The heart of an authentic creative relationship between two people is the ability of the one to share in the keenest intimacy the burdens that afflict the other. In fact, there can be no deep, enduring relationship with anyone else until one is in right relationship with oneself, especially the darker layers of the unconscious with its menacing shadow figure that epitomises all the hidden, subterranean powers within oneself that have a destructive tendency until they are brought into the light of full consciousness. Then these dark forces can be transfigured and allowed to play their proper role in one's psychic life. A transparent relationship with the less agreeable but very important parts of our own psyche is possible only in intimate communion with God, Who is at once immanent in the spirit of the soul and transcendent of all human knowledge and imagination. The proof of a full, unshielded relationship with another person is the opening of the barrier that normally separates them. This barrier is erected to prevent other people seeing too closely how disordered our own inner life is in the course of everyday social intercourse while at the same time protecting us from too shattering a psychic influx emanating from emotionally unsatisfied people who would only too readily 'take over' someone else. The unprotected psyche can easily be overwhelmed by the powerful emotions of predatory individuals who are seeking, albeit unconsciously, to substantiate their own imperfect sense of identity with the strength they feel in another person.
This barrier, which is at the same time protective and isolating, has to be breached before people can communicate with each other in depth. This depth of being is clear and unobstructed; it harbours no fear and consequently it does not flinch either from increasing self-knowledge or from the less acceptable psychic influence it may acquire from unstable people in one's vicinity. The thinning of the barrier witnesses its slow dissolution as it is irradiated and transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit within one. As I become reconciled to the depths of my being - which comprise layers of scarcely penetrable darkness as well as inextinguishable rays of sublime hope - so I can bear the depths of suffering and anguish that I sense around me in the hearts of others. Now at last, and suddenly, I discover that nothing in my fellow men, indeed in the created universe, is foreign to me. Though I myself may not have experienced the problems and difficulties that afflict those around me, I am nevertheless in such close empathy with the souls of all men in pain that I can share the psychic charge that is common to all experiences of fear, loss and dereliction. As I grow in love, so the full burden of human suffering becomes known to me. I become increasingly available to all the world's pain, which has to be borne in love before it can be transfigured by the power of the Holy Spirit.
What is the gauge of the inner depths of love? In terms of outer action love can, at least to some extent, be measured by one's capacity to sacrifice everything one holds dear in the service of the beloved. The greatest love of all is the willingness to lay down one's very life for one's friends (John 15:13). The inner revelation that energises this great sacrificial love is a spontaneous opening of the depths of the soul to the suffering of all created beings. This sudden, often dramatic, yielding of the enclosed self with its previously entrenched attitude of private interest to a total outgiving of itself to life is a divine gift. It cannot be contrived since it is outside the power of the naked will. It differs radically from the manipulated affection and feigned concern that pour out from the predatory individual who attempts to woo others for ulterior purposes. Behind this façade of affection the victim is seduced; he is subtly diminished as a responsible person and deprived of his birthright of independent action. There is a corruption of integrity and a loss of freedom which are crushed and destroyed in the chilly embrace of the predator as he implants his Judas kiss on the guileless face of his victim.
By contrast, the fullness of true love is a gift of God. It is a response of the soul to God's Spirit radiantly outpoured on the agent of healing whose demeanour in turn is warm, still, balanced and undemanding. He is at home in himself with God's gift of peace that is so very different from human comfort with its sincere, well-chosen words of reassurance. The divine peace flows out in perpetual blessing to those in communication with the person imbued with God's love. As he gives his simple, undivided attention, so those around derive from that attention an assurance of God's blessing. This radiant, childlike openness to God's renewing love can be compared to the petals of a delicate flower unfolding to confront the sun and imbibe the power of its life-giving rays. As the soul yields itself to the love of God, so it is able to give itself in full, yet unobtrusive attention to the one in need, and eventually to all who are in need. 'We for our part have crossed over from death to life; this we know, because we love our brothers' (1 John 3:14). This glorious opening of the panels of the inner life to God is a manifestation of the eternal life of His Spirit within us; the proof of its life is its bestowal of life on all who come within the orbit of its influence. As we come to know inwardly that openness from which radiates a love for an ever-increasing number of people, so we can direct our attention with greater efficacy to all those around us, and especially to the ones in pain.
'Help one another to carry these heavy loads, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ' (Gal. 6:2). The way of disembarrassing the other person of his load is to share it with him, not simply to take it away with magisterial authority and god-like omnipotence. The heavy load is the person's own passport to a new world in which he can be free of the entanglements of his present unsatisfactory way of life. Were he in his present disposition transparent to God's Spirit within him, he would be able himself to cope with his burden. But until he has wrestled in courage and faith with his particular incubus, he will not be worthy of the blessing of freedom, deliverance and inner transfiguration that are the fruits of God's presence in his life, of God's affirmation of his own special place in a world drawn down by torpor and sluggish unconcern for anything except its own pleasure. A new consciousness, no longer limited by what the world believes, is moulded as we bear each other's burdens in shared responsibility.
How, in fact, do we bear one another's burdens? This question sounds, at least on the surface, to be naive and simplistic. The social activist in us all would translate it in terms of relieving his distress, whether physical, economic or political. This particular approach is unexceptionable, indeed laudable, in its own context. We have already learned that the kind of religion which is without stain or fault in the sight of God our Father is this: to go to the help of orphans and widows in their distress and keep oneself untarnished by the world (Jas 1:27). But the source of all burdens is more deeply placed than this: the outer social manifestations of malaise are essentially pointers to something inherently amiss in the depth of humanity's soul. It is only too easy to concentrate one's efforts on social amelioration and reconstruction while losing sight of the unit of society, the common man, in his inner raging torment. The individual, of course, finds his justification in terms of his role in society, but until he is inwardly justified with God, his social role will remain unfulfilled and his contribution to humanity seriously diminished. Therefore the first approach to relieving another person's burdens is by an inward dedication of oneself in caring, so that the soul of the one who helps may be in union with the soul of the distraught sufferer.
To bear another person's burden is first of all to relate positively with him in the depth of silence. This again may seem strange. Surely it is more important to engage him in conversation, indeed the intense conversation of the counselling session where problems can be discussed and difficulties thrashed out in the light of unimpassioned reason? Here the dictates of common sense illuminated by psychological understanding can help mightily to disentangle the problems of life and point the way to their solution. But problems that elude direct solution by the person himself and require the assistance of a counsellor point to a significant degree of inner turmoil that is unlikely to be healed by a merely common-sense approach without some deeper contribution on the part of the counsellor, still more so of the therapist. It is when we have passed beyond the essentially rational avenues of approach and entered in faith into an unexplored way of silent unknowing that the power of the Holy Spirit is activated; He leads all those committed to God's service along an undiscovered, yet strangely familiar, path to the fulfilment of the human quest. This is an inner renewal that promises complete healing. It is at this juncture that the rational, technical modes of approach become especially helpful - they tend to fall into place quite naturally and are easily assimilated by the person in need of help.
In the deep silence of shared intent, whether there is indeed a wordless calm or merely an intense, self-revealing conversation directed in full attention to the needs of the client, there is a rapt psychic communion between the two parties. The barrier of separative individualism has been breached, so that all those involved are now veritably parts of the same body. 'Throw off falsehood; speak the truth to each other, for all of us are the parts of one body' (Eph. 4:25). The supreme falsehood on which humanity thrives until it is shriven of its illusions by the inroads of suffering and loss is the acceptance of an atomistic separation of identity of each of its members. The end of this illusion of separate identity, in which man wars against his brother and takes up arms against his own kind, is destruction and death. This is also the experience of hell: an atmosphere of total isolation of the individual from all contact with living forms as well as from a knowledge of God's all-encompassing providence.
In the converse state of heavenly consciousness there is an unobstructed flow of psychic energy from one to the other. Nothing is withheld because there is no barrier between intimate soul communion. Heaven is artless simplicity and transparent clarity. The transparency of the true self renders it open to all other selves so that it is seen even as it sees others. The atmosphere is of God, since the Holy Spirit is both the medium of fellowship and the host at Whose table all are united in love, joy, peace and service to the world. Plotinus' vision of heaven expresses this quite marvellously,
A pleasant life is theirs in heaven. They have the truth for mother, nurse, real being and nutriment. They see all things, not the things that are born and die, but those which have real being; and they see themselves in others. For them all things are transparent, and there is nothing dark or impenetrable, but everyone has all things in himself and sees all things in another; so that all things are everywhere, and all is all and each is all, and the glory is infinite. Each of them is great, since Yonder the small is also great. In heaven the sun is all the stars and each again and all are the sun. One thing in each is prominent above all the rest; but it also shows forth all. There pure movement reigns; for that which produces the movement, not being a stranger to it, does not trouble it. Rest is also perfect there because no principle of agitation mingles with it (Ennead 5, 8, 4, translated by W R Inge).
The whole object of life, at least for the human being, is to attain this state of divine coinherence, to use a word beloved by Charles Williams. And the end of the state of coinherence is its widening so as to encompass the whole created universe in its embrace. Once our souls can coinhere in the being of even one other person, we have sacrificed the assumed proprietorship of our own life and surrendered it to Someone greater than we are. And He is God. By this act of faith we have moved into the realm of eternal life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Heaven is not experienced in the rational consciousness of what we call normal life, which is, in fact, a travesty of true reality. The existence we tend to lead from day to day is, as we have already seen, shuttered from a full exposure to the real world, so that we may remain protected from its penetrating shafts of light and live in our own darkness. The shutter we pull down around us helps to hide our secrets from the gaze of the unfeeling world. It also excludes the unchecked psychic inflow that may issue forth from the souls of other people in pain and anguish. In both situations the shutter has a protective function as a barrier: it is a guardian against those of our unscrupulous fellows who might take advantage of our own weaknesses, and it also prevents the invasion of our personality by an overwhelming psychic surge that could severely crush us. The state of infatuation that so often masquerades as love is a cogent example of psychic projection that would tend to overwhelm and ultimately destroy the object of its attraction. In the less tangible realms of the psyche beyond mortal life there are the even more terrifying phenomena of obsession and possession by displaced discarnate entities that sometimes have a demonic power but are more often tragic lost souls in search of security and love.
We can know heaven in this life only on those rare occasions when there is complete rapport between ourselves and the other person; if there is a group of people in harmony, the experience of heaven is intensified. Now at last the shutter in front of the naked soul can be lifted and a free psychic exchange tolerated, and indeed welcomed, between all those present. In the words of Psalm 133, 'How good it is and how pleasant for brothers to live together'. The fragrance of the uninhibited mutual sharing and exchange in true worship is compared with the oil of sanctity, and its purity with the early mountain dew. 'There the Lord bestows his blessing, life for evermore.'
When we are completely open, as our souls are always open to God's scrutiny, the Spirit of God cleanses and transfigures the portals of our inner being, and we can share our most intimate thoughts with others. On an even more silent level, our responses become available to those around us, and we are, in turn, able to accept some of their scarcely tolerable burden into our own psyche. This is the work of substitution, whereby we can exchange psychic pain from a sufferer and give him in turn the peace beyond understanding that we know as we are open to God. We are burdened as he is relieved of his incubus. In the words of St Paul 'For you know how generous our Lord Jesus Christ has been: he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich' (2 Cor. 8:9). The poverty of Christ is the riches of the Father, and these are bequeathed without stint on all who cry out for help. 'Here I stand knocking at the door; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sit down to supper with him and he with me' (Rev. 3:20). This is also the constant cry of divine wisdom, realised in the person of Christ. 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall never be hungry, and whoever believes in me shall never be thirsty' (John 6:35). 'If anyone is thirsty let him come to me; whoever believes in me, let him drink' (John 7:38). Wisdom cries out, but all too seldom is the cry heeded and the divine offer accepted. The wisdom of God finds its home within us in the spirit of the soul; when it is tapped it yields forth an unquenchable stream of riches, such that God alone can bestow. There is no need any longer to seek an outside source of authority; on the contrary, the seal of sanctity within recognises all true spiritual authority outside itself and responds as a brother to many other brothers. It is thus that we respond to the authority of an authentic scripture or spiritual tradition - it is like speaking to like, deep calling to deep in the roar of God's cataracts, as Psalm 42 describes it.
This inner wisdom flows out to all those who are in need. It does not simply instruct and exhort, as does worldly wisdom; it penetrates deeply into the soul of the person in distress and alleviates its pain by bearing its severity and removing it. The wisdom of God is never overwhelmed by the suffering it lays itself open to bear. It presents that suffering to God in Christ as a transaction of exchange. Christ, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world, leaves peace and forgiveness in their place. The sins Christ bears are healed by the unfailing love that accepts them without reservation and pours out the Holy Spirit on them. The Christian way of bearing another's burdens is identical with the healing power of Jesus: the person is accepted for what he is, and then the Holy Spirit transforms his personality. The one thing needed of the person himself is openness to the power of love. This is the supreme act of will that all human beings are asked to make. It is the one and only willed act that ultimately matters, for man's supreme activity is the contemplation of God. It is the purpose of our life, because its end is the transformation of the person into the image of God, which is shown to us definitively in the person of Jesus Christ.
The heart of the process of bearing another's burdens is therefore to stay in silence with him and let the interchange of psychic energy take place unimpeded and uninhibited. This work of exchange is performed by the Holy Spirit, and what He requires of us is silent acquiescence. The activity of God, far from requiring any encouragement on our part, is hindered and deflected by our gratuitous interference. This applies especially when we feel impelled by a burning desire to help God actively: Until this desire loses all obsessional concern for results and all egoistical demands for praise and reassurance, it is almost certain to degenerate into officiousness and shallow worldly wisdom. In the end it may usurp God's role in its own right, so that the counsellor dominates over the Holy Spirit.
This staying in corporate silence with another person and letting the Holy Spirit perform His great work of healing the inner disorder and bestowing counsel on the cleansed soul is at once the simplest activity and the most profound. Of the counsellor it demands such a transparent self-knowledge that no element from the unconscious can be expected to obtrude and obscure the radiance of God's Spirit within him. Obviously such an invasion of unconscious material into the field of consciousness can never be prevented by an act of will. Its baneful effect is obviated by the power of love radiating so strongly and insistently from within us that it can intercept, greet and enfold all that is unclean or perverse, whether it comes from our own darkness or from the darkness of the collective unconscious, from which we inherit the psychic information as well as the destructive tendencies that have arisen from creature activity since life started. Christ did not flinch from any human experience, nor turn his back on any who were in need, no matter how sordid their way of life or degraded their circumstances. He was open in direct awareness to the full gamut of human experience. This is very different from viewing the degraded and diseased at a distance, from the vantage-point of self-imposed domination where one can look down in judgmental pity and dispense the medicine of worldly wisdom in lordly condescension. In a truly healing relationship the medicine of God's power has first to cleanse one's own soul of its separativeness and subversion. Only then can that medicine of grace act through one to heal the other person. And furthermore, the cleansed soul is now an integral part of the divine balm that restores the health of that which was diseased and perverted. Thus the true counsellor is not only the channel of the Holy Spirit; he is also the refined instrument of that Spirit. He is used as an aid in healing by the Holy Spirit; he does not impress himself on others as a healing agent, but is used in his humility as the representative of Christ to effect the cure. We do God's work best when we offer ourselves to Him in steadfast love, saying 'Thy will be done', and then becoming servants in stillness. That stillness is perfected by God to become a peace that brings all created forms into a vortex of transforming love in which a new being is fashioned.
In this state of self-renunciation, the Holy Spirit issues forth from the counsellor, who now becomes a radiant instrument of God's healing power; it is, indeed, at this point that the ministries of healing and counselling merge to become one great service of reconciliation and transfiguration. The darkness of the one in need is taken in exchange by the minister of God's grace; in Him it is lightened and healed. In turn, the Holy Spirit descends into, or more correctly issues effectively from the soul of the one who has been disembarrassed of his heavy incubus of darkness and despair. The Spirit can now lead the person into a full confrontation of his problem and show him the way to its solution. This seldom involves a miraculous release. Much more often it consists of a patient coping with the difficulty, but now with the conscious support of God. In due course the journey comes to its end and the person emerges much stronger in character as a result of the ordeal. Thus a blessing has been obtained by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the love and dedication of the counsellor.
This ministry of silence in deep fellowship with the afflicted may seem vague, insubstantial and visionary to the rationalist and sceptic who feels that extravert activity is the key to true relationships at all levels. But until we have experienced the inner release of tension and anxiety that tranquillity brings, we shall never know the healing power of God in silence. In silence we can not only hear the articulated cry of the one in need, but can also sense it on a far more interior psychic level. If we know the power of love as an inner reality we can rest assured that we are worthy of exchanging the quota of suffering with the other person. And then healing commences. As the man born blind said of Jesus' healing power, 'All I know is this: once I was blind, now I can see' (John 9:25). The divine exchange of Jesus' love and the Spirit that illuminated it heralded the healing, and its fruit was the birth of a resolute man enabled to grow into spiritual maturity.