Spiritual Awakenings
outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor—all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one. I have these new policies toward
my life, like I will not accelerate when I see the yellow light. I’ll say no to things that I used to instinc- tively say yes to, invitations that are wonderful, but I know will actually make me more tired the next day, more stressed. It’s like protecting this wonderful little match that I lit in India. And I feel my job now is to cup my hand around it and make sure that the shearing winds of capitalism and industrialism and competition don’t blow it out, and that my own anxiety doesn’t blow it out.
Given what you’ve been through, what is God for you today?
I sort of do have an answer. It’s something from the Gnostics, which said that God is the perfection which absorbs. I think that’s the loveliest and simplest and least politically controversial possible definition of divinity—that we are not perfect as humans, and yet we have access to a perfection that’s beyond us that we can become absorbed in, sometimes just for five minutes, sometimes for a whole year, sometimes if you’re really a blessed saint, forever. Suddenly, there’s just this crack
of a doorway into that divine per- fection where you remember for a minute that you’re more than this. It’s available to you always. It’s your right to find that and it’s your right to shape your life as much as you can to where you can access that as much as possible.
How can a broken heart lead to a fuller heart?
There’s a line from Leonard Cohen, he has this wonderful song that says; “There’s a crack in everything—that’s where the light gets in.” And I think that’s probably the best encapsulation of how a broken heart can lead to a
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bigger heart. The light causes the expansion. There’s also this wonderful adage
that says, “You can’t push out dark- ness. You can only bring in light.” If you’re in a closet and it’s black, there’s no way to sweep darkness out. The only thing you can do is ignite, illumi- nate somehow. And the only way to get into a darkened, miserable heart is to break it.
I had kind of given up on love, but hadn’t given up on myself. That’s
what I did on this journey—I said, “I’m going to marry my own life and make that wonderful, even if it means that I don’t have this experience of intimacy that everybody wants.” And of course, because the universe loves to be ironic, I found the intimacy that everybody wants. So whatever the lesson is that comes from that—if it brings hope, let there be hope.
Source: Adapted from
Beliefnet.com.
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