Falling Down

Some of you may remember this sad movie from the 80s in which Michael Douglas plays the role of a recently laid-off character who also suffered through a divorce in which his wife got a restraining order against him, keeping him away from his child. As the movie progresses you see his tensions rising and - in his perception - the world increasingly turning hostile on him. Eventually it all erupts and he loses his life over it.

Yes, we are able to fall that much. Little psychological cuts are part of our life; we all have to endure them whether we are spiritual or not. These wounds might be some karmic debt, some repressed hostility or insecurity that begs expression, or simply some random acts of unkindness. In small doses we have no problem absorbing them. Perhaps you can compare yourself with a lake. If a near-by plant releases small toxic doses from time to time, the environment absorbs it all and cleans itself in the process. If the pollution becomes a steady stream instead, there will be a level that kills the entire lake. Our situation is not that different.

We always enjoy observing little children as they play.  When they have just lost a soccer game they feel distraught; offer them an ice-cream afterwards and they forget all about it. That is how things ought to be if you had a bad day at work. You go home, relax, put your mind on something else and after a good night's sleep you are your old self the next day and everything about yesterday is water down the bridge.

The truth is, it rarely works that way. There are periods when it doesn't rain but pours and as you get really wet you also catch a cold; you can't sleep at night and are consequently caught in a long period of elevated stress, sadness or aggression. This is ok too. Everything that comes your way has spiritual meaning. Perhaps you can try to remember similar periods of struggle in the past and try to focus on the time when you rebounded from it. As a spiritual traveler you will learn quickly that you can always recover from whatever it is that bothers you today. A spiritual path is an ongoing healing opportunity; for you as much as your environment.

The most important part of the healing process is that you recognize the cuts for what they are. Don't try to negate or repress them and don't get caught in a negative feed-back loop in which you either strike back or endlessly review the occurrences in your head. Aggression will always hurt you, as will guilt and regrets over things of the past. The power of positive thinking is to find the silver lining in everything that comes your way and focus on that. Along a spiritual path you can literally think of everyone as your friend. Most friends love you, while some friends are a little rough around the edges; yet, everyone has a message for you. When you feel the anger, frustration or fear rising in you, focus on the upside in every situation instead.

The way of the Tao is really the understanding that we are all one. The environment just mirrors back to us the tension that builds in us. When we heal ourselves, our environment heals with us. Being a spiritual traveler does not prevent us from experiencing stress, fear or unpleasantness, but it will help us in our recovery once we decide on it.  Does it really make sense to be mad at ourselves over stuff that happened in the past? In the same vein, does it really make sense to get mad at someone who is just the mirror image of our own being? Discover those simple truths and realize that along the Tao you can never fall down.