After the Fall
“Success is a series of glorious defeats.”
-Mahatma Ghandi
Everyone has experienced the sensation of falling, the rush of weightlessness, that powerful pulse of adrenaline when you don’t know what is going to come next. For some people it is a rush of excitement, yet for others it is sheer terror. It’s that sense of xenophobia we all get, the fear of not knowing what is in store for us. Will we be caught? Will we hit the ground? Will we be hurt, or for that matter, survive? What will befall us in our descent? Can we find the courage to trust ourselves or others to cushion our fall or to make it less painful, either physically, spiritually, or emotionally?
In what ways do we fall? As a child, scrapping a knee was traumatic, as was being shot down by the pretty girl I had a crush on. When rollerblading as a child, it took me many years and many falls to master the art of falling physically. I had to experience each nuance of the fall, along with the pain accompanying it, to learn to catch myself so that I would not be as injured in my crash. After a few casts and ER visits down the road and the ability to transfer my weight and glide to the ground instead of slam it, this physical mastery was achieved. But physical falling is definitely not all there is to falling and not the only form of falling I have mastered over the years in the trepidations and trials of my life.
People fall in love, they fall for a gag, they fall asleep at the wheel, both metaphorically and literally. They fall apart, fall from grace, or have a falling out. Some fall in a hole or fall out of sync, while others have everything fall into place. Shedding our skin, the shell falls away from us like a husk, freeing us from our ego and static view of the world. Why do we signify so many things in association with such a difficult experience everyone has felt? What does it mean to really fall?
It means letting go, being in that fear and uncertainty, thriving in it, or writhing in it, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. It means losing yourself to something, embracing change and flow in the unknown with that sense of freefall. It might mean approaching destiny or defeat, depending on what’s happening and how you look at it. Think of it as a cusp, a climax, a turning point, that last moment before the buzzer, whether beneficial or difficult. Sometimes it is losing your way and having to start all over, or maybe just needing to rekindle that fire deep within your soul. It could be not retaining control of our emotions when interacting with others or losing face in the eyes of those who revere us. Feeling stuck in a situation or trapped or perhaps being duped by someone could push that sensation of losing our balance within our lives. Being unconscious while living our lives would create a perpetual sense of fearing what is to come.
All of us have these moments in our lives. Some more than others, like myself, choose to fall way more than needed in order to learn the right way to do it and then thrive after it has been experienced. This doesn’t have to be everyone’s path though, as much as I have enjoyed taking the long way to get to my goals, I know that there are far more rapid paths to a goal than this trail I have chosen. The great leaders and masters of all fields of study seem to live by this “road less traveled by” mentality though. It is this art of falling, of losing yourself to something greater, trusting your descent and reveling in the sharp crisp feeling of that brief rush of fear, knowing all will work out as it needs to whether we like it or not. Little has been studied or explored in this phenomenon. We simply dismiss it as ill timing or unfortunate circumstances. Many of the greats have used it to their advantage and capitalized on their failings, faltering, and fumbles to create many masterpieces and discoveries. It is by analyzing the misgivings and those mistakes that we are able to pick up and strive forward to realize our true callings.
Maybe some of us can’t see the stars until we are truly are in the gutter to misquote Oscar Wilde. Together we will analyze what this gutter is like and see where the stars will and can take us, because difficult things and traumatic events in our lives serve us as ways to grow and improve, but only if we can recognize and capitalize on that fact. We will work to cultivate that mindset in order to see those silver linings everyone talks about or hopes to find. By embracing the fall, we may follow our bliss. By accepting our flaws, we may find our true strength and purpose. We will work to bring more consciousness or awareness to our lives so that any descent we make for ourselves will merely be that backing up to get a running start.
During these falls we will identify how to gracefully glide to our resting place to begin anew. We will explore the passion and the butterflies of a romance as well as how to keep it fresh and re-ignite the fervor of love as we leap blindly into it. Acknowledging our egos we will learn to let go of their vicious grip on our psyches and their needless control and difficulties they inflict on our lives in the name of self-preservation. We will experience how it can be safe to not always be in control and how to accept that helpless feeling in order to ride the wave of uncertainty that this reality constantly presents us with.
“Reading spiritual books is like reading the menu at a restaurant. Don’t forget, you must eat the meal.”
-Trunga Rinpoche
Are you ready to master the art of falling?
