For almost everyone who practices, cycles of awakening and openness are followed by periods of fear and contraction. Times of profound peace and new found 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...
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." The well we fall into can be created by clinging to our experience and spiritual ideals or by holding inflated ideas about our teachers, our path, or our self. The well can be the unfinished business of our psychological and emotional life--an unwillingness to acknowledge our own shadow, to include the human needs, the pain, and the darkness that we carry, to see that we always have one foot in the dark. As bright as it is, the universe also needs us to open to its other side.
- Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry:
How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path
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