If one day you bang your elbow and seven years later the same spot still aches, and now radiating pains are appearing in your fingers and shoulder, you would start to suspect that something in your body’s system was amiss! You would conclude, virtually beyond any doubt, that your original injury never healed properly.

By the very fact of its continuing presence in our body, we intuitively know that such pains are not supposed to linger on and on. But speaking of a pain that won’t go away, that spreads and compromises other parts of the self, what about that ache that appeared that day your close friend betrayed your trusting heart? Why doesn’t it seem odd to us that this pain should persist and, in some cases, worsen as it so often does?

The real question before us is twofold: we have to ask ourselves not only why these types of mental and emotional wounds never stop hurting us, but also why it is that their hidden cause — that “slash” somewhere in our soul — just won’t heal… [to be continued]