No one book or healing session or religious service is going to stop all our tears. The spiritual medicine that heals our sadness is not a pill or a shot; it’s an internal process of awakening from a dream that is posing as reality. Given that our entire culture is predicated on thoughts that separate us, belittle us even to ourselves, and breed fear of anyone and everything, it is no surprise so many people feel as though they live under a very dark cloud.
Your true self knows you are one with the universe, created in the perfect image of God, eternally innocent, blessed and protected, here only to love and forgive. This true self, by whatever name we call it, is obscured beneath layers of illusion. At this point your true self is so used to crouching within the cage to which the ego has assigned it, it’s as though it has forgotten how to stand forth in glory. We lack the psychological skill sets that lead to joy.
We cultivate the emotional habits of sadness more than the emotional habits of happiness. We’ve been so trained to think thoughts of fear and attack that the mental musculature to support our joy has shriveled.
And it is up to each of us to rebuild those muscles, no different than it is up to us to strengthen the muscles of our bodies. We generally agree that we are responsible for many things about our lives, but somehow not our emotions. In fact, happiness derives from a decision we make. We might not be happy today, but as long as we’ve developed the musculature of happiness then we will find the internal strength to return to it.
People for the most part go through crises the way we go through life in general. If I consistently perceive myself as at the mercy of the changing tides of circumstance, projecting onto people or things that they are the source of my happiness, then I am bound to cry when the person or circumstance doesn’t do as I wish. At that point, I will be tempted to hold a grievance against that person or circumstance, which will only increase my pain.
My mind, therefore, is the source of my sadness. And my mind is the source of my happiness. Only I get to choose how I use my mind, but however I choose to use it will determine whether I’m on my way to pain or on my way to peace.
One day I was in an airport gift shop browsing through fashion magazines. While I admired the beautiful pictures I also noticed that with every page, I started feeling worse about myself. My face. My body. My age. My clothes. And then I realized I was starting to buy one of those magazines! I quickly put it down like it was a hot coal, thinking, “Why would I do that to myself?!” I was going straight from an experience that made me feel bad to an effort to get more of it. This is not to say that such magazines have no place in life, but for me on that particular day—not so much.
And do we not do that to ourselves consistently? We are so sucked into a modern brew of loveless perceptions that we are tempted to think that we have no choice. And that, right there, is where the awakening begins. We do have a choice. We always have a choice.
DECIDING TO BE HAPPY
From Buddha’s Eightfold Path to the Ten Commandments to the Workbook of A Course in Miracles, any serious spiritual teaching involves more than a prescription for feeling good. Enlightenment is serious work.
In order to survive and thrive, humanity must disavow a fictional worldview that poses as reality. Spirituality is a radical realization that the body’s senses tell us lies, that time is not what it appears to be, and that the universe is more malleable than we thought. At first all this is a terrible shock, but ultimately it becomes such a joy to know. While it rattles us at first to learn that we’re not who we think we are and the world isn’t what we thought it was, once it finally hits us what that means, then it’s a source of complete relief.
This moment of realization, this surrender of limited perspective and openness to miracles, signifies the death of the ego. But like Pharaoh responding to Moses’s demand that the Israelites be released from slavery, the ego says, “Nope. Not so fast.” One moment of egolessness is not necessarily followed by a moment of more egolessness, so much as by a moment of panic. The ego puts up some strong defenses. Too much love will not be tolerated, and too much forgiveness will simply not do.
How attached we are at times to our suffering. To the ego, after all, pain is a peak experience. In certain ways, we’ve created a cultural propensity to what author Caroline Myss calls “woundology.” We get more support in our society for the places where we are wounded than for the places where we are healed. We’re more apt to find camaraderie among those who share our tears than among those who share our joy.
There is an emotional art to balancing the allowance of our suffering with the certitude that this too shall pass. And that certainty doesn’t just rest on our faith in God. It must rest on our faith in ourselves. We must develop a way of talking to ourselves much like the way we talk to our children: “. . . because I said so.” I will survive this because I choose to survive this. There is a difference between a dark valley where you know God walks with you, and a hellish descent into a bottomless abyss. The bottomless abyss is not of God and if you ever find yourself falling into it, get on the case with whatever tools come into your mind. “Satan get thee behind me” works. Imagining a crucifix thrust toward a vampire works. Falling to your knees and crying “God, please help me” works.
Because you must get up. We need you here. Perhaps your children need you or your partner needs you. And even if neither of those exist, the world still needs you. For you, like everyone, are a precious child of God, and there would be a huge hole in the universe if you decided to check out. Perhaps you cannot see your strengths, but they are within you because God put them there. Perhaps you cannot see a future, but it exists in the Mind of God. Perhaps you cannot imagine being happy again, but you will be because God has heard your prayer and has miracles in store for you.
The ego torments you, as it torments us all. But the ego is a liar and what it says to you is not true. You are not dried up, or useless, or damaged, or a failure, or a loser, or a problem to have around. As long as you are alive, and even longer, you are of infinite value. You are God’s eternally innocent creation, no matter what anyone thinks of you or what anyone has done to you, or anything you’ve done wrong or any failure you might have experienced. As low as you feel you might have fallen, that is how high you will rise in God. He will gently scoop you up in His hands and lift you to the highest heights.
And He will do this for His sake. Not because you’re a nice person, which you may or may not be. He will do it because that is what love does, because He cannot turn His back on His children though we so consistently turn our back on Him. He will do it because His creativity and His mercy are without end. He will do it not just because He loves you, but because He is love.
And His love is infinite. Your cowering beneath the weight of the ego’s monstrous force is not God’s will for you or for anyone. Love is the victor. The battle has already been won. You do not have to fight for the victory, but simply accept it as already accomplished. For only what is love is real, no matter what shape or size or form the nightmarish hallucination might now be taking in your life.
Hold on, be strong, have faith until tomorrow comes. For no dark night has ever not been followed by the glorious radiance of God’s new day. Surrender to Him and ask Him to help you. Then get up, wash your face, dry your tears, and show up to help someone else—someone who is having as hard a time, perhaps even harder, holding on today as you are. Turning your compassion to their weakness, you will find your strength.
None of us ever knows what suffering lurks beneath the brave exterior of anyone we meet. But it is reasonable to assume that no matter what suffering we have endured, whoever stands to our left and whoever stands to our right has suffered as much as we have. A deep river of agony underlies the templates of mortal consciousness, as all of us struggle mightily to survive in a world that refuses to see us, or hear us, or love us as we would wish to be seen and heard and loved.
Feeling that way does not make you odd. It makes you human. It means you feel the exquisite pain of being a stranger in a strange land, and you have made your way to the extraordinary realization that the material world is not your home. The fact that you cannot bear it here is entirely valid. The point is, understanding this is not the end. It is the beginning. You’re not at home in this world, but you are at home in the arms of God.
He has sent you here to reclaim this plane of existence for the light that is at the heart of things. Earth has been held hostage for a very long time, the human race imprisoned here within our own minds, seemingly limited to the very small pieces of joy the ego will allow. But you’re not here to be a prisoner in this world. You’re here to help set it free.
Has not your suffering helped in some way to make you more aware of humanity’s frailty? Has it not expanded your compassion for those who walk with you? Has it not in some way prepared you for a larger life?
When you remember who you really are, and the glorious purpose of your existence here, then you will fall to your knees again—this time not in pain but in gratitude, overwhelmed by the blessing and privilege of having been given such a miracle as this life you get to live. You’ll ask that God make of you a shining star in the darkened skies of the world, that you might represent His love and reflect His goodness for those who cry as you have cried. Whatever problems you have, simply put them in His hands now. He will handle them for you, as He turns you into someone who can handle them yourself. You’ll emerge much stronger, and be ready to work miracles in the lives of others as God worked miracles in yours.
God Himself will wipe away all tears and that will wipe away all doubt. When the morning comes, you will hardly remember the pain of this night. The memory will only appear when it is useful for you to remember, that others might be strengthened by you and you be strengthened by them. Look forward, not backward. To the light, and not to the dark. To God and not to anyone or anything less powerful or pure, for only God is God and only God can do what your ego says cannot be done: lift you up and raise you high.
The darkness has no power before the light within your heart. Be patient. Give it time, if it needs time. God will give you back not only the life you thought you lost but also one you never dreamed possible. Having suffered, you will have a taste for sweetness and a talent for happiness and an appetite for peace. You will be a bearer of sweetness and a bearer of happiness and a bearer of peace—for your sake, for God’s sake, and for the sake of all the world.
Such are the rewards of holding on and trusting in the Lord. For God is good. God is great. And God is true.
Amen.