Wounded

During the last PAGASA workshop in Baguio, I was struck by an insight. First chance I got to sit alone, I pulled out my notebook and quietly sat to record the flow. The insight had to do with personal trauma. I realized that we all have to work hard so that our greatest personal wounds do not become our identity--that we recognize the trauma is not who we are. It becomes a part of us, yes, but we are so much more; the wound is but a portal into our highest possibilities. My own experiences tell me that life's most difficult challenges bring us to our next level of humanity if we are able to put the experiences in the larger context. What does the experience mean? What did it bring out of us that was never there before? I have experienced people who have turned their challenges into their identity. They are often bitter, clinging to their wounds for dear life, and unable to accept their trauma as part of their humanity.  I have come to know that the worst kind of pain can be the deepest grace in the larger scheme of things. Most people are able to achieve things they wouldn't have normally been able to after a death of someone dearest to them, because the question of their own life's purpose came to the fore. From that darkness was born their brightest purpose. I think our personal wounds are just that--vehicles that need to take us where we need to go towards our spiritual/human task. I know that it all leads to a kind of service for humanity and the world, no matter where we are. Crisis, pain, trauma--these are the things that prompt us to become active in the world from our most personal spaces, but only if we have worked through the experience and not allowed it to define us. You are not a battered wife or an ex-wife, a victim of rape or abuse--those were things that happened to you to shape you to become so much more.  To become fully human, we are plunged into the very depths of human experience so that, out of our own striving and consciousness, we can rise above it towards transformation because every authentic human transformation serves the world, especially when it is made conscious. The Christ, in his own human experience, had to plunge to the very depths, to awaken the transformative consciousness in man--to help us become what we are all meant to be. Life is not meant to be easy. It is a journey of sorrow and death, but also the triumph of resurrection and transformation. Pain is necessary for the development of compassion and love. To view our own experiences in a new light, we must stop defining ourselves by our pain and letting that be the fulcrum of our identity.  Instead, let us ask how our pain can lead us to integration towards the greater task of serving humanity.