The Painful Beauty of Being "Broken-Open"

"Water finds limitless power by seeking it's lowest point."
– Zen saying

There's an essential aspect of our growth through this life that, by it's very nature, is so undesirable and contradictory to our search for happiness that it's often purposely overlooked, even by the most ardent self-examiners. In fact, I almost don't want to mention it (but I will). It's what happens to us when unavoidably awful things are happening to us…that is, when we have really good reasons to be unhappy.

This is a miraculously beautiful world we get to inhabit, no doubt about it, but it's also fraught with terrible passages, and what appear to be injustices of the worst kind all around. Unfortunately, none of us will escape these experiences completely. But is it really misfortune, or is it our opportunity to discover our greatest potential? After all, feelings will come and go in a predictable way. Bad things feel bad, good things feel good. It is a sensory world.

When something awful happens to us: When we're laid-off from a "secure" job; we lose a loved one in an unfair way; when we are ourselves suddenly victimized by bad health; when we "fail" at finance – or with a relationship; or even when we're just forced to confront our flaws again. At all those times when we're forced into a situation we don't want to be in (a place no one wants to be), but simply must go through at one time or another, then there are choices we can make based on our not having any choice.

Unavoidable powerlessness in the face of Fate evokes a deep, personal response in everyone who's ever lived. Suddenly, involuntarily, we discover true humility at it's most profound level. It's thrust upon us when there's no alternative. Nothing can be done except to face the situation standing as firmly as you can on the ground of your most basic being, with all pretense of specialness or entitlement (gratefully) stripped-away.

Ouch. You've been fired. Your Mother is dying. Your boyfriend has betrayed you. A soulless corporation is exploiting you and your pristine world. Your car won't start. Instantly, you are no longer the VP of your company, or untouched by loss, or in a happy relationship, or safe from the unconsciousness of a developer's greed, or getting there on time – you're just a human being, being washed-over by the tsunami of Life – it's very unavoidable erosion suddenly stripping away all of your artifice.

What gifts could possibly be there to meet you, when you're beset upon by these catastrophes? The gift may just be that clear window of self-realization. A realization of the principles which underly personal survival and happiness at their deepest level. You are forced to confront a powerful, more appropriate respect for all life; an unconditional identification with everyone else who's ever been in the same difficult spot; a real understanding of the importance of Love; and a resolve to meet the challenge (and maybe then, all your life) with honesty, openness, and willingness. It's the gift of an involuntary faith that you can only find by becoming profoundly vulnerable.

In the clarity of your resolve to live – to get through it – you might realize that you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. It's not so bad, being a human in pain. This is the moment that you are really alive. Life is showing you what's real. The injury is really a state of grace.

That's what that spiritual presence is (Buddhist "Right Occupation"): compassionate purpose without self-interest. Occupying that difficult, unavoidable place and choosing to reject the imaginary penalties of fear and separation. Recognizing the true medium of Love that flows underneath, within, and through everything; and becoming it's facilitator, it's medium, if you can.

So we occupy these difficult places tentatively, often unwillingly to start, but then we can enter into the pain completely, knowing this too shall pass. Then we can choose to show up for Life with an innate positivity that's made evident in that pure light, made visible to us by being thoroughly broken-open to it. In that difficult place, whatever it might be, we can truly celebrate this delicate condition we all share. We are cycling back to where all love lost will be rediscovered.

Am I suggesting that we seek pain, and enter it willingly? Thanks, but no thanks! But as there isn't much hope of avoiding it, I ask only that you try to recognize what it might be offering you – the chance to occupy that place the best way you possibly can – with Love in your heart; and there to meet another you – the inter-dimensional, spiritual you that's alive within everything you are, and without everything you were "supposed to be."

"The Heart is the centre of the real...the ego is the [human] link between spirit and matter; it is...the knot of radical ignorance...When this knot is cut asunder by proper means you find the centre." "Go back constantly to the question "Who am I?" Tear everything away until only the source of all is left."

Ramana Maharshi


Read about this and much more in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is due out early 2018, from Llewellyn Worldwide can be pre-ordered online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

The Educational Beauty in What We Avoid

"Everyone chooses a suffering that will change him or her to a well-baked loaf."

                                                  Rumi

Each of us has our own story of ourselves. If yours is anything like mine, then it's mildly heroic, in an appropriately humble way I hope. I'd like to think about myself in a positive way, so I suppose I've consciously (and subconsciously) fashioned a fairly favorable version of my personal history. It's full of challenges, disappointments, and properly scaled victories, like a good movie – without the final act.

 My story of myself is undoubtedly different than the story you have of me, and vice versa. Your story of me may even be more favorable than the one I've been working on for myself (which would be nice of you), or it may possibly be less favorable. But one thing is certain: I've been working much harder on my story than on yours. I have a lot at stake in the carefully crafted picture of myself that I've created.

It never really occurred to me that the areas where I was not entirely honest in my self-account were exactly the same areas where my life seemed to hurt the worst. It was as if I had hand-crafted some protective finish to conceal a painful wound or blemish in the smoothed-out story of who I am – often without even noticing that I'd gone to all the trouble of leaving many of the difficult parts out. Imagine that. So something had to happen to open my eyes to the uncomfortable truths I'd hidden in my story. This is where the stuff we usually avoid becomes just the stuff we really need.

Eventually, like a phony showing off his bullwhip tricks, I experienced severe and sobering self-induced pain. A shock to the pride that could have been predicted. Then I had to walk around with my nasty injury exposed, whether others noticed it or not, I sure did. I couldn't not notice it – it hurt. And it hurt because 1) It's supposed to hurt, in order to capture my attention; and 2) Because I was afraid everybody else would see the truth I'd been concealing (I'm really no good with a bullwhip). Something was kicking up again, and I couldn't smooth it over, or ignore it anymore.

   "Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth."

                                                    Pema Chodron

That pain and fear made me realize that there was something (or somebody) at work in here. An anonymous, invisible editor, obscuring my uncomfortable truths in a very sneaky, and very effective way. Me, and my shadow, strollin' down the avenue. My shadow editor, my ego, tells me that I have to cover up my hurt – that I'll lose something that I can't afford to lose, or fail to get something that I "really need" if I don't. Of course, by now I hope that we've established that he can always be relied upon to make trouble, but maybe he's doing something beneficial too. All that activity obscuring the truth and securing a delusion happens around something. It's within the pathology of the perpetrator to lead us back to the scene of the crime.

So, while it may seem that you have to be a little crazy to focus on instances of fear and pain, on causes and conditions of discomfort, in order to reveal the blemished reality of your self, maybe you have to be a little crazy not to. A little pathological, as it were. But since pathology isn't really a choice, but more of a geography, then it isn't something to avoid, but something to explore.

"Yeshua said:  If you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

                                       Logion 70, The Gospel of Thomas

Fear and pain are inevitable in Life – so what if they're really showing me something about myself that if I got to work on, I'd be less pathological, and much happier? Something very specific to my ongoing story, some old subconscious editing, inserted to self-enhance, or hide a hurt I'd caused. What if the subtle lies of omission point to what's missing, to the source of my suffering, and the bleeding heart of my selfishly low self-esteem? 

When I can step outside of myself with that objectivity, I may finally start to escape the self-centered importance of my story, and begin to think more about everyone else in my life, and in the world. Maybe I can help them write a more successful story of themselves. That would be a better way to spend my time. Maybe my fear and pain can free me to help ease someone else's fear and pain, and help them realize that we can all be one, that we all are one – unified by our shared experience. Now the story really starts getting better for everyone.

In Buddhism, this is called bodhicitta, and your hardcore Buddhist monks really go a little overboard on this idea, this path to self-realization and transcendence. Listen to this:

"Adverse conditions are spiritual friends. Devils and demons are emanations of the victorious ones. Illness is the broom for evil and obscurations. Suffering is the dance of what is."

                                                                Lord Serlingpa

That's probably why I'll never be a hardcore Buddhist monk. But it is kind of an amazing, selfless approach, isn't it? A radical way to defuse and redefine our typical view of fear and pain. A kind of revolutionary attitude that reveals the beautiful underlying purpose of all the stuff I usually want to avoid. "Suffering is the dance of what is." I mean, I hate to suffer, but I love to dance...perhaps being injured can help me to hear God's music.

So I guess I'll put the bullwhip down, for now. I think the best trick I ever learned with it was snapping my own ass, after all. Anyways, no one ever called me a bullwhip artist.  

  

"There is only one thing I dread – not to be worthy of my sufferings."

                                                       Dostoevsky


The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide can be ordered direct on this page or online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!