I am One with the Universe, and it Hurts

In response to Jeff's stunning comment on my last post, I am re-posting an entry I wrote last summer on my old blog.

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It is continually astounding to me, the way books seek me out. I must have some sort of homing signal for important works.

I randomly found a little book called "Daily Afflictions: the agony of being connected to everything in the universe." written by Andrew Boyd.

The book in its entirety is a little dark for me. (The man is a worshipper of Nietzsche.) I am drawn more to the Hafiz brand of spiritual experience - the sheer, unbounded joy of existence - the sense that Reality is so vast and so beautiful, all we can do is dance, gasping for breath. And yet, in the middle of my dance, I remember the suffering, and I stop. My own suffering, I can generally reconcile after a period of pouting or weeping. But the suffering of other people is much harder to understand. This entry from that book was so true to me that I started to cry. This entry speaks of what I think Jesus meant to show us in his passion and death:

"What is to give light must endure burning." - Victor Frankel

Many of us have set out on the path of enlightenment. We long for a release of selfhood in some kind of mystical union with all things. But that moment of epiphany - when we finally see the whole pattern and our sense of place in the cosmic web - can be a crushing experience from which we never fully recover.

Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

To seek enlightenment is to seek annihilation, rebirth, and the taking up of burdens. You must come prepared to touch and be touched by each and everything in heaven and hell.

I am One with the Universe, and it hurts.

I am constantly being told by my friends when they see me crushed by the vision of some great misfortune in the world, or the private grief of a friend or a stranger;

"You need filters, you need some armor, you can't just go through life feeling everything, because it will destroy you. You have to choose what you feel."

and yet, from my very youngest years, I can't remember a time when I didn't feel this sense of the entire world, full of pain and heartbreak and grief, rushing into me and shaking me down like the skeleton of an old house not meant to billet an army. I have sensed the impossibility of shutting something so enormous out without disfiguring my self. And I've also always questioned - if I could shut it out, would I want to? I can't shut another person out of my experience without shutting myself out of theirs. Somehow the pain of not sharing the sufferings of another seems a worse pain, to me. The agony of not being connected to everything in the universe seems much darker and more frightening.

I love this little book for the truth it contains, but I think he has not gone far enough. As the Buddha says, we must enter into our perceptions and feelings, positive, negative, and neutral, and seek out their roots. I can feel the blinding pain of another person, but if I allow it to blind me, then there are simply two suffering, blind souls instead of one, which helps nothing. There must be a way to truthfully and genuinely accept suffering without being destroyed by it. The Middle Path.

"Take up your cross and follow me!"

It's in every gospel. Yes, take it up, but take it up with joy. Is this what it means to go rejoicing into the flames, like all of my martyrs, laughing, filled with the deepest peace and contentment?

I think so, and if I can only get my mind around it, how beautiful it will be - to feel the grief of mourning and weeping in this valley of tears, and still dance in the joy and hope of Julian of Norwich that "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

At the same time, how refreshing for someone to acknowledge that we're not born in this state of peace, and that even the strong sometimes shudder and lose courage.

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In the end I remember the last verses of Isaiah 40, which seems to strike a reccuring chord in my spiritual life...this is from an amazing Jewish translation:

Youths may grow faint and weary,
And young men stumble and fall;
But they who trust in the Lord shall renew their strength
As eagles grow new plumes:
They shall run and not grow weary,
They shall march and not grow faint.