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During my tenure as a hospital chaplain, I was once called to the E.R. at 3 am to be with a young mother and father whose four-year-old child had just been run over and killed in a Walmart parking lot. I escorted them into a room to view the boy's body and silently bore witness to the bottomless agony of their wailing.
Of all the miseries and sorrows that I saw on a daily basis in the hospital, that one in particular made it clear to me that there were absolutely no words of comfort that could possibly be spoken, and all I could do—all anyone could do—was stand alongside those parents and be in the presence of unbearable, unthinkable suffering. And yet, even in my silence, I later recognized a phenomenon I'd observed before: when called upon in a situation of crisis, I somehow felt something rise up within me to meet the needs of those before me, even if this time what was needed was only the silent, shared recognition of naked horror.
But it was as if my ordinarily self-centered, somewhat immature personality was brushed aside by the event and replaced by a compassionate, able, wise adult. The spiritual resources I required, I realized with astonishment, were immediately available. That place within me that I had long strived to attain and embody, and for which I had sat long hours on meditation cushions, and searched for far and wide, was present in an instant when it was needed in the service of another.
Time and again, I seem to thrive and be at my best in times of crisis, able to fully bring myself to situations and be present in a way that is rare in my daily life. As a chaplain I intuitively knew how to be with people and what to say to grieving families that was actually comforting to them and surprising to myself.
Despite my personal, confused, mish-mash of a semi-New Age/secular humanist/Jewish-Buddhist spiritual life, I seemed nevertheless able to meet people in the place of their own faith and beliefs, and affirm that with them. "Who is this guy?" I'd sometimes wonder about myself, as I performed a Baptism on a brain-dead infant, or held hands in a circle chanting a hymn to Jesus with an Afro-American Christian family from the deep South. I was a chameleon of religion, while having little of my own. Although "spiritual" and interested in all things mystical, I'm not religious or observant in any traditional sense, and don't have a very well-articulated relationship with that same God with whom I was somehow able to facilitate a connection for other people.
My wife Shari commented once, only half-jokingly, that on those days I came home from the hospital and nobody had died or been seriously maimed, I'd seem a bit disappointed, if not bored. That may sound as if I was feeding off of other people's pain to get something for myself, but that's not the case. Quite the opposite, in fact; the sudden presence of my more essential nature only appeared because I wasn't in it for me, and had no attention on myself at all. While it may be true that "it serves me to serve you," if I serve you in order to serve me, then it's not true service, and neither party benefits. The very act of being fully present for another is its own reward, which is why ‘tis better to give than receive. The simpler word for this phenomenon is love, and what, finally, do any of our lives really come down to in the end, except the depth and generosity of our love and spirit? After all my years of meditating and going on retreats, I heard a spiritual teacher say recently, "You can advance more spiritually from doing a single act of kindness for a fellow human being than you can from any solitary practice."
The fact that crisis can bring forth in an instant what many of us have been struggling to achieve our entire lifetimes has far-reaching repercussions for the professional spiritual seeker. It suggests that all we need do to find the innately powerful, loving, essential being we really are is to manufacture crisis! It is reported that the mystic Gurdjieff used to do just that for the benefit of his followers. He would bend over backward to create uncomfortable, even intolerable situations for people, making impossible demands, intentionally contradicting himself, imposing long hours of difficult physical labor, doing whatever was required to rouse his students from their waking slumber and remember who they really were.
Genuine teachers like Gurdjieff and others like him are not in the "soothing" business; if they are legitimate, their job is not to console people and make them feel safe, comfortable and "better about themselves," but rather to trigger an explosive crisis in the very center of the student's identity, blasting away tired, habitual ways of seeing, thinking, being and behaving, and triggering the emergence of someone who operates from a new, previously unknown center of gravity.
Crisis can take many forms. One of them, oddly enough, is the stage. Through performing in community theater musicals, I have observed a very similar pattern. It is as if the mere act of stepping out on stage is simultaneously a stepping in, to a fuller, more expressive and present version of myself. No matter who I think I am offstage, or what mood I'm in, when the curtain rises on the finale, I need to leave all that behind and virtually leap out of my mind into being. If the final number is an upbeat, joyful song, how can I spontaneously enter a joyful state and make it real, and not seem like I'm faking it? For to merely "act joyful" does not an inspiring show make. To get people whistling out the door and feeling a little better about their existence than when they came in, the performers themselves have to embody that spirit of life in a genuine way. And again, for the committed performer, that quality is instantly available, a simple choice, a way of responding to a situation that calls for nothing less than everything we've got. Creative people engaged in other forms of expression report the identical dynamic; authentic being and true art appear only when we leave ourselves behind and allow the unknown to freely move through us, often like a tornado, destroying anything in its path that wreaks of ego.
The question then is, what's to prevent us from choosing to be all that we are all the time? Must we wait for a crisis in the ER, an opening night, a blank canvas, or some other special situation before we fully show up, or is it possible to approach this moment, and every moment, as reason enough for us to call forth our best selves? Theoretically, yes, it is possible; in practice, for most of us, no it isn't, not really. Presumably, the truly enlightened among us live that way, at least more often than we do. On the other hand, Sufi teacher Asha Greer once remarked that that sort of super-human energy that can come through us when needed is akin to the Magician's card in the Tarot, meaning, it is a particular archetype that has a unique function for certain circumstances and not others.
We've all heard stories of people who were able to single-handedly lift up a car to save a trapped child, but who among us could live with that kind of adrenaline running through their system all the time? Of course, those who are more consistently able to live in this way are not necessarily revved up like that, but rather, have tempered it with the skill of equanimity, the ability to calmly be with the present moment, dramatic or not, and respond in an appropriate and skillful way,
Perhaps, then, the message we receive from crisis is simply a news bulletin from our higher self: "We interrupt the regularly-scheduled program you are stuck in to bring you this special glimpse of who you really are; ordinary programming will resume shortly." Thus we proceed, day by day, sometimes propelled by crisis and challenge—or art, or Grace—into wakefulness, while at other times we merely go through the motions of life in a kind of spiritual sleep. Despite all the talk of Total Enlightenment, Full Awakening and Final Liberation, I'm beginning to suspect, at age 57, after 30+ years on "the path," that perhaps what I've described may just be about as good as it gets for we ordinary folk. What do you think?
