A few months ago, my friend (a previous podcast guest) recommended the book Adam’s Return by the theologian Richard Rohr. It’s a book about the lost art of rites of passage.
According to Rohr, the purpose of initiation was to teach essential truths. Rohr suggests that all great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. The first initiation lesson was to teach the young man not to run from pain and, in fact, not to get rid of any pain until he had first learned its lessons.
What if the significant lesson of setbacks is to awaken us to the truth that life is hard? Initiation is not about being a warrior as much as it is about being conscious, awake, and alert. Rohr writes, “Note how much Jesus talks about the same issue, and “I am awake” is the very meaning of the name Buddha.”
Although there is the potential to experience setbacks and not reap the gift of greater understanding about ourselves and the world around us, we are all prone to blame others and repress our negative emotions. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise person never has to blame another or themselves.”
Rohr sums up his point this way,
It is finally all about one thing: What are you going to do with your pain? Are you going to blame others for it? Are you going to think that it has to be fixed? As the Buddha is supposed to have said, “Pain is part of the deal”! No one lives on this earth without it. It is the great teacher, although none of us want to admit it. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it in some form.
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