Whatever the now-current science of personal development may theorize, the fact remains that the self is all we have. It is the raw material of the spiritual life. It is not the world with which we wrestle; it is the self that is the antagonist in our lives. The cry of the restless self is the cry for the God beyond the little gods we fashion along the way.

Self is what enables us to refuse to settle down, in love with the mediocre, satisfied with the banal, because the self is always on its way to somewhere else. Self is the seeker within. Even when we cannot be moved by the world around us, self rages on inside of us, relentless in its seeking, regardless of its restraints. We get one thing we want—and find that we want something more. We achieve what we set out to do—and find that we begin to look almost immediately for some other hill to climb.

Dissatisfaction becomes the spiritual director of our souls. We keep trying to be satisfied—accept what you have, we tell ourselves—when satisfaction may be the chloroform of life. God is life, not torpidity. “You shall worship the Sovereign your God, and God only shall you serve.” (Mt. 4:10)

These words trip off the tongue—all the while I worship other gods. Lesser genies of my ravenous soul. I have worshipped so many false gods in life, yet in the collapse of each of them—and they have indeed collapsed—I have come closer, ironically, to the god who is God. Everything else has failed me—people, privilege, positions, profit—but not this God who is “not in the whirlwind.” That God, like a magnet, draws me on. And someday, perhaps, I will lose myself down the black hole of nothingness and find everything. Without the dissatisfaction of the soul, how could we ever find our way to more?

—from Called to Question:a spiritual memoir by Joan Chittister