The Indestructible Core

Has anyone else ever received the spiritual blow to your head, or heart, or ego, the one that turns everything upside down?  It's happened to me a couple of times, and I sometimes call it the "cosmic 2 x 4," it can hit that hard.

This one was completely unexpected.  A few weeks ago. the wonderful Elizabeth Gilbert posted a quick exchange from a recent interview onto her Facebook page.  At a public event, an attendee walked to the microphone and asked, "What do you know more than anything?" 
Her response was great: "I am not here to suffer!"  I smiled, having learned that from a wise man long ago.  But it made me ask myself, "What do I know, more surely than anything?"  And the answer that came forth from I-don't-know-where was astonishing.  "I AM SAFE."  Even now I look at those words, and I do not know how they came to the surface with such passionate conviction.  But there they were.  I am safe.  It is safe to be me.  Nothing anyone else says or does to me, about me, at me, can do me any real, lasting, permanent damage.  This was a revelation beyond anything I could imagine.

It hasn't always felt that way.  As a child I never felt safe to be me, there was always someone who was smarter, or more athletic, or more talented, or better behaved than me.  My hair was coarse, and my body was lumpy, and I couldn't get the hang of being either a tomboy or a girly-girl.  Not fitting in, especially as an adolescent, is the worst kind of vulnerability.  Adulthood wasn't much better.  Two painful marriages left me feeling profoundly unsafe as a woman, even as a human being.  The odd thing is, I wasn't even conscious that safety was an issue for me, until the moment that it no longer was.

Now that's all changed.  This new awareness, this new conviction, has led me into whole new worlds.  It is safe to occupy my body, even if it doesn't match the cultural norms for women.  It is safe to do the work God has given me to do, even if I'm getting an advanced degree at 58 instead of 28.  It is safe to open myself to God in prayer and contemplation, even if I'm not the most conventional Christian around.  It is safe to be the one and only person I can be.

There is, of course, great pain and suffering in the world; I have borne a small portion of it myself.  None of this changes any of the crises that surround us.  But in a very small way, I think it helps me to not contribute to the world's suffering quite as much as I had.  Now I don't need to feel resentful, or angry, or indignant towards whoever I think is better off than I.  Now I get to feel grateful for what is, and hopeful for what may yet be, and release what is in the past.  Now I know that there is within me an indestructible core that no one can wound or scar or deface.  Call it Atman, or Buddha-nature, or indwelling Christ, it is most essentially me, and yet more-than-me, and whenever I call my conscious mind back to awareness of its presence, I am calmed and opened and somehow more fully myself. 

There will be more to learn from this revelation, I expect.  I can imagine experiencing the core in me moving outward to touch the indestructible core that inhabits others as well.  And that web of being may well be what Scripture calls the "Kingdom," the Realm of God, the Place of the Divine which is within us and among us and around us. It took a long time to come to this place; I will let the rest come in its own time as well.