One of the miracles that I have been privileged to witness as a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher is the resiliency of people who have undergone tremendous abuse, trauma, and tragedy. These people do not merely survive; they thrive in spite of all odds. What is the source of the phenomenon of resiliency? The answer is simple: God’s footprint! Nowhere is the Divine footprint more obvious than in the human soul, which is, as Yogananda stated, the very “image of God.” The soul is the spark of the Divine; as such, it is untouched by life’s vicissitudes, sin, and karmic limitation. Resiliency is, therefore, the light of God shining in and through the soul. In this well-known passage, Thomas Merton describes his direct experience of the great light of the soul:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
Imagine…
We are all walking around,
shining like the sun!
Though I might not see this,
May I have faith that it is so.
