The Power of Coincidence (19 page)

None of these programs includes drugs, food, sex, or other compulsions. None of them resorts to silver-lining consolations that are not true and that contradict the conditions of existence. Examples of such consolations are: “Well, I always did my best.” No one always did her best throughout her life, nor is that to be expected. “Things will always work out for the best.” Things will not always work out for the best, as wars and genocides have shown. “It is karma.” This is a deterministic use of the concept of karma that may serve to excuse us from adult responsibility for our actions. “God will provide.” Provision for human needs will not always happen, as starving children learn each day. We have to provide for ourselves—and others—in many ways.

Healthy tools for facing life predicaments may include the following:

1. When I am afraid, I can admit my fear, allow myself to feel it fully, and then act as if the fear could not stop me. The more I relax into reality rather than run from it, the more do the fears—that have been my unwelcome companions all my life—finally let me go.

2. If I am angry, I can express it responsibly and directly to the person involved without blame or violence.

3. If I am passive in my interactions with others, I can learn to be assertive and to stand my ground without becoming aggressive.

4. When I suddenly feel fragmented and depressed because my life seems to have been a waste, I can imagine a kindly, avuncular voice inside that says, “It’s not so bad as I am making it out to be. Let me look at all I have done, both positive and negative. I made some mistakes, but everyone does. What matters is that I have gone on and know better now. Give myself some credit!”

5. In the void—the black hole of panic in which nothing works and our lively energy is on hold—we can simply stay in the suspense, without having to do anything. We can let it be and listen to its eerie silence until we feel an impetus to move in some new direction. The timing is never from ego but from the self’s calendar of synchronicities.

6. If I feel guilty, I can make amends and resolve to change my behavior for the future.

7. If someone says something cruel to me, I may be tempted to resort to the ego’s program of retaliation. Instead, I can declare to the other how hurt I am to hear that and how it is unacceptable to me to be spoken to in that way. When the ego voice within says, “I should have come back at him with . . .” I can acknowledge that as the indignant ego, and respond with an affirmation: “i let go of the need to retaliate. I choose to handle things creatively and strongly but kindly too.” The work is to clear away all the neurotic ego’s programs from our modus operandi and to replace them with loving and yet assertive ones.

8. If I am betrayed by a partner, I can resort to the ego’s armory and defend myself against further hurts by putting up a wall against future relationships. Such self-defense walls me in. On that wall, the scared ego has scratched its self-defeating graffiti: “You cannot trust men/women. They will always disappoint you. You cannot handle the normal give-and-take of relationship with all its potential for pain. Stay away from all future relationships.” I may believe these bitter verdicts and thus abandon myself. Suddenly, passion goes out of my life, as do my chances for pleasure and fulfillment.

It is stressful to maintain a repression of the natural human instinct to bond. Wholeness means giving free rein to all our instincts and susceptibilities. Healthy people are willing to love again, ready to risk the same disasters they faced before, because they have found a resource for future reference. Griefwork is the program for dealing with betrayal and abandonment. Those who have grieved and let go will choose new partners more wisely and be more psychologically nimble in their grieving the next parting, if that were to occur.

9. Sometimes we will have face something that is too big for us to handle alone. Then our program is to seek help. If I have a cut on my finger, I can use the program of first aid that I have lined up for just such emergencies, peroxide and Band-Aids close at hand. If I cut an artery, I will have to go for help to the hospital, where the doctor will provide the necessary technology of suturing me. Likewise, in a psychological crisis, I may need to consult a therapist to help me design a program that meets my needs with a healthy resource. Becoming healthy does not mean that painful things no longer happen to us but that we now have ways of handling whatever may happen.

10. The given of injustice may make us wonder why the innocent suffer. But this presumes that suffering is a punishment for evil. In the world of the loving self, there is no punishment, only consequences and opportunities for transformation. To wish that the wicked will suffer is ego-vengeful. To work for their transformation is loving. How have I responded to the evil done to me? What do I feel about punishment, including prison and capital punishment? Do I have a heart that feels sadness for both the victim and the perpetrator? How can I work toward an alternative to the violence of punishment? Is my God an extension of the male punitive ego? Am I creating hell on earth or heaven on earth?

11. In buddhism, there are the eight worldly concerns that challenge our equanimity. These are four pairs of cravings/fears, and to find a path through the center of each set of these dualisms is to be liberated from ego’s excessive desire for positive experiences and terror of negative ones: gain and loss, fame and infamy, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. Where do I stand? How can I stand with equipoise and equanimity?

12. Recite this declaration and notice what you feel about it: “It is only when I have the courage to face things as they are, without any self-deception or illusion, that a light will shine from events, and a path to contentment will open for me. Since all predicaments teach and awaken me, I can be grateful to them all. I do not push my predicament away; I find a way to lean on it. I choose to have no escape hatch. My Yes is unconditional.”

Bring loving-kindness to your practice by adding: “By the power and truth of this predicament, may all beings have happiness and be free of fear and craving. May I never destroy anyone’s happiness. May all people keep choosing the path of peace and cherish all that lives as holy. Everything that happens to me is from a sacred heart, a light that will not go out, something unfolding and enfolding. I say Yes to the path with heart.”

13. Here is a summary model for healthy, functional responses to the conditions of existence. What can I install into my lifestyle to make these responses happen more and more?

Finally, we can admit that even the healthiest ego may be powerless to effect certain changes in the psyche. No psychological program works to make an arrogant ego surrender easily. On its own the ego cannot “turn the other cheek,” love or forgive unconditionally, or give itself away in compassionate generosity. These are callings from a spiritual source that not everyone will hear. They hearken from the world of the Self where grace presides. How ironic—and humbling—that we cannot release what is best in us on our own. How fortunate that graces abound.

14. The hero leaves where he is, goes through many struggles, and meets up with assisting and afflicting forces, and finally finds a treasure that he brings back home. Here is a model in which we can locate ourselves in those same three phases of life’s journey in our past, present, and future. Where are you, and what are the synchronicities that are coming to meet you?

I am where I have been for awhile.

Something happens that challenges me to change or go.

I cross a threshold to embark on something new.

I meet up with afflicting forces, am wounded in many

ways, even possibly become immobilized.

I am visited by assisting forces who rescue me or give me a special grace to break through my stuckness or my injuries.

I find something out or find something of great value not by effort but as a gift of grace.

I bring this gift back to where I began, willing to share it freely and generously.

Some understand me and some do not. Some accept my gifts and some refuse. I do not force, nor do I give up. I keep sharing my gifts in any way I can.

I rest in the light of equanimity and let it through me continually.

C
RISIS

A Given and a Spur

A friend rejects us. A partner leaves us. A company fires us. A loved one unexpectedly dies. We are devastated and at a loss as to what to do about these givens that have come our way. In such crises we are frightened as well as grief stricken. We are finding out that our sources of security had no real foundation. Meister Eckhart said, “Everything is meant to be lost that the soul may stand in unhampered nothingness.” A crisis leads to a discarding. But of what? Only of the illusions, disguises, and masks that we were relying on to establish our identity. The true Self can emerge only from the surrender of the deluded ego.

An ego crisis is weathered successfully when we can fall apart and then trust that we will reassemble. Our trust is based on the fact that the healthy ego has the skill of restoration. This is being transformed by pain. The pain has been useless if we get back in full control when all the signals say, “Let it happen.” Jung referred to this as “the regressive restoration of persona.” It is putting the old mask back on. It is a refusal to “stand in unhampered nothingness,” the only launching pad for a new way of living.

Creation myths begin with chaos. Chaos is the given/condition for something new to emerge. The meaningful connection is synchronicity A personal crisis is a microcosm of the primordial chaos and the synchronous prerequisite for creative possibilities. When things become topsy-turvy in our life, something is ready to be born in us. We may ask, “Why me?”
Why
is from the vocabulary of intellect and reason. Crisis does not hearken to us from that realm. It transcends and defies the rational. It is the paradox of a chaos that
necessarily
precedes a new creation. Logic and making sense of things are usually impossible to achieve in crisis. Pausing is the proper etiquette, brooding over the troubled waters, not draining them away.

Crisis usually represents a confrontation or an argument with one or more of the conditions of existence. Crisis is a challenge to change. To change is to locate a new level of strength in ourselves and to act in accord with it; to stay unchanged is to regress. There is no middle ground of safety. This is why in a crisis, we enter the void. We see how much of our security was a prop meant to uphold a shaky ego. In crisis, we feel powerless to maintain the old comfortable structures. We are then forced to marshal our strengths and move into something new. Perhaps a grace comes our way; we find strength we did not think we had. We live through the crisis; we are still standing after the storm. What threatens us with breakdown leads to breakthrough. A paradox has appeared; without props, we still stand. Emily Dickinson uses this same metaphor: