Destroying my Credentials
I went to see Ellen today and told her that my faith has been rocked. She asked me, from a philosophical standpoint, what is faith?
My faith is not my religion, my faith has been my confidence in myself, that I had walked through the valley of various hells and could withstand anything that life threw at me no matter what presented itself.
That’s what was shaken. That faith. If my life was put on camera, just as you would watch a movie you see that when the hero is threatened, she doesn’t budge, but when the hero’s loved one is taken and threatened, or worse, hurt, then the hero goes ballistic and loses all discernible patterns of herself in the process. That’s what makes for great cinema – life erupting right before your eyes.
I came home after seeing Ellen and listened to a sermon from Romemu where Rabbi Ingber quotes Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s thoughts on healing and the Lion’s roar:
When you begin to experience the process of going towards emotions, rather than emotions coming towards you, then you begin to make a journey.
~ Rinpoche
The lion’s roar was what was behind me, the eruption of tremendous energy and the disruption of me and us emotionally, and I have wanted to run from it, but days in, I realized that I have to stand and face it. I have to summon the courage to face the lion’s roar head on. And there lies my enlightenment.
Every mother wants to protect her child. In the biblical story of King Solomon, he proves his mettle when the first to approach him in court are two mothers claiming the same baby. He tells the guard to put a sword to the baby, when the tip is piercing the infant’s skin, one mother leaps forward and screams, “No, she can have him, just don’t hurt him.” King Solomon declares her the mother.
No matter how many times I revisit what might have been, I turn to what is – we have looked into the lion’s eyes, he roared, the roar shook us to our core, and we are still standing.