The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, there we also stand already quite near its transformation.”
I believe this is because when we are at a place where we think we can’t go on, we are at the point of surrender, where something greater than our own ego can take over. But why do we wait until everything has fallen apart and all our defenses are down before we surrender and allow Nature to take over our lives? Surrender is not something we can do, it happens to us. The purpose of the spiritual path is to help us become more susceptible to surrender and more aligned with the will of Nature.
Right now, in the midst of this pandemic, things aren’t going well for many people. But even when our lives are going well, there is always the knowledge, that our well-being could end since we know from experience that life is a series of ups and downs. It’s human nature to try to avoid the difficult parts, distract ourselves from our internal suffering, but ultimately, does this really work?
To be happy requires a certain internal acceptance of whatever life brings. Otherwise, as poet and philosopher David Whyte says, “we are at war with reality fifty-percent of the time.” But it can seem impossible to accept certain things in our lives. Working at hospice, I sat with people every day who were suffering deeply due to facing their own death or experiencing the loss of a loved one. I remember two clients in particular—Blake and Melinda (not their real names). Blake’s entire family was killed in a plane crash. Melinda was dying of a rare disease. She was leaving behind her three young children. My own sister, who died in her early thirties, left behind her four young children. How can we accept this level of suffering as perfect?
The spiritual masters tell us there is an underlying perfection in the laws that govern the universe. But where is the perfection in the suffering we see in the world, or maybe in our own lives? How could losses like those experienced by Blake and Melinda be perfect? Maybe perfect just means it is what it is. Whatever happens fits perfectly into the bigger picture. We could say there is a higher purpose we are not aware of, which may be true, but that just sounds like an empty platitude in the face of suffering. How do we actually live from the higher perspective where we see everything is perfect?
At the same time that I have worked as a psychotherapist and hospice counselor journeying with people facing grief, loss, trauma—suffering in so many forms—I have traveled a spiritual path in a quest, which, at its core is a search for happiness, for a way out of suffering. The purpose of the spiritual path is to help us develop the ability to live in peace in the face of life’s continual ups and downs. It leads us to a fuller experience of who we are at a deeper level of our being. It guides us to that place within, which is stable and unchanging. It brings us in harmony with the laws of Nature which operate perfectly.
Life does not always bend according to our desires. Our ultimate desire is for happiness; we want to feel at ease in our lives. The spiritual masters tell us surrendering our little ego to the will of Nature, the cosmic order, is the key to the happiness we are seeking. It may sound cliché, but I think we all know deep down it’s true that happiness ultimately comes from inside rather than things and situations in the outer world. Naturally, if we can do something to improve a situation, we should do so. But the nature of life is vibration between two opposite poles, so to expect that the world will offer only what we consider good is to be disappointed. The spiritual path helps us connect with the inner stillness in the midst of the constant change. From that point of stillness everything is perfect.
Life invited Blake and Melinda and the others I worked with at hospice to make space in their lives for loss, grief and healing. Like every one of us, they had to live and grow through what life presented them, however harsh and seemingly impossible it appeared. I don’t know what happened to them after they left hospice, but I am fairly certain they would grapple with these losses and come to terms with them on different levels throughout their lives. And I know that part of that process would be surrendering aspects of themselves that no longer worked in order to grow in unexpected ways that would allow healing to occur. And I know too that following a spiritual path can help the gift of surrender find us.
CONSIDER THIS: Reflect on the healing power of surrender.
