|
|
Waking Up to LifeThe Spiritual Traveler
|
The
great paradox about waking up to life is that it requires that we first
wake up to death. It requires the realization,
acknowledgement, understanding, and acceptance of our own
mortality. We all acknowledge intellectually that we will
die, but acknowledging this with not only our mind, but also with our
heart and soul is a much more difficult and complex
process. Normally, this awareness does not come until we
reach middle age, have a crisis in our health, or experience the death
of a close friend or family member.
 There's
a very famous short novel by Franz Kafka called The Metamorphosis, or
The Transformation. It begins with an unforgettable first
sentence: "When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he
found himself transformed into a gigantic insect." In the
story, Gregor, transformed into an insect in this first sentence, ends
up dying miserably in his room. His transformation can be
seen as symbolic of his realization of his own
mortality. The rest of the novel is concerned with his
struggle to come to terms with his condition, and in doing so he goes
through the classic psychological stages of death: denial, anger,
depression, and acceptance.
Curiously for such a
seemingly bleak story, The Metamorphosis has been interpreted as a
parable of modern spirituality. In finally accepting the
inevitability of his death, Gregor also accepts a truth about his life,
namely that a possibility for fulfillment or meaning exists for him
only in his outcast state. Now this is indeed spirituality
of a type, for spirituality implies a turning away to a certain extent
from worldly concerns and desires. An individual with a
spiritual outlook is an outcast of sorts, living in this world, but are
not of it. What makes Gregor's spirituality peculiarly
modern and unhealthy, however, is that it doesn't include any notion
that there is something that lies beyond this life.
The problem with this is that
nothing can truly have meaning except in relation to something
else. A sound has no meaning except in relation to other
sounds. A word has no meaning except in relation to other
words. Our lives have no meaning except in relation to other
people's lives. Life on earth cannot have meaning except in
relation to another form of existence. So, to find meaning
in our life, we must consider it in relation to that which lies beyond
it. Spiritual experience starts with recognizing that we
will die, but more than this, it also requires the recognition that our
brief sojourn on earth is simply a stage in a larger
process. Only with this type of recognition will our
transformation truly be a metamorphosis.
 There
was a film that came out a few years ago called "Contact," starring
Jodie Foster. In the film, Foster's character, Ellie
Arroway, is an astronomer who makes contact with intelligent life in a
distant galaxy. The transmission she receives via her
monitoring and decoding efforts enables the people on Earth to build a
transportation device. In this vehicle, Ellie travels
millions of light years and back in a space of eighteen hours,
returning with a message to mankind that we are not alone in the
universe. The film sequence of her voyage in many ways
mimics the death process. It's a voyage across space, rather
than to a higher plane of existence, but the analogy is clear.
In the film, Ellie does not
believe in God, but she believes that there is intelligent life on
other planets. She expresses her belief in terms of a
scientific precept called Occam's Razor. The precept is that
all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right
one. Ellie Arroway applies this precept to her vision of the
universe. "The universe is a pretty big place," she says,"
"It's bigger than anything in our dreams or imagination. If
we were the only intelligent inhabitants in this vast realm, it would
certainly be an awful waste of space." Although Ellie is not
intellectually able to apply the same precept to life after death, it
is not difficult to extend it in this way. We could say
that, given the immeasurable extent of time, of life, or of reality,
for our existence to be bound by the constraints of our earthly lives
would be an awful waste of experience.
The vehicle in which Ellie
travels is interesting. It's a hollow sphere, which shuts
her off completely from viewing those around her, similar to the way
the onset of death closes us off from all but our own
experience. The launch controllers, for their part, are able
to monitor her until the very second of her departure. The
sphere is suddenly dropped, let loose of its tether, and Ellie plunges
into a space warp. Contact with earth is severed.
There will be a time for all
of us when we stand, like Ellie, in the center of a vehicle that we
call the Soul body, ready to travel into another realm. This
moment of death is actually a process of 'translation', a rendering of
our self into another form. At that moment, we will be
poised, like Ellie, at the center of a universal
experience. Like her, we will feel the countless invisible
eyes of humanity upon us. We will be like emissaries,
ambassadors from the human state of consciousness to a higher
state. And like Ellie, we will not be able to communicate
that experience to others, for it is for each person to experience for
him- or herself.
Ellie spent her whole life in
preparation for her voyage, and our lives are likewise nothing but a
preparation for our own moment of translation. There are
steps along this path of preparation. Self-realization is an
important step in this direction. Essentially, it means to
be born again. Those who have experienced self-realization
almost universally report that they have had a vision of their life up
to that point as a curiously aimless enterprise, a going around in
circles. We must be spiritually reborn before we are ready
to undergo the death of the physical body in the way that Ellie Arroway
undertakes her mission-with purpose, in full-awareness, and with total
responsibility.
Whether or not one has
experienced self-realization, the growing awareness of our mortality
produces a similar effect. Everything that we did up until
this moment seems petty and inconsequential. The emphasis we
placed on finding true love, becoming successful, living up to other
people's expectations, or any one of the other questionable pursuits in
which people in this world are so seriously engaged, is seen as
vacuous, meaningless, and laughable. Everything boils down
to a precious little amount of time. It all comes down to
making a difference, serving others, and living the rest of one's life
happily, productively, and meaningfully.
To view our earthly existence
as a mere drop in the bucket of our experience is really the only
rational approach that we can take to life. Only this
approach will allow us to live according to principles of moderation,
humility, and service. Without this understanding, our life
is all too likely to drift off into either a numbing addiction to
routine or a frantic attempt to squeeze some meaning into an ever
decreasing amount of time.
We have to live with the
prospect of our death on a minute-to-minute basis. We have
to sleep with it like we do with a lover. We have to talk to
it like we do with a friend. We have to deal with it
honestly, as with a colleague, and recognize its authority over us like
that of our boss.
Our death must become our
constant companion in the same way that the stars and galaxies became
for Ellie Arroway. One day, much sooner than we think, we
will be among those stars, and will awaken to a whole new life, and a
whole new memory of ourselves. Only with the promise of that
destiny, can we wake up to life in the present moment. |
|
|
Date Submitted:
1/2/04 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
|