Reposted from March 2011, after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
I’m not sure why events in Japan have affected me so much. I sit here weeping, day after day, and I don’t know why. Of course the large death toll, the example of the men at Fukishima knowingly sacrificing their lives, the plight of all the homeless, the lack of food and water.
Or is it the bond I feel with Japan and have always felt since I was child? As a young man, I studied karate and watched all the films of Kurosawa, and surrounded myself in Hiroshige and Zen writings, read about the Japanese giving up the gun, wrote articles as a young historian on anti-Orientalism in the West, or walked through Japan town and loved nothing more than a night in a Japanese restaurant. I’ve always had a bond with Japan.
So when I saw the sea sweep over the land, I felt a sorrow such as I had never known in this time, this lifetime of sorrows. Not simply outrage as with Haiti and Chile, or sadness as with Queensland and Christchurch, but a deep sorrow. And I still feel it. And perhaps I’m grieving now and may need to grieve some more.
I haven’t even known why days have gone by and I haven’t done the wash or why I sit here now and I can hardly see out of my glasses because I haven’t had the presence of mind in days to wash them. Why have I sunk so far in carelessness? And it is this numbing sorrow I feel at what has happened to Japan.
At times like these, what is going on around me fades away, like a movie I’ve lost interest in, and I find myself reminding myself what this is all in aid of.
Why have civilizations come from light years away, across hostile space, to assist us with Ascension? Why do they care? Why do we care?
Why does life value Ascension? Why do the Arab people value freedom? Why do Wisconsin workers risk everything to oppose their government? Why does the West respond to the Libyan people. I’m glad that Matthew has confirmed that their motivation is pure and not, as some people have said, just one more installment of Illuminati machinations.
Why is there this great sweeping movement towards freedom and Ascension? What is it all about?
And I am reminded at a time like this of what so many wise spiritual masters have said, what they have noticed – that there is an unquenchable thirst in human beings for freedom, for knowledge, for truth and peace and love. An unquenchable thirst. More unquenchable than the thirst of a man in the desert for water.
They call it the longing for liberation and the urge to evolve. This thirst goes on, from lifetime to lifetime, after every other desire runs out, after every other desire is satiated, be we rich or poor, young or old, man or woman.
And I see at those moments the thrust of life, the upward ascending spiral of spiritual evolution, the stairway to heaven, the ladder of consciousness. And I see where it leads and where it ends. And I see the great sweeping arc we follow, out from God into the world and back to God again.
And I remember that we start this journey unaware, hesitant, confused, guided only by that unquenchable thirst for what we know not. And I see us plodding through lifetimes of pain and a little joy, periods of rest and then the relentless journey again.
And I see those higher on the ladder, inviting us, encouraging us, prodding us on. And I see us blossoming, expanding, lifting our heads. And I remember what this is all about.
And, as hard as it seems, I know that those who died have not died and that those who were injured will be made whole again and that all are suffering only for a time.
And I remember the goal – the remembrance of who we are – and with it the return of all the conditions and powers that will turn all this back into a dream, fast fading from our minds. And none of this seems real then. It becomes all the dream that it is. And that which I am at essence becomes again the only thing that’s real, and who you are, and who we all are.
And I’m enabled to go on another day in the face of such misery, such suffering, and all this weeping that I’m doing and need to do. Oh, how cruel we are to each other. How mistaken we can be. How utterly misguided and short-sighted.
And it will go on a time longer. And, even when it doesn’t, even when the clouds lift, there will be others who remain in misery and there will be work for us to do, who no longer suffer.
Life is suffering and so many of us only seem to learn through suffering. I only learn through suffering. And I have no magic wand to change the situation. No escape. And, for the Japanese, no ease or respite.
But there is nothing for it but to look around and see what needs doing right here, right in this room, right in this city, right in this world. And to do that and do that and do that again, until the day comes when relief, if only temporary, arrives, and, long, long beyond that, the salvation that comes from solving the great puzzle, answering the riddle that plagues me lifetime after lifetime, at the center of existence – who I am.