Light at the End of the Tunnel

Pain is a bully; I hate it when it talks. Pain walks hand-in-hand with Fear and Lies; together, the three push Hope and Sleep off the sidewalk of Life. ~GH

Tonight I felt exhausted and laid down quite early (for me). Slept three hours and awoke around midnight. There are changes coming in my life -- I feel them acutely. I welcome their arrival. I wonder if I'm ready to step up into these new roles. 

I felt a great deal of physical pain, couldn't get back to sleep, tried for three hours and finally gave up. Went downstairs to take a couple of pain pills to see if I could find some relief and get back to sleep. I have a test in the morning - my last test before finals.

Looked through a bookcase and re-discovered a book of Kahlil Gibran's letters (this one is Kahlil Gibran: A Self-Portrait, published in 1959. There are other collections of his correspondence). Skimming through, I remembered that his health was poor. That set off a trigger and I received a mental image of a cracked vessel. 

I wondered if our bodies weaken as our spirits grow strong? Does one feed off the other, I supposed? And I wondered why I had to invest so much energy into simply surviving for so many years. What impact did that have on my spiritual development? My physical health? If I hadn't had to scramble to live, where might I be or get to in my creative life? 

Then I thought about what little I have to offer compared to how much I want to give. And I wept. 

In Gibran's words to his friend, Emil Zaidan:

There is nothing more difficult than the existence of a strong spirit in a weak body. I feel--I am not modest--that I am just at the beginning of a mountain road. The twenty years which I have spent as a writer and painter were but an era of preparation and desire. Up to the present time I have not yet done anything worthy of remaining before the face of the sun. My ideas have not ripened yet, and my net is still submerged in water.

I realize I'm mostly feeling lonely and exhausted. It is the very end of the semester. Resolutions to issues that have long troubled me appear to be on the horizon -- but they've deceived me before with the promise of settlement. I am tired of being teased. My faith has been stretched to the limits of its endurance. There are endings in sight - so near and still, seemingly so far away. New beginnings beckon. I want to just turn away from dealing with unpleasantries and embrace happiness. I am so ready for Joy. 

But I have some loose ends to tie up first. Reminding myself that it won't be as long as it has been, this hellish journey. There truly is light at the end of the tunnel.~~GH

The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf' and the People Who Loved Him

A person whose role in my life has been significant for many years was recently exposed as having habitually lied to me. Under numerous circumstances, sometimes seemingly out of no deeper motivation than avoiding a second question.

If you know me, you know I am innately curious and ask lots of questions. I don't interrogate anybody for the sake of judgment; I seek to understand for my own edification. It's really all quite objective. It is extremely rare for me to “get personal.” Think of me as a slightly more mature four year old: “Why? Why? Why?” I imagine I can be annoying. That's why I try not to ask any more often than I feel compelled to know. The world is definitely not ready for my level of curiosity; this I learned the hard way. I am a giant knowledge sponge.

So this significant person established a decades-long relationship on a foundation of lies. I only recently came to understand this reality. Now I am dealing with the fallout. And in my objective, scientific-ish way of handling relationships, I weighed the impact of this break in trust. Naturally, I find it difficult to trust this individual, but it goes far deeper and further than that. I hear whispers of doubt when dealing with others, as well.

Doubt is a bastard. But like a sherpa on a trek up Kilimanjaro, a necessary bastard. We all need a little doubt to stay alive. If we blithely walked everywhere without questioning, we'd soon end up dead. But too much doubt undermines one's ability to lead a fulfilling life. Too much doubt causes one to question others' motivations when maybe it really doesn't matter. When what the others do really doesn't have a thing to do with US. When we hold up the yardstick of our existence and force-measure someone else against our standard. That's a negative result of doubt.

Another negative result of doubt is questioning ones self. What was wrong with me that I believed those lies for so long? Is there something functionally wrong with me that I cannot see through deception? Is this new person lying to me now? Will the next person I run into, say at the post office, lie to me too? Does everybody lie? Studies tend to suggest everybody does. What does that even mean?

These are the truly evil consequences of his lying. Not even the situations that were hidden and lied about, but the fallout, the loss of trust, the doubt, the residual lessening of ME and my spirit, my life, the revealing of my weakness, my reluctance to trust. 

In my spiritual Universal way of thinking (my personal spiritual path that remains unlabeled yet is fairly defined), the lesson here is that I must trust more fully, more deeply, more willingly. His lies exposed my doubt. They laid open a wound that had never fully healed, an ugly wound at that.

Two sides of the coin: Trust, and doubt.

So how does one deal with Trust and Doubt? I'd say with Grace and Judgment. More on that tomorrow. ~~GHC