Therapy and Introspection: A Cultural Experiment
Therapy and deep introspection are new enough that we don’t fully understand their long-term impact on personal resilience or society’s mindset. In many ways, we’re experimenting with introspection as a tool, one that’s untested compared to the ancient preference for forward-focused living.
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But if going to therapy has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is actually solved by intellectualizing and pathologizing every part of what we feel — and when we try, we’re usually sort of wrong anyway. Your emotions, by and large, are not a problem to be fixed in service of producing a better, more manageable, more loveable self. They just want to be felt.
no good alone
rayne fisher-quann -
Perhaps you look too much inwards on self, instead of outwards on the Lord Jesus.—The healthiest people do not think about their health; the weak induce disease by morbid introspection. If you begin to count your heartbeats, you will disturb the rhythmic action of the heart. If you continually imagine a pain anywhere, you will produce it. And there are some true children of God who induce their own darkness by morbid self-scrutiny. They are always going back on themselves, analyzing their motives, re-considering past acts of consecration, or comparing themselves with themselves. In one form or another self is the pivot of their life, albeit that it is undoubtedly a religious life. What but darkness can result from such a course? There are certainly times in our lives when we must look within, and judge ourselves, that we may not be judged. But this is only done that we may turn with fuller purpose of heart to the Lord. And when once done, it needs not to be repeated. “Leaving the things behind” is the only safe motto. The question is, not whether we did as well as we might, but whether we did as well as we could at the time.
We must not spend all our lives in cleaning our windows, or in considering whether they are clean, but in sunning ourselves in God’s blessed light. That light will soon show us what still needs to be cleansed away, and will enable us to cleanse it with unerring accuracy.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
We must, however, remember that temperaments differ. Some seem born in the dark, and carry with them through life an hereditary predisposition to melancholy. Their nature is set to a minor key, and responds most easily and naturally to depression. They look always on the dark side of things, and in the bluest of skies discover the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. Theirs is a shadowed pathway, where glints of sunshine strike feebly and with difficulty through the dark foliage above.
Such a temperament may be yours: and if it be, you never can expect to obtain just the same exuberant gladness which comes to others, nor must you complain if it is so. This is the burden which your Saviour’s hands shaped for you, and you must carry it for Him, not complaining, or parading it to the gaze of others, or allowing it to master your steadfast and resolute spirit, but bearing it silently, and glorifying God amid all. But, though it may be impossible to win the joyousness which comes to others, there may at least be rest, and victory, and serenity—Heaven’s best gift to men.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
No earthly friend may tread the winepress with you, but the Savior is there, His garments stained with the blood of the grapes of your sorrow. Dare to repeat it often, though you do not feel it, and though Satan insists that God has left you, “Thou are with me.”
And remember, my friend, you are passing through this experience, and God has taken you out of the deliciousness of conscious fellowship with Himself, that you may learn to walk not by sight, but by faith.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
When Dr. Payson was asked by a friend, in a season of severe illness, if he could see any particular reason for the present dispensation, he replied- “No; but I am as well satisfied as if I could see ten thousand. God’s will is the very perfection of all reason.”
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in suffering and weakness, you are brought to “Lie passive in His hands, And know no will but His!”
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The discipline of patience is another light blending with the shadows of sickness. No unimportant or untimely grace of the Spirit is this; the development and culture of which finds no school more appropriate, or discipline more effectual, than that of ‘pining sickness.’
The continuous endurance of unmitigated pain- the prolonged and deathly weakness- the failure of skill and remedies to promote a cure- the morbid irritability and fretting almost inseparable from the prolongation of suffering- and the remembrance of duties neglected, of affairs deranged, of expenses incurred- all conspire to render the discipline of patience the most needed and precious; and when attained, to shed one of the most luminous graces of the Spirit upon the shaded picture of bodily disease.
Lights and Shadows of Spiritual Life
Octavius Winslow -
“How many seek Jesus for no other object but that He may bestow on them a temporal benefit?! One has a business on hand, he seeks the intercession of the clergy; another is oppressed by one more powerful than himself, he flies to the church. Another desires intervention on his behalf with one with whom he has little influence. One in this way, one in that, the church is daily filled with such people. Jesus is scarcely sought after for Jesus’ sake.”
—St. Augustine, Sermon 88 (on John 10:14), NPNF
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Lord as You know and as You will, Have Mercy.
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He does not always immediately answer our prayers. Sometimes he does not answer them at all, but instead, in His wisdom and goodness, grants us something that we did not ask for, but which in our situation is more beneficial for the salvation of our souls.
—Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) of St. Petersburg
How to Live a Holy Life p.108 -
In the present life, until one’s final breath, sadness always comes mixed with joy.
—Elder Joseph the Hesychast
SO GOOD QUOTES 