Storming the gates of Heaven

I was a caged tiger being driven to run in circles and wring my hands with grief. My thoughts were pummeling me so hard and fast, I couldn't even land on suicide as a way out. This pain shot straight past depression, which is the state most suicides are committed, and straight into the heart of the survival instinct—the oldest, deepest drive we have. Internally, I was running two feet in every direction, unable to see or do anything except scream. That was all I could do. So I sat down and started screaming.

It was my early 20s. My first major relationship had just broken itself on the jagged rocks of “looking in all the wrong places” for fulfillment or love or happiness, whatever you want to call it.

It was simple. If you're suffocating, you fight for air. It's automatic. You have no say-so in it. So I sat down and started screaming with the only thing I could think of –"Don't think about it, don't think about it". That brought me, in the midst of drowning, close to the surface where I discovered I could get a quick breath of “no pain”. Each time I shouted some painful memory out of existence, a gap was created interrupting the flow of thoughts. That gap holds the pure energy of release and joy. It was the only relief I could get so I kept screaming. At the end of the third day, the last quantum of my dependence on the love of my life imploded into smoke and rubble. I stood up new, strong, objective, and full of life. For a while, it wasn't emotion that moved me in life but power. Emotion just reacts. Power moves us to achieve, to become more. It clears the way and for a while, we're not impotent, but move easily toward our goals.

I had not one whiff of animosity towards my ex-partner from then on. When I saw them again, I was amazed at how quickly love could disappear because they seemed just like anyone else in the store, out doing their weekly shopping. I was completely objective to them, as though we had never shared a past. No pain. I was free. I began to be suspicious of what I called love. This person had felt like the love of my life, my soul mate, my everything. What happened?

I saw there is something wrong in our relationships with other people, something wrong about our dependence on, well, just about everything, not just people. I had been addicted to Xanax for a short time back then. I hadn't had time to become an alcoholic or establish some kind of permanent addiction, yet they felt the same.

Something within us latches onto others like a parasite. We try to suck life out of anyone we consider meaningful to us. We get our life from others through dependence on what they think about us. Two of the most popular genres in movies and TV today are vampires and the undead. The TV series, "The Walking Dead" has had an unheard-of 11 seasons and is starting their 12th. To me, the “walking dead” are archetypal for our condition. We become infected and turn into monsters. The infection is trauma, ego is the monster. Monsters chasing humans to infect them is comparable to all the falsities others teach us—our parents, our peers, teachers, Sunday school. The sleeping dead start infecting us as soon as we’re born, even before.

 But that's not supposed to be how it works, is it?—sucking our life out of other people?  Well, at least, I didn’t think so. I mean, I wasn't born with anyone's heart or mind or blood but mine. Why does the feeling of my life have to run through someone else? Why does my sense of well-being have to rely on how someone else decides to treat me that day? I gave them all my power by trusting them to not abuse my well-being because they love me. That’s the game we play—we can feel very noble while making others responsible for our lives. But we are relying on another being who doesn’t have it together any more than we do.

When our highs and lows depend on how others treat us, our life lacks emotional order, stability and continuity because it’s being determined by whimsy. That only adds to our belief that the natural order of things is that there is no order.

I had been unable to keep my partner's interest and up to that point, no one else I felt attracted to either. After my screaming match, people started noticing me, practically showing up at my door. People are attracted to confidence (especially the confidence that stands on an unseen pillar of spiritual granite, for that brings a sense of certainty unattainable in the outer world). True charisma is spiritual confidence. I could have had my pick of possible partners if that had been important to me. But my sight was now set on something else, something as yet not defined.

Now, there was something there like a shadowy background trying to find an opening into the veneer of my life, desperate for me to just glance in its direction, past all those forms and pretenders to life (alcohol, lovers, travel). This vague stream of “new life” now burned in the back of my mind, replacing “life-taken-for-granted” with suspicion and an alert readiness. My suspicion was that life was not at all what I thought. The suspicion was that something else entirely was going on. I needed something to break the hypnosis, to wake me up. And that's what I inadvertently did the day I decided to start shouting back—I stormed the gates of Heaven. I peeled back the Emerald curtain and turned on the light. I fought for my right to sanity. It was me who stopped being mowed down by every impulse of helplessness that wanted to torment me. It was me who led the charge. It was me who changed my life and reality. Why? Because, “I CAN”!

And so can you. There is nothing in life you have to lay down for. You are always in control of your reactions no matter what it looks or feels like. You can change the kind of person you are, the direction of your life, the level of your being. You can even change the experiences that come your way. Stop with the victimhood. Victims are just people who make others responsible for their lives. If you don’t know how to change—which most people do not—find out how. If you think you can just change something because you want to, right now, in this second, quit some major addiction you have. Quit right now and forever. If you are unable to do that, then again, find out how. The Way is there.