As children we are wounded and our positive or organic development interfered with – which can set us on a path of alienated development; this traumatic history is often behind present time crises.
However, in terms of spiritual growth we must distinguish between the wounding of the child and the tasks and challenges that face we adults. We face accident, illness and ageing, bereavement and loss of important friends and lovers (their abusive history can come back to haunt them); disease (covid), disaster and war; among other deep psychological and social tensions inherent in the human condition.
While the wounded child needs self-affirming, loving therapy and care – the wider trials of adult life can call for transcendence, a deep change of heart, a letting go of the poisons that sicken the soul such as resentment and outrage, existential fears or subtle attachment to suffering or self-image. Sometimes the situations of adult life can restimulate wounds and trauma and we have to sit with the whole catastrophe and, carefully differentiate what belongs to the child and what belongs to the more resourced adult. In a sense we may be embarking on a spiritual walk together, for a time.
Furthermore, as spirit awakens in us, we may find ourselves in a spiritual emergency; a developmental moment where we must shed what no longer serves our soul and spirit. Most of this is inner work we may need to jettison nothing or no-one in the outer world for the healing to begin, there is no need to act out what needs to be integrated…this is what C.J. Jung, one of our transpersonal teachers, called Individuation and the vast paradox of becoming who you already are.