Freedom’s Cry

Waking up isn’t easy. That’s why so few of us do it. Walking through the doorway that separates one from feeling connected with the larger processes of Life is a fearsome thing. It takes a rare courage, or a desperate kind of necessity. Anyway, it isn’t for the weak of heart. Have you ever wondered why? I have. I started out thinking it should be relatively easy. I reasoned that we humans, and the world in general, could use such a sensitivity to carry us through. I still think that, but I no longer am so naïve to think it should be easy. The need goes on, it even increases, but wakefullness remains elusive, for good reason.  The heart and mind have to go through a fundamental change, which can only be achieved through a deep immersion in the pain of the world.

Joy follows. That is why the truly illumined ones laugh. The price of waking is the recognition of how asleep one has been. This little bit of paradoxical wonder maintains a permeable membrane that is strong enough to keep most people from breaking into the light. Gain is connected with loss, but to get to the gain one has to go through the loss. There is no more sure barrier than the realization of limitation, the inescapability of death.

Life follows a perilous path. It is a high wire act all the way. New life, fresh insights and capacities are accessible, but only through perishability. Acquisition requires letting go, surrender, the collapse of aspiration and hope. This is not a path one voluntarily takes. It is a final, desperate resort. It is laying oneself down on the altar knowing that one cannot fathom an outcome. It is the act of one hopeless and deeply defeated.

The cry that baby’s utter when they come to life, is comparable to the shriek of recognition that accompanies the freshly awakened. It is a searing sound. With some strange mixture of grief and joy there is a full-bodied exclamation! Life is a combination of attributes linked by gossamer threads of feeling. A newborn’s skin is impeccably sensitive, and the freshly awakened discover skin that includes everything, vibrating with sensations too complex for words to tell. Pain and hilarity mix, paradoxical relationships abound, and the unlikehood of it all is joined by the on-going miracle of existence.

It is overwhelming. This is a new, on-going condition of life, this sense of overwhelm. And, there is nobody to talk about it with. There are people who say that they know, and maybe they do, but not in the way one does. The absolute has descended upon one and all that is left is uncertainty.  The dregs of existence now have an impossible luminosity. That light shines with a ruthless brilliance, that compels, confuses, and connects. Sleepy time has passed. Celebration, however, is muted by the immutable.

Awakening is desirable, but it brings a certain cloud of unknowing. It is like a storm cloud, dark with destructive capacities that refurbish and refresh the world. Grief taints existence, enlarging everything with a resonance of exquisite vulnerability. It is this fragility that renders beauty.

The only reasonable reaction to awareness of this level of incredulity is a cry. It is the involuntary howl of enlightenment; human and yet other-worldly. People come to consciousness in strange, unpredictable ways. There are no practices that lead to lightening strikes. The blessed one is introduced to sanity, that goes way beyond our notions of madness. There are no conventions, no patent assurances, no specialness at all, only a sense of being deeply at home.

This is all looked at favorably by our spiritual traditions. They extoll the enlightened perspective. Laughter seems to be the Master’s way. But what if it takes some time, effort, and energy to adjust? The freedom cry then seems assured. And, maybe the difficulty I sense actually exists. The world seems to have good reason to maintain its darkly illumined secret.