"This is the season of Epiphany, when the renewal of light and revelation are celebrated in the liturgy of the Catholic, Episcopal, and Eastern Orthodox churches. On our new path we seek everyday epiphanies-- occasions on which we can experience the Sacred in the ordinary-- and come to the awakening … We have to be willing to discover and then appreciate the authentic moments of happiness available to all of us every day."
-Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
January is a time of renewal. As we look forward to the coming year, we have hopes and dreams for transformation, happiness, and fulfillment. As we create resolutions for the new year, we evaluate the progress made towards previous goals and consider the next steps on our journey. Who are we meant to become? What are we called to do? What will make us feel happy and fulfilled? How are these answers revealed to us and how do we recognize them?
Jeremiah's Letter to the Exiles in Babylon
"The Weeping Prophet" Jeremiah (c. 650 - c. 570 BCE) witnessed the fall of the Assyrian empire to Babylon and the steady rise of Babylonian dominance in the Ancient Near East. He understood the military significance of Nebuchadnezzar's campaign against Egypt and foresaw the destruction of the Jewish state by the Babylonians and the removal of the Judean people into captivity in Babylon. In both Jewish and Christian traditions, Jeremiah authored the book of Lamentations and the books of Kings. The book of Jeremiah is a collection of the prophet's oracles, preserved through scribe, covering a period from the 13th year of Josiah, King of Judah, to the beginning of the Babylonian Exile (c. 627 - 587 BCE). In these oracles, Jeremiah calls for the people of Judah to repent for their sins of false worship (the belief system of the people was henotheistic at this time -- the people recognized and worshipped deities such as the Ugaritic goddess Asherah, the Phoenician god Baal, and the Sumerian sun god Utu-Shamash, among others) in order to save Judah and Jerusalem from destruction. At the beginning of the reign of King Josiah's son, Jehoiakim, Jeremiah receives a message from the Lord that he intends to bring a disaster upon the cities of Judah if they do not turn from their evil ways, stating, "I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth" (Jeremiah 26:6). This oracle was contradictory to the peaceful prophecies of the "false prophets," and Jeremiah was persecuted for this. The word "jeremiad" became a form of rhetoric in colonial America, referring to speech or literary work expressing a righteous prophecy of doom (in which one must amend one's life in order to avoid doom). Jeremiah's doom-and-gloom prophesies were what gave him his nickname, "The Weeping Prophet."
Jeremiah's prophesies were fulfilled when Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II laid siege to Jerusalem, taking the city in 587 BCE, destroying the First Temple (along with much of the rest of Jerusalem) and deporting many of Judah's inhabitants to Babylon. Both the Hebrew Bible and cuneiform tablets written in Nebuchadnezzar II's time tell of the events that took place. Hebrew clerics concluded the reason for God's punishment was because they had not worshipped Yahweh exclusively. The Babylonian Captivity, then, was the turning point in Israelite religious belief and practice and, moving forward, it would be characterized by a strict monotheism.
Jeremiah wrote a letter to the people who had been exiled to Babylon with the message that God had a plan for the people to remain in Babylon for 70 years as God's discipline. After that, God would return them to their homeland. Jeremiah insisted on a future for God's people, but it required submission to the Babylonians and acceptance of life there.
"Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for our sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the LORD. For thus says the LORD: Only when Babylon's seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile"
-Jeremiah 29: 5-14
God had a plan for his people. The verse Jeremiah 29:11 states these are "plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope." However, there is no promise that pain and suffering will not occur. Pain and suffering must be accepted as a part of life.
The Jews did eventually return to Jerusalem, but they spent many years in Babylon. While in Babylon, it seems that they did come to some sort of acceptance of their situation, as God had commanded. A number of cuneiform tablets have emerged from Iraq in recent years detailing the lives of Jewish deportees who lived at a village called Al-Yahudu, which means the "village of Judea." These tablets were written by Babylonian scribes. They show that the exiles and their descendants had, at least to some extent, adopted the local language, script, and legal traditions of Babylonia a relatively short time after their arrival there. The Babylonians were eventually captured by the Persian Empire and the Persian King Cyrus the Great gave the Jews permission to return to Jerusalem in 538 BCE.
So I think the moral of the story is the importance of acceptance, surrendering to the flow of life, and how this allows our purpose to be revealed to us. The Israelites found God through surrender and total acceptance of their suffering.
The Awakening
The ability to see life in its wider perspective and to accept the existence of pain and suffering in our lives allows us to surrender to the flow of life and to have peace.
When we see "the big picture," we view our current predicament from multiple angles and from a more neutral position. Personal perspective is often limited to our own immediate experience and vantage point; however, there are many factors and a larger context involved in any situation. Viewing the situation from a wider perspective gives us a clearer understanding of our own role in the situation and the impact of our actions. This allows us to see the interdependence of life and to recognize that our current predicament is the result of the sum of circumstances that surround us. How can we reasonably expect to control all of these circumstances? If we cannot control all of these circumstances, how can we expect to control the outcome of any situation? If the outcome could not be controlled, then why do we experience attachment to the outcome?
Pain and suffering are a part of life. When we experience pain in life, we have two possible reactions:
1. Resistance
OR
2. Acceptance
When we experience resistance to pain, we are attached to the outcome. We are making a judgment about ourselves, others, or the situation itself. In doing so, we are resisting reality. We resist reality and pain in an attempt to avoid pain. However, this does not change the fact that the pain exists. Resistance, therefore, is futile.
To surrender is to become unattached to the outcome. We have awareness of our current predicament by viewing it from a wider perspective, but there is no judgement. This is a compassionate awareness-- compassion for ourselves and for others. We are all on the path at different stages and we are interdependent. When we surrender, we do not resist reality-- we accept reality. The acceptance of reality is the only place from which change can begin.
From a state of surrender and acceptance, our actions are performed consciously -- because the outcome no longer matters. All that matters is what we are doing in the present moment. Surrendered action in the state of acceptance means that we are at peace. While at peace, our actions become a joyful celebration of life and the quality of our work is enhanced. The results will reflect that quality -- thus, surrendering our attachment to the outcome actually improves the outcome.
Therefore... Acceptance of Reality = Conscious Living = Joy
Seeking Everyday Epiphanies
I was listening to a "Personality Hacker" podcast recently, which featured Annie Lalla. In the podcast, Annie discussed systematizing ways to find our purpose by "manufacturing" joy in our lives, instead of waiting for our purpose to find us.
Joy = Conscious Living = Acceptance of Reality
Finding ways to "see the Sacred in the ordinary" facilitates our path to "awakening" by allowing us to manufacture joy. Joy is a celebration of life. Joy inspires us, fulfills us, allows us to open ourselves to new possibilities and to receive life as it is. When we learn to celebrate life everyday, our entire perspective tends to focus on the positive. We notice our successes rather than our failures. We develop the self-esteem and the audacity to believe in ourselves. We believe that we deserve to be happy by virtue of our existence. In this state of mind, we are more readily able to surrender ourselves to the Sacred plan, to receive it, aligning our lives to what we are called to do.
Learning to manufacture joy involves some work. We need to commission our minds to discover mundane moments of beauty, delight, magnificence, gratitude. Annie Lalla said, "I think of myself as always on a movie screen and I'm in the audience -- all my future selves and everyone I admire -- anything I do is either making the audience clap for me or boo me. If I don't know what to do in a situation, I ask, 'what would make my audience clap for me?' ... So when you're looking for moments of pleasure and delight, one part of my brain is tracking that and then another part of my brain -- second order -- is saying 'I love the girl that's walking down the sidewalk that looks at the sparkle in the sidewalk and gets delight from it. We love that girl, she's so cool!' I have a chorus of applauders for parts of me that I want to systemize. And when I install the second order babysitter for the first order behavior, it becomes generative and I can sub-contract it out into my subconscious and I don't have to consciously do it anymore." She states this is "A manufacturing system that's on automatic for generating self-esteem and falling in love with my life."
Here's something weird about me... I realized that I developed a mindfulness practice almost exactly like this when I was in junior high school -- before I even knew what mindfulness was. I would pretend that I was being filmed at all times -- like on a reality TV show. In doing so, I would "zoom out" in my mind and view my world from the audience's perspective and I would notice things that I usually didn't notice. Throughout the years, I have gone back to that practice every once in awhile to keep my perspective fresh.
To summarize all of this, if we want to be open to and ready to receive the possibilities and opportunities in the Universe, God's plan, what-have-you, we need to develop a joyful celebration of life everyday-- despite our current circumstances -- in turn, developing a love for life, a love for others, and a love for ourselves and a belief that we all deserve to be happy by virtue of our existence. One way to do this is to commission our minds to "see the Sacred in the ordinary."
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