True spirituality is about self-surrender, about bringing our wills into alignment with the will of God. Not about the cessation of pain. Throughout history there have been many cases of people finding God while under lock and key. My own experience in jail confirms for me that something does happen when our souls hit rock bottom, when we are trapped in prisons that are sometimes of our own making and not always constructed of iron and steel. Life can sometimes feel like a cage from which there is no escape...Yet, beyond the crucible of spiritual darkness is the light of inner redemption. If we believe that a descent into the abyss can ultimately make us stronger, we will outlive the nightmare. The challenge is to brave our dark nights and wait for the dawn.
It's a curious paradox in this life that change is a constant, dependable, and unchanging fact. But when we try to control the moment by denying what is so, we have lost the moment to the past or the future. Trying to alter the moment steals it from us. If we want fruitful change in our lives, we have to move through each moment, experiencing its wholeness, savoring what it has to offer, noticing where we are stuck, and in the process maintain an intimate contact with our deepest sense of self.