Better in the Soul

This story began with a call from Judy James, the minister of Unity Church of Maine, asking me to cover the sermon for a worship service one Sunday she was planning to be away. When Judy called, I hesitated. Since the publication of "Embracing the Mystery" in 2004, it seems I've done a lot of talking and not enough listening; both by nature and by profession---as a therapist and spiritual director---I actually prefer to listen. In her infinite wisdom, Judy gave me the gift of time to think about it. Of course, Spirit was at work behind the scenes, tweaking things here and there, the way it always does, promptly providing me with inspiration in the form of a client who came into a therapy session with a story worthy of our collective attention.

The story was this. Her sister, generally a hard-edged person who could be (let's say unkind) to others, had separated from her husband and been diagnosed with an aggressive, commonly fatal, form of cancer within less than a week. This sister had a long and painful history of animosity with several members of her family, including this client. As a result, she was estranged to some degree from many of them. My client has lived a hard enough life herself, where she learned through her own challenges when to be scrappy and when to leave matters to wiser hearts than hers. When she learned everything her sister was going through, her initial response was to keep a respectful distance, to leave her sister to the consequences of her own unpleasant behavior. What that meant, even she wasn't sure.

However, before she took this step to back away, she asked a question that impacted both of us powerfully. “Is there any possibility that all this could help her become better in the soul?”

Better in the soul. I'd never heard the term or thought of the concept in just that way, but her words struck a deep, unexpected chord of truth in both of us. We sat in a rather stunned silence with that question: "Was it possible all this bad news, this deluge of painful events, could help an unusually difficult person become better in the soul?"

It was a question that belonged in this conversation about whether to reach out to her sister or pull back. It was a question that couldn't be overlooked. Or if overlooked, it was evident that this brief window of opportunity for the sister to alter her life course, as well as her present relationships with family members, could be lost forever. I finally broke the silence with something so obvious it was actually laughable, “It's always possible for bad events to lead us into good places. We can use any circumstances, at any place and any time, to help us to become better in the soul. It's always a matter of choice, and what we do with what we are given."

Spirituality 101, right? Elizabeth Kubler Ross, the ferocious pioneer of work in the field of death and dying used to say, “”Who you are, is God's gift to you. What you make of yourself is the gift you give back to God.”

The client looked at me with a big grin on her face, one of those grins that says a lot in a simple expression. We both knew what she had to do, and, as I remember, the conversation immediately moved into how to do it and how to do it well. No more dwelling on what to do, or why to do it. It was just the right thing-obvious to both of us-to get involved in her sister's life and to provide whatever support and love she could, open to helping, yet still aware she might have to boundary or protect herself at any moment her sister's behavior proved too difficult.

Over some months since this question first was asked, my client's sister has blossomed and begun a new life (although not without some rough edges). “Chemotherapy school,” another term coined by this client, isn't an easy school to be in, and the homework's really hard, even when the chances to learn are notable. Driving her sister to chemotherapy school, sitting with her during treatments, helping her in the days following her treatments, my client hasn't had to protect herself in any way. There has been a softening between them, and they're carving out a true sisterhood for the first time in years, both becoming better in the soul as a result of risking and forging a fresh relationship with each other. According to my client, cancer and chemotherapy school have a way of making very clear what is, and what's not, important.

So this is the question that presented itself to me in preparation for this talk with all of you, the question the Mystery asked me and asked me to raise for consideration today: What does it mean to become better in the soul, and how do we get there?

Jack Kornfield is a practicing Buddhist as well as a meditation teacher of some wide reputation. He's written a number of wonderful books on the spiritual journey, among them a book called The Path of Heart.

In the early chapters of the book, he describes his own first significant lesson as a spiritual seeker: that all we ever hope to embody or teach others about living a spirited-centered life, must first pass through us, be recognized, absorbed and integrated as lessons in our singular lives. Only then do we have the wisdom which indicates we have lived what we hope to teach. In simple terms, the universal work always begins with the personal.

And only as we accumulate the wisdom given to us in our singular lives, do we come to understand the purpose for which we are born. It's a slow, care-filled process that begins with turning within, listening to our own lives as the best teacher for each of us, and following the unique path life spreads in front of us.

Listen to Jack Kornfield for a moment:

quote:

“I have learned that the universal must be wedded to the personal to be fulfilled in our spiritual life. We are human beings, and the human gate to the sacred is our own body, heart, and mind; the history from which we come; and the closest relationships and circumstances of our life. If not here, where else could we bring alive compassion, justice and liberation?

An integrated sense of spirituality understands that if we are to bring light or wisdom or compassion into the world, we must first begin with ourselves. The universal truths of spiritual life can come alive only in each particular and personal circumstance. This personal approach to practice honors both the uniqueness and the commonality of our life, respecting the timeless quality of the great dance between birth and death, yet also
honoring our particular body, our particular family and community, the personal joys and sorrows that have been given to us. In this way, our awakening-or what I call for today's purpose “becoming better in the soul”-is a very personal matter that also affects all other creatures on earth.

Roughly translated, what Jack Kornfield tells us is that the particularities of our lives are neither random nor purposeless: they come to illuminate the gate that crosses from the human into the sacred realms. They come to show us the way. Thus, those “particularities,” however much we want or despise them, are eminently meaning and opportunity-filled. We are always given the choice to approach and accept them, or to avoid them and turn away. To say “yes” or to say “no.” And since the Mystery bears no judgment on our choices (it just makes them available, and if we let them pass us by, allows them to be received by someone else), we are, in the truest sense, agents of free will when it comes to becoming better in the soul.

To say “no” means that we stay as we are, in whatever life we have made our own. It gets no bigger; it gets no smaller. Our spirits grow no bigger; they grow no smaller. It's a kind of spiritual stasis we-sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of exhaustion, sometimes out of apathy-can choose without reproach.

To say “yes” means that we are ready to live triumphantly, which doesn't promise that we'll never be hurt again or have shards to pick out of our human wounds. It just means that we say, “Yes! Give me life, and I want all of it. I want to be here for my life, for all its loves and losses. I want to show up for all parts of it, to learn and to grow from it, and, ultimately, to give back some of what I've learned in the form of wisdom to those who follow me.” The result of saying “Yes!” is both laughter and love, sorrow
and bleeding: a rich journey through our time on earth, in a life full well inhabited.

Do we always want to do what's asked of us? Sometimes yes, when it's easy or offers a measurable reward. Mostly we balk, because the work is invisible to all but what we see from the indwelling spirit, and because a lot of the time, what we're asked to do in the effort to become better in the soul, stretches us to the point where our bones ache and our hearts hurt. This isn't such a terrible thing-we've all lived through experiences that shook us to the bone and survived to become better as a result-but it is enough of a spiritual nuisance that, given the choice, we sometimes choose to say, “No, thanks. I'll pass.” And we do that aware that we are choosing, in that instance, to turn away from circumstances that could grow or mature us spiritually.

If there is no great negative-except for spiritual stasis-to saying “no,” why should we say “yes?” The answer is simple: because the world needs us to do it, because the children of the present and the grandchildren of the future require it of us, because the family of creation waits for us to do our part in its expansion or movement toward awakening more and more fully. “If not me, then who? If not now, then when?”

Example: for the last six years, I've been pretty much happily involved in a life that was full and growing fuller. I had a lovely relationship on which I counted for support and sustenance, I had a thriving practice of therapy and spiritual direction, I was leading groups I loved and writing the books I'd waited all my life to write. My children had reached a lovely place in their now-adult lives where they were also in thriving relationships and work that satisfied them deeply. Looking good.

Then my companion maneuvered a perfect turn in another direction, and everything that I thought my life would be about for the next decade was suddenly…not what my life was about. Where there'd been fullness, was now an emptiness. Where there'd been joy, was now sorrow. This change was nowhere foreseeable on my radar screen. Something just happened to move us onto another path with each other and to up-end both of our lives. I dropped into this unexpected change kicking and screaming. He went into it clumsily, making mistakes that hurt both of us, but not in the least able to change his course. We might have ruined each other, or hurt the other beyond repair, but for an inexplicable "something" that held our feet to the fire. It came first from me, but he was ready and relieved to agree.

I said, “If we're ending this relationship, let's end it with love and with the promise that we'll each go forward better in the soul for having loved this long and this way. Let's finish this in beauty.” Slowly, meticulously, often painfully, we picked apart the threads that bound us and let the other go toward freedom. Nothing about this was easy. Nothing was simple. There were times when both of us wanted to avoid the work this involved, and yet-to his credit and mine-we stayed with it until the tears had flowed, the gratitudes were spoken, and the promises were fulfilled.

In the end, I still grieved deeply, and so did he. I saw the face of his grief, and he saw the face of mine. We wept together, held each other through the weeping, laughed about the mistakes, and grew in compassion for one another's humanity. We struggled with my longing to hold on, were tender with each other until it passed…and I could open my hand to let go. We discovered his tendency to bolt, to hurt others in his hasty retreat, and slowed down enough to tie up the loose threads in a kind manner to everyone involved.

In the process, we acted with justice toward one another: our motto, no harm. And though I'm not in any way offering to re-visit this experience, we both left it feeling stronger and wiser in the soul: kinder, softer, more compassionate, our hearts expanded enough to transform love-not into hate or fear-but into a new form in which love, now different, continues to thrive.

What's my message? Love the particularities of your life, however hard or gentle they may seem, however loving or bereft of love, however uplifting or despairing. Love them all; embrace them all. They are your gate to the sacred, your threshold to becoming better in the soul. Honor them as the opportunity they are for you to mature and grow spiritually. Our chances to grow come as they come, not always in forms we want to accept, but they come...and, if we don't turn away, we can be greatly en-spirited by the gifts they hold out to us.

And how will you know when or if you have become a little better in the soul? The truth is, you might not…though those who love you, live with you, share in life's joys and sorrows with you, will almost certainly see changes in you. If you find them in yourself, it might be quiet change, a transformation that unfolds gradually, until one day you notice that you too are moving through life more aware, more conscious that every day throws its gifts at you, more grateful for both the gentle and the bitter winds on which those gifts arrive, more willing to spin those gifts into spiritual gold.

Nothing comes to us without, at its deep center, the intention for us to grow better in the soul. We're born to embody the extravagant heart of divinity, and absolutely everything that life hands off to us contains the opportunity-yours or mine to accept-for us to step more consciously into the choice to fully inhabit that inborn divinity.

So. I bow to the sacred within you. I humbly invite you to flaunt your fears and resistances-whatever they are, and we all have them-and come out, come out, to stand in the circle with your sisters and brothers of all faiths who are quietly becoming better in the soul…so that we might yet pass to our children, our children's children and grandchildren a gentler, kinder, and more compassionate home for the human family. Amen.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Meredith Jordan,