There are very few issues on which all world religions and the absolute majority of philosophical teachings would agree. The main subject of consensus of prophets and sages of all ages and continents is, perhaps, the recognition of the fact that suffering is the basis of human life. In the Christian tradition, human history as such arises at the moment of this bitter realization. At the very beginning of the Old Testament, in the Book of Genesis, God unambiguously informs Adam and Eve who were expelled from paradise what exactly awaits them in the new life. First, he turns to Eve: “By multiplying I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in illness you will bear children; and your desire is for your husband, and he will rule over you. " Then to Adam: “Cursed is the earth for you; with sorrow you will eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles she will grow for you;and you will eat the grass of the field; in the sweat of your face you will eat bread, until you return to the ground from which you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you will return. " Christian thought and its key texts from the first centuries are permeated through and through with the above tragic understanding. We must not forget what exactly the central symbol of Christianity - the crucifixion - means, and that its central ethical model is self-sacrifice driven by love, voluntary acceptance of the cross, immeasurable suffering.and that its central ethical model is self-sacrifice driven by love, voluntary acceptance of the cross, immeasurable suffering.and that its central ethical model is self-sacrifice driven by love, voluntary acceptance of the cross, immeasurable suffering.
The sacred texts of Judaism and Islam are built around the same premise, with the latter placing a special emphasis on the role of suffering as a test and a gift from God. In Hinduism, the reality around us is interpreted as "Maya", an illusion that constantly generates pain, and the highest goal of the individual is to achieve liberation from this world and the circle of birth and death - "Moksha". Of course, Buddhism approaches the question most frankly - the first noble truth of Buddha, the basis of the foundations, directly says: "Life is suffering."
Contrary to these evidences, today's man is bombarded from all sides with images of cloudless happiness, presenting this rare state as normative. Impeccably dressed, healthy and beautiful people blissfully smile at him from screens and pages of magazines. This same part of the spectrum of emotions dominates social networks, where people are naturally accustomed to flaunt the false facades of their own lives (often after convincing themselves of their reality), or at least try to embellish it. All this forms a fundamentally distorted and skewed picture of reality, in which negative experience is perceived as dysfunction, an annoying illness, something that needs to be avoided, ashamed, and when you meet, close your eyes and endure. Suffering, failuretragedy provoke feelings of guilt and an instinctive desire to deal with them as quickly as possible and wash their hands.
But the denial and repression of negative experiences is paradoxically itself negative experiences that increase the aggregate burden of the individual. Conversely, accepting and integrating the negative is an act with the strongest positive charge. The difficulties, failures, tragedies, and tension we are experiencing do not just have tremendous creative potential - in fact, this is the only thing that has it. Only they allow us to move forward, representing the feedback that outlines our capabilities, identifies weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and indicates directions for growth. Nietzsche writes about it this way:
In order not to go to extremes, let us take, for example, a situation where a person does not know how to communicate with others - he is not able to conduct an interesting and coherent conversation, is nervous and seized with anxiety, and this burdens him. He, therefore, constantly makes ridiculous and painful mistakes and puts himself in a ridiculous position. However, it is precisely these inevitable flaws that tell him what exactly he is doing wrong - without them he could not have had the slightest idea about it. Fear and refusal to endure the humiliation of his own oversights, refusal to stress deprive him of the only way to overcome himself. It is necessary to discover the positiveness of the negative, and then, among other things, we will discover to our surprise how much this discovery will make our perception of the world more harmonious and more comfortable.
Symbolic death
Since negative experience in its various forms and gradations makes up such a significant part of existence, it is obvious that the whole picture of our life is determined by how we perceive it and interact with it. This is especially important for such moments of human life when whole layers of it are torn apart, uprooted and the intensity of suffering reaches its extreme values. Such are the tragedies of illness, death of loved ones, spiritual crisis of loss of faith and purpose, bitter disappointment, colossal failure and defeat, betrayal and betrayal. The soil then appears to be knocked out from under our feet, the foundations on which life rested are shaken or completely destroyed - what can be called symbolic death occurs. Order is dismantled - and chaos reigns, in its strictest sense. It's a half-empty hostile spacethe element of uncertainty, incoherence, when it is not clear what to do, all the landmarks are knocked down or missing and it is not clear where is top and where is bottom.
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Chaos is terrible, but if we limit ourselves to this initial intuition, our understanding of chaos is still childish, for it is a dimension of maximum possibility, potency in its purest form. The second point of consensus of the mythologies and religions of the world is as follows: chaos is that from which the world arises, from which order is born, from which everything essential flows. Chaos is the substance of creation. So, according to the oldest ancient Egyptian mythology, the world was created in the boundless chaotic ocean Nun by the first god-demiurge Atum, who first created himself by an act of will, saying: "I exist." In the primary source of Hinduism, the Rig Veda, one of the oldest texts in the world (c. 1500-1200 BC), we find the same idea about the primordial chaos-substrate that prevailed at the beginning of time:
They are echoed by younger Greek, Scandinavian, Chinese, Babylonian and other mythologies. Finally, in the prevailing Abrahamic religions today (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), the creation of the world comes from nothingness, that is, one of the forms of chaos - the measurement of uncertainty, absolute possibility.
The amazing unanimity of humanity in this regard makes us seriously wonder if there is a deep psychological reality behind it. What we know about the history and structure of the individual, undoubtedly leads to the realization that when the degree of chaos in our life dramatically increases and we experience symbolic death, three paths open up. At the first stage, we are not able to integrate and perceive the constructive potential of chaos, we allow ourselves to be broken by it. Then he overturns the person completely, provoking regression and relegation to a lower level of personality existence, or it entails physical death. Further, the regression caused by him may be temporary, after which the person returns to a relatively stable state. And only in the latter case are we able to curb the creative energy of chaos and create from it, like the mythological demiurges, a new order - an order of a higher level than it was before, before the transferred symbolic death.
Symbolic rebirth
The next point of consensus of most religious traditions is that if we consciously and voluntarily accept death, destruction, make a great sacrifice, they are followed by the birth of a new - usually higher - life. Christ dies on the cross and is resurrected in eternity. Odin, the supreme god of the German-Scandinavian pantheon, hangs on the world tree Yggdrasil and, reaching the very brink of death, gains great wisdom. The mythical bird Phoenix dies in the act of self-immolation and then is reborn as a young girl from the ashes. Destruction frees up space, sweeps away the buildings that were once held, and thereby gives us the opportunity to rethink the architectural planning of our own life and build something else on an empty space. The fight against this formidable element, creative resistance to it pushes the boundaries of our capabilities,contributing to the birth of a new structure.
Whenever the order is suddenly overturned, for example, if a person becomes the victim of a grievous betrayal, primordial uncertainty reigns. He no longer knows where he is - and with whom exactly, who this stranger is in front of him, it only once seemed to him as if he knew this. He is no longer sure of others, not sure of himself - he believed himself to be sighted, not blind, loved, not devoted and alone. The contours of the future blur at the same time as the present: the idea of what will be, in the blink of an eye becomes covered with cracks and disintegrates into fragments. Past goals, plans and all visions of the future are shaken or destroyed. Even the past is engulfed in chaos. It was a lie in this, maybe it was a lie and the rest, everything now appeared in a new and sinister light.
In the absence of the ability to master or survive the destructive element, this is followed by regression, immersion in deep depression, inactivity and then irreversible disintegration of all key areas of life, up to suicide. In the second and less tragic scenario, the damage received is compensated. Over time, the intensity of suffering decreases, the emotional balance is restored, the void is filled, uncertainty diminishes and life actually returns to its former state. This is the reaction of most people to such a crisis.
In the latter case, overcompensation is observed, a symbolic rebirth due to the use of the destructive power of chaos. Instead of falling victim to the latter or limply waiting for its dark waters to drain away by themselves, a person listens to the revelations coming from the depths. The destruction caused to him opens his eyes to what exactly was wrong in the collapsed order, what were his vulnerabilities, what he himself had sinned against himself. Reasonable questions arise: "Why did what happened, what happened?", "How to prevent this in the future?" These questions are difficult and unpleasant, because if you go their way to the end, this inevitably means that you will have to shed a fair amount of sweat and make sacrifices in order to erect stronger and more perfect buildings on the ashes.
It also involves taking responsibility and admitting your own guilt, because only what is weak is swept away. The person realizes that he was not attentive enough to himself - he was someone who can be betrayed. Further, he was overly dependent, not stable enough - to those who such betrayal incapacitates. Finally, he was not attentive to what was happening around him - he did not notice a good hundred portents of trouble, he hesitated when it was necessary to act, swept the dirt under the carpet and did not keep his outer life in order, just as he did not keep his inner life in it. … In this understanding, in this taking on responsibility, then strength, inspiration, creative enthusiasm are gained to change your life for the better, prepare yourself for its challenges and learn from its blows.
Nietzsche owns the famous words: was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker - what does not kill me makes me stronger. People often try to clumsily drag them onto themselves, ignoring the fact that this autobiographical observation has nothing to do with them and will never have it - the way to this point is too difficult, long, and there are no excursions. However, even if I dare to join these words, I am never let go of the temptation to play a linguistic game with Nietzsche, in a sense, turning them over. Only what kills us can make us truly stronger. One who is afraid of death never gains real life, is not reborn for it. We must be able to take from chaos what order cannot offer: creative power waiting to be tamed, understanding our boundaries, weaknesses and vulnerabilities,freedom and fullness of possibilities. Chaos, tragedy, death open the way for a new beginning if we are conscious and courageous enough to walk through them.
© Oleg Tsendrovsky