Anthony J. Fisichella...
The Practicality of the Spiritual Life Part II
An Excerpt From "Echoes From Eternity"
The first essential lesson to be learned is the importance of struggle and failure to the growth process. This is also in relation to normal human development as well as spiritual paths. Don’t misunderstand, I am not suggesting that you should masochistically cultivate a life of struggle, nor would I prompt you to make failure your life’s goal, though there are some who would have you worship at the altar of pain and suffering. Pain, they proclaim, is holy. They believe a life of struggle and sorrow is a glorious sacrifice to God that all must make, and they acclaim the poor and needy as God’s chosen. They are unaware of the fact that sacrifice means “to make sacred” and does not pertain to the avoidance of life’s joys and pleasures. They look upon joy and pleasure as the work of the devil—a medieval notion, at best. Having never learned the laws of spirituality, they have become expert in the application of poverty consciousness and thus live lives of deprivation and want. This, they assert, is the way of spirituality. Critically, they gaze upon the lives of those who are happy and joyful as the products of sin.
Instead all acts, whatever their nature, may be made sacred if our consciousness is properly focused and held steady in the light. “Fix your mind on me, Arjuna, surrender all deeds to me,” enjoined Krishna to his disciple. And thus are all of our deeds made sacred. At the other extreme are those who devote themselves to the perpetual pursuit of pleasure. Their God is a god of fun and games and at his altar they lay all the fruits of their labor. Frighteningly, their numbers appear to be growing by leaps and bounds in our hedonistically-oriented society.
Of course, both extremes leave a lot to be desired and produce their relative addictions. The trick is not to perceive all of Life’s activities— pleasure and pain, success and failure, joy and sorrow— as ends in themselves but as nature’s feedback to your efforts and as sacred food for growth. Effort is your job. Results are God’s. Let me repeat that.
Effort is your job to do the best you can under every given circumstance, bearing witness to the results without any attachment to them. This is called Karma Yoga and I again strongly suggest that all who would aspire to the spiritual life should read the Bhagavad Gita for further clarification of this principle.
Results are the province of God or nature or the universe, depending on how you wish to define it, and are not your concern except insofar as they educate you to the Universal Process. The critical factor is your attitude.
The most meaningful story of the power of attitude I have ever heard involved the inventive genius Thomas Alva Edison. In his pursuit of the incandescent light bulb, Edison conducted thousands upon thousands of experiments, all without achieving the results he sought. Still he persisted, never giving credence to the possibility of failure. After some 9,000 experiments an associate approached him and asked, “Tom, why do you persist in this folly having failed more than 9,000 times?” Edison stared incredulously at his associate, unable to fathom his attitude, and at length answered, “I have not failed even once. Each time, I’ve learned what doesn’t work.” It should be clear now why Edison once commented that genius is “10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.”
Having shared this story during countless lectures over the years, I have then asked the following question: “Had Edison succeeded in producing a successful light bulb with his first experiment, would he have continued with the other experiments?” Invariably, the unanimous answer I receive is, “Decidedly not.” There is no way to know for certain; but I feel, based upon this great man’s attitude of mind, that he most assuredly would have continued his experiments in order to learn all he could.
I’m reminded of an experience that occurred to me during a lecture tour of California some years ago. While driving to the seminar location in San Jose, my West Coast secretary, Nancy, directed me to what she considered to be the most expeditious route. It seemed that her directions were overly complex, but I followed them nonetheless and arrived at our destination. The next day as we set out for the same seminar locale, I decided to experiment, much to Nancy’s protestations, with an alternate route that seemed more direct. Upon arrival I turned to my secretary and said, “Nancy, you were right. Your way was quicker and easier but now I know it, before I didn’t. If I hadn’t tried my own way I never would have been sure.”
Now certainly this was not a crucial event in my life, and I point it out merely to convey a state of mind that if adopted will serve you well all your life. Dean Inge once said, “The conduct of life rests upon an act of faith which begins as an experiment and ends as an experience.” The key issue is that you cannot avoid life’s lessons, nor can you learn them vicariously. It does not matter in what order you experience them; but if you do not learn the given lessons that your life’s circumstances are bound to teach you, then you condemn yourself to their repetition. Furthermore, “the struggle of youth builds strong wings.”
Some years ago, I viewed a TV show bearing that title and was much impressed with its message. You see, you get your next spiritual message from wherever you get your next message. In this instance the TV was my guru and I was ready to hear its message. During the plot a priest was seen observing a group of children roughing it up in a park and he was bemoaning the tendencies of children toward violent play. A gentleman, observing the priest’s discomfort, walks over and says, “Father, the struggle of youth builds strong wings.” The priest responded with a quizzical look and asked, “What do you mean, my son?” The man then tells a tale of his youth, of his chance discovery of a butterfly struggling to free itself from a cocoon and of his sympathetic concern for the butterfly which prompted him to shatter the cocoon. Thus the butterfly was set free, but the end result saw the butterfly, having been deprived of its struggle for growth, and prematurely liberated from its challenging environment still lacking strength for survival and capacity for flight, toppled over and died.
The implications and applications of this idea are numerous and varied. For instance, are you depriving your children of the struggles, challenges, and frustrations that are inherent to their existence? Sometimes we do things for our children, or for others in our environment because we can’t deal with our own frustrations. In doing so, we deny ourselves and the recipient of our efforts the fruitful experience of an encounter with the challenge intrinsic to frustration.
About twenty years ago I was faced with frustration, disappointment, anxiety, and stress. Hank did nothing to extricate me from this menacing situation. He simply directed me toward a reevaluation of myself, my value system, and my understanding of life and its process and purpose. From these trying sets of circumstances, and from others I have had since, I was to build my own strong wings and really learn how to fly. In retrospect, I wouldn’t take a million dollars for those gloriously frustrating trials and challenges, or for the enriched awareness with which they blessed me. Nor would I pay a dime to relive them. Once is enough. Learn from your difficulties and you will not have to repeat them. Fail to do so, and they will eventually return to haunt you. Incarnation after incarnation you will keep at it until you get it right.
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