not in this process of transformation alone can go a long way in helpingus stay on the path. However, honest community makes us vulnerable and open, sothe possibility to be hurt again is very real. Because it is in relationshipthat we get hurt, it is also in relationship that we heal, practicetransformation, and see the fruits of our psycho/spiritual labor. The paradox ofrisk and reward is truly felt...