Your Sacred Self
Living Your Real Life
Christmas Essays
Christ on the bus
The dark night of the soul
Facing loneliness – finding joy
An angel -- sometimes it's you
Peace on earth
Christ on the bus
On a dark December night, a strange, old man sat across from me on a New York City bus. He asked, “Are you holy?”
I sat stunned -- a captive of his intense gaze. A crumpled figure, with a scraggly, grey beard, he looked like a wizened rabbi. He kept staring. He looked profoundly wise, piercingly perceptive -- and bonkers. I tried to ignore him.
He asked again, "Are you holy?" I pretended not to hear. "You look holy. Are you a holy man?" he persisted.
After feeling lousy about myself all day, I had gratefully gone to a coffee shop with some of the guys I know on the journey. With their good cheer and encouragement, my mood had shifted from despair to a remarkable feeling of well-being. I was heading home feeling restored, and sane. I didn’t need this.
"Excuse me, I'm speaking to you!” He persisted. “Are you a holy man?" This time, I heard a quality in his voice that I couldn't ignore. I believe theoretically, we are all holy, all the Christ, but would I admit this to a complete stranger on the 14th Street cross-town bus -- loaded with weary, yet eavesdropping New Yorkers?
I looked him directly in the eye. If ever I saw a holy man or woman, this was the real article. I answered as a Zen student would answer the master. "Yes I am holy. I believe we are all holy."
He said, "Correct. And Jesus wasn't the only Christ." "Yes," I agreed. "I believe there are other enlightened beings. Jesus is not the only Christ. We all are potentially the Christ."
The dark night of the soul Facing loneliness – finding joy
This joyous time of year may leave some of us feeling anything but joyous. Instead, we may feel lonely and left-out. If we can face into these feelings, we may liberate the season from the tyrannical expectations of the family and culture that usurp the profound meaning at the heart of this time. If we address our lonely feelings, we can make this holiday season a sacred time for us. Chances are, our loneliness stems from long ago, the child’s legitimate expectations and failed hopes intensified by the promise of this wonderful season. The anticipation of the holidays may have seemed a saving grace for a sensitive child whose world or family-life did not always feel jolly or safe. The gifts, the magic of a Christmas tree, the excitement in the air, the decorations on Main Street all softened the bleak landscape for a creative and real child growing up in a constricted family and often hostile world. Our hearts may break during the holidays remembering what was -- and what wasn’t. A candy-coated version of a past will not bring us peace. As we feel the reality of holidays past, their delight and pain, a new light begins to kindle in us, even in this darkest time. Only facing the facts and feelings of our actual past experiences will generate a new spark of life in these dark and cold days of today. This holiday season, we may not get the gift for which we ache -- a different childhood filled with parental love and acceptance. Yet this sacred season will not be wasted, as we can give the priceless gift of acceptance and love -- to ourselves. Affirm: After many disappointments, the last gift under the tree is self-acceptance, and loneliness is changed to joy. An angel – sometimes it’s you David was dying of AIDS. On my way to visit him in the labyrinth of a New York City hospital, I stopped in an artless church, memorable only for its size and for the fact that it was open at all. Sitting in the gloomy cavern, I tried to think of something to say to David. Nothing came to mind -- only a numb fear. I sat on his bedside. He looked pathetic. I searched my brain for the right thing to say. I shuddered, realizing how easily this could have been me. What responsibility did I bear for this epidemic – what should I do now having been spared this ordeal? Something came over me -- I became peaceful. I took his hand and said, "David, don't worry about eating those cherries." Then I looked deeply into his intensely beautiful, brown eyes and said, "There's nothing to fear." He relaxed. The fear left him. I felt God had spoken through me in a very difficult situation. I felt God had used me as an angel. David died soon after that, and they reported -- peacefully. Affirm: God's angels are all around and sometimes -- it's you. To contact me or to comment on this web site, mail to: Ftimm@verizon.net
“Correct.” He got up, rang the bell and got off the bus with a worn newspaper crumpled under his arm. What was that all about? When I got home, I called a friend who said, "You meet an angel."
Affirm: If someone on the bus asks if you're a holy person, tell the truth.
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At our lowest point, we feel hopeless. There is no one to turn to for comfort – even our addictions offer no solace, but only the promise of death. God seems to have abandoned us entirely. There is no discernable way-out. We enter the dark night of the soul.
When our own best efforts to conquer life’s uncertainties lead us into despair, when our attempts to find salvation in worldly achievement fail, when our efforts to avoid our traumatic past can not longer be avoided through addiction, depression, dissociated highs, or distracted lows – we must find another way.
Yet, as we turn to God in desperation, we find a void. There seems to be no answer. Where is God in this pain? Has God abandoned me entirely? The loneliest time for a soul destined for greatness is this agonizing transition. As we turn from a life based on externals and childish dreams of rescue, to a spiritually mature life lived from within, we fear we have lost our way. We question: Will we survive this agony? We pray that hope will find us in this spiritual exile -- where nothingness meets nothingness.
The most painful feeling we humans can endure is abandonment. The infant’s primal fear is parental desertion. This terror now takes adult form – and translates into feelings of being abandoned by God, by meaning, by life itself. These profound, fundamental and agonizing feelings of loss are actually the final child’s nightmare as the adult psyche transitions into autonomous maturity. To suffer these feelings is a necessary prelude before the adult Self can emerge. We call this painful transition from the realms of darkest despair, the terrors of the abandoned child to the promise of enlightened adulthood -- the dark night of the soul. And every soul who would meet its true Self and enter autonomous adulthood must traverse this terrifying and profoundly lonely terrain. We must leave behind our limited parents and our limited version of God – and trust that this profound journey will not destroy us, but take us to new meaning.
During this time of year in the Northern hemisphere, when the days seem to descend into darkness never to return, we take comfort in the inevitable cycles of nature. There is an end to darkness and it is not destruction. The sun returns. It is not an accident that we celebrate Christmas near the solstice. As the sun is born in darkness, so is the Christ. And our Christ Self, our true Self, begins to be born in our emptied and terrified hearts at our darkest hour.
Affirm: In my darkest hour, God hasn't abandoned me, but is being painfully born -- in me.
Now, as adults, we may feel again the anticipation and hope we felt as children -- and its heart-break. In fact, we may feel the same anticipation, colored by disappointment that haunted us all those years ago. We remember that this magic time of gifts never gave us what we truly wanted -- a safe place in our family where we were seen, and appreciated for exactly who we were – a wonderful authentic child.
How many times in the early days of the epidemic had I visited friends with AIDS? In the 1980’s, fifty percent of the gay men living in New York City were infected with HIV -- I wasn't. Why was I spared? At least I could visit – look into their faces and search for an answer.
I entered David's room cautiously, not wanting to intrude. Dying is an intimate act.
There was my friend, at least what was left of him, in a knot of sweaty sheets. He was trying to eat a bowl of cherries, yet he could hardly chew or swallow one. Those red cherries seemed to represent life itself. If he could only ingest them, he would live. It was a futile, sad struggle to watch.
Peace on earth
This time of year, we may have received many holiday cards wishing Peace on Earth, Good Will to All. But, if we are honest, these sweet sentiments seem like wispy dreams in the face of life’s realities and the actual emotional atmosphere of our own lives. We sincerely yearn for Peace on Earth, and in our lives, yet peace seems like a dissociated fantasy -- not a real possibility.
Until we heal our childhood traumas, as individuals, and collectively as a community, nation, and world, we will always seek revenge and turn to violence. We will go to war with our partners, our neighbors and co-workers -- even with other nations -- until the raging child within us is appeased with love and care. As long as there is a neglected, wounded and raging child at our core, who remains denied, untended and unloved, we will always seek conflict and wishes of Peace, like last year’s Christmas cards, though obligingly sent and well-intended, are quickly forgotten and discarded.
Peace is possible, but requires a battle. The war is not with external enemies, but with the demons within our own psyches. Peace, which is part of our essence, will remain inaccessible, until we integrate the traumas inflicted during childhood. We will never know Peace as long as it remains buried under the rubble of childhood pain.
As we become conscious of our past and face our demons, the horrors of a innocent child growing up in a violent world and family with parents who failed us, we will no longer need to externalize terror and see the face of evil in others. When we face the traumas of childhood directly and indict our parents, we will no longer seek the magical, dissociative promise of “the peace that passes all understanding” as is often quoted in church services – but rather, we find the peace that comes from understanding.
Through understanding, we begin to heal our wounded child who then needs not seek revenge in a displaced manner. At time passes, the child heals into an integrated adult, the adult self can forgive his persecutors, including his parents, for he see them for who they were – unconscious, traumatized children.
With this hard-won understanding, peace begins at last. Now, we can truly wish peace to others with the conviction of those who have fought battle for peace within themselves.
Affirm: When I heal my traumatic past, then Peace on Earth begins with me.