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So what's the payoff to this "spiritual awakening?"
Well, let's say you've had some tragedy in your past, something that left a mark on you, on your life, on your idea of life. And let's say someone asks you a question about that thing that maybe you've never asked yourself, and now of course you can't help but ask, and then the sadness from so many years ago rises in you, it's there as if it never left, sitting on your chest and you couldn't make it move even if you wanted to... let's say something like this happens.
Your thoughts say nothing has changed, everything good is a lie, the only thing real is this feeling. You deserve this feeling. This feeling is you. Live with it, die with it. No one cares.
If I am a meditator, if each day I have the experience of self that is behind all the swirl and clatter, then I know the thoughts are a lie. I know that the feelings are stresses that are being released in my body, old calluses of emotion from which I have long since needed to heal. I know I am at one with nature, that nature is evolving through me and that however uncomfortable it may be for me to go through this process, at the end of it I will be stronger, lighter, more present. The energy that has been bound up for years in these stresses will be accessible. The lessons we've learned from the tragedy finally will be available for us to lend to someone else who may need them, and this thing that was tragedy takes its place as another thread in this beautiful tapestry that is our life.
Sad Angel, Waverly Cemetery, Sydney, Australia
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Kober
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