Yesterday, I wrote about the Tower tarot card. One challenge of it is not viewing the difficult changes in life as necessarily bad. I’ve also been doing a good deal of Buddhist readings and recently came across several articles about viewing the “bad” or hard things that happen to us as a teacher to help us wake up. Alchemy has also influenced my thoughts. To achieve wisdom and enlightenment, you (as the source matter to be turned into “gold”) must go through a process of purification that isn’t easy or pretty, but there is help along the way. This is what life is. A journey to become ever more awake, ever more wise.
If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I have a lot a health issues that have drastically changed almost every aspect of my life. It’s resulted in a renewed and intensified battle with my chronic, major depression and generalized anxiety. I was quite suicidal for the first time in years for about a period of four or five months recently. It’s only in the last few weeks that I’ve managed to lift that cloud for longer than a few days at a time. It gives me hope that I’m nearing a more extended time of greater stability and peace.
Changing my perceptions of the losses I’ve experienced over the past decade, and specifically the last year, has made a huge difference. It took time, medication, therapy, a whole lot of reading and contemplation and mediation, and the support and love of my husband and friends. A side note of thanks here to Chris, Kristen, Ray, Nora, Josh, and Kristin.
Some days it is a huge challenge to see obstacles as teachers and to give thanks to them for giving me the opportunity to become wiser and more awake. Other days, it is a huge comfort. This idea floating in the back of my mind is yet another tool to help me pull myself from the brink. As much as I’d like for any one philosophy or thought or belief to be the magic bullet to cure what ails me forever and always, nothing in my life or anyone else’s has convinced me that such a magic bullet exists. In each moment, I try to remember that, accept that, and learn what I can from the experience.
I am on a path, on a journey. The further I walk, the less I see an ultimate goal. After all, what exactly is wisdom or being awake and where do either of these concepts end? For that matter, what does it mean to be at peace or stable? Sometimes I think I know the answer, but we humans have a gift for imagining the way we want things to be, and it’s never how things are, even if we achieve what we set out to achieve.
I find myself left with walking and questioning and wondering. Maybe that is all there is to do. It is not a sad notion.
You can find other A to Z Challenge blogs here.
Suicidal Tulip 