"We may know nothing of our destiny"
Oct. 17th, 2001 02:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
days_unfolding--From Lifelines, by Forrest Church
The lessons of the fall are lost on those who claim that special knowledge can protect us from suffering or give us power over our health and destiny. Modern spiritual teachings such as those contained in A Course in Miracles suggest that "Both sickness and health are in our control….Problems exist only in the mind….The Holy Spirit will solve every problem." According to such teaching, if we align ourselves with truth or love, it will protect us, inoculating us against suffering, illness, and other afflictions that visit those who stand outside the circle of light.
Others contend that everything happens for a reason. For instance, if a young woman has cancer, it was meant to be, perhaps to test her faith and make her a better person or to punish her for something she did in this or some part life. Or maybe she got cancer because of her inability to handle stress, her poor diet, or her failure to align herself with the Holy. One way or another, by this way of thinking, we are held responsible for our own afflictions.
Several years ago a young woman I know suffered an ectopic pregnancy. Her fetus was developing outside of the womb and had to be aborted. All she could think of was, "Why did this happen to me?" Several friends, fellow members of a group of New Age spiritual seekers, had ready answers. "Nothing happens that we don't choose for ourselves," one said. "Clearly you were ambivalent about having a child. Sensing this, the baby balked at coming into the world." To reconcile their friend to her inevitable fate, others posited everything from bad karma in a previous life to a new take on predestination (women who can't bear children are not worthy of being mothers).
This young woman had joined a New Age spiritual circle because she believed, as her friends did, that if we tap the source of holiness all will be well with us. Today, blessed with two lovely subsequent children and a deeper appreciation for life's mystery, she views both her pain and her joy in a different light. "I used to yearn to control my environment and my future," she wrote to me in a recent letter. "A tragic accident or loss like my lost pregnancy makes you give up that dream fast. The reward for giving up that dream of control is that you are set free."
She learned something else as well. In this same letter, she writes that, after she gave birth to her first child, "I thought of all the women who were still aching as I had been, and how they would continue to ache for months or years, or maybe forever." Through her own experience of anguish, she had discovered a bridge to the hearts of others. This invested her newfound joy with a depth that otherwise it would have lacked. What her friends had not been able to offer her, she now can offer to others, a wisdom born of pain.
The lessons of the fall are lost on those who claim that special knowledge can protect us from suffering or give us power over our health and destiny. Modern spiritual teachings such as those contained in A Course in Miracles suggest that "Both sickness and health are in our control….Problems exist only in the mind….The Holy Spirit will solve every problem." According to such teaching, if we align ourselves with truth or love, it will protect us, inoculating us against suffering, illness, and other afflictions that visit those who stand outside the circle of light.
Others contend that everything happens for a reason. For instance, if a young woman has cancer, it was meant to be, perhaps to test her faith and make her a better person or to punish her for something she did in this or some part life. Or maybe she got cancer because of her inability to handle stress, her poor diet, or her failure to align herself with the Holy. One way or another, by this way of thinking, we are held responsible for our own afflictions.
Several years ago a young woman I know suffered an ectopic pregnancy. Her fetus was developing outside of the womb and had to be aborted. All she could think of was, "Why did this happen to me?" Several friends, fellow members of a group of New Age spiritual seekers, had ready answers. "Nothing happens that we don't choose for ourselves," one said. "Clearly you were ambivalent about having a child. Sensing this, the baby balked at coming into the world." To reconcile their friend to her inevitable fate, others posited everything from bad karma in a previous life to a new take on predestination (women who can't bear children are not worthy of being mothers).
This young woman had joined a New Age spiritual circle because she believed, as her friends did, that if we tap the source of holiness all will be well with us. Today, blessed with two lovely subsequent children and a deeper appreciation for life's mystery, she views both her pain and her joy in a different light. "I used to yearn to control my environment and my future," she wrote to me in a recent letter. "A tragic accident or loss like my lost pregnancy makes you give up that dream fast. The reward for giving up that dream of control is that you are set free."
She learned something else as well. In this same letter, she writes that, after she gave birth to her first child, "I thought of all the women who were still aching as I had been, and how they would continue to ache for months or years, or maybe forever." Through her own experience of anguish, she had discovered a bridge to the hearts of others. This invested her newfound joy with a depth that otherwise it would have lacked. What her friends had not been able to offer her, she now can offer to others, a wisdom born of pain.
