“I succumbed,” she said. “I stopped denying the wounds and felt them, felt their width and breadth. Pain can be clarifying. If you are able to feel it...the pain itself will tell you what to do.”

I looked out of the window, feeling disappointed and empty. This was not the answer I had come for. I wanted something else, some other formula or

This growth causes pain but it is a sacred pain. It would be much more tragic to have cautiously avoided these depths and remained marooned on the shiny surfaces of the banal.

So many of the wise teachers among us apprehend truths of life from an edge of illness or crisis, where the view is suddenly so stark and so clear. They come back wounded and more whole than before, all at the same time—not cured, but healing, and embodying mystical ideas that seemed strange as abstractions and turn out to be common sense. The core