Dying to live

Sunday Life

Dying to live
HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes Updated November 23, 2008 12:00 AM

Have
you had long episodes when you felt like you were walking on unsure
territory, where you found it hard to see beyond what seemed to be the
dreary fog of life, when everything seemed like an aimless, meaningless
blah? When I am in such a funk, my higher self wants me to break out
into something new. And longer periods like this are sure signs of new
major undertakings.

Transitions are scary. One is being asked to
leave one place and go to another. Never mind that the place one is
leaving has become boring, transitions can still be daunting. It
demands of whoever is going through one to let go of the safety harness
in one comfort zone and jump into another, and in the process become
untethered, unsafe and unattached, (hopefully for only a while) until
one reaches (if ever) the new terra firma.

When we decided on
our move to Australia, I was weary of the political situation in the
Philippines which seemed stuck in a deathly inertia. I also remember
feeling that everything else I was doing was pretty much a
been-there-done-that affair. I felt the ache that the rest of my spirit
was feeling because it needed to find something new to come alive to. I
remember trying to imagine seeing people I love for the last time since
one can never tell what could possibly happen. I remember selling our
cars and seeing our prized possessions being packed in boxes for
shipment to a country where we had only a few friends or relatives. It
was scary — definitely — but at the same time, the very boldness of it
made me feel alive to myself.

In moments like these, one’s
senses awaken and it can be a profound spiritual experience. Any new
person I meet, a new detail I encounter, a path uncovered becomes a
sign that seems to affirm that I am being led to a new life that awaits
me. It feels like God, in His/Her/Its divine plan, is doing the
leading. How can it be otherwise? Serendipity is everywhere. The signs
unmistakably affirm the decision of the new life wanting to be lived.

It
is definitely a growth spurt of sorts, and like all growth, it asks us
to turn away from the familiar and embrace the new. In many ways, it is
like what we experienced in our teenage years when we woke up to
discover our young bodies being reshaped for tasks that would go beyond
what we were doing as children. All of a sudden, we were taller with
more body hair and bodily urges that were so powerful. It definitely
felt different. Needless to say, we felt unsure of ourselves in this
new body. There was an awkwardness, a doubt, a confusion about what we
had become. We sensed that something in us was dying and something new
was being born.

In such moments of great change when one is in
the process of leaving one state to go to another, the challenge is not
to look back, although the temptation to do so is great. One must
continue to walk on the path even though it is unsure, dark and often
bleak. To look back and ask the “what ifs” about one’s decisions too
early in the journey is to become stuck — like Lot’s wife in Sodom and
Gomorrah, immobile and turned into a “pillar of salt”! Scary as it is,
we must do it if we are to move forward because it is the path to
growth. One might even feel at times that to continue is part of one’s
soul journey. Emerson put it well when he said that “God will not have
his work made manifest by cowards.”

This process of dying and
awakening into something new requires a new mindset. The worst attitude
to have is to leave one place and go to another only to expect to live
the exact same old life one had, rejecting new things that will surely
come along. It’s a sure prescription for unhappiness, like insisting on
experiencing summer in a winter setting!

I admire people who go
through life’s stages almost seamlessly, who are able to pick up the
pieces after a tragedy, like those who are able to find a new love and
marry after the death of a spouse, or the end of a long standing
relationship. Or former addicts who are able to have functional happy
lives after rehab. Or people who leave jobs they have been in forever
and boldly move on to new careers. There is something light and nimble
about their ability to drop what has stopped working and leave it
behind regardless of sentimental ties in order to embrace the new wave
that can make one bigger.

Have you ever realized that many
times, we may be putting more effort into preventing growth than simply
allowing it to happen unimpeded? Yes, it does take effort (often
unconscious) to be lonely just as it takes effort to be happy. It takes
effort to maintain our biases, defend our views, feed our fears, and
argue in defense of our shallower convictions that keep changing.

Being
unconscious can bring us to lonely, sad places in our lives that are
actually prisons where our spirits die. From time to time, all of us do
in fact live there, but there are those who, tragically, do not know
any other home.

Life, I believe, is a cycle of birth, death,
acquisition and loss, a dance marathon of opposites. Wherever we find
ourselves, its opposite will manifest after a while if our life is to
be completely lived. To awaken is to consciously accept what has died
in us, to mourn it and move on to something where we can have a greater
experience of being alive. Being awake allows us to choose being happy
and free.

For roughly the same effort, where would we rather
invest our time and resources and our lives, in consciously choosing
joy or unconsciously choosing fear?

The following quote from
Rumi, one of my favorite poets, never fails to soothe my fears about
any transition I must go through. He wrote:

“I died a mineral,
and became a plant. I died a plant and rose an animal. I died an animal
and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?”