After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

I have had this phrase come up for me a lot in the last few weeks.  It is a reminder, that awakening, enlightenment, transformation is awesome.  It's a great feeling to have a clarity of vision, to see everything clearly, you feel ecstatic, alive, amazing.  But a few days pass, and the good feeling fades because daily life gets in the way.  Bills have to be paid, kids have to be fed, careers have to be attended to.  Life gets in the way of that ecstatic feeling.

Let me offer a few examples of what I mean. 

After the seminary retreat in June, I returned refreshed and ready for life.  I had found community, I had found a place, I had fully understood my calling.  For a few weeks that high lasted and I was on top of the world.  Then my world came crashing down around me.  My BIL was diagnosed with a very rare form of Leukemia.  The seminary I was attending was breaking and pieces were scattering to the three winds, with so much anger and animosity.  Two of my friends were not only at each other's throats they were at my throat and mad at me for not being on their side.

Through that, I had lost sight of my calling.  I lost sight of that feeling of ecstasy that I had discovered.  I had lost the key to my awakening and my new found insight.
I had mistakenly assumed that the feeling of ecstasy that came with that part of the soul awakening would continue to carry me through and it would now be easy to maintain the joy.  I assumed the ecstasy would remain.  I was wrong.

The trials of life brought me down and all those steps forward, all that work I had done to move forward seemed to disappear.  I was back where I had started.  I felt unmotivated, my spiritual practice didn’t move me, I started to struggle with feeling like I was inadequate.  And this time, the depression was both much worse than it had ever been, and yet not nearly as bad as it had been before.
I carried with me the memory of that joy.  I carried with me the memory of the awakening and I desperately wanted that back.  While I felt worse than I ever had before because I felt like I had actually touched the true me, the me that was 100% and I had fallen so far.  I also knew that I could touch the true me.  I could be fully me and fully happy and fully in my call.  I could get back there.  I did it once, I could do it again.
I learned my lesson.  Awakening, enlightenment, ecstasy doesn’t last.  It isn’t something that sticks around forever.  At least not when you ignore the stresses of the real world.

On NYE, I performed a fire ceremony and with that came great joy.  A feeling of lightness that I hadn’t felt in a long time.  It came with a feeling of freedom I hadn’t even felt after the release at the retreat in June. And like before, a few days later as the ecstasy was wearing off, life stress comes in and I am having the same fight with a friend, the fight we have had for the last 5 months or so.  This time I decided that I wasn’t going to let the depression gain a serious foothold.  I had read a book by Jack Kornfield titled “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.”  And Gloria Karpinski (Barefoot on Holy Ground) wrote the same thing in her chapter on Endurance.  It was time to face the problem head on.

As the feeling of the ecstasy of awakening was beginning to fade, I decided not to fall victim to the depression that would set in as soon as my friend started in on me.  So I told him that I couldn’t do this anymore.  I couldn’t continue to let him hurt me.  I told him that I wasn’t going to let him be the reason that my feeling of ecstasy faded quickly.  

During that conversation, I think he had a moment of awakening.  And I can hear the awareness in his voice.  I can  tell that he has had a moment of enlightenment, but like me the stress of life will set in and it will not be easy to hold on to the awareness that was gained in that moment.  It will not be easy to maintain the sense of peace that has grown between us.  And I will not burn myself out being the one that tries to keep the fire of understanding burning.  I hope he learns from my mistake.  I hope he takes the steps necessary to hold on to the awareness, rather than just assuming that it will remain without effort.

A less personal, more general example comes in the form of the people who have the vision of Christ.  There are those who share their testimony of seeing Christ in the depths of their despair and the love of Christ draws them out of their personal hell and shows them the grace and glory of God.  Many times these people will tell their story with tears in their eyes, and then they get busted having an affair with their secretary.  The buzz of the moment of enlightenment has worn off and while they remember the experience fondly, the trials of everyday life has them returning to the Unchristian behavior they exhibited before their awakening.
Unfortunately, I think that once we have tasted awakening, not only are we not prepared for the work it takes to maintain that awareness, we get arrogant about it.  We did experience a moment of utter clarity, everything made sense.  We told people it all made sense.  And so when that moment passes, when the ecstasy fades, we can’t admit that, that would be a failure, so we continue to preach the virtues of the enlightened feeling, when really we need to be addressing the stress in our lives that is bringing us down.  Okay, maybe  I am the only one who experienced that.

I have no answers, I have no solutions.  I only know that in the last 7 months I have had two moments of pure clarity.  The first time I mistakenly assumed that meant I would keep the clarity.  This time I will not make that mistake again.  I will do the work necessary to endure the trials of life that will shake my sense of awareness.  I will look at each trial as it comes to me, I will do my best to see it in the light of the awareness and not as something that I have to just take on.  I will remember, that life must be lived and to keep that awareness, I must live my life in that awareness.

I will be true to me.