C. Myss’s lectures and books changed my life. Barbara
Each year, Caroline selects a Salon that she wants to send out to the Myss Newsletter Subscibers.
We hope you enjoy!
JULY SALON/NEWSLETTER: PRACTICES THAT LEAD TO UNIMAGINABLE GOODNESS
Every now and again, I read something that so inspires me, I have to share it with others. (Rarely does it occur to me that others might not find the particular stories or passages that moved me as inspiring as I do, by the way.)
Long ago, I realized that whatever this presence is that goes by the name, “God”, it hardly squeezes its force and volume into any or all religions. Religions are the social and political end of good mythologies and that’s about it. The quest for any real truth is found through leaving the shell of one’s religion and entering into the spiritual mysteries of all the great religions – or at least a partnership of one from the west and one from the east. There are other routes to the truth, of course, but right now I am addressing the path that specifically moves from religion to spirituality to mystical consciousness. And given that this path is one of inner illumination, it is replete with spiritual writings.
While zapping through my Kindle one night to check out any new and interesting books, I spotted one on the work of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. He could also be credited as one of the founders of spiritual direction, because he poured so much effort into articulating instructions for following the inner life. What caught my eye was the title of this book, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, by James Martin, S.J. So, I downloaded it into my Kindle…just like that. I thought I would glance at the book in the morning, but those critters are so fast and my curiosity is so adrenalin-driven that I just had to look to see if the book actually arrived (it did) and then I had to check it out. (I have to say, being the life-long book creature that I am, Kindle books will never ever replace real books for me. Inevitably I end up purchasing the books in real book form that I bought through my Kindle, because I long to hold them in my hands, to flip the pages back and forth, and to just see the length of the book itself. Who knows what you buy when you download an electronic book? It could be, as The Kindly Ones, 1,000 pages! The book goes on and on and on and on. I have news for you – there is no flipping to the last chapter in a Kindle…but I digress. Back to my new treasure book.)
Even though I told myself not to even glance at the book, I couldn’t help it. This isn’t, by the way, a promo piece for this book. I find books that capture the spiritual journey simply intoxicating. I rapidly categorized what the author was saying into “new”, “not-so-new”, “no big deal”, “brilliant”, and then I came upon one particular story that left me breathless – absolutely breathless. I read it again and again. I then stopped reading it and just stared at it, wondering why this story struck me so deeply. I was actually choked up with tears. I couldn’t read any further. I marked the page in the book and turned off the light to go to sleep, but I could not stop thinking about this story.
The next day I went to see my own spiritual director and shared the story with him. He got choked up, teary-eyed. We sat in silence for a few moments and then we discussed how it is that a man could experience what this man did and then end up doing what he did. We talked for two hours. Later, my spiritual director phoned and asked that I bring this book with me the next time I came to see him, so that he could copy that story to share in one of his own up-coming lectures.
Monthly subjects for my Salons or Newsletters are not as easy to come up with as you might think. I always have in mind the intent to share something with all of you that will enrich your life in some way. Sharing this particular story occurred to me, but in what context, I wondered? It requires a bit of preparation or groundwork in order to appreciate the choice made by this one man, Walter Cisnek, S.J. And moreover, how would I position this story, given its historic content, so that it is of significance to the modern person, who, for the most part, could not relate in the least to what this Jesuit priest had endured? For how often, really, do we look at the life of another person and truly draw from that life the grace of inspiration? Most especially if we see that person as an extreme individual – a monk, or a priest, or a mystic? These are not ordinary people as such but people who have chosen to live a certain way, to expose themselves to the “spiritual elements” in this Universe. Most of us live more protected lives, hidden from these radical spiritual elements that seem to test the spiritual stamina of some individuals who have, by profession, openly proclaimed an alignment to heaven.
So before I share the particular story that so moved me, I want to lay the groundwork a bit. As a teacher, I am always asked questions at my seminars. A handful of those questions are what I would call “repeaters”, the types of questions that come up all the time. These questions fall into the category of the major mysteries of life: the nature of good and evil, right and wrong, and the mysterious nature of God.
Many people, for instance, ask about the paradox of how it is that bad things could happen to good people. Familiar examples are cited, like the Holocaust and the more current crisis in Darfur. I have always been frustrated by such questions, not because people ask them, but because what kind of answer can be offered that would really make a person say, “Oh, that’s why there was a Holocaust and six million Jews and five million other people were murdered. Okay then.”
But one day, in response to exactly that question, I asked a gentleman this question, “Have YOU ever hurt someone you love?” He replied in the affirmative. I then asked if he ever hurt that person deliberately; that is, did he plan to hurt (in this case) his wife? He said he did, but then offered an excuse: She had done something to hurt him. He felt justified.
I said that regardless of the rationale he gave himself, at the end of the day, he deliberately plotted to hurt someone he loved. I asked him if he agreed with that and he, hesitatingly, said he did. I then said, “Well, if we could plot to hurt people we love, is it that difficult to imagine how we human beings could plot to destroy people we don’t love? In fact, is it all that difficult to imagine how easily we can be swayed to even want to destroy people we fear because they have different religions or come from different cultures? It’s really not that difficult to make that leap in imagination, as unpleasant a truth as that might be to reflect upon.
The truth is that the grand horror of Darfur or the Holocaust or other human massacres along with all the lesser-in-size (but no less evil) tragedies are the result of individual choices and not one great, big, huge choice made by one great, big, huge evil giant. Impossible huge evil events rely upon impossible small evil choices. They work hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other, and inevitably one generates the other.
It is very easy to become frightened and slip into dark and shadow-filled choices. In fact, it’s effortless. I listen all the time to the way people connect the dots in their thinking and am astounded by their lack of facts, details, history, and general knowledge about other cultures and religions. Such absence of information creates a void that only fear can fill. But the more tragic consequence of this is that once people are filled with fear, their humanity begins to disintegrate. They will find it easier and easier to lose their capacity to relate to “other people out there” and the instinct (versus conscious choice) to withdraw into a safety net of “one’s own kind” will seem like the right and safe thing to do. We are witnessing this taking place within our own society.
THE SOUL PART
As fear takes over, our grace-driven instincts become repressed. The more I work in the arena of mystical consciousness, the more I am convinced that we are driven by the graces in our soul. We have an inherent need to heal others, to reach out in compassion and kindness and generosity. And we have an even deeper need to be forgiving, which is why we battle with forgiveness so much. We aren’t fighting the need to forgive; we are fighting our pride. Get over the pride factor and forgiveness comes easy.
The point here is this: You are far more comfortable in your spiritual skin than in being driven by fear. You feel far more in harmony with your interior self, your soul, by having the fortitude to make courageous choices than by collapsing out of fear and compromising yourself. And you – all of us – have a profound need to trust that your life is on a path of purpose, which does not by any means exclude experiences of chaos, loss, disease, pain, and isolation. The purposeful life might well require all such experiences because these are essential to a soul’s journey, as they were for Walter Ciszek, S. J. It is easy to be kind among kind people, to love those who love us back, and to share our food while our refrigerator is bursting with leftovers. But the truth is, in your heart of hearts, generating unimaginable goodness is exactly what you long to do in life. That’s the true reason that people are drawn to magical characters and to wizards and fantasies about power. People want to have goodness defeat evil and they imagine themselves as part of the good guys defeating the bad.
It is unfortunate for that part of us that longs for drama and applause and recognition to learn again and again that at the end of the day, we must work with the same tools to generate unimaginable goodness that we use to generate unimaginable darkness. All we have are the choices we make, one at a time. And from such choices are created the larger events of humanity. Our imaginations cannot grasp that one good choice, one holy choice, one profound choice can make a difference – especially since we long to see, feel, touch, and note in great detail the difference we are making. But we are never to be granted such a vision, lest we be shown the consequence of all the darkness we have set in motion. Could we live with that? It is better that both ends of our handiwork are kept from us. It is simply up to each of us to trust that every choice we make matters.
THE STORY OF WALTER CISZEK, S.J.
Briefly, Walter Ciszek was born in Philadelphia in 1906. He was ordained a Jesuit around 1938. What makes his life so surreal is that he ended up spending twenty-three years in a Soviet prison camp, the gulag, as it was known. Through the most bizarre and unusual series of spiritually-driven choices, Ciszek felt compelled to go to the Jesuit House in Rome after his ordination and study in the Jesuit Russian program. At the time, the Jesuits were looking for volunteers to enter into Russia secretly to assess the spirit of the Catholic population and to be present as priests. He felt called to this mission. Hitler was more than just on the rise by the late 1930’s and Ciszek was now being discouraged from heading into Russia. Instead, he opted for Poland. He was already fluent in Polish, having grown up in a Polish-speaking American home. Hitler invaded Poland’s western end and the Russians invaded the eastern end, where Ciszek, now using an alias, was living. He saw this as an opportunity to enter Russia as a regular laborer and he took it. Eventually the Soviet authorities came upon the Jesuit House in Poland, where they found his American passport. They tortured the head priest into finally revealing that Ciszek and one other Jesuit had entered into Russia using false identification papers. Within a few months, both these men were arrested and their nightmare journey began. Ciszek’s companion priest died early on, but he went on to experience brutal interrogations, starvation, and eventually years in Siberia. He was released in 1963, thanks to the efforts of the U.S. State Department, his sister, and President John F. Kennedy, who held the Jesuits in high regard.
He wrote a book entitled With God in Russia, which, of course, I immediately downloaded into my Kindle that same night. I had to find out how a man born in Philadelphia could end up ordained in New York and then land in a Soviet gulag during the 1940’s, 50’s, and early 60’s. I have given you a far more complete portrait of his life than is in The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything because I wanted to just give you a small background on the torture and torment that this one human being went through. Knowing this, what left me breathless was the closing words to his book in which he recounted his twenty-three years of having been imprisoned under false charges of spying. Instead of saying something like, “I couldn’t get out of Russia fast enough,” or “I left with a bitter taste in my mouth for all the wasted years of my life,” he noted that as his plane took flight, he could see the spirals of the Kremlin in the distance. And with that image in his view, “Slowly, carefully, I made the sign of the cross over the land I was leaving.”
He blessed the hell from which he was being released.
Slowly, carefully, he blessed the land that had held him prisoner and had brutalized him for more than two decades. For me, this man was a modern day John of the Cross, a man who had found a way to love greater than and through the labyrinth of his own personal sufferings. His grace and goodness were unimaginable and it struck me with a force as I read his story late at night. What is that grace that allows a person to have the courage to make choices so profoundly good that their consequences live on long after that person has passed away?
Obviously we are not going to end up in a Soviet gulag, but what is certain is that our lives have had and will continue to have situations that present us with choices – the types of choices that end up making a difference to us personally and therefore to others. Blessing that which constitutes the hellish parts of our lives may well be among the ultimate challenges, but what is the other option? Condemning your own hell is like adding years on to your own sentence, yes?
Yet the question remains, “How does a person become strong enough to generate unimaginable goodness even in the midst of great darkness?” That’s a worthy question, perhaps so much so that it merits a book and not merely a Salon. A person has to be devoted to scaffolding a sturdy interior self. Without that, what part of you can you count on when you need to? So in keeping with the Jesuit theme of spiritual direction, I am going to offer you the following questions for reflection with the goal of generating unimaginable goodness in mind. That is to say, if you were truly honest with yourself, you would discover that being able to generate goodness no matter what situation you are in, whether it is one of bliss or hell, is the optimum. The only thing that can block us from making such choices is the mysteries of our own nature.
QUESTIONS FOR SELF-EXAMINATION:
How do I know I trust my own choices?
How can I live a simpler life?
What do I mean by “a good friend” and how can I be a good friend?
What brings me joy and how can I become a container of joy for others?
How do I face my own suffering?
How do I help others carry their pain and suffering?
Am I trustworthy? Where do I have difficulty in maintaining trust?
How do I pray?
How do I express love? How and why does love make me uncomfortable?
What am I waiting to have happen in my life?
AND FINALLY…
What is my definition of unimaginable goodness?
What would I have to choose to allow for unimaginable goodness to occur?
What is required of me to become a vessel for this grace?
These are not ordinary questions. They are soul changers. I hope you will take the time to reflect upon each one and even discuss them with a close soul companion.
CMED Healing Family:
The following is a healing prayer for us to share for all the many who have sent in their healing requests. I would ask that each of you spend three minutes a day channeling grace to all those in need of healing, including our nation and the Middle East.
The following is a prayer to meditate upon before channeling grace to others:
And I saw the river
Over which every soul must pass
To reach the kingdom of heaven
And the name of the river was suffering –
And I saw the boat
Which carries souls across the river
And the name of that boat was
Love.
—Saint John of the Cross
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