That Sacred Space Within

I was re-listening to a podcast of a discussion with John O’Donohue (Irish poet, theologian, mystic) and I felt I had to write down this part of it and share it with you since it is so incredibly beautiful.

Meister Ekhart says ‘There is a place in the soul that neither time, nor flesh, nor any created thing can reach’.

So, there’s a place within you where no one has ever got to – or damaged, and that’s the ground of your soul. There in that place, you have confidence, complete poise, courage, elegance and complete tranquility.

No psychiatrist can ever know where healing comes from or when it might begin. I think it begins from this sacred place within us.

And so I would see prayer as visiting at this ground within us. And l would also see love as the affinity and the belonging of these two grounds together.

It is very sad that we imagine ourselves so negatively. We behave as if our happiness is an occasional accident, as if the normal thing is to be torn and damaged, melancholic, an abyss of negativity and general unease.

Happiness is the best praise for having been given the gift of life. Because to enjoy the gift must be a delight to the giver, the Creator.

Sometimes if you let yourself off the hook and trust the integrity of your soul, then you can actually go and do things and create and become something, rather than sitting in the corner of your psyche, tending to yourself like some kind of damaged creature for your whole life.

We are all stuck somewhere. We are all damaged somewhere – some of us are deeply damaged. But wounds don’t decide to heal themselves. If you cut your hand, the hand doesn’t say ‘I must heal myself’. What happens is that the rest of the wholeness of you persuades the wound to let go. And I think there is a deep wholesomeness in everyone that they can completely trust, and if you stand on that ground in yourself, then your life begins to unfold and become and you inherit your creativity.”