The Moon was full in Virgo yesterday, and with the Sun in Pisces we have a polarity, an opposition which pulls us in two different directions. Pisces pulls us towards the ecstasy of transcendence and imagination; Virgo pulls us towards the ordinary and the mundane, the details which we must take care of because we live in a body that requires care and attention.
I woke up this morning thinking about a book I read many years ago, and some of you may have read it too: “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry” by Jack Kornfeld, a Buddhist practitioner. I found an excerpt online and it beautifully expresses this need to keep a foot in the world of the ordinary while seeking the bliss of a more enlightened existence. 💖
For almost everyone who practices, cycles of awakening and openness are followed by periods of fear and contraction. Times of profound peace and newfound love are often overtaken by periods of loss, by closing up, fear, or the discovery of betrayal, only to be followed again by equanimity or joy. In mysterious ways the heart reveals itself to be like a flower that opens and closes. This is our nature.
The only surprising thing is how unexpected this truth can be. It is as if deep down we all hope that some experience, some great realization, enough years of dedicated practice, might finally lift us beyond the touch of life, beyond the mundane struggles of the world. We cling to some hope that in spiritual life we can rise above the wounds of our human pain, never to have to suffer them again. We expect some experience to last. But permanence is not true freedom, not the sure heart’s release.
As one Zen master puts it: “Enlightenment is only the beginning, is only a step of the journey. You can’t cling to that as a new identity or you’re in immediate trouble. You have to get back down into the messy business of life, to engage with life for years afterward. Only then can you integrate what you have learned. Only then can you learn perfect trust.”
Most of us have to re-enter the marketplace to fulfill our realization. As we come down from the mountain, we may be shocked to find how easily our old habits wait for us, like comfortable and familiar clothes. Even if our transformation is great and we feel peaceful and unshakable, some part of our return will inevitably test us. We may become confused about what to do with our life, and how to live in our family or society. We may worry how our spiritual life can fit into our ordinary way of being, our ordinary work. We may want to run away, to go back to the simplicity of the retreat or the temple. But something important has pulled us back to the world, and the difficult transition is part of it. …
Ordinary cycles of opening and closing are necessary medicine for our heart’s integration. In some cases, though, there are not just cycles, there is a crash. As far as we ascend, so far can we fall. This too needs to be included in our maps of spiritual life, honored as one more part of the great cycle.
A Zen koan…is asked of students who have experienced a first awakening: “A clearly enlightened person falls in the well. How is this so?” One Zen master reminds his students, “After any powerful spiritual experience, there is an inevitable descent, a struggle to embody what we have seen.”
—Jack Kornfeld, “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry“
Spot on for me right now, thanks 🙏
Thanks so much for this. My Pisces self resists this, “Most of us have to re-enter the marketplace to fulfill our realization,” but it’s so necessary. Can’t remain outside of the world and survive. Here’s to “the messy business of life.” Kornfield is always so spot on, one if his gifts is really paying attention and making space for that reintegration.