The Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius did not live the life of an armchair philosopher and was not fortunate in the character of his family or the state of his beleaguered empire. Nonetheless, in the midst of the fray, writing to establish and maintain a witness perspective on the broiling events around him, he formulated two principles in his Meditations that seem to me to be essential rules of life. The first is that our lives are dyed in the colors of our imaginations.
The second (in the excellent recent translation by Gregory Hays) goes like this: "Our actions may be impeded...but there can be no impeding our intentions or their dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its purposes the obstacle to our acting.” In summary: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." [1]
What a magnificent invitation to upend our reflexive response to adversity and seek the opportunity in the obstacle and the gift in the challenge!
It’s not about telling yourself that it’s all good. It’s about making it good.
The obstacle in itself is less important than how we see it and respond to it. We have the power to choose our attitude and adjust our perception. Epictetus, another Stoic philosopher at the other end of the social spectrum from the emperor (as a former slave), counseled that when presented with an obstacle we need t step back and take a cool hard look: “Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hits you knock you off your feet. Say to it: Hold on for a moment, let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test.”
This may not be easy in storm of grief or rage or bitter disappointment that come in the face of a letdown, a wound, a loss, a shaming or betrayal. We may have struggle to rise to a witness perspective and see the larger picture. This gets easier when we adopt the practice of looking back on our lives to see if something good came out of a bad situation.
The blocks we encounter on our roads - whether they are in ourselves, in our circumstances, or both - may be teachers and helpers, as well as part of life's cycles. A block can drive us to discover a new direction, spur us to develop new skills and courage and stamina, or lead us to look again at what really matters in life. We may find that obstacles we encounter on our life paths can save us from compounding mistakes, make us take a longer view of our issues - and encourage us to shift direction and notice better options.
We may even come to recognize that there is a hidden hand that places some of these obstacles in our way. If we can make the necessary attitude adjustments, we may find, like Marcus Aurelius, that what stands in the way becomes the way.
Sometimes the speed bumps we encounter on the roads of life are just a sign to slow down. Sometimes they look like solid brick walls, or mountains set in our way. Sometimes we feel we have come to a door that won't open however hard we pound, or however many keys we try.
I once had exactly that sense, of coming to a door in my life that would not open. I believed that everything I most wanted lay behind that door. But I simply could not get through. Frustrated, exhausted by trying, I slumped into an easy chair one afternoon and suddenly had a spontaneous vision of my situation. I saw myself beating until my knuckles were bloody on a great oak door banded with iron. Yep, that's how it was.
A little movie clip began to unfold in my consciousness. It was the kind of dream movie where you are not only the observer but can step right into the action. Slipping into the situation of my second self I felt a kind of prickling at the back of my neck. I turned - now fully inside the vision - to see an elegant but Trickster-ish figure beckoning to me from some distance to my right. He was standing in the middle of an archway. Behind him was a scene of great beauty, with a lovely house on a hill above orchards heavy with fruit and flowering trees in full blossom. I knew, in that instant, that everything I was seeking lay through this archway.
As I moved towards it, and then through it, I turned to try to understand the whole story. I noticed two things. While with one hand, the Gatekeeper was beckoning me towards the archway of opportunity, with the other hand he had been holding the door that refused me firmly shut. Behind that door, was something like a jail cell, a place of confinement. I had been wasting my energies in a vain attempt to put myself into the wrong place.
I carried guidance from this vision,
with its dramatic and objective perspective, into my life immediately. I
abandoned work on a certain project and ended a certain professional relationship.
I soon found myself, in a creative sense, in that wonderful place of the
flowering trees.
I learned from this experience something I
believe to be relevant to all of us at certain times of challenge in life. When
you feel hopelessly blocked, check whether the block is actually a signal to
choose a better way forward. Behind that seemingly insuperable block may be a
beneficent power - which I call the Gatekeeper - who is opposing your progress
on the path your everyday mind has chosen in order to get you to turn around
and find a better way. Schopenhauer wrote of how there can be a "conspiracy of fate" to prevent us from pursuing the wrong goals, He advised that "
This is only one of the ways in which our blocks may be our friends. We may be on the right path, but that path may include challenges that are necessary tests, requiring us to develop the courage and the skills to go forward. As Dion Fortune once put it, the block may be "thrust-block", like that used by sprinters at the start of a race.
At every major threshold in our life journeys, we are likely to encounter
some form of the Dweller at the Threshold, a power that challenges us to brave
up and rise to a new level. Faced with such a challenge, and the inner
resistance that comes with it, we have a choice. We can break down or break
through. I am in favor of breaking through. Practice will teach us when that requires
moving forward, despite the block, and when we need to shift direction and go
around the block.
References
1. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations trans. Gregory Hays (New York: Modern Library, 2005) 60
2. Arhur Schopenhauer, "Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual” in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philsophical Essays trans E.F.J.Payne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974.) 218
Text adapted from Growing Big Dreams: Manifesting Your Heart's Desires through Twelve Secrets of Imagination by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.
photo by RM
love, love, love this ! and in my practice of trying to be mindful and pay attention to the "sidewalk" synchronicities occurring in my life, ... well, how timely !
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