Jan. 1, 2024
RISK
“The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing. All we know about the future is that it will be different, but perhaps what we fear is that it will be the same. So we must celebrate the changes because as someone once said, everything will be alright in the end, and if it’s not alright, then trust me, it’s not yet the end.” (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)
As New Year’s Day approaches I weigh the risks involved in answering a dare to polar plunge in Green Lake with my son and various other family members. This should not be too intimidating. I’ve already plunged in the ocean a few times since returning to B.C., with the difference being a pool, hot tub, steam room, and hot drinks a few steps away. Unless we break a hole through the albeit thin ice in front of the lake cabin, this adventure requires a drive to where we last saw open water, which will at least be a walk of some distance from where we park the car. That, for me, will be the hardest part. Because I’m already strategizing how to answer this challenge, I know I will inevitably go. Which may be why the above quote stood out for me.
I’d been looking through my notes for a quote by Hillevi Ruumet, a transpersonal anthropologist and professor at ITP, now Sophia University, whose work on the evolution of consciousness has had a lasting impact on me. But, as is often the case, what I’d recorded about risk, from Marigold Hotel, is not unrelated to what drew me to Ruumet this particular morning.
In her model of psycho-spiritual development, Ruumet uses the chakra system to describe the various stages a human attains to in order, ideally, to fulfill their evolutionary potential.
In explaining what she calls the “Spiral Dance” Ruumet outlines several stages that build on both horizontal (psychological) and vertical (spiritual) growth and integration. Think of a seven or eight story building that fans outwards and upwards from a central core with differing tasks associated with each “floor”.
In her chapter on “Evolution and Maya” Swami Radha expands on this theme:
“THERE IS A DISPARITY in the evolution of consciousness in human beings. Groups of people develop at different rates, side by side. There are on earth right now some people who have still not developed a written language. Yet there were people living in the Middle East thousands of years ago who wrote works which later became part of the Bible’s Book of Proverbs. They were people with very high ideals and insights on how to conduct life and how to take care of other human beings less fortunate in their grasp and intelligence.”
For those of us who have the luxury of time and/or inclination to devote to our personal growth, there is also an unspoken imperative to do so. As much as we have a duty to secure our socio-economic futures, we have an equal responsibility to fulfill our psycho-spiritual potential, in order to care for other, less fortunate beings. I know from experience how intimidating real personal growth can be. Confronting our illusions is hard, as is cleaning up our karmic back yard. Once we have achieved a certain degree of material comfort and financial stability it is tempting to stay with the devil we know even if, in some vague way, we sense we’re missing something vital to a full “360 degree” life.
Ruumet offer this insight:
“There can be no happiness in staying at a stage we have outgrown, because a part of us always remembers what we were really called to do, and failed transitions can be tragic, even lethal. The depression that often accompanies such a failure in someone who has clearly been called to the next stage but refused it (often for “sensible” reasons) can manifest across a whole range of psychopathology, have personal and career consequences, and cause “soul loss”. We must keep growing or, as Jung suggested, we risk becoming caricatures of ourselves.”
I have built my spiritual house, such as it is, over decades of daring to face my own demons (which frankly don’t seem to get any less, so much as just different) and in doing so I’m building spiritual resilience in the same way I’ve built physical resilience by regularly dipping into the frigid Pacific. And now Green Lake! For the past couple of nights my three sons, a daughter-in-law and I have made our way down to the dock and gingerly climbed off into the glacier-fed water.
No Wim Hof’s us, we were nonetheless chuffed to have done it, not so much for bragging rights (though I did get the record for number of dunks, three) but for the sake of pushing beyond our limits, our fear of the dark and the unknown. Not to mention the cold! Which is also why I lead an examined life. I know from experience that there is always more to explore, and each small victory over some bad habit or each way that I add value to someone else’s life is its own reward. And taking calculated risks is the only effective way forward.
As Anais Nin wrote: “And the day came when the risk it took to stay tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Is today your day?