written by Eric Phipps
It has been said that after a long period of spiritual struggle and searching, the Buddha sat down under a Bodhi tree and experienced a moment of awakening.
After many years of persecuting the Christians, Saint Paul traveled along the road to Damascus, and in a moment, he experienced a flash of blinding light.
An offender, guilty of a terrible crime, languishes in a prison cell. His life has hit rock bottom. He then feels a moment of deep sincere remorse, a recognition that what he did had caused untold suffering to another human being.
After a long period of going round in circles and appearing to go nowhere, a psychiatric patient suddenly realises: “so that is where I have been going wrong! That is the cause of my problems!”
For every single individual, there is a very special unique moment. It comes upon him or her entirely of it’s own accord, spontaneously, completely without warning. You can never tell when it will emerge, nor to whom. This moment is what makes an individuals life infinitely valuable. Two things are needed: the Moment, plus a “midwife” to catalyze, facilitate the emergence of this moment. The midwife could be a friend, a spiritual mentor, a therapist, even a group of people, or some completely unexpected other person, or situation, or enemy.
A tragedy is when, for whatever reason, this fails to happen. For example, in Shakespeare’s story, Hamlet did not ever manage to have this moment of insight, and he was not surrounded by any wise individuals who could have helped him in this regard.
Sometimes, the midwife factor is wilfully ignored or devalued. Sometimes, the possibility for the moment to emerge is somehow betrayed.
Prior to the moment, there is usually a dialectical, apparently insoluble conflict between the individuals will, and the “other” (Reality, or God). This can take myriad forms, and is usually very protracted. The “moment” can then emerge as a third factor, from totally beyond the level on which the conflict took place.
Loss
The loss of something precious (e.g. a loved one) is one of the greatest gifts of all, for by this loss, one can end up discovering that one has actually not lost anything at all; one has gained something instead: a). valuable memories of the thing lost, which now have a sort of aesthetic completeness to them, a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending; b). the value one projected onto the thing lost is, in fact, always within oneself and always will be; c). the actuality of the experience of the thing lost has an eternal quality about it that will always remain with one. The discovery and the integration of these three perspectives into one’s general perspective of Life could be said to be a form of spiritual growth.
Eric Phipps
