Broken Open - Elizabeth Lesser

 

Prelude say: "And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.  - Anais Nin"

Joseph compbell, the great mythologist of the twentieth century, wrote, "We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. 

The book is divided into 6 parts: 

Part I: The call of the soul

It can be unsettling to dip below the familiar and descend into the more mysterious realms of the soul. 

Any of us feel uncomfortable revealing to others and even to ourselves what lies beneath the surface of our day-to-day consciousness. We shut down to our soul several time. There is a feeling of deadness. How the river diverts itself and breaks through in other ways - as a desire to blame, as an emotion of anger, as physical illness, as restlessness, or a weariness, or self-destruction. The soul always speak and it always speak the loudest when we block its flow, when we live only half of a life, when we stay on the surface. If we don't listen to the voice of the soul, it sings a strange tune. If we don't go looking for what lies beneath the surface of our lives, the soul comes looking for us. 

No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it  - Albert Einstein. 

In What Einstein Knew, she writes about her experience, when she meets the psychic to find if she should divorce, 

What lesson do you want to learn? It is to find and trust your own precious voice. Only those who love themselves can love others, that only people who claim their own voice can hear the true song of another. What feels like painful loss now will become something beautiful later on. You cannot escape your destiny. You can certainly try. People do every day. They hold on tight, and the river just dries up. Things may get worse before they get better, but they'll only get better if you let them get worse. 

Take Voyage from once born innocence to twice born wisdom, it is never easy. Most generous and vital people are those who have been broken open by change, or loss, or adversity. And not just broken open on the outside. It is the internal transformation that matters most. If there is one thing that make a difference, it is the courage to turn and face what wants to change within.

In the difficult are the friendly forces, the Hands that work on us - Poet Rilke. Every shift in our life comes courtesy of the friendly forces; every catastrophe can hand us exactly what we need to awaken into who we really are. 

Open Secret: Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you've been given, the door will open. - Rumi. Within us - burning brighter than any movie star - is our own star, our North Star, our soul. It is our birthright to uncover the soul - to remove the layers of fear or shame or apathy or cynicism that conceal it. A good place to start, and a place we come back to over and over again is what Rumi calls the Open Secret. When your heart is undefended, you make it safe for whomever you meet to put down his burden of hiding, and then you both can walk through the open door. 

We're all bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride - Wavy Gravy. it is important. 

Open heart - It's interesting and important to know our body, and how it function. While we are here contained within, bones and muscles, organs and skin, take care of the gift of body, feed it well, move it gracefully and rest it deeply. 

Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, by the Tibetan Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa, meditation teacher: "You feel sad and lonely and perhaps romantic at the same time, that is the first tip of fearlessness, and the first sign of real warrior-ship." Discovering fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. 

Lighting up and falling down, We are chunks of dense matter that need to be cracked open. Our errors and failings are chinks in the heart's armor through which our true colors can shine. 

In the beginner's mind there are may possibilities, in the expert's mind , there are few. The Soul "Was the one who answer the question 'why are you really here?' It is the wise and whole and brave part of the self. The soul is the ageless longing for truth that sends scientists into the lab and seekers onto the spiritual path. "

Soul wants you to go beneath. It leads downward. It says, "Don't ignore the signs. Follow your longing down. Go beneath the surface of your troubled mind, your bad moods, your repetitive mistakes. Go beneath the surface questions to even deeper questions. " 

We can relate to our circumstances as messengers from the dep, or we can shut down, defend our position, and add another layer of protection to the castle wall. If we defend against the Strange Angels, we will become more and more numb to life. We will remain unchanged . If we allow the angels entry, we will open the door to change and evolution. As in a fairy tale, the moral may be a simple one, but the story maps a dangerous, fantastic, and transformational journey. 

The Rapture of being alive, is what we all all seeking not just a meaning for life. an experience of being alive. The world suffers more from unhappy, stifled people trying to do good than it does from those who are simply content within themselves. If we reject what is painful, we find only more pain, but if we embrace what is within us - if we peer fearlessly into the shadows - we stumble upon the light. 

Shaman of a Caribou Eskimo tribe in northern Canada, Igjugarjuk, told European visitors that the only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and can be reached only through suffering. We too much go through such a time, when life as we have known it is over - when being a caterpillar feels somehow false and yet we don't know who we are supposed to become. All we know is that something bigger is calling us to change. And though we much make the journey alone, and even if suffering is our only companion, soon enough we will become a butterfly, soon enough we will taste the rapture of being alive. 

Feel the rapture. What wants to live in you may be waiting - at the end of long loneliness. 

               

In the first part, Elizabeth Lesser speak of her childhood, first marriage, and divorce. 

While the first and the third part had details from Elizabeth Lessers own life, second part has examples from others. 

Part II: The Phoenix Process

The transformational journey is a voyage with a hundred different names: the Odyssey, the Gail quest, the great initiation, the death and rebirth process, the supreme battle, the dark night of the soul, the hero's journey. All of these names describe the process of surrendering to a time of great difficulty, allowing the pain to break us open, and then being reborn - stronger, wiser, and kinder. 

You and I are the Phenix. We too can reproduce ourselves from the shattered pieces of a difficult time. Our lives ask us to die and to be reborn every time we confront change - change within ourselves, and change in our world. When we descend all the way down to the bottom of loss, and dwell patiently, with an open heart, in the darkness and pain, we can bring back up with us the sweetness of life and the exhilaration of inner growth. When there is nothing left to lose, we find the true self - the self that is whole, the self that is enough, the self that no longer looks to others for definition, or completion, or anything but companionship on the journey. This is the way to live a meaningful and hopeful life - a life of real happiness and inner peace. This is the Phoenix Process. 

The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.  - Victor Frankl. Every one has a burden to bear, and no one can carry it for us. It's our won chimidunchik. "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life - daily and hourly. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. "

This too shall pass. Everything passes and changes and turns into something you would never have imagined. Do not dwell on whether or not something should be happening. Sometimes we have "Choiceless choice". When faced with tough situation, anger is another common reaction after denial begins to fade. 

When faced with adversity, name each of tables four legs - Faith, courage, growth and love. 

By failing to accept your suffering, the pain you feel will be much more acute and harsh. There are three major hurdles to overcome in crisis: dealing with pain; working with your attitude; and using the crisis as a wake-up nd a clean up call. 

There is the story of the baggage -chimidunchik, Jude and her second child and both suffering, Ram Dass, Before and after the death of loved son, surviving the Holocaust, learning to live with incurable illness, .  Yeudah Fine's 'Time Square Rabbi: Finding hope in lost kids' lives', in a broken heart is an open heart; September 11, witnessing terror or experiencing trauma are Phoenix processes of the tallest order. Come through one of them with an open heart and you light a path through the woods for all. 

In a beautiful poem called "As I walked out one Evening", W. H. Auden expresses in a few line the essence of the Phoenix Process:

O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbour

With your crooked heart. 

'Ray of Hope' - Have you seen this anywhere? Amazing job by students of the Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology, 'The phoenix'  a mythical bird believed to rise from its own ashes.

Part III: The Shaman Lover

The end of marriage and the dissolution of family, was a great Phoenix process for the writer. Intimate relationships are a powerful catalyst for personal growth and transformation. Having three sisters and three sons, growing up in a family of women, and creating a family of men is the family life. There is some kiss we want with our whole lives - Rumi. EL went looking for it, Her mother had always told the girls, being in love was a romantic fantasy, and that the life of  the mind was the one to trust. Many couple unconsciously recreate our parents marriage. The Shaman is a medicine man or a healing witch who hold an exalted place in the society. EL found one. The great epochs of life come when we gain the courage to re-christen our evil as what is best in us.  - Friedrich Nietzsche. From the beginning they knew meeting could only end in parting, yet they ignored the coming dawn and gave themselves to each other. In Greek such passion is called Eros. The son of Aphrodite, was the golden god of love and the personification of passion and sexual relationship.   

Mystic Crossroads are moments in our lives where the unconscious crosses consciousness; where the eternal crosses the transitory; where a higher will demands the surrender of our egos.

"So long has you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  EL married Tom , after the note: " I only want to be with someone who has died." 

"Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy? " Marriage should be between two whole people - two people who have married the shadow and the light within themselves, and who love the truth as much as they love each other. Children will learn from us, how to change and how to grow.

Part IV: Children

Raising children will help us break open. Parenthood is a clumsy yet majestic dance in the flames. A career with the crazy-making job requirement of simultaneously surrendering to and letting of of someone you love, over and over and over again. A never-ending journey down a wiser river of worry and love. Parenting is a perpetual process of change and transformation - a dynamic experience of being broken open by love. Nothing has a more disturbing influence psychologically on children than the unlived life of the parent. Normal is someone you don't know where well. 'Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field. ' we meet our children there. 

First son when leaving college in his speech said - I have so many emotions, and they're all so jumbled. For every emotion there is exact opposite equally strong for completely different something. Happiness and sadness, nervous and confident, strength and weakness, top of the world yet overwhelmed by the moment. 

In the words Robert Bly from  ‘Iron John’ the most crucial keys to a child’s individuality is to be found “under the mother’s pillow.” Those who lived with mom’s had to “steal the key from under mother’s pillow”. No mother worth her salt would give the key anyway. If a child can’t steal it, they don’t deserve it. Mothers are intuitively aware of what would happen if children got the key. They would lose the children. Their possessiveness can never be underestimated. Different kids and parents traverse the teen years in different way. When the bunnies leave the nest and enter the dangerous world, if parents find themselves holding tight to children long past appropriateness or helpfulness it would help to take a copy of “The Runaway Bunny”, sit on the couch next to your stunned son or daughter, and read the book aloud. Only this time change the words. Read it like this: Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, “I am running away”. “If you run away”, said his mother, “I will let you go. For you are grown now. I trust you t find your way in the world. Run away, bunny!”. Once you move out, it will help if you ask yourself, before you take up any action, will your parents be proud to know of what your are doing? 

EL had two children, one child from Tom's earlier marriage and her first husband had a child named Eli - who asked her, 'What is your title to me?'  he was really asking, "Where do I stand in the circle of your family?" Mother Teresa said: The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small. 

We are small creatures, looking at the smallest segments of a huge painting. 

Part V: Birth and Death

Life and death are two sides of a coin. Together -always together - life and death complement and complete each other. If we play dumb about death, life loses its vitality and meaning. 

Three simple rules in the study of death: 1) Death is not something that happens only once at the end of life, form the moment we are born we are dying everyday in all sorts of physical, emotional, and spiritual ways.  2) Grief is good, it is a sign of how well we have loved. 3) Death of the body is the start of an adventure. We may not know where the adventure will lead, but we can approach it with the same kind of hopeful anticipation and nervous butterflies that we feel before the start of a trip to a foreign land. Birth is a prerequisite and a sequel to death. 

The baby's descent had ended in life; the mother's pain was transformed into love. Birth is shocking - it is graphic and gory, painful and intimate. It is through the very terror of the birth process that the miracle is revealed. Bernie Siegel says: "Life is a labor pain; we are here to give birth to ourself."

French scientist Lavoisier says nothing is born and nothing can die: "Rien ne se cree, rein ne se perd."

Thich Nhat Hanh says that studying death can help each of us become "someone who has a great capacity for being solid, calm and without fear". There is an art to grieving, it is a creative art. Our culture favours the fast-food model of mourning. It should be a slow and sloppy process - one that involves emotional upheaval, interrupted activity, and dark nights of the soul. Grief is messy and painful. It is also a tonic, a healing elixir, made of tears that lubricate the heart. If we gloss over our grief, we migh become depressed. Unfelt feelings and unexpressed grief have a way of dulling life. 

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? - Mary Oliver "The Summer Day"

Part VI: The river of change

We live in a river of change, and a river of change lives within us. We can relax and float in the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it. If we had the patience and a high pwered microscope, we could sit and stare at our hands and watch the river of change flowing though our own bodies right now. We could watch our cells changing and dying and being replaced, over and over and over. 

Enjoy the passage of time. Every body love celebrating birthday when they are children. Growing old your perspective change. Some start enjoying every moment.  EL decided not to celebrate birthdays after 40, and on 40th, gave her woman gang a pinecone, threw a match in the fire, and as it burst into flames, told everyone to think of something she wanted to get rid of. "Something to burn to ashes, so that a new life can emerge". She herself threw into flame, her resistance to time passing, fear of aging, and big No! to change. And prayed for a new way of being in life to emerge. To say Yes! to all of it - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Live the secret law of the universe. Enjoy the passing of time. 

Poet Rainer Maria Rile wrote " In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us"; Our problems are friendly!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Turn and face the strain

Ch-ch-changes

On, look out you rock 'n rollers....

Pretty soon you're gonna get a little older. 

   - David Bowie

Don't fight with reality. Don't defend against it. Rather, read it like newspaper that happens to you and to others as pertinent news about the reality of being human, of being you. Life in the world is full of pertinent news. When you are working and nothing is flowing easily remember, each of these situations is a reservoir of meaning, a bank of rich information. The answer to every problem is already wrapped in the problem itself. I need only stop resisting, open wide to reality and decode the message. 

Tool Box: Joseph Campbell said, " What all myths have to deal with is transformations of consciousness. You have been thinking one way, you now have to think a different way. Consciousness is transformed either by the trials themselves or by illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what it's all about. "

Here is a prayer from the Theosophist Annie Beasant. 

O hidden life! Vibrant in every atom;

O hidden light! Shining in every creature;

O hidden love! Embracing all in oneness;

May each who feels himself as one with Thee,

Know he is also one with everyone.

The fruit of prayer is the realisation that life is an eternal adventure, and that we are explorers, always changing, always learning, always breaking open into new vistas of clarity and peace. 

May you find the faith, the patience, and the help you need to transform pain into wisdom and joy. Can I call this the 33rd?