Therapy strives to make the deficient self stronger by uncovering the sources of a person’s emotional pain and releasing the rigid defensive patterns built up against it. Spiritual exploration ploughs the same ground but is less concerned with “fixing” or improving things than with rediscovering what is whole and has not been absent, just obscured. As Edmund Spenser wrote, “For there is nothing lost but may be found, if sought.”8 What form of spiritual seeking a person chooses is determined by place, culture, belief, and personal inclination.
