After the Darkest Hour: How Suffering Begins the Journey to Wisdom
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After the Darkest Hour: How Suffering Begins the Journey to Wisdom
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Overview
In the tradition of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, a book that explains the transformative power of suffering
Most people understand that suffering and sorrow are inevitable parts of every life and that illness, death, or loss of a loved one are universal experiences, not retribution or a symptom of bad luck. But few of us comprehend the ways in which suffering can give rise to growth.
In this sensitive and caring book, Kathleen Brehony describes the experiences of people who have endured life's trials and consequently found deeper spiritual and psychological meaning in their lives. Drawing on a rich selection of mythological and religious stories from many faiths, Berhony provides a historical and cultural context that enriches the meaning of these deeply personal tales.
After the Darkest Hour explores the qualities--psychological, behavioral, and spiritual--of those who have turned periods of pain and suffering into opportunities for growth and renewal. The final chapters offer exercises that will help readers approach the difficult situations they face in a more conscious, enlightened way, as well as specific suggestions for creating personal healing rituals.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429933230 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/11/2000 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 514 KB |
About the Author
Kathleen Brehony, Ph.D., is a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist, personal coach, and public speaker who has delivered hundreds of keynote addresses, workshops, and training sessions. She is the author of Awakening at Midlife and Ordinary Grace. She divides her time between Virginia and California.
Kathleen Brehony, Ph.D., is a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist, personal coach, and public speaker who has delivered hundreds of keynote addresses, workshops, and training sessions. She is the author of Awakening at Midlife and Ordinary Grace. She divides her time between Virginia and California.
Read an Excerpt
After the Darkest Hour
How Suffering Begins the Journey to Wisdom
By Kathleen A. Brehony
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 2000 Kathleen BrehonyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-3323-0
CHAPTER 1
The Truth about Life — Everyone Lives a Drama
Life gives us magic
And life gives us tragedy
Everyone suffers some loss.
Still we have faith in it,
Childlike hope.
There's a reason that outweighs the cost.
— From "The Color of Roses"
* I was once conducting a group therapy session in a psychiatric hospital. The participants did not have long-term, serious mental illnesses but were generally functional people who had been experiencing a difficult time — often as a result of a significant loss in their lives such as a divorce, the death of a loved one, or a similar event that had knocked the pins out from under them and sent them reeling. In short, they were people who'd been overwhelmed by suffering.
"I know one of the secrets of life," I said to the group that day. "Really!" they declared, and I could hear them scooting their chairs closer to mine. They sat stone silent and wide-eyed, not wanting to miss a second of this self-proclaimed wisdom. "If you only live long enough," I said, "you will lose everything." There was a brief silence as the words sunk in, then the sound of screeching chairs cut through the air. They were falling all over themselves as they scrambled to put as much distance between us as possible. "We're already having a hard time," one woman yelled. "Why are you telling us this?!" "Because it's true," I said. "And because in understanding this you can learn to live better."
Because something is true does not mean that it is easy to understand, accept, or even to recognize. As with the stereogram, the hidden images of life's truths are there for us to see, but they often elude us. We can almost make out the hidden picture, then the colors blur and the image is lost again. When something is both true and painful, we have an even harder time acknowledging and accepting it. For in these cases we often do our best not to let the truth come to full light in hopes of trying to avoid the pain we anticipate it will bring. Figuratively, we all want to screech our chairs away from the notion that suffering is in store for every one of us. In fact, many of us choose to live our whole lives trying, in vain, to escape that truth. "There is nothing there!" we say, staring at the picture of life around us in which others are suffering loss and pain, smug in our conviction. "You may be suffering, but that doesn't mean I will!" we can think in our fortunate times, breathing a sigh of relief as we glance nervously over our shoulder. But the truth that suffering is a part of life remains, and only when we let that truth in will we be able to look beyond the suffering to its meaning. To see the image in the sterogram we must shift our perspective. To see and accept the truth about suffering requires a similar shift in consciousness.
First, in order to realize the fundamental truths about suffering, we must first understand that everyone suffers. And second, we must accept that suffering is the force that knocks out our illusionary beliefs about life and thrusts us toward new consciousness about ourselves and the true nature of reality. In spite of all the ways we try to deny the actuality of suffering, I believe most of us know these things in our heads. But that's not enough. We have to know these truths in our hearts — in the deepest, emotional places of our being. We have to feel them. It is only then that we can gather the rewards that they bring: the growth of consciousness, compassion, and courage. The stories that I've included here are ones that touch me with the truth and ground me during my own suffering. After my father and Deanne's accident I went back again and again, seeking the truth that is in plain sight.
I came across many stories, myths, and powerful examples from religion, history, my own life, and others I knew and some I heard of and then sought out that I found eloquently speak the truth about what it is to be human. These stories touch me in such a way that my head and my heart recognize the part that suffering plays and I can begin to allow it in. It is my hope, in writing this book, to seek the wisdom of the ages, to revisit and retell the stories that touch our hearts, shake off our illusions, and expand our consciousness. Gently, but with the power of truth, they call us to a new wakefulness. I hope they also help you begin to see the world, and your own life, with a new perspective. The story of Kisagotami is one such story that moved me when I first read it more than twenty years ago as I began to explore Eastern teachings and mystical experience. The tale is from the Buddhist Dharma and dates back more than two thousand years. This parable of a mustard seed takes place in India, but its lessons are universal.
Kisagotami was inconsolable. This young woman, married to the only son of a wealthy man, had birthed a beautiful son. Everything in her life was perfect; she was living a fairy tale. But just when her beloved son began to walk on his own, he was stricken with a terrible illness and suddenly died. The young mother, desperate in her grief, carried the dead child clasped to her bosom and went from house to house asking people for medicine or miracles: anything that would bring him back to life.
Naturally, all the people felt very sad for this grieving mother, but no one could help. Finally, one old man said, "My good girl, I myself have no such medicine as you ask for, but I think I know of one who has."
Kisagotami begged him for the name of the one who could restore her son to life.
"The Buddha can give you medicine. Go to him," the old man said.
So Kisagotami went to the great teacher, Gautama — the Buddha — and, with deep homage, begged him, "Master, do you know any medicine that can help me?"
Buddha listened with infinite compassion and gently said, "There is only one way to heal this affliction. Bring me back a mustard seed from a house that has never known death."
Relieved that so common a drug as a mustard seed could end her suffering, Kisagotami left and walked toward the city. Still clutching the body of her beloved son to her breast, she went in search of a mustard seed.
She stopped at the first house she came to and said, "I have been told by the Buddha to return with a mustard seed from a house that has never known death."
"Dear child, we will happily give you a mustard seed, but many people have died in this house. Just last month, we lost our beloved mother," she was told.
She went to the next house. "There have been countless deaths in our family," she heard.
She went to the houses of the rich and poor, the powerful and the meek. "We have also lost a son," said one. "We have lost our parents," said another. "The living are few, but the dead are many," said yet another. She went to every house in the city, until she realized that the Buddha's condition could never be fulfilled.
At last, not being able to find a single house where no one had died, her mind began to clear. She carried her dead son into the forest, buried him, and returned to the Buddha.
"Do you have the mustard seed?" he asked.
"No," she said. "But I understand the lesson you are teaching me. Grief made me blind and I thought that I was the only one that had suffered at the hands of death."
"Why have you come back?" asked the Buddha.
"I want to know the truth about life and death," she replied.
And so the Buddha began to teach her: "There is only one law in the universe that never changes, and that is that all things change, and that all things are impermanent. The death of your beloved child has helped you to see that. Your pain has opened your heart to the truth. I will show it to you."
The woman knelt at the Buddha's feet and followed his teachings for the rest of her life. Near the end of it, it is said, Kisagotami attained enlightenment.
The simple story of Kisagotami quietly speaks volumes to me about the true nature of reality. Kisagotami clearly experienced more than a "bump along the road of life" with the loss of her child. Her inability to accept her son's death was not neurotic suffering, it was the deep and fundamental pain brought on by real suffering. Kisagotami's story illustrates not only the way in which we often try to avoid suffering but also the fact that no one escapes it. Being human means that we will all suffer great pain. However, when we are in the midst of the searing grief of great loss — as Kisagotami was — it's easy to feel that we are the only human being ever to have had to endure such anguish, such loss, such vulnerability. Surely Mark O'Brien may have felt a singular loneliness, lying on his back, with a mechanical breath as his constant companion. We would all probably agree that he had every reason to feel isolated by his fate and be angry in light of it. We would most likely be able to relate to such feelings. But the archetypal drama that is played out through our individual lives is both ancient and commonplace. The losses we experience in our lives are different in their forms and arrival dates, but they inevitably come. Rarely are we not surprised. We all accept the reality of automobile accidents, yet nobody is prepared for the phone call on a Tuesday afternoon from an emergency room nurse who gently asks, "Is this Kathleen Brehony?" While everybody's life is unique, we are all subject to the mortal realities of aging, illness, and death ourselves and in those we love. Existence it seems is, as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wisely observed, "living our lives saying good-bye." But in spite of this, many of us don't accept the companion suffering is throughout our lives.
Kisagotami learned the hard way that death, loss, and suffering are universal experiences as she walked from house to house, unable to find one that sorrow had not visited. We would all like to believe, as Kisagotami did, that there is a house, or a place, or a group of people — preferably those we love — that lies beyond suffering's reach. Life often brutally reveals that this is just not so. And although philosophers and thinkers of all cultures have expressed the certainty of change and loss in many different ways, I find that Eastern traditions seem to emphasize the transient nature of existence more clearly than we do in the West. Time and again their poems and stories highlight that change is the natural order of the universe and that everything in our lives is subject to it. An ancient Buddhist text captures the nature of life with simple elegance:
This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds.
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky,
Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.
Surrounded by life's impermanence, still, we've evolved some curious explanations for why we lose those people and things we've become attached to and suffer as a result. Although there's no evidence that suffering is punishment for sin or retribution for "negative karma," we often imagine that such must be the case. This notion sprouts naturally from two flawed assumptions: one, that life should always be fair; and two, that people (especially other people) get what they deserve. What seductive concepts these are! They allow us to perceive the world as orderly and comprehensible. There is no mystery or chaos in this worldview — there is a God or some creative intelligence who has established rules that we can understand and manipulate. These ideas suggest that that if we are good and play by the rules we may be spared the kinds of sorrow and pain that others are subject to. If only that were true!
Such a view of life is not only false; it's dangerous. If we believe that life should be fair and we suffer only because of some misbehavior, then it becomes a pretty natural response to blame ourselves when we go through difficult, painful times. With this as a foundation for our reasoning, we can easily experience profound shame and guilt, asking, "What have I done to deserve this?" when life deals us one of its inescapable blows. This way of thinking also reinforces a false sense of separation, as if somehow we are different from everyone else in the world. Kisagotami had surely seen pain all around her as she grew up, but the notion that she could also be stricken with the loss of her beloved child was beyond her understanding or acceptance. With such a point of view, she suffered in a lonely place; she could not access the comfort that comes from a community of soul mates who would understand her loss because they had felt the same kind of pain. I had a similar response when my dad was hurt. Given all that my father — a nice guy, by the way — had been through in the past few years, I felt that he was getting "more than his share" of suffering as I stood by his hospital bed. I was angry and would have liked to vent my feelings, which would have sounded something like this: "Excuse me? Whom do I talk to about this? This does not coincide with my understanding of the rules!" This sense of entitlement to a pain-free existence and the alienation from one another and from the truth about life it breeds can be more isolating than suffering itself. And beyond the consequences of such willful naïveté, the assumption that suffering is the result of misbehavior does not fit the facts all around us. Quite simply, it can't explain the suffering of innocents, can't offer a believable explanation as to why terrible losses are so often bestowed on people who have done nothing wrong. How can we possibly offer the idea that pain and an early death are the just deserts for a three-year-old diagnosed with leukemia, a good man who dies while saving the life of a drowning person, the six million Jewish people annihilated in Nazi concentration camps, or the little children starving to death on the arid plains of Africa?
Suffering and loss are intrinsic and inevitable parts of living a human life in our less-than-perfect world. If we look at the way life unfolds around us with a clear view, we see suffering is a visitor upon the good and innocent people as well as upon the greatest sinner among us. Every religion and wisdom tradition teaches us that truth. In the New Testament, Matthew (5:45) reminds us that God "sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, suffering is brought about by a benevolent God who uses it as a tool to break down the outer man so that the Creator's love can be manifested and revealed to the believer. Suffering forms the ground for man's intimate, unencumbered union with God and occurs so that faith may be deepened, and so that both love and forgiveness can be most fully expressed. In this view, God has made a world that bestows suffering not as punishment but as a way to teach and redeem human beings.
Pain is a common way through which we come to understand that our life has a transcendent aspect, a larger dimension, and realize that "my life is not just about me." This transformed consciousness allows for the birth of true compassion (a word that literally means "to suffer with"). This heartfelt tenderness removes all barriers between oneself and others so that we can experience oneness with each other and the universe. I find that it is easy to recognize those who have true compassion; it is apparent in their interest in other people, their empathy, and in their eyes, which seem to look on the world and everything in it tenderly. What we also usually learn about truly compassionate people, as we come to know them, is that most often they have suffered some great loss.
These themes resonate most beautifully in the Old Testament story of Job. This is a familiar tale to most people raised in the Jewish or Christian traditions, but I'd like you to think of ways in which you have ever felt like Job as you read it.
Here's the story: Job is a very successful man by all accounts. If Job were living today he'd be driving a Mercedes and living in a mansion with a swimming pool. He has every bounty that life can bestow. But in spite of his wealth, he is not arrogant. He is a good man, always "blameless and upright." His life moves forward effortlessly until one day when Satan goes to visit Job's God — Yahweh. Yahweh points out Job to Satan and brags about just how good and loyal he is. Satan takes a look and isn't a bit impressed. Satan replies that it is quite easy for Job to worship him and turn away from evil since he's got everything he needs and more. Satan suggests a small wager. He bets Yahweh that Job wouldn't be quite so blameless and upright, so clear in his love for God, if things weren't so perfect in his life. In a way, Satan makes a good point. Isn't it easy to be "blameless and upright" when everything is going our way? Yahweh reluctantly agrees to let Satan test Job.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from After the Darkest Hour by Kathleen A. Brehony. Copyright © 2000 Kathleen Brehony. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,PART ONE - Reflections on Suffering,
Introduction,
1 - The Truth about Life — Everyone Lives a Drama,
Change: The Natural Order,
Change Means Loss,
We Determine Our Responses to the Events of Our Lives,
Gifts Hidden in Suffering,
2 - Lead into Gold, or the Alchemical Process of Making the Best from the Worst,
An Alchemical Story,
The Alchemical Metaphor,
The Alchemical Process,
3 - Brick Houses and Straw Houses: How Prepared Are We for Hard Times?,
Uneven Playing Fields,
Self-Images and Suffering,
Learned Helplessness,
Illusions,
4 - Beyond Resilience,
Resilience,
The Hero's Journey,
5 - Rowing versus Flowing: Luck, Destiny, and Free Will,
Good Luck/Bad Luck,
Destiny or Free Will?,
Locus of Control,
Rowing AND Flowing,
A Path with Heart,
PART TWO - A Dozen Strategies for Growing Through the Pain,
Introduction,
Strategies,
Conclusion - "Living in the Guest House",
Notes,
Acknowledgments,
Permissions Acknowledgments,
About the Author,
Copyright Page,