The Way To God

by Nick Andrea

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
— Rumi

I recently helped someone through a transition caused by the ending of a relationship. The transition wasn’t really about relationships, it was about himself. While it was difficult for him to go through it was beautiful for me to watch, for he finally came face-to-face with his central wound. All of his issues converged at once, leaving him no place to run and avoid them. As Marianne Williamson says, “Until your knees hit the floor, you’re just playing at life…The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins (A Return To Love, p. 12-13).” That is cutting edge I want to be living on.

I had an experience about a month ago similar to my friend’s. I was on the last day of a powerfully transformational and joyous trip back home, and I was supposed to go sailing with a good friend as a last hoorah. However, it was raining miserably so we didn’t go. I’m not sure why but that made me very irritable and sad. While it seems fickle I think it had to do with the high of just having healed all this garbage from my past; I wanted to celebrate! As the morning wore on I felt so yucky that I was contemplating packing up and leaving that day. After mulling over it, however, I decided to stay.

I made the best of the day, meeting my sailing buddy instead for lunch and a cruise through the back roads I used to drive in his sports coupe, which he let met drive – which I did at nearly mach-1. Haha. Well, I don’t normally drive like that but this day I said, “What the hell?” I wanted to feel the wind in my hair, and that I did. We had a great time and some deep conversations and after the ride we said goodbye and I went home.

When I got there I had a heart-to-heart with someone I hadn’t really connected with for a long time. This was sorely needed.

By this time I was feeling like a million bucks. My morning sadness had turned into clarity, space, and love. There was no desire left but to be in the moment with whoever and whatever was with me. There was complete trust of what was happening.

This experience is one of several that reflects my greatest moments in life when I have palpably felt the presence of That which is beyond words. In every case I arrived there by surrendering to and embracing the sadness. I felt it, not run away from it.

Now, I’ve never been diagnosed with depression and I don’t show any of the symptoms that meet the criteria. There is just an unresolved conflict at the core of my being. I call it “The Wound” and I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t have it. Not all express it the same but we’re all missing our connection to the Source from which we came. It’s part of being human.

A friend once said to me, “Maybe this emptiness we feel is not supposed to go away. Maybe that emptiness, itself, is the way.” Does that mean we should be sad all our lives, that depression is a way of life like all those medieval paintings of priests and bishops with long faces? No, of course not. What it means is that happiness, beauty, God is found by embracing it.

The Wound is beautiful. Do not be sad about it. Emptiness is sweet. It beckons us back to That which we truly are.