The Cost of Awakening

 

Currently, I’m taking an online course for continuing education through the Center for Action and Contemplation taught by the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault.  I highly recommend their website, which has some wonderful resources.  Recently, Dr. Bourgeault spoke about the cost of spiritual awakening, quoting another great living wisdom teacher, Brother David Stendl-Rast.  Her teaching touches on something that many of us are experiencing at different levels.

 

First, she notes that spiritual awakening does have a cost!  We might think that being spiritually awake is all about being able to stop and smell the flowers; it is all rainbows and unicorns!  But truly being awake to our senses and consciously present to reality requires vulnerability.  As Brother David says,

 

. . . you can’t touch without being touched, and as you awaken to touch, the pain of the world touches your heart and you carry it, and you have to be willing, and much more than willing – ready – in your nervous system to bear the river of pain, the collective pain body that is our planetary existence.  And to bear it lightly, joyously, and sacramentally. 

 

Then Dr. Bourgeault comments,

 

It costs something.  You have to be strong and clear inside to do it, because if you bear it with drama, everything’s going to fry.  You’re going to go tense and physically contract and you’re not going to help a bit.

 

So, clarity, strength, equanimity, balance.  All these beautiful human skills that lie beyond the egoic level.  To the degree that you are willing to sacrifice your personal pleasures and your personal dramas and your personal stories to instill and stabilize those qualities, then you join the great evolutionary flow. 

 

Cultivating these qualities that allow the river of pain to flow through us, rather than drowning us,  enables us to be present to suffering without being defined by it.  We remain loose, flexible, adaptive, capable of responding in ways that are helpful and that promote the spiritual evolution of our species.   But we have to know our limits, our capacities.  This requires honesty and humility.  Otherwise, we become overwhelmed and we shut down – or worse, we react in ways that increase suffering. 

 

I can’t stress enough the importance of the integration of our own inner work and the work of repairing the world.  Presiding Bishop Michael Curry speaks about it as the way of love.  We must learn, as William Blake said, “to bear the beams of love.” 

 

This is the urgent call of our time: to learn to bear the beams of love.  Jesus is our model and our guide.  But following his way requires discipline.  There is a cost to spiritual awakening.  That is why St. John of the Cross wrote,

 

God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness because if we fully knew what was happening, and what Mystery, transformation, God and Grace will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process.

This is faith: to trust God’s slow work in us, to be willing to be transfigured by love, and in giving ourselves away in love become capable of receiving everything.  Beloved, be gentle with yourselves.  Trust God’s slow work in you, and pace yourself accordingly.  Don’t take on what is not yours or that for which you are not yet ready.  And be prepared to be surprised by what you are able to embrace at the appointed time.  God is with you!