(This is Part 21 of a series. Go back to Part 20.)
The examples of the shadow in human life are like the legs on a centipede, seemingly endless:War, murder, rape, famine, slavery, torture, disease, addiction, financial ruin. Loss of a loved one—chlld, parent, partner, friend.
Loss of a way of life. Loss of beauty or health. Loss of family, home, job, business. Loss of meaning or direction, loss of one's ideals or clarity or belonging or reputation.
Grief, despair, fear, anxiety, alienation, shame, confusion, disillusionment. Is there any end to the list?—and yet this hardly begins to enumerate all the possibilities. Why does the shadow exist in our universe? Why is there suffering?
We've already talked about the inherent duality of reality as perceived by the mind. Indeed, we can't even go for a drive in the car without incurring this: We go where we want ("good") but there's always the potential for a serious accident ("bad"). The two possibilities exist together and cannot be divorced.
Having a body means the pleasure of experiencing food or a flower or friendship ("good") but it also means the pain of illness, death, suffering ("bad"). Our religions have brought comfort to many ("good") and also great conflict and suffering ("bad") . And so on. No matter what aspect of life we might talk about, this duality exists.
Yet this very duality also makes our growth possible, and without it many of the things we most treasure would very likely not happen.
Let's take an example: Life can bring us great fear, great anxiety, even great terror, and yet this is the very thing that can prompt us to let go of control and surrender to something greater than ourselves. Otherwise, why would we bother?
This was Eckhart Tolle's path to liberation. He describes how his anxiety built up and up and up until one night it completely consumed him. At that point something in him shattered, and out of necessity he let go at a level beyond description, a let-go like death itself. And he woke up to
a transformed world.
Another example: Would we develop compassion for others without the existence of pain and suffering? Very doubtful. In feeling our own pain and suffering we begin to appreciate the pain and suffering of others; something in our heart can open to a new and different place.
Another example: The knowledge that we're going to die can, if we're open to it, bring an intense appreciation of life's beauty and fragility. The approach of death wakes many of us up; it woke up both my father and my mother.
The knowledge that life is fleeting can bring an exquisite tenderness if we're open to it. We look at a sunset and suddenly we stop thinking about it. We just take it in, we experience its ineffable beauty like a stab to the heart.
The knowledge that sooner or later we'll lose everything we love—that all things are fleeting—can, if we open to that realization, bring a quickening to our experience of them while they are still here. It can bring a realization of how fortunate we are—they are still here, they are here now. If we truly grasp this it can literally bring us to our knees—gone, gone, gone in appreciation and gratitude.
We are here now and what we love is here now. That is what matters. And the love in our hearts—which is the determinant of our happiness—is not dependent upon our circumstances.
I forget who it was, but there is a true story of a prisoner in desperate circumstances in a solitary confinement cell. He was continually bemoaning his situation and feeling anguish, despair and rage that destiny had brought him such a bitter fate.
Then he noticed an insect crawling up a wall. A mere insect, slowly and laboriously making its way up the wall. The prisoner studied the insect for a time and suddenly burst into tears. But it was far more than tears. His heart filled with love for this insignificant insect, and for all that it represented—all of life, all of existence. He felt,
he knew that it was the divine crawling up the wall.
And suddenly he was liberated—in the very middle of
his desperate, contracted, hopeless situation. Suddenly something opened within him and he felt a kinship with all the suffering in the world. He knew now that it was
the suffering, not "his" suffering, and his heart knew the absolute oneness of existence.
Notice that the prisoner's heart didn't break open as he was watching an insect in the comfort of his living room. If he'd noticed one in his living room he'd probably have squashed it and moved on to reading his magazine. No,
it was the extreme negativity of his situation that allowed that insignificant, "ugly" insect to liberate his existence.
Now he too understood the meaning of the saying that if you put a Zen master in hell it would be heaven to him.
(This is the end of Part 21. Go to Part 22.)
—jim sloman, 1.12.06
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