Sitting comfortably in our ego's "house," fully furnished with control and perhaps a smug knowing, we imagine ourselves safe, impervious to life's pitfalls. We have it all figured out. We are on the top of our game. Pleased and self-satisfied, there is no need to pursue the larger picture. Then - WHAM - we lose a loved one, sudden unemployment leads to financial disaster, disease robs our health, our lover betrays us. Suddenly we are on our knees, groveling in the dark, desperate to find the light switch. Why is this happening to us? What did we do to deserve this? The ego tries to regain control but there is no going back. Our fortress of security has fallen and can never be rebuilt. At that moment we set foot on a higher pathway fueled by the anguish and angst of life's unanswerable questions.
When reality throws us a curve ball that cuts to the quick we are triggered to open to greater possibilities never before imagined. To crash and burn is not our only option. Hitting bottom opens the possibility of touching the "top" of our awareness. We are forced to put our world view into a larger perspective because our ego can't handle the pain of integrating crisis or trauma within its narrow perspective. Harsh blows dealt by an austere reality are calls from the higher self to explore the spiritual meaning/knowledge that will fuel us through these crises as our ego falters within its limited paradigm of control and victimhood.
Overwhelming collective tragedies like 9/11 are obvious signals to refocus us into embracing our spirituality. However, on an individual level most of us meander through our days, adjusting, perhaps numbing ourselves to the slings and arrows of life and missing the "wake-up" call nature of these difficulties. We assume that we have to tough it out, "this is the way life is," without realizing that "bad things" have a specific divine purpose orchestrated with just the right timing to initiate (or deepen) our spiritual quest. To the extent that we miss these cues is the extent to which the "calls" get more potent - demanding recognition, usually through pain.
I have always rebelled against the notion that we need to experience pain in order to grow. Can't we just hear the celestial call to open up, like a flower buds to the song of the warming spring sun without having to suffer? Is our ego's defense structure so dense that it requires the jackhammer of misery, affliction and mishap to break it open to the higher light? The Tibetan reassures me that eventually we will be able to grow spiritually through joy when our ego's have found their proper place within our cosmological view shed. In the meantime we apparently need to be clobbered over the head to get the message that there is more to reality than meets the ego's eye!
Often it's a traumatic event that triggers our awakening. Sometimes, rather than an event, an amorphous existential ache surfaces, apparently from nowhere, that wicks the color right out of our reality, dumping us into a joyless wasteland. If we can learn to open to this pain, sitting in its mystery, we can accelerate our spiritual growth by leaps and bounds. Our society is chock full of pain suppressors - pharmaceuticals, anti-depressants, T.V., - geared to pushing our agony as far from our consciousness as possible. While this may offer temporary comfort, it obliterates the "call" our soul so desperately needs us to respond to. So we heap on the numbing agents of our resistance, increasing in dosage, to ward off the impact of the bad stuff that happens. We don't realize that this bad stuff is reorganizing our energetic field to open us to higher knowledge NOW. Ironically, we push off the rewards of heightened consciousness by denying or attempting to destroy our torment. If we absolutely knew for sure that difficult experiences (both external and internal) were signals to step onto a higher path, we might be inclined to embrace these challenges with gratitude and the eye of a detective looking for clues on this scavenger hunt to expanded consciousness.
These painful triggers to awakening are timed when we are ready to embrace a spiritual life. We may have fully developed a personal, ego-based existence. Having completed this assignment the next one awaits - to align with our higher self. The pain required to catch our attention is not only for wake-up call purposes. It is also the tip of the iceberg that suddenly surfaces when we think the sailing is clear.
The "presenting" pain (the current expression of accumulated past life pain) is just the beginning of a major clearing process of karmic wounds laying dormant until we are ready to "go the distance" into full soul-alignment. It isn't necessary to laboriously plow through layer after layer of karmic pain. Today's trauma/difficulty carries the matrix, the core essence, of the soul's wounds. If we can embrace this pain, allowing it to have an alchemical impact on our approach to life, we have the opportunity to simultaneously clear hundreds of past life clusters of trauma. When these bad things happen they seem larger than life because they are!
The ego assumes it's the sole occupant of self. Unable to fathom that it is a mere piece of the larger puzzle, the ego is overwhelmed when trauma catalyzes an ancient soul-based pain that it cannot identify with. The ego is then faced with a choice - to either believe that self is a victim in a random universe or to surrender its dominion to an amplified life of spiritual growth that includes the full range of the soul experienced through countless lifetimes.
Hitting bottom shatters the ego structure, providing just the right break down required to liberate us from the blinders of the small self. Then we have the opportunity to behold and follow our pathway of spiritual growth. Ego-death symptoms of loss of control, disorientation and failure ultimately lead to the surrender required to start getting spiritual. This is a challenging junction because the ego, so inclined to resist the mystery, views these bad things as a dead end rather than the process of initiation that they really are. If the ego clamps down on its domain, the breakdown process (the blackening stage of alchemy) is unnecessarily prolonged.
We may be able to resist and postpone our spiritual life but ultimately we all pass through the gateway of spiritual initiation. The "breakdown tunnel" is only as long as is needed to alchemize the ego and defense structures - pummeling them down to a pulp to allow the higher self to finally breathe through at long last. Bad events blow open the door to a new direction with pain as the ambassador to a dimension way beyond our familiar personal reality. Our higher self knows exactly when it is time to issue these wake-up calls. Larger forces take over our lives, granting us a great opportunity to flower spiritually. This alchemical process softens, humbles, elasticizes the ego to allow it to flow with greater attunement to impermanence, mystery, wisdom.
In spite of understanding these concepts, I, too, put up a valiant fight to resist the call of spiritual growth. Although I know this is ultimately what my soul wants, my ego tenaciously clings to its version of reality no matter what. It tries to control all the bad things that happen, as if it had ultimate dominion. It declares, "I don't need to grow more. I already know all that I need to know. I'm spiritual enough!" Triggers to spiritual growth occur at all points along the pathway, not just to initiate our process but to deepen it. As soon as we get too cozy with our certainty, even our spiritual certainty, our ego clamps down in a statement of final authority. Then we have to be catapulted into the "no man's land" of despair, anguish, upheaval, chaos - whatever it takes to grow our spiritual essence through our human experience. I'm not thrilled with this growth format! However, I'm slowly learning to cultivate an attitude of on-going surrender to minimize the shocks of boot-camp-like wake-up calls, attempting to convice my higher self that indeed I am finally willing to cooperate and extend my spiritual ground. My ego still quivers at this process, wondering what horrible things have to happen to grow me spiritually, knowing that ultimately it will experience itself as undifferentiated oneness, whatever that is!
The Tibetan chuckles at my trepidation, reassuring me that these triggers don't have to be so melodramatic. He teaches:
" The soul rejoices when the time has come to step on the spiritual path. It signals the imminence of ultimate reunion with Source - the greatest adventure Self has ever known. Ironically, there is more chronic subliminal pain/discomfort in the complacency/stagnation of residing in the small self too long, resisting spiritual growth, than there is in the bad events that propel self beyond the ego. The passionless state of ego control dulls the spirit, extracting the magic out of life. Bad events reflect the soul's energy pushing up to the suface to shake things up, challenge old belief structures to provide a crack in the cement through which to allow magnified light to enter. It is the ego's nature to secure itself to a one-pointed reality that it believes it manages. The ego's mechanism doesn't yet register the spiritual call without pain. This is not a reflection of a cruel divine plan but rather of an immature humanity.
"Respond to these bad events with curiosity, willingness, open-mindedness and trust. They are NOT punishments. These disturbing upheavals that catalyze self to an enhanced land beyond the ego's island are interpreted as signs of failure, inadequacy, stupidity. This reflects the ego's impotence within this expanded reality of the soul. Most of the pain from these bad events are the result of the ego's attachment to the status quo. When fully surrendered to these challenging events, self opens to their full impact. Relaxation within acquiescence eases some of the pain/difficulty into a greater flow through which self can harvest a deeper attunement to the brilliant guidance inherent within these triggers. Self is then in full cooperation with his/her predestined soul's curriculum.
"Once established on their spiritual pathway, most students look back upon these triggers of initiation with great appreciation. Without this momentary disruption of the psyche, self would be permanently imprisoned in the small, windowless room of the ego. The long range gifts of spiritual growth far outweight the temporary discomfort of these passing triggers. Just like ignoring the alarm clock when self wishes to stay submerged beneath the covers, the ego is innately resistant to the self's divine impulse to rise up out of its cocooned state to greet a superior reality. To stay under the covers, suffocated within the grasp of the ego, is to miss the magnificent universe that awaits self through spiritual growth. Traumatic triggers to awakening advise the student to break down, to ask what is life all about, to look inside, to reexamine one's values, to explore the terrain of one's deepest self, to experience the heart's trust, to be notified that the higher self is ready and waiting, to remember that Source is within self's breath, to yield to the mystery, to let go.
"Devastatingly painful experiences need not forever be the central mechanism that propels students beyond their ego. As humankind embraces its spiritual reality, the collective ego will assume its rightful place within the psyche. This maturation of humankind will allow the soul to grow through other forms of heightened vibrational influence besides pain such as powerful currents of joy, ecstasy and love. There will no longer be a need to shock the student into looking toward higher ground. All will already be awakened and in Love. The paradigm of mandated nightmarish disturbances will recede. Humankind will respond to the great Call, ushered forth through Source's magnificent organizing magnetism of Self-discovery, Self-creation, Self-initiation, with the gleeful joy of a child running with arms outstretched to embrace a Land of Wonder."
Moriah Marston is a soul psychologist who includes astrology, dream analysis, and past life integration in her intuitive work as a mid-wife to the soul-alignment process