It is fashionable nowadays to see spiritual work as a means of uncovering your perfect self, your inner child, the unblemished soul just aching to be recognised and revealed. There is an element of truth in this of course, but at most it represents just one side of the story. As well as being perfect souls we are also wretched sinners – we contain a dark side, a very dark side – and it is this side that really needs to be revealed and attended to, not the other. This is why so much of what passes for positivity – positive thought and action – is just a way of avoiding what we don't have the courage to face about ourselves, as though ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist will make it go away. It wont. It will bide its time and then, when I least expect it, bite into me with a ferocity impossible to imagine.