When the gods want to make a poem out of a man’s life, they send him suffering. – Anonymous
Field training teaches that the reality of our world arises out of our intentions, defined as that structure of consciousness that comprises what we take to be real, and that with which we identify. Thus, for example, the belief, “I am a survivor” will fulfill itself in the manifestation of experiences for us to survive, “I am lucky” will produce its own sort of luck as efficiently as “I am unlucky” will produce the opposite, and so on. Note that it isn’t the words “I am” that spark the creative arc, but the underlying identification, the silent claim, the unspoken and perhaps even unthought assumption.
When we fail to recognize the causal role of our consciousness in a situation, when we believe that our reality happens to us rather than through us, when it seems that all the power and authority lie outside us, then we are in a state of what Field training calls “immersion” in another belief—namely, the belief that we are at the mercy of conditions, and this belief, too, tends to be self-fulfilling, until a nicely closed system is formed between the psyche and the world, and our experience continues to prove what we have assumed to be so.
From an immersed state, it may be all but impossible to recognize the great benefit, even blessing, of hardship, but things only start falling apart when they are no longer adequate to fulfill. Hinduism tells us that the nature of the Godhead is threefold, that it has three aspects: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Sustainer, and Shiva the Destroyer, and it is important to understand that often, Shiva must do his part before Brahma can do his. An old, decrepit building must be demolished before a new one can be built on the site where the old one stood, and in just this way, psychic structures of our life that have been burdened and exhausted too long by contradiction must be torn down to open the way to fulfillment.
Before we can receive what we want, our hands must be open, and this may require that we let go of an old identity that served us once but has since become too costly. So does every rite of passage involve a wounding, the loss of a certain version of self, and a dismantling of the old reality that belonged to it.
When we are moving though moments of dismantling, when it seems that things are falling apart, and we cannot see over the next rise to the gift that is on its way to us, it can help greatly to remember that Shiva’s work is not arbitrary. He destroys to make room for the new, for Brahma, for greater life, identity, and creative self-expression. To cooperate with Shiva is the mark of an advanced student, someone who has learned to stand in the face of facts without allowing those facts to impersonate a conclusion, who knows that the better outcome always has the last word. At such times, it isn’t necessary to have heroic faith, only to be willing to let things unfold, and to refrain from agreeing with facts or thoughts that would set us against our best interests by giving ourselves to worst-case suppositions.
If contradictions try to take our resolve hostage, we remind ourselves that any path is as steady under our feet as our willingness to see it through, and remain poised no matter what the world throws at us. Florence Scovel Shinn writes, “I do not move, so the situation moves.” Far from being a bad guy, hardship gives us the opportunity to rise above where we have been and acquire a new way of being in the world. When we choose to remain poised under fire, we do not have to wait long to hear the wings of angels, for the one who overcomes the enemy within overcomes the world.
