The reason why so few people wake up is that it is so profoundly painful. The reason it is so painful is that to wake up means accepting responsibility for so much of the world’s pain. Maybe this is why suffering is such an essential aspect of enlightenment. Tears are often considered a gift, even a necessary sign of one’s enlightenment. These tears prove the depth of our awakening, that it is not merely imaginary or mental but felt in our bodies.
I am using “awakening” and “enlightenment” to talk about what Christianity means by resurrection. Resurrection is uprising. It is the emergence of the True Self — Christ — and the letting go and falling away of the false self — ego.
The false self does not fall away without suffering. It is embedded within and attached to the True Self, extending its tentacles through it. It does not detach easily. Which is why contemplatives equate the process of detachment from it with death. The false self has to “die,” which feels like actual death to the person who is totally identified with it.
The false self dies when we realize the damage we have done under its influence. This damage is to ourselves, to others, and to creation. The false self dies when we take responsibility for this damage and feel the pain it has caused. It dies because it deserves death as a matter of justice. It “dies” because it was never really alive or even real. The false self is an invention and projection of our ego based first on fear, and then on anger and shame. What dies is our addiction to it, which is to say, our pathological identification with it. That is to say, our presumption that the false self is who we are.
This only happens when we reject the three temptations: money, fame, and power. And that only happens when we feel the pain of those we have harmed in our obsessive drive to acquire for ourselves money, fame, and power. We don’t wake up until we feel the damage.
There is an old M*A*S*H episode where a bomber pilot ends up in the unit, and meets a little Korean girl badly hurt by aerial bombing. At first he tries to avoid responsibility by asking whose planes did the bombing. Hawkeye’s answer is basically that we don’t know and what difference does it make? The bomber’s subsequent discomfort is the beginning of his awakening. He’s not happy about it. No one wakes up happy, at first.
In the 12-step system, the addict must make a fearless inventory of the harm they have done to others, and then seek to personally make amends to those harmed. This is what healing means. This is how healing happens. It is astonishingly painful and humiliating, even sometimes personally dangerous, to admit such wrongdoing. But it is the only way to real healing.
None of us wants to face or admit the harm we have done. This is true with individuals, as well as with larger organizations and institutions. It is true of nations and whole civilizations.
But acknowledgement of harm and making amends for that harm is the only way to cut away the false self and allow the True Self to emerge. Acknowledgement of harm is repentance; making amends is discipleship. The former is a change of direction; the latter is actually to move in that direction by acting differently.
If the church is missionally ineffective it is because it does not understand that discipleship is making amends. It is repairing the world… based on the recognition that we are the ones who wrecked the world in the first place. To proceed without this recognition is to blame victims for their own pain and make yourself — your false self — the savior. The false self only acts out of self-interest. It only acts out of what it stands to gain. When the church is not making amends it is only seeking to gain members, money, or influence for itself. It takes the superior position of a generous benefactor, forgetting that it needs and must seek forgiveness in humility.
Ultimately, waking up is a joy. Once the false self has fallen away, what emerges is the True Self. The false self was collapsed in on itself, lost in a funhouse of self-reference, self-obsession, self-righteousness, and self-gratification. The True Self is connected outward. It is one with everything. It gives thanks in all circumstances. It knows that everything is working together for good. It prays constantly. It lives forever participating in the true life of all.
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