broken record

Sometimes Watashi-wa feels like a broken record. Some things I keep coming back to, over and over again. One of them is suffering, and its relation to the spiritual life.

Today is one of those days. I went to bed early, slept well, and woke up refreshed. I meditated via Zoom with friends in Berlin and Athens. I didn't even get sleepy. In fact, it was unusually pleasurable - there was a kind of thrumming energy which made it easy to sit straight. Breathing felt luxurious. 

I read for an hour - an improving book! - and then I noticed the familiar malign energy, tension and tightness in my body, irritability and malaise. I went for a walk,  sat on a bench by the sea, and observed the sensations with as little judgement or reactivity as possible. I started to feel sleepy, so I lay down on the sea wall and snoozed for a while. After that, I felt ok again. Quite peaceful, in fact.

What is this, and where does it come from?

Maybe it is best not to ask those questions. Better just to accept it, and know that I am not alone.

Abba Anthony, one of the Desert Fathers, said to a fellow monk that it belongs 'to the great work of a man...to expect temptations to the last breath.'

Mother Theodora, one of the Desert Mothers, said: '...you should realise that as soon as you intend to live in peace, at once evil comes and weighs down your soul through accidie (sense of boredom), faint-heartedness, and evil thoughts. It also attacks your body through sickness, debility, weakening of the knees, and all the members. It dissipates the strength of the soul and body, so that one believes one is ill and no longer able to pray. But if we are vigilant, all these temptations fall away.'

And yet, Christ says: 'Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.'

How does one square these?

Well, in truth, I did find rest, but only after a very unpleasant couple of hours. So maybe it has to be that way. For most people, suffering is the great teacher, the great motivator. Until you are fed up of feeling crap, you have very little incentive to look more deeply. That, at least, has been my experience.

Mother Theodora recommends 'vigilance', which is - I think - the same as mindfulness, or the non-grasping, non-resisting awareness of Zen meditation. It is the light of consciousness, and when it is turned on suffering, the suffering will be dissolved, and the light of consciousness will burn more brightly as a result. At least, that's what I have read.

Eckhart Tolle thinks that this is the esoteric significance of alchemy: the base metal of suffering is turned into the pure gold of consciousness. I actually find that a more plausible idea than the alternative - that the greatest minds of the medieval period were obsessed with trying to turn one metal into another.

Even St. Porphyrios reflects this complexity. On the one hand, he states that the spiritual life is one of peace and of bliss:

'When you find Christ, you are satisfied, you desire nothing else, you find peace. You become a different person. You live everywhere, wherever Christ is. You live in the stars, in infinity, in heaven with the angels, with the saints, on earth with people, with plants, with animals, with everyone and everything. When there is love for Christ, loneliness disappears. You are peaceable, joyous, full. Neither melancholy, nor illness, nor pressure, nor anxiety, nor depression nor hell.'

But equally, he recognises that suffering for Christ is an integral part of it:

'That’s what it is! You must suffer. You must love and suffer – suffer for the one you love. Love makes effort for the loved one. She runs all through the night; she stays awake; she stains her feet with blood in order to meet her beloved. She makes sacrifices and disregards all impediments, threats, and difficulties for the sake of the loved one. Love towards Christ is something even higher, infinitely higher.'

So once again, I feel that the broken record has completed another rotation and I am right back where I started.

Have I really learnt anything?

Maybe just this: for most of my life, I have felt that the slumps, the tension, the malaise could be fixed by trying to arrange the external world in such a way as to satisfy my desires: a good meal, a night out, a new possession, an adventure, a new girlfriend, material gain, worldly success etc. But those are distractions, not solutions. That is one thing I know for sure.

And maybe also this: one can suffer, and still be at peace. Indeed, maybe suffering is the gateway to peace. But it is still hard for me to get my head, and my heart, around that.