Through the Fire

Many of us, in the course of our lives, have had one or more experiences of what I call, going through the fire.

Very often these experiences come about as a result of us going through something we hold as going terribly wrong in our lives. This going terribly wrong experience however, is not at all absolutely required. We can also have the experience of going through the fire being brought about through having many other types of life experiences as well. For our purposes here, experiencing something having gone wrong in our life is simply just another way of saying that we had one or more collective experiences of not getting what we wanted and/or of us getting something we didn’t want although perhaps in a rather extreme way. Often the experience of not getting what we wanted and/or of getting what we didn’t want leads to us suffering in some very clear way or of us feeling an insatiable need to blame either ourselves, others, or life circumstances, situations, and realities for us having this experience. Sometimes however, not getting what we want and/or getting what we don’t want can lead to an experience of us going through the fire and this experience subsequently, can take us directly onto the path of awakening.

All of us typically have many experiences of not getting what we want and of also getting what we don’t want. However, not all of these experiences bring us the additional experience of going through the fire. The additional intensity that is experienced here can be brought on by any number of circumstances. Perhaps it is the severity of the experience. Maybe it is the timing of the experience that adds the additional intensity. Perhaps it is us having multiple very intense experiences of not getting what we want or getting what we don’t want, all within the span of a very short period of time and this is what moves our experience from one of simply not getting what we want or getting what we don’t want to one of going through the fire. Maybe it is a situation where we have some primary wound or injury we are meant to address or heal in this life and we have an experience or set of experiences that triggers this in some sort of essential, deep, traumatic, or visceral way. And as I have already said, it doesn’t have to be a negative life experience that brings us to such a place, although that does often seem to be the case. Still, it can also be a seemingly very mundane, or a very beautiful, or what we hold as a mystical experience we have that brings us to the brink of going through the fire. The point I'd like to emphasize is that something in our lives or some collection of circumstances and events does in fact bring us to the place of going through the fire. What we do with this experience however, could very well change the rest of our lives and in very important ways.

Some people do not physically survive the experience of going through the fire. In other words, it hastens their deaths. Others survive it physically but do not really survive it emotionally nor psychologically intact. Others still survive it on some clear levels but at the cost of becoming social pariahs or monsters of some sort or of essentially becoming the walking dead—zombies, if you will, people who are breathing and whose hearts are still beating in the middle of their chests while going through many of the same motions as other living people but for whom the experience of going through the fire has left them a shell of a person, a hallow vehicle simply marking time until the heart and the breath catches up with the rest of them and they eventually drop their body and move on to whatever is next. I believe it is important for me to state that I do not consider any of this to be an expression of emotional or any other kind of weakness. Dying in the process of going through the fire or becoming a bitter person, or becoming emotionally stunted, or taking on sociopathic qualities, or becoming a zombie for me, is simply what is or what has occurred. I have no need to place any kind of judgment on it whatsoever.

There are many different ways of being someone can embody after one has gone through trough the fire, including being a person who is essentially indistinguishable from whom she/he was before the experience of going through the fire. I however, want to focus my attention on those who have a spiritual awakening experience directly as a result of going through the fire.

I want to first clarify what I mean when I say, spiritual awakening experience.

I believe it is important for me to say that I have come to a place where I do not believe in a single individual arriving at total, absolute, and complete enlightenment or at a state of one being completely and totally awakened spiritually. This places me at odds with perhaps many spiritual teachers and many spiritual seekers as well. So be it. I believe enlightenment, awakening, or what some call self-realization, is always an ongoing process, even if that process is in the zone of the extremes in terms of subtlety. I do not believe there is some endpoint or finite destination one arrives at and then when one arrives at this point one is then “enlightened” or “awakened” or “realized.” The ego loves this idea of finite, complete, and absolutely finished work. I however, do not. So when I use the phrase spiritual awakening experience I am simply speaking of a person having a conscious awareness that he or she is in the awakening process—just like so many other people on the planet. The person may however, not understand anything about the process. That issue is for another post. However, for my purposes here there does need to be a conscious awareness that one is in such a process or at least posses a belief or presumption that one is in such a process. Being consciously aware of being in a process of spiritual awakening is not necessary for the authenticity of the experience itself. I simply prefer to focus on people who are consciously aware that they are in a process of spiritual awakening or in possession of a belief that they are. It simply makes it easier for me to speak to such people directly and for them to understand that I am speaking to them directly.

Historically, I believe there has been a strong correlation between going through the fire and spiritual awakening. And I believe there has historically been an even stronger connection between a very negative experience or set of experiences, going through the fire, and spiritual awaking. Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle states this in his book, The Power of Now. Of course his own powerful awakening experience came when he himself was on the brink of suicide. So it makes sense that he would see and understand this connection. However, I still agree with Tolle. I believe he is correct. It’s quite simple, really.

When we have an extremely negative experience or set of experiences or a very prolonged experience of negativity in our life, one of two seemingly opposite experiences seem to be quite common. On the one hand one can be plunged into an extremely deep depression as a result of what is experienced as deep suffering. Or one can have a profound, unplanned experience of extremely intense spiritual surrender which in turn can lead to a profound journey of awakening. One way of understanding intense spiritual surrender is the ego or mind identifying with something very strongly. This is the status quo period. Let’s, for example, say the ego identifies very strongly with the construct of being "a victim" or identifies very strongly with the construct of "suffering" and this identification becomes so strong, so intense that for an instant the ego itself is overwhelmed with the identification and the ego and this identification drops or stops running the show for an instant. If in that instant when the ego identification is dropped or stopped, Divine grace, in the form of awakened consciousness, steps in to take the place of strong ego identifications. When this happens we may have an instant of extremely powerful awareness. If we are able to metaphorically grab that awareness, caress, and hold it even momentarily, what was experienced as intense suffering can instantaneously turn into an experience of pure bliss, or pure awareness, or pure clarity or “the peace that surpasses understanding.” It could be experienced as a fleeting moment. Or it could be experienced as that which morphs into a lifetime journey of awakened consciousness marked by an ever more weakening of the power of the ego and the mind over the person in question.

So you see, consistently not getting what we want and/or getting what we don’t want and us then experiencing intense suffering as a result, which often is exactly what happens, can in fact ultimately lead to a journey of authentic spiritual awakening, especially once this takes us on a journey of also going through the fire. Of course there is also the fact that a genuine journey of spiritual awakening is very often expressly not as an experience of eternal rainbows, unicorns, flowers, balloons, and the constant repetitive singing of Kumbaya. This is what I will address in my next post on this topic.