Organ Donation Chronicle - Clarity

Sacrifice and Purification

(Please note that this post is unabashedly spiritual in content. If spirituality is not your thing or turns you off feel free to take a pass.)

Well I spoke too soon when I titled the next to the last entry the conclusion. As a number of people noted, that post offered more in the way of question than answers. Now that I have returned home I have had time to reflect - what is the significance to me having made this decision and having gone through with it?

To understand what this has meant, requires an understanding of the spiritual concept of purification. If you know how they make metal, you know that we start with an ore subject it to great heat (smelting) until it melts (think blast furnaces). If we want to great an even purer form, we raise the heat even more (think making steel from iron) which removes the impurities. Most spiritual paths have a similar concept – that to achieve a higher level of spirituality requires purification – and the path of purification requires some kind of sacrifice. An example of this would be the monastic paths of renunciation in many traditions where the renunciate or monk sacrifices worldly pleasure for the discipline of a spiritual path.

The tradition that I follow emphasizes that the spiritual path is about purifying ourselves of a lifetime (actually lifetimes) of crap. If we are fortunate, this process can be short circuited slightly. This is through a process called Tapasya. Tapasya is a spiritual fire. It is sort of a spiritual blast furnace that gets rid of a whole lot of crap in a short amount of time. It is the fire of purification. You have to have reached a certain level of development in order to be able to withstand a Tapasya event just as an ore has to be processed and smelted before it can be refined. Tapasya is never ‘fun’. After all we are burning away unpleasant stuff.

Prior to the going to off to CT, I had had a number of experiences during meditation where I was getting the message that ‘I was ready’ that ‘I was strong enough to accept’. What I didn’t know was what was I in fact ready for and what was I strong enough to accept? Now I do.

There are a number of things in my past involving how I handled my relationships with loved ones that I have had lots of problems with. On the surface I have dealt with just about all of them. On the surface, the people that were affected by them have long since gone on and shown that in fact I did deal with the issues. But inside me, I have never been able to forgive myself for those pasts in spite of all the assurances through word and action from those involved.

When I got home and meditated in my own place on Sunday morning, I was suddenly aware that those guilts, those attachments were gone. They were cleanly and completely gone. Now it became clear what the meaning of this experience was. I had been given the opportunity to, of my own free will, make a sacrifice, a sacrifice of myself. And by making that sacrifice and because of my previous spiritual efforts, I was rewarded with the gift of Tapasya and had been able to remove the things that had been eating at me for decades. And on top of all this, this wave of Tapasya seems to have cleansed and healed the issues among my siblings and parent that have extended for decades as well.

I can tell you without embarrassment that the tears of gratitude were flowing that Sunday morning.

Now I think I really can conclude this Chronicle. I still need to heal. This whole long, long process has taken a lot out of me. But I see signs that gradually my energies are returning and my wounds are healing. Hopefully my Sister gets out of the hospital Tuesday morning. That will take a load off my mind.

I want to give my deepest thanks and gratitude to everyone who has assisted over these last few weeks. My Wife has been an unbelievable tower of strength and calmness. My brothers and father totally have stepped up to the plate and supported both my Sister and I. And all of the people all over the country and the world that have been thinking of us, praying, sending us their thoughts, calling, I cannot tell you how much it was appreciated.

Now the only problem is:

What the heck am I going to post on my blog that can hold a candle to this?