The Worst of Times & The Best of Times - On the Edge of Life Your Spirit Soars

Originally published on The Hidden Mountain Journal Newsletter

Over four months have passed since I had my pelvis shattered in an auto wreck. The other morning my son walked by and reminded me of the opening lines from Tale of Two Cities. He simply glanced at me and said, “Remember, It was the best of times and the worst of times.” No doubt this is not the best spring and summer of my life. It has, though, become the deepest. The accident may have shattered my body, but it also cracked open deeper layers within my heart. By the way, being cracked open is intense.

Oftentimes I have felt like I was back in New Mexico, sitting on an outcropping of rock on the canyon overlooking the Rio Grande River. Up there the wind always blew on my face. One summer I caught nearly every sunrise on that canyon edge just outside of Taos. Every dawn the sun rose blood-red over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In the evenings, the thunderstorms lit up the sky. And as the thunderclaps roared down miles of canyon they sounded like giant bowling balls rolling and smashing off the canyon walls. Every morning I would sit out there, in prayer, on that canyon edge at first light. Every now and then I was buffeted by big updrafts of wind from the river floor. Sometimes that wind would nearly knock me off my special perch. I vividly remember how small I felt as I held fast to the rock ledge where I was sitting.

Back then I thought the metaphor was that sometimes we have to hold on to the edge and find balance near the precipices of life. I was young and life was still rich with the metaphors of youth.

This auto wreck, though, has taken things a few steps further. It rubbed out a lot of those metaphors and left me staring at life. If I ever thought life was a metaphor for many things, I can now report that although life may have metaphors, the edge of life is very real.

Here is a small piece of advice: It is a good idea, when you find yourself on the edge of your life, to grab hold of a piece of your spirit. Any small morsel will do. It not only calms your heart as it flip-flops near the edge of the cliff, but it truly is a lifeline when you feel yourself falling.

Spiritual updrafts also blow up inner spiritual storms. No one ever said that spiritual growth is a gentle experience. I can report some of these upsurges have literally taken my breath away. Some have made my spirit soar and some of them have scared the hell out of me.

In the midst of crisis the spirit does indeed soar, and spirit soaring that is filled with inspiration teaches us about the Love of Heaven. Spirit soaring can also be frightening. The scary stuff bumps us into what I like to call the Awe of Heaven. Awe, after all, is always tinged with Fear. I much prefer the Love experience, but the suffering I have gone through since my accident has led me to understand that the nature of growth includes a very heavy dose of the experience of Awe — Awe clothed in the garment of Fear. What I can report is that both of these experience are, by their very nature, incredibly strong. They stretch you out all the way from Earth to Heaven.

No One Said It Was Going to Be Easy

A teacher of mine once commented about the spiritual path by remarking, No one said life was going to be easy. If I ever had any doubts about that simple truth, they are gone forever. The accident changed all that. While there are a lot of exalted lessons happening here, it is also true that what I have learned has come courtesy of the tough lessons dosed with pain.

What I knew before about suffering and pain has now changed to what I know and experience in suffering and pain. From all the wisdom streams I have studied I can definitely say that all the teachers got the lessons on suffering right. All the chapters written down through the centuries are accurate and require our attention. If I could distill it all down to a few words, I would simply say that suffering and crisis transform us, humble us, and bring out what matters most in life.

It has not been easy for my family as far as worrying about and taking care of me. Sometimes I think it is harder for them than for me. Nevertheless, I suspect on the spiritual level we are going through the best of times. The irony is not lost on me. Accidents also open us to a world of meaning. Still in all, it is a hell of a way to be blessed with meaning. But the truth is, that is why these things are called “accidents” — because no one in his right mind would ever order up a serving of blessings and meaning this way! For years I used to teach about and marvel at how the Talmud points out that just as we bless the good, so, too, do we bless the bad. I always thought that was a profound concept. It is only now, when I find myself stretched between the good blessing and the bad blessing, that I understand how important it is to surrender to the depth of my life. Nothing that happens is to be ignored. Everything requires attention and mindfulness. There are spiritual gems to be recovered from the difficult challenges. I think that is why the great Hassidic master Reb Dov Ber of Mizrich said, Sometimes we have to sift through the ashes to find a single spark.

A 5-Star Crisis Rating

You might wonder what I mean by the best of times. My auto accident certainly deserves a 5-Star Crisis Rating. This was, and is, a doozy. The choice we all face in crisis is: how are we going to respond to difficult challenges? Are we going to totally fall apart or let loose the best of who we are? (Note we all fall apart in crisis. The question is for how long?) And as many of you know from my book, the best of who we are means the best of our love, caring and compassion.

I consider this the best of times because I am in the middle of one compelling life drama and it has tested everything I know and everything I surmised I am. I put any major life crisis in the category of no stone unturned. Why is this so? Simply because pretty much every aspect of our lives falls under scrutiny. When these kinds of things happen, there is no avoiding the inevitable meeting up with everything we stand for.

Accidents and catastrophic events of this order of magnitude put your whole being to the test. Early on I knew I was in the middle of my own unique test. I don’t think it is too dramatic to say I even put a label on my accident. I put this entire event in the category of Trials and Tribulations.

Living in the middle of this has shaken out everything I stand for. A good deal of the time I felt like I had caught the perfect wave. The only problem was that I also realized that I have never really had a lesson in surfing. Things spin around in my world so fast that I sometimes experience a profound, although not particularly pleasant, rush. Most important is to know that even without all the fancy spiritual lessons, practices, and teachings, we naturally come prepared to face the tough, gritty, mind-numbing events.

By the way, that doesn’t mean we transcend everything like a graceful ballet dancer. Anyone who thinks we can pull grace out of a hat has his nose stuck in a book under the category of spiritual fiction. We can, though, live with grace and give love and compassion even when the best of times are continually marinated in the worst of times. Either way it cuts, life has meaning and blessings no matter where we find ourselves.