A Suffering that Transforms: Spiritual Awakening and Ego Dissolution
I had the room set up perfectly so that I could find total stillness and contemplation within. No distractions. This was somewhat normal for me during my meditation practice but today was special. I was going to work through a specific mourning ritual that is used to help individuals let go of their loved one after death. My husband, just a month earlier, had passed away from Stage IV Colon Cancer, and my life had been completely turned upside down. You never really know how grief like that will affect you. A death of this magnitude is so abnormal that you find it quite hard to stick to normal routines, so you just do the best you can, one step at a time. This was a step, and somehow, I knew it. My yoga mat laid out, the candle lit and the darkness gathering, I sat down to start my meditation. The directions said to have a picture of your loved one in front of you and let the grief pour out. So, I did. I asked him how he could have left me here without him. I told him how much I missed him and that every day waking up to the reality of his absence was like reliving a nightmare on repeat. I asked him where he was now. Was he just ash or was he something more? Why did we have to be separated by death? I cried. I sobbed. I questioned him and God. I sat in silence. I knew I didn’t quite understand where my husband was going and wasn’t sure about the reality of a “streets of gold” kind of heaven. Yet I knew that somehow, he was in a place of deep love and peace, without question. I imagined him on his new journey with the Divine and tried to release him into this new life. Being in that vulnerable state, a place where you can be intimate with the Spirit, where your heart is broken and your pain is real, when you have nothing else to hold onto, this is when we realize that pain can be an opening for transformation, the beginning of a path towards spiritual enlightenment.
Why am I telling you this, dear reader? I don’t tell you this to make you sad. I tell you this so that you can see that suffering is a part of our natural state here on earth. It is one of the building blocks of temporal life. We all go through pain in this life; we all have a different story to tell, a unique journey. The one commonality in this life is that we all suffer. I remember the first time I read those words. It didn’t sit well with me. My privileged little soul didn’t quite understand what that meant, but I started to have eyes to see once I experienced it firsthand. Until we understand suffering at a deeper level, either through our own trails or being in with solidarity with those who suffer greatly, we cannot be able to fully understand God. Suffering has the ability to bring about spiritual awakening, for our ego is allowed to dissolve and we can see the realities of our impermanence, the fleeting nature of our existence. Although “spiritual awakening” is not a word we hear often in the Christian context, I propose that suffering not only aids in ego disillusion but that same ego death/disollution is crucial to the Christian story of redemption and new life in Christ.
To understand how suffering can aid in spiritual awakening, we must define it. In the article “Spiritual Awakening and Human Development,” Slanina defines spiritual awakening as:
“a window to another dimension of existence, where socially constructed reality is no longer the main frame of refence, but rather one aspect of a larger field of meaning… [it] leads to the recognition of the larger whole, higher truth, and greater power of which we are not in control but a cooperating part. It means we are acquainted with and recognize the ‘true self, the Central being, hidden beneath the many layers of our meticulously constructed ego and it’s personas.’”[1]
If we turn to the story of the paralytic man in Mark 2 1-12 and Luke 5:17-26, we see that at the forefront of Jesus’ mind was not actually physical healing but spiritual healing and redemption. When Jesus sees the man’s friends and their faith portrayed so eagerly and robustly, he says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”[2] He then mocks the Pharisees for being blind to the reality that it is more important to have spiritual healing than physical healing. It is significant to note that the paralytic man does not retort back with ungratefulness before his body was healed. Could he have possibly recognized that the most profound gift was this spiritual gift of “the awakening… to having been seized in and by love delivered in the encounter with Jesus?”[3] Spiritual awakening is not new in the Christian scriptures. The New Testament speaks of a time where we will wake from sleep,[4] to “stay awake,”[5] and declares, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine in you.”[6] The term “awake” is used to describe a state of spiritual readiness and preparation. Parables about the kingdom of heaven ask believers to “stay awake,” and be prepared for the day and hour of Christ’s return. Could this also possibly refer to a state of awakening in this life here and now, which could help us see Christ’s kin-dom is already here with us living in and through those who have chosen to die to self and live fully in Christ?
Even if we know spiritual awakening is something that we are called to as spiritual seekers, how is it that suffering can bring about our own enlightenment? The Buddha’s first of his four noble truths is “life is (dukkah) suffering.” His Holiness the Dalai Lama goes even farther to say that suffering is “like a disease we have all contracted.”[7] For Buddhists, Dukkha (suffering) is the pain which is innate in all of finite existence. Life is dislocated, something has gone wrong, and it hurts. Parts of this suffering include the trauma of our own birth, sickness, aging, dislikes, desires, separation from loved ones, and the fear of death. Suffering is part of our lives because we believe that things last, that they are permanent, and that they can give us safety and security. The nature of our very fleeting existence from birth until death is that we will suffer at one time or another from this very impermanence.
The suffering that we may experience in this life may be caused by our finite nature, but what does this have to do with spiritual awakening? Our scripture library is rife with examples in which the authors tell listeners to suffer for Christ and speaks of the righteousness of those who suffer. In the past, I interpreted this to mean that we were simply supposed to suffer in some way to be righteous people. I now wonder if “blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” is not an indication that in the spiritual realm, to know suffering allows one to know the suffering God. The Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew teach us that we (believers) are blessed when people utter evil against us because our reward is great in heaven. 1 Peter 4:12-16 states, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” This verse contends that we should actually be glad when we share in Christ’s own sufferings! Through my past evangelical theology, I viewed these scriptures through the lens of Christian persecution. I assumed I must suffer for the sake of my faith, but what if we actually perceived this incorrectly? We will suffer because it is part of our natural existence, but those who touch suffering have the opportunity to also be awakened by it. This suggests that the only way to know Christ, who is God, is through humanity: “to suffer and be with those who suffer.”[8]
We often forget that our scriptures are lined with chapters on the suffering of humanity and their pleas to a God that suffers with us. There are stories of lament littered throughout the bible, such as the Psalms and songs of David, Job’s journey with loss, and most expressly in Lamentations. This book has been attributed to the prophet Jeremiah but was most likely written by several different anonymous people.[9] They were common people, like you and me, but their suffering was immense. Their home, Jerusalem, had been torn down, and war, famine, rape, and even cannibalism, had broken out all over the city. The author goes from one extreme to the next: from great desperation to intense joy as seen in these verses in Lamentations. “He has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones; he has made me sit in darkness like the dead of long ago.”[10] Then the author moves quickly back to praise, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, your mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.”[11]Can it be a coincidence that the pangs of suffering are also amidst the joys of knowing the faithfulness of the living God?
Richard Rohr in his book The Universal Christ sees the suffering of the world and names it the “Great Sadness:” the one sadness of God. Some mystics even think that individual suffering doesn’t truly exist but that there is only one suffering, “it is all the same, and it is all the suffering of God.”[12] The image of Jesus crucified is the greatest and most dramatic symbol of this human suffering in solidarity with all of humanity, the “one suffering that God fully enters into with us- much more than just for us, as we were mostly trained to think.”[13] God is both the God of the sufferers and the God who suffers. Author Nicholas Wolterstorff explains it like this: “It is said of God that no one beholds his face and lives. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live.”[14] We often think that we find spiritual eyes through knowledge, love, prayer, spiritual practices and other answers that Christian tradition has given us. Although these may very well also be great truths, we often miss the fact that it is in our own suffering where we find the center of our true selves, and ultimately, where we find God. Wolsterhoof asks the daring question like this: “Is our glory to suffer?”[15] 2 Corinthians 12:10 shows us this strength through suffering: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Could it be that which feels pain also has the ability to let it go and through this process “the center stands revealed and sufficient?”[16]
From a psychological perspective, Peter Amoto proposes a theory of awakening in which significant life occurrences or traumatic events can cause a shock to the system, sparking the awakening process. In 2014, research by Havawickreme and Blackie suggests that “significant life occurrence in the theory of awakening affects potential progression and regression, ultimately impacting quality of awareness.”[17] This awareness can be seen as the first step towards spiritual awakening.
Although suffering may be an innate part of our existence as finite beings, why do we experience transformation spiritually through traumatic events? It has been proposed that suffering brings about ego disillusion or death, which is part of the path of enlightened living. In Christian terminology, we may call this redemption. In Greek, the word meaning “to loose” or “to release.” Christianity may not use the word “ego” but it is nonetheless a religion that teaches us, from the cross, how to “win” by losing. Our ego, or our false self, is the “I” that we identify as that of our self. This is, in my case, the “I” of the mind and body of “Laura.” The ego is the sense that “I” am separate from everything and everyone else. It is not a thing but a function of our mind which has told us stories about who we are and who we are not. “I” am a white, protestant woman. “I” am a singer, pastor, and widow. “I” am extroverted, endearing, and a good speaker. These are functions of my personality and identity, but they are by no means my full and true self. In This, author Michael Gungor frames it through this lens: “The ego is the result of a human organism’s desire to be permanent. It is a coping mechanism and a clever way for an organism to survive and procreate. Our evolved fear of death gets expressed as the story of a permanent, real, and consistent ‘self.’”[18] They are helpful illusions but they are illusions and stories nonetheless. This is why the fear of death, our impermanence is so strong. We fear the death of our “I”- our ego. Only through the disillusionment of this ego or “false self” can we find the center or our “true self”- that which is God.
One of the ways ego death can be attained or strengthened is through suffering and being in solidarity with those who suffer. Through intense turmoil, there is a dissolution of psychological attachments such as hopes, ambitions, beliefs, status, wealth, and social roles. These attachments are the building blocks of a person’s identity and therefore, their own personal ego, or false self. When these building blocks are taken away through despair or loss, the structure collapses. In some people, this collapse can allow for the center of one’s self to unfold: “a new, higher functioning self-system to emerge and become established as the individual’s new sense of identity.”[19] As Buddhist nun Pema Chodron writes so succinctly, “the only time we ever know what’s really going on is when the rug’s been pulled out from under us and we can’t find anywhere to land. We use these situations to wake ourselves up or put ourselves to sleep.”[20]
In his article “Two Modes of Sudden Spiritual Awakening? Ego-Dissolution and Explosive Energetic Awakening,” Taylor explores the phenomenon of the transformational participation in ‘spiritual awakening’ through a study of 25 people who claimed to have undergone this kind of experience. The participants were asked to describe their experience in a narrative flow, including the nature of their transformations. The key questions were: “Was there a particular point at which you underwent transformation? and “How has your attitude to life changed since the experience?” The three most noted characteristics of the experience were a positive effect of the person’s well-being, greater “present-ness,” and an uninterrupted stable state of being. Other characteristics included a quieter mind, a reduced fear of death, a decreased sense of group identity, and sense of connection to something greater. Many of these transformational experiences occurred after traumatic life events such as death of a loved one, illness, divorce and depression. One participant describes her gradual development of spiritual awakening through the suffering of a deep depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She describes the peak experience:
I opened my eyes and the world looked different. It was alive. It was infinite aliveness. Everything was bright. Even the space between everything. The colors were incredible and the flowers looked happy. I looked down and realized I was the sidewalk.[21]
Another participant was dealing with the death of his son and his wife close to one another, which brought about a sudden awakening:
The sense of who I was has been stripped away, and I was left staring at emptiness…It shattered the thin shell of my ego. I could see through the illusion of separateness. All those years I’d been looking for a pair of glasses which I was already seeing out of. The idea that all is one had been an intellectual concept, but now it’s become real. It’s the fear of nothing that terrifies the ego. It spends all its time protecting itself from nothing, all to avoid looking inside.[22]
It is through ego dissolution in which one finds a deeper state of consciousness to understand the nature of our eternal, spiritual existence in a material, created, temporal world. If this is a deep spiritual truth, then, our Christian scriptures must also speak to this kind of dying to self. Our true self, our center, where we find our most authentic selves, which is the reflection of the image of God, is covered by our false self, our ego. This is the self we must die to.
As a seed forms, an outer coat forms around the seed to protect it. It is of the same biological material but of a different form. When the right conditions are met, the outer seed will soften so that a sprout can emerge and grow into a full, mature plant. The outer layer protects the seed so that it can grow into its real self, but it is not the real seed. It will soon fall away and be turned into soil for the thriving plant. It is the same with our ego. It is a necessary function to live in our temporal reality, but it is not who we truly are. Jesus speaks of this same process in John, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”[23]
Yet, we instead live in the illusions of our ego. Living into our ego selves is when we “sin.” The word “sin” is complex and often misunderstand. In Greek, hamartia, it means “not to hit,” “to miss,” or “to err.”[24] Essentially, sin is when we miss the true goal of life: our redemption, growth, and wholeness as a part of the created and loved universe. The contemplative monk and theologian Thomas Merton states, “All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered.”[25] Another way of saying this is: we sin when we think the world revolves around our own selves and not the Creator-Source, the One God. Though individual sin may lead to moral errors in living, to sin is primarily to limit our understanding to the narrow perspectives of the clinging ego rather than through the freedom of our true selves, that which is God within us. We cling to satisfying our own needs instead of believing in the deep, covenantal, conscious altering love God has given us to live into here and now.
Paul knew that to die to our self and to sin is to live a life “in” Christ. “En Christo,” a phrase he used a total of 164 times, more than any other, was for Paul a buzz word for “the gracious, participatory experience of salvation” which shows that humanity was never separate from God, unless by its own free will.[26] We are all “en Christo.” This bigger divine identity that we find in the dying of our self is the “mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth en Christo, as a plan for the fullness of time.”[27] To be fully living and fully human, as Jesus did on the cross, is to “be willing to die over and over again.”[28] This is the awakened view of life. No story can be truer of this than the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, which is why it is the Christian’s foremost example of how to die into new life. We overcome suffering “by a humble letting go that always feels like losing.”[29]
When we realize, dear reader, as the writer of Ecclesiastes does, that life is not as we may view it from our limited, earthly, time bound bodies, our perception of our world and our God will shift. For everything there is a season, even our own lives.[30] We were not here to exist permanently. What we have been given is a gift. This does not mean that suffering does not create deep wounds. The wounds can be raw and excruciating, but what we do with that wound, that is the true gift. One of these gifts can be the gift of transformative awareness of the dying to self. For “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”[31] Maybe this is indeed not a call for martyrdom or persecution in our earthly life for Christ but instead the martyrdom of our false selves, so that we can fully live into this collective unconscious that is en Christo. When we can accept that suffering is part of existence without judgment of that suffering, we can begin to see the suffering God a little clearer. God does not create suffering but God can work through it to restore us, to keep us in a state of renewed spiritual awakening in the present. This is the redemption and sanctification of the soul, so that the soul can live out it’s true identity: a divine reflection of God at our very center. After all, God loves things by becoming them.[32]
Bibliography
Amato, Peter P. The Theory of Awakening: A Classic Grounded Theory. Saybrook University: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2016.
Chodron, Pema. When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Boulder: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2016.
Collins, John J. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004.
Greenway, William. The Challenge of Evil: Grace and the Problem of Suffering. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016.
Gungor, Michael. This: Becoming Free. Petulama, CA: Roundtree Press, 2019.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama. How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life. Edited and Translated by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph. D. New York: Atria Books, 2002.
Kittel, Gerhard, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964.
Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ: How a forgotten reality can change everything we see, hope for and believe. New York: Convergent Books, 2019.
Rohr, Richard. What the Mystics Know: Seven Pathways to Your Deeper Self. Richard Rohr. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2016.
Slanina, Stanislav (Standa) Jan. “Spiritual Awakening and Human Development.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1993.
Taylor, Steve. “Two Modes of Sudden Spiritual Awakening? Ego-Dissolution and Explosive Energetic Awakening.” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 37.2 (2018): 131.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Lament for a Son. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987.
Vancil, Marilyn. Self to Lose, Self to Find: A Biblical Approach to the 9 Enneagram Types. Enumclaw, WA: Redemption Press, 2016.
[1]Slanina, “Spiritual Awakening and Human Development,” 10.
[2] Mark 2:5, NRSV.
[3] Greenway, The Challenge of Evil : Grace and the Problem of Suffering, 127.
[4] Romans 13:11, NRSV.
[5] Matthew 24:42, NRSV.
[6] Ephesians 5:14b, NRSV.
[7] Dalia Lama, How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life, 33.
[8] Rohr, What the Mystics Know, 20.
[9] Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 348.
[10] Lamentations 3:4,6, NRSV.
[11] Lamentations 3:22-23, NRSV.
[12] Rohr, The Universal Christ, 162.
[13] Rohr, The Universal Christ, 162.
[14] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 83.
[15] Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 83.
[16] Rohr, What the Mystics Know, 23.
[17] Slanina, “Spiritual Awakening and Human Development,” 10.
[18] Gungor, This: Becoming Free, 104.
[19] Taylor, “Two Modes of Sudden Spiritual Awakening? Ego-Dissolution and Explosive Energetic Awakening,” 131.
[20] Chodron, When Things Fall Apart, 10.
[21] Taylor, Steve. “Two Modes of Sudden Spiritual Awakening? Ego-Dissolution and Explosive Energetic Awakening,” 131.
[22] Taylor, Steve. “Two Modes of Sudden Spiritual Awakening? Ego-Dissolution and Explosive Energetic Awakening,” 131.
[23] John 12:24-45, NRSV.
[24]TDNT (Abridged), s.v. “ἁμαρτάνω ἁμάρτημα ἁμαρτία,” 44.
[25] Vancil, Self to Lose, Self to Find, 25.
[26] Rohr, The Universal Christ, 44.
[27] Ephesians 1:9, NRSV.
[28] Rohr, What the Mystics Know, 26.
[29] Vancil, Self to Lose, Self to Find, 57.
[30] Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8, NRSV.
[31] Matthew 10:39, NRSV.
[32] Rohr, The Universal Christ, 16.
