Dear August,
I enjoyed your Forbes article, A Wake-Up Call For Leadership, and I wonder whether it’s really the case that we have to experience trauma to be awakened?
The following is a recent experience I’d like to share:
Moulin d’Alger
My wife and I have a home in the Languedoc region of southern France. They have forest fires there and with the drying of summers, there is a move to enforce the law in relation to brush clearance as that reduces the risk to life and property. Thus we found ourselves with an unexpected and monumental task, clearing brush from steep hillsides around our house. The rough land was at about the steepest angle one could move around on without using all four limbs. Cutting the scrub was tough and clearing it away by rolling large bundles down the slope was even tougher. After two weeks of part time work I was fit but exhausted.
The day before we were due to leave we decided to rest. However I was tempted by the need to finish some steps, to bring down a small tree for a log I could split. The tree fell awkwardly and I asked my wife to hold a rope so I could attach it to branches in order that I could cut them without losing them over the edge and into the river. The first went well but the second was harder and I recall reaching out as far as I could to attach the rope. I decided to take support from the tree but it moved. I went head first over the edge and fell five meters (over 16 feet) onto rocks and tree stumps. I have no memory of the fall, nor of the following events. The local fire service carried me off to hospital where I was found to have broken ribs and a sprained neck. There is no doubt I am very fortunate to be alive and whole.
This incident amazes me. I could be dead or crippled. I realize that I was tired and my judgment was impaired. However, there was a surreal aspect to the event. I recall distinctly the moment before the fall – the texture of the rope in my hands and the details of the leaves I was negotiating. Then, as the fall began, I simply let go of this world – no panic, no attempt to arrest myself. I recall that to pull the rope might jeopardize my wife so I declined that option and surrendered myself to the abyss.
Somewhat frivolously, I would describe this as the ‘hand of God swept me away” – and follow with “and his other hand caught me”. Instead of being dead, as well I might be, I came round to find myself battered but intact. This is not mere luck, as it would seem, but indeed some ‘divine intervention’… something for me to ponder, to respond to… a further awakening perhaps? A lesson in living? I am duly grateful.
These incidents pointed to my need to become more conscious, to awaken. It seems to me that I can choose to ignore them or I can choose to recognize them as reminders and respond as best I can”.
Warm regards
John
Dear John,
Thanks for your thoughtful and inspirational reply. I loved your story very much and I think it answers your question: You experienced a traumatic event and it woke you up to a deeper understanding of life and self and God. However I would quickly add that when I use the term “traumatic” I do not mean that waking up requires anything as severe as plunging over a cliff. As I noted in A Wake-Up Call For Leadership, we experience a “slight trauma” every time we wake up from physical sleep. However if we pay close attention we will find that whether it is spiritual awakening or just some lesser occurrence the typical “wake up call” is initially experienced as a “shock” of some sort – even if it is nothing more than that infernal alarm clock sitting by our bed. Doctors even “shock the immune system” with a vaccination in order to “wake” it up to fighting disease. Psychotherapy no matter how benevolently administered always leads to some sort of “crisis” that is experienced “traumatically” for the patient in order to effect progress and healing. All of this leads to an important spiritual point: All too often we look for spiritual teachers and directors who “soothe” us when what we should be looking for are those that can wake us up with the least amount of trauma. Thanks again for your comment and wonderful story. August Turak
Dear August,
Is it that trauma is required for awakening or that awakening is accompanied by trauma? Does it matter?
I agree with contrasting teachers who soothe with those who might (lovingly) shock – the latter are likely to be more effective. I have known both as, no doubt, you have. Obviously there is a lot of self-calming that goes on as we, the masses, anaesthetize ourselves to the madness of this physical world.
Why would it not? But do we want to go like lemmings to our doom?
Those who seek more will forego such comforting. Right now I am suffering somewhat but have no doubt that I have been given a valuable experience and a great opportunity.
At least I am now addressing my writing with a sense of urgency! At the time of this accident I happened to be reading Fritjof Capra, Gregory Bateson and, oddly enough, Paulo Coelho. I suspect a conspiracy!
The rest remains to be revealed.
Good wishes,
John
Dear John,
Whether trauma causes awakening or merely accompanies it, I would say is immaterial. Typically it is the TRUTH that wakes us up, and it is our reaction to the truth that we experience as traumatic. I remember a spiritual teacher saying that his problems arose from his bad habit of telling people the truth and that this “tended to engender rage.” I remember my teacher’s teacher referring in a letter to his interactions with his own teacher. He said that working with his teacher often left him “murderous.” But then of course he went on to lavish high praise on this very same teacher. Thanks so much for your notes, and I am not surprised that you have the spiritual maturity to see in your suffering the opportunity that it may very well contain. Authentic spirituality is not a process of addition. It is a process of disillusionment. August
