Reflections From the Past
More Will Be Revealed
A few months ago I agreed to lead a service on this date tentatively titled, “Dark Night of the Soul” and I had collected some poems and passages along the way that I thought might help me form this theme. But when we actually got to the planning stages of developing this service, I felt like I had nothing to say about “Dark Night of the Soul.” In fact, I didn’t have much to say about anything. I was feeling depressed, but it wasn’t a “Dark Night of the Soul” kind of depression. Rather, I felt like a lot was happening inside me but it was best if I didn’t talk about it, resist it, or try to change my mood. It was best if I didn’t try to describe what I was feeling or why I was feeling it. I recognized intuitively that I should refrain from trying to name it and define it and then give a reflection on what it is I had experienced or was presently experiencing. Intuitively, my sense was that I needed to be quiet. I need to let the process unveil itself.
I think all of us go through times when we need to shut down and quiet ourselves because something is happening, growing, changing within us. So instead of giving a reflection on what it is that is spiritually unfolding, I decided all I could really talk about was the process of unfolding, the process of being as still as I can be until more is revealed. And while this thing- this new change or insight (or whatever it is) is in the process of becoming, I have three choices: I can fight it; I can try to force it to unfold faster; or I can trust the process and let more be revealed in the space and time it needs to emerge.
That’s what I’ve been trying to do this time with mixed success: trust the process without analyzing, defining, forcing, fixing, trying to control, manage or steer my internal life and the world around me. That’s what I usually do. I always feel like I have to be in charge of my internal life somehow, that my vigilance will help things along, that I can control the outcome, the pain or lack thereof. This process of change is often uncomfortable and my first reaction is to cut down on the discomfort in whichever way I can. I read books looking for answers, I make lists, I talk about it, I try to manage how I’m feeling, I try to steer my moods, I try to force myself to do things I’m just now ready or able to do. But that’s usually counter productive and doesn’t help the unfolding process.
For instance, this week I found myself getting caught up in another book that supposedly had an answer for all my problems. Except I realized that it was just filling my head with information and wasn’t making me feel much better. It was filler while the real work is happening below the surface. The other thing that happened was this: I was invited to an art’s fund raiser that was supposed to be a big ball. I’ve been to it before and had fun. This week, I felt ambivalent about going, but felt like I should go, I should put myself out there, I should make the effort to do something out of the ordinary. And while sometimes that’s true, this week I just couldn’t. I needed to be quiet. I’ll go another year, but not this year. (A friend of mine is fond of saying, “Don’t should on yourself.”) So instead, I allowed myself to have a very quiet day and evening; I’ve tried to remain quiet this time, stop forcing things to go the way I think they should, and let something more be revealed. Listen to my life.
Rumi says about this attempt at cultivating a quietness inside us where things can emerge:
“That hurt we embrace becomes joy. Call it to your arms where it can change. A silkworm eating leaves makes a cocoon. Each of us weaves a chamber of leaves and sticks. Like silkworms, we begin to exist as we disappear inside that room.”
Spring is a definite time to observe the unfolding of life. I went for a walk the other day and noticed the fiddlehead ferns unfolding themselves, unwinding in a gradual graceful wave toward the sky. I saw other shoots sprout up from the ground, pushing themselves and their young leaves, all of them a tender shade of green. My acupuncturist talks about spring as being a violent season because there is so much energy and effort needed to break through and become: the life force that’s needed to break through the seed, through the pod, through the soil, burst open the blossom and be seen. It’s an awful lot of work. In many ways I feel the same work is going on inside of me. Something is trying to be born (occasionally I have dreams about being pregnant, a sign to me that internally a new perspective or inner change wants to be born, I am giving birth to something) and I need to be still to let that change take place.
Years ago when I first go sober I was very anxious about my progress in sobriety and I wanted to hurry things along, hurry up and feel better, hurry up and become enlightened. A friend of mine said, Jen, the seed has been planted but you keep wanting to dig it up to see if it’s growing.
That analogy has stuck with me and I find I still want to do that in other ways: dig things up to see how they’re growing, to see if they’re growing, to see if I can tug on the shoots a bit to help pull them up faster.
There is another story I was told many years ago about a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. The butterfly was struggling to be free. One wing had been freed from the cocoon but the other wing was still stuck and the butterfly appeared to be troubled, unable to fully emerge from the cocoon. So the person who had come upon this butterfly decided to help it, to gently cut away the cocoon from the butterfly’s wing so it could be free. But what happened was this: the wing that had not squeezed through the cocoon, had not been forced to go through the same difficulty as the first wing, so it was heavy with microscopic mucus or tiny feathers that are usually wiped free in the process of emerging. And so the butterfly was lopsided and could only walk in circles, it couldn’t fly.
I always thought of that story in relation to other people: that I should allow other people to “become.” But the same is true for myself. I need to allow myself the quiet time in the cocoon, I need to allow myself the opportunity to emerge only at the rate that I am able. This leads me back to acceptance: accepting things as they are instead of trying always to fix, steer, control or bargain my way out of certain feelings.
The passages that we’re using as readings this morning come from the book, “Letters to a Young Poet,” in which Rainer Maria Rilke is approached for advice from a young man of nineteen who was attending the same military academy that Rilke had attended as a younger man. The book is comprised of ten letters that Rilke wrote to Mr. Kappus over a period of a couple of years giving him advice not just about writing, but about life. And because Rilke’ s time at the academy had been such a difficult period in his life, the letters seem to transcend time and are written almost as though he were talking to a younger version of himself. Keep in mind that Rilke was only twenty-seven years old himself when he wrote the first of these letters.
I love these passages from Rilke’s letters because they remind me to have faith, not to despair, but to trust the process of unfolding. Something is happening, something more is being revealed. Have patience with myself, trust, accept things as they are. A long time ago, someone told me (the same friend who said, “Don’t should on yourself”) that confusion is a state of grace. It has taken me a long time to understand that, to recognize that when I am confused, when I am in the midst of big change (which inevitably brings confusion), when I am struggling to make sense of things, I am still somehow carried through, not by my own willpower, but by grace. The grace of God. And it is this grace that keeps me somehow intact.
So this morning’s service is an opportunity to be still and listen to our lives. Listen and let go, allow space for whatever is inside us that is waiting to be born.
