An Unreasonable Request
Why are those invitations to awakening so irritating?

The call of life manifests differently to each individual. It is at once universal and intensely personal. It is universal in the sense that it aims exclusively at awakening the real self, absolute reality. It goes about this in a totally unsentimental way. It disregards personal attachments, social considerations, and any peripheral values, including personal pain or pleasure.

Eva Pierrakos, Surrender to God Within

I woke up one chilly February morning in 1982 to the realization that I was called to be a minister. It came about after several years of mantra-like prayer to anyone or anything that might have cared to listen: There's got to be more to life than this! "This" referred to my life as a nurse tending life-support apparatus attached to anonymous, unconscious patients in the Intensive Care Unit of a remote hospital in Montana. I had no idea of what life beyond ICU might consist of but I hoped it would be better than the ongoing frustration I endured in dealing with the machine of western medicine, about which I had tremendous judgements.

So, my calling to be a minister was in many ways a great relief. Initially I received it as you might the embrace of a dear loved one who has been long absent. A wave of incredible love washed over me. A sense of goodness and innocence welled up in my heart, while layers of cynicism accumulated over the years of my life dissolved. The tenderness of this love opened me to a sweet longing for life's possibilities I'd not felt since I was a small child. But this longing did not feel like deprivation - for almost immediately I felt I could access whatever I needed for that longing to be fulfilled. To say I was grateful would be a gross understatement. I was amazed and honored that I was being called to a lifework that would totally involve me in a life of service to Ultimate Meaning. But almost immediately I began to balk.

In some ways I felt as I did when I was younger, playing the mating game. I'd obsess for weeks about someone I was infatuated with. I'd fantasize about what it would be like to be with this person. I'd get very excited whenever I was around him -- and then he'd ask me out. This always seemed to me to be a big mistake on his part, for I'd begin to wonder what was wrong with him. Was he an ax murderer or just a big creep? Any attraction I'd felt for him would immediately disappear, to be replaced by varying degrees of repulsion. I'd go out on the date, but no matter how I tried to ignore these disconcerting feelings, it was clear that the date was over before it began, at least in my own mind. Although I didn't know it at the time, this was how I successfully removed myself from the threat to my identity a relationship posed. I didn't know how attached I was to the story I told myself that I was destined to be lonely and unfulfilled. To have entered into a fulfilling relationship I would have had to give up this fiction. At that time, this was far too risky.

Now, at the time of my calling, I was faced with a similar dilemma. I had tasted the good stuff of love this invitation to be a minister was offering me, but if I accepted it, who would I be? In a life of love, so many of my many selves would have no raison d'etre - the cynical one, the depressed one, the unloved one, the deprived one, the victim of so many circumstances - these and so many others would no longer be able to call "me" home. Could I really kick them out when for so long it seemed that had been me?

Of course not! They wouldn't hear of it. Instead, these very industrious aspects of my very own personality began their work of imagining how terribly unpleasant life as a minister would be. They conjured up images of Tammy Fay Bakker and told me that's what I'd end up like if I was to RSVP to my calling. They reminded me of how much I hated church - how could I possibly become one of them? It was true - I liked doctors better than I did hypocritical churchfolk who seemed so interested in being nice all the time.

Within no time at all, I'd turned my calling into a nightmare more dreadful than any date I'd been asked out on. I was back in the same boat as with every guy I tried to start relationship with, only this time it was the Big Guy. How do you fool that One? Feigning interest in a man was easy, but how do you pretend to be taken with someone or something that deep in your heart your really want to be taken with but are mortally afraid to be?

Well, you do the reasonable thing which is to remove yourself as quickly as possible from the source of discomfort. You try to run away from the dilemma altogether. You try to forget you'd been called. You resent any reminders of that fact. "Oh, you left a message on my voice mail - I never got it. Hmmm…sorry I missed the party you were inviting me to. Try me again another time, and I'll see what's wrong with the answering service (and maybe I'll look into a call-blocking while I'm at it)."

It took almost a year for me to stop pretending I'd never received a calling to be a minister. Only after I was in enough pain from the misery of significant things not changing in my life did I begin to consider my response to what Richard Moss refers to as an "invitation to radical aliveness." As Moss describes it, radical aliveness is a fundamental state of Being characterized by radiant vitality of body, mind and spirit. The radically alive person is present, alert to the possibilities for good inherent in the moment, and capable, like a well-tuned instrument, of expressing that good as the situation calls for it. In bringing forth that good, the radically alive person senses the universality of his or her existence and its connection with a purpose not ordinarily perceived when identified with a strictly personal reality.

At the time I couldn't fathom that ministry would open a door to radical aliveness, but it did just that. When I am fully living my calling, I am at once "me" and a part of something much larger than me. In this state, I have a new existence that is not limited by the beliefs that govern my personality. My personality remains, but it is somehow freed from the bonds of past experience. Instead of needing to put all my energy into constantly defining "me," I am able to relax into being a part of Life rather than apart from it. It truly feels like I am born again to a new Life. It has taken me a long time to be willing to experience this state of aliveness in myself, to take a chance on this possibility.

For to the ego this sort of transformation is risky business. Why? Because in the moment that Moss calls a "discontinuity of consciousness", there is a break with all that is familiar and known to us. This break allows for a jump into a dimension of consciousness that is different from the limited awareness of the ego. As we gain the insight of this expanded state we become referent to a larger Self and the ego loses control over us.

The ego experiences this loss as a breakdown and we seem to regress. As all we've known falls away, we may feel lost. When our hard-won successes seem meaningless, we may feel like a failure. Panicked, we may invest even more energy in trying to put the pieces of our life back together in some recognizable form, but whatever we temporarily achieve in this regard is inevitably broken down as Life continues to call us to Itself. For, unpleasant and unwelcome as it may seem, this regression is necessary. It's what Jesus meant when he taught, "In order to gain your life you must lose your life." Or to put it another way, "Breakdowns lead to breakthroughs.

The invitation or call that Life offers each of us goes against the grain of our rational processes. Yet the power in spiritual teaching that can help us access this more fulfilling reality lies precisely in the revelation of what seems backwards to common sense. The ego's need to protect is instinctual, yet the teaching asks us to trust instead. When wronged, the ego seeks to punish, while the teaching invites to forgive. There's so much the ego can find fault with, however the teaching calls us to love. It doesn't make sense to the ego to do these things that's why it requires a discontinuity of ordinary consciousness for it to do so. The whole business is completely irrational! Perhaps that's why someone once said, "Transformation is an unreasonable request."

If we want the experience of a greater aliveness we must risk responding to this unreasonable request. A spiritual rebirth requires us to say Yes to the Life that calls us to a more fulfilling existence. It also requires that we say No to our resistance of that state, No to all the personal selves who insist on the status quo of familiar miseries.

Those limiting selves are afraid of what happens when they say Yes. They don't yet know who they will be when their services in the negation of Life are no longer required. They fear getting laid off, getting fired. But you're not downsizing, you're getting larger. So when you finally allow yourself to take the risk of transformation, they'll be surprised to find they have new jobs to do. Instead of laboring to keep you in a state of lack, separate from a greater good, your many selves will have the job of accepting more and more . They'll have full-time employment receiving the abundance of Life and giving back to Life the joy and pleasure of being fully alive.

Sounds like a rough Life, doesn't it? Sure, it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it! The question is, Are you willing for it to be you? If so, Life invites you to pray for a deep change in those non-productive selves. Pray for them to become willing to become willing to change. Watch and pray, pray and watch and soon you'll see: Now is the time to imagine a life beyond the limitations of those selves, to dream again as you did when you were a child. As the song says, your dreams can come true, it can happen to you. When you take the risk of rebirth, you are born into a new life of wholeness and happiness. I know -- it happened to me!

Copyrighted, NCM Press, 2002