Tragedy into Transcendence
by N*I*N Sharyn Bebeau
This is an excerpt from a lecture N*I*N gave March 25, 2006, at a benefit for The New Hope Technical Institute in Rwanda.
Tragedy is losing something or someone important to you, someone you love. Perhaps the focus of your heart is damaged, lost or separated from you. Whatever the event, you feel like a part of you has died, which it has. This painful event becomes a trigger that launches you out of your ordinary world, launches you into the grief tunnel.
People often cling to the trigger, repeating details obsessively. “I should have done this. … I should have said that… If only I had……. If only I hadn’t……” Rehashing the events over and over keeps you dangling on the surface of reality, reifying your victimhood. It also keeps you from descending into the process.
In the ancient myth of Inanna, the Goddess descended into the Underworld to wrestle Her Beloved from death’s claws. Stricken with grief over her husband’s death, the Goddess refused to let him go. She followed him into the Underworld itself. On the way down to the depths, Inanna passed through seven gates. At each one, She was forced to surrender a piece of clothing: a crown, her identity; a breastplate, her protection. When She finally reached the deepest of all places, She was stripped naked.
Trauma launches you into the Underworld, where you too are stripped to the core. People do not like to change, to let go of the known, even if it is awful. When Destiny demands that we step forward to embrace our power and take on our fate, we sometimes need to have our fingers pried loose, for we do not want to let go - even when we want to go on.
Tragedy forces you to confront your beliefs. Your value system changes. Old beliefs and imperatives fall away when the world spins out of control. Suffering forces you to surrender, compelling you past your resistance and into change. When you surrender, something new emerges.
Sometimes you cannot grow from where you are, and a dramatic force is needed to launch you. Stripped of outmoded identities, cumbersome roles and responsibilities, and exposed to dramatic and shocking events which demand so much of you, you are forced to discover new parts of yourself. Drawing on your deeper resources to merely survive leaves you with access to those new resources, thus catalyzing a rebirth in your life.
Dennis was a successful dentist. He was revered by his clientele and appreciated by his community. There was no reason to give up his lucrative practice. Dennis’ 40th birthday brought a hunger for freedom, but no visible way to break free of his busy schedule. Then tragedy struck! He was diagnosed with stomach cancer. In the following months he was too sick to work, and spent most of his time in bed. There, in the quiet of his bedroom, he rediscovered the guitar, an old forgotten love.
Over the next year his music became more and more exciting, more central to his life. His soul felt free at last, and the cancer went into remission. Instead of returning to his successful dental practice, Dennis became a professional musician. He never made much money at music, and his wife left him for a successful businessman. Nevertheless, Dennis enjoyed his new life, especially the freedom and satisfaction it afforded him.
The path of your life is destined. The past molds the choices you make today. From Plato’s teleological point of view, so does the future. It pulls on you as well. If this moment is molded by the past, the future and the needs of the present, where does free will come in? You may not be able to choose your life, with all its strange twists and turns, but you choose how you walk the path. You can make conscious choices or you can be dragged along by Fate’s capricious whims. The moments when you take assertive action form your fate.
Some say that Karma works as crime and punishment. When tragedy hits, they righteously proclaim that you must have done something really awful in your last lifetime to deserve this! No one deserves to suffer, and God’s Karma is not vindictive. Karma is a search for balance. The wide swing of your experiences exposes your soul to experiences that in some way bring balance to your understanding of life.
Don’t blame the messenger. See the message. Nothing is punishment. Everything is a call to awaken. Whether it was you or someone else who initiated the intense events which led to loss, no one is the cause. Greater cycles are at play than you can ever see. God/Goddess/Great Spirit/Divinity is compassionate, but not sympathetic. It cares about getting you where you need to be to do your soul’s mission, but thinks nothing of dragging you through hell and high water to get you there.
All the resources you need are inside of you. The challenge is to recognize your traumas as the awakening of those resources. Laura Evans was a successful designer, well loved and respected. In the prime of her life, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was given three to five years to live. Ten years later, she was well enough to lead a group of cancer survivors up the highest mountain in the Argentina Andes. Beating the cancer became the vehicle of her empowerment and gave her the determination to give others the tools they need in order to take control of their fate.
Ask yourself what is your greatest wound. Then ask this unbelievable question: How has it served you? What is the opposite of this affliction? The answer will give you a hint about your soul’s mission.
We are all healers in a world dearly in need of healing. Only the wounded can heal because their healing power comes from within. It was not gained lightly with a turn of a page, but grew from the courage they were forced to cultivate and the wisdom they suffered to acquire.
When you can disengage yourself from the personal part of an event and look at the overview, the destiny that calls to you, this is transcendence. We are all little fishes caught in a net. Your soul is stretching and you are being forcefully evicted from a familiar world. Loss and gain, like lovers, lie entwined, one sometimes disguised as the other. Beyond blame, victimhood and guilt lies a greater overview of what is really happening. When you connect with a greater overview of your Destiny, your soul’s mission becomes apparent and you feel transcendent!