Have you ever experienced such an intensity of physical or emotional suffering that you doubted whether you would survive? I have. And it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Enjoy this 5 1/2 minute read or let me read it to you via the audio link at the top of the webpage.
I was taking medicine. What started as a subtle burn settled into my nervous system in waves of nausea, panic, and disorientation. I was purging so much that drinking felt like drowning. I lost my hearing and almost passed out. The entire time the guide’s words echoed in my ears: “No whining. Say ‘yes’ to life. Say ‘thank you.’”
Western culture does not know how to suffer. It denies death. It clings, consumes, and coddles, and because of that, we’re unable to transform in the way the planet needs. We think there are technological fixes that will enable us to sustain our way of life, but there are too many of us hungry for too many things. And it’s not just the oceans, forests, and wildlife that suffer. It’s our own souls.
Indigenous people understand suffering and death. Those who do not give birth (and many who do) are submitted to equally grueling, often solitary, ordeals of physical, emotional, and mental stamina and resilience. These break down the ego so we can become “hollow bones”; so the ancestors can work through us to heal others; so that we can live not for our own gratification but for the benefit of our community.
We need to know death – to know our own mortality and the suffering of others – in order to develop empathy and to know our purpose, to know the primal fears of being human and move past the futile attempt to conquer them toward a way of honoring and serving what is. We can never see and serve what is if we are not well acquainted and reconciled with our powerlessness over loss, death, change – those voracious forces of life bent on transformation.
We are not here to be happy. We are here to participate in reality.
Life is not here to serve us. We are here to serve Life.
Instead of praying for what you want, pray for how to serve Life. Feel the gift of being alive and the vitality of your life force. Listen to pain – your own pain inside and the pain of others around you. Move with patience and grace, and you will find yourself surrounded by teachers and people in need of your unique way of healing. There’s no need for ambition, force, fixing, manipulation. Life meets us to the degree we are ready.
I believe we often don’t get what we want because we don’t really know what we want. Western culture offers us comforts and amusements that don’t slake our true longings. We grieve for what we don’t even remember losing. Because we’ve forgotten vulnerability is inherent to being human, we strive for safety and security instead of courage and acceptance. Because we’ve forgotten what its like to be embedded in a living ecosystem, we pray for victory and success instead of surrender and service. And because we’ve forgotten our ancestors and guides, we pray for popularity and romance instead of divine love and an infinite network of belongings.
Being secure, successful, and admired is fleeting. The obsession with attaining and sustaining them has gutted our landscapes, communities, and inner lives. We’re spiraling deeper into desolation and depravity. But courage, surrender, service, compassion – these can be invoked in any circumstance to enrich and dignify ourselves, others, and all life. We may not choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we meet it.
As the waves of nausea, heat, and trembling coursed through me, I whispered a meek, but powerful prayer: “Yes. Yes. Thank you for making me strong.” I have the scars to remind me I survived. Embracing the suffering of sensory overwhelm akin to death has left me so grateful for the blessed opportunity to be in a body: the simple pleasure of rubbing my fingers across my palm. Its planted within me seeds foreshadowing the warrior who shies from nothing and responds precisely as needed.
While we’re wishing each other health, wealth, and happiness this holiday season, may this blessing validate the underworld journey you may already be on or long for in the secret recesses of your heart:
May you face your suffering with gratitude and dignity.
May it liberate you from your fear of insignificance, loss and annihilation.
May you come to know and treasure the blessing of this physical existence and hear the pain of others calling you to serve.
May all humans come to know and bow in reverence to Life, ready and willing to sacrifice so Others might have a chance.
Nancy
Special thanks to this month’s sources of inspiration:
- Sangoma John Lockley and the Shaman’s Directory
- Kananawa and the Noke Koi
- Jeff Gibbs on Planet of the Humans
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