Once you set foot onto the path to enlightenment, stepping off is deeply painful. Where you were angry before, now you feel bursting with rage. Where you were sad before, now you feel abject depression. Where you were lost in thought before, now you feel pure ennui. At first, you think, “well fuck. This is worse than before! How can that be possible?” How, now that I am on a journey to seeking peace and love in all things, am I shimmering with a heated fury over some small inconsequential thing my husband does? Why is a rude stranger suddenly a burning slap in my face? I should be happy all the time!
Giving Up the Fight on the Path to Enlightenment
This horror is what I went through when I first gave up fighting. I had finally seen the error in thinking I could pick a side and burn the other side down in complete disregard. I truly saw the meaning behind the proverb: “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Or “meeting fire with fire burns the whole world down.” As I got increasingly angrier at those I was so sure were wrong, abusive, oppressive, tantamount to evil, I saw that I was becoming the thing I hated.
When I originally sought peace, I began with deep meditation, completely silencing my mind, and I found bliss. I connected to what some would call God. It took intense study, devoted time to the greatest thinkers in the world of peace and love, and I found it. “Yes!” I thought. It was indeed a Eureka moment. And then I “fell out of alignment,” as some would say.
Falling Out of Alignment
I still wasn’t super comfortable with the way my body worked. I drank a glass of wine almost every night and coffee throughout the day. I wasn’t getting enough sleep and I wasn’t paying attention to the food I was putting in my mouth. So my periods were all out of whack and I would have highs and lows like most people. I was still not trained to control my thoughts. I’m sure that first time I fell out of alignment, got angry at something or someone, I was PMSing, but I don’t remember exactly. What I do remember is just how bad the anger was.
“Why am I so angry? I know better than this?!” After much study, much looking inward, and a whole lot of hindsight, I understood that I was so intent upon being happy, on reaching that bliss I had found – “positive vibes only!” – that when I did fall out of alignment, for whatever reason, I was shaming myself. I was being hard on myself, and of course those around me. I was using enlightenment as another opportunity to pick a side and judge people.
Yea, No, that’s not Enlightenment
Once I realized this, and fortunately it was only a few months into my journey, I changed my tactics.
When I fell out of alignment, I got curious. I leaned into my anger, my frustration, my sadness, and saw that most of it was fear, and some of it was just hormones.
When I saw others who were angry, bitter, mean, spiteful, or any other totally normal, human manifestation of fear, I had compassion.
At this point, I opened myself up to doing the shadow work that is so important to real cycle breaking.
The Path to Enlightenment Is Ongoing and Never Ending
The real key to the path to enlightenment, the key to staying in that happy, high energy, blissful state, I finally recognized, was, first, acknowledging that there were still going to be dark times. I’m human. I’m gonna get pissed about stuff. I’m gonna have PMS. My husband is gonna get on my nerves. My kids are gonna test me. And the world around me is still going to keep turning. I have no intention of retreating from the world, or surrounding myself with “positive vibes only,” cutting out anyone who ever has a negative thought or feeling.
Second, I needed to be able to honor those darknesses.
Honoring my darkness meant confronting it.
What I was doing before was either escalating it as a way of avoiding it, or ignoring it and shoving it down as a way of avoiding it. In confronting it, I get to dig deep and understand what I was really feeling. When I do this, the feelings gradually stop coming around.
For example, if my husband is driving me crazy, I have to ask myself why. If it didn’t bother me yesterday or a month ago, why now? And if it did, why does it feel so extreme now? In my marriage, truly my greatest fear is being taken for granted. I am honestly happy to run my household like a superwoman (and I’m damn good at it) as long as I feel like I’m appreciated for what I do. So I can tell my husband, “I feel like you don’t appreciate me.” Or “I’m feeling like I’m doing this alone.” And because I married someone who wants me to be happy, he will instantly do whatever he can to make me feel appreciated and valued. Before, I would snap or yell, which would trigger his defensive mode, and then we would fight.
With my kids, I had to look really deep to see what would set me off.
I soon figured out that it was control.
I would get frustrated and snap at my kids when I felt like I couldn’t control them. This lack of control felt like I wasn’t a good mother because I couldn’t get my kids to listen. They, I thought, were a direct reflection of me. So if they were fighting, stealing, lying, you name it, it was my fault because I wasn’t whatever enough with them. Once I saw that this was all bullshit based in my own insecurities over being the best mom in the world, I could breathe easy and let go.
Logically I knew, I know, that I can’t ever control anything or anyone outside of myself. I will spend the rest of my life just trying to control myself. Once I could connect the logic to my emotions and my actions, I was able to work with my kids. Now, I can take comfort in the fact that as long as I am doing my best to be the best version of me I can, I am literally doing all I can. As the saying goes, “I am the only one who can give my kids a happy mother who loves life.”
And On and On and On into Infinity
So this is how it goes for everything in my life now. I feel the old rush of negative emotions, and I get inquisitive about it. I investigate my feelings and I honor whatever I am going through in the moment. I remind myself that I am unlearning decades of learned behavior. A lifetime of living a reactionary life where I was in full blown survivor mode.
There is a real danger of hating who I once was, of shaming that girl who was ruthless and harsh and hard. Of blaming and ridiculing that woman who burned bridges and lashed out at random. The danger of seeing yourself in the mirror is an ugly downward spiral from which it would be nearly impossible to rise. This, I believe, is the truest definition of hell. Living out an endless loop of shame and ridicule, pain and suffering at the life you lived before you realized what you were really doing.
Fortunately, I can own my past, look at that girl and that woman in the mirror, and have compassion for her. I know she was doing the best she could with what she had. I know that that is all any of us are ever doing. Having that compassion for my past self allows me to have it for my present self when I stray from my path to enlightenment. It also allows me to have it for people in my life and out in the world I never imagined I would have compassion for. Ever.
Now I handle myself and everyone else with kid gloves, gently, with all the love I am able to share in the moment. I finally see that love is the most powerful weapon in the universe.
As Abraham Lincoln once said,
“Do I not destroy my enemy when I make him my friend?”
The path to enlightenment is not a graduation ceremony. There is no end. No certificate. I will always be on this path. I will always fall off.
Yes, of course, it is so much worse somehow now when I fall off. I expected to be angry before. Life was anger. Pain. Hurt. Hard.
Now that I know it actually doesn’t have to be that way, that I was the only person who could ever cause me pain, it’s hard on me when I fall out of alignment.
The work I do now is in finding and maintaining faith that everything I go through, the light and the dark, is an opportunity to learn and grow.
For the very first time in my life, I am living with intention.
And my primary intention is love.
A love so big, so bright, and so bold, that even in my darkest moments, even when it feels so much worse than before, I can see my way out.