No One Said It Would Be Easy

I heard once about a musician who got caught harassing women. He had had a successful career. But now he was losing everything, and it happened almost overnight. He himself was amazed by the level of rage that flooded into his world, and washed away everything he had worked for. And so he began to think of how he could make amends.

His idea was to put out a new album, and donate all of its proceeds to an organization that supported victims of sexual abuse.

I remember hearing this story from a friend, and thinking to myself: That’s a really cool way to completely avoid the problem.

Whoever this guy was (I never knew him), he clearly had a problem. Was that problem going to change? Was he, as a human, going to change? Granted, he was traumatized by the ordeal. So maybe he had “learned his lesson”? If you ask me, that just cannot be.

You cannot understand what you’ve done by donating money to a cause.

You cannot come to terms with the pain you’ve caused by writing songs.

You cannot change your ways by doing more of what you’ve always done - in this case, more music.

In my own opinion, what he was basically trying to do was to get his career back on track, as soon as possible. Donating money was a Public Relations move. I am guessing that his hope was that, by doing something generous in public, he could basically just make himself look good again, turn back the wheel, and have his life back.

But did anybody say anything about change?

Certainly not. Not at all. As a matter of fact, how can we ever know that he would not go back to all of his old ways, including sexual harassment?

If you really want healing, you have to heal yourself. What everyone else thinks about you isn’t going to matter when you place your soul on the Scales of Ma’at to determine what kind of person you really are. My question to that musician - whoever he was - would be: Do you want to make your pain go away? Or do you want to heal? Because it really is not the same thing.

Donating money, assuming it worked as planned, might have given that guy the reputation of someone who had healed. But is that real healing? Of course not.

So what would real healing have looked like?

In the case of our musician, it might mean therapy. It might mean time - maybe even years - of searching, digging, scrambling to find his own pain - the pain that had been driving him for so many years, and compelling him to hurt others. And then, once found, he would have to confront it. Explore it. Get to know it. Embrace it - in the Buddha's words - as a mother embraces her child. And then he would heal.

And would anybody know?

Yes.

He himself would know.

And everybody else just wouldn't matter.

Would he have a successful musical career again?

Maybe. But that is secondary. The important thing is that he would finally be happy. And who knows? Maybe his entire mountain of music was built just so he could fall off the top, and finally get it.

But guess what... Donating money is so much easier than all of that. And that is why most people choose "Option One": Most people just donate, most people just run, most people find ways to cover up the problem, most people just do what they have to do to make it look like they have it all figured out. Whatever pleases the crowd - that's the easy way out.

Because real healing is hard.

Extremely hard.

But guess what...

No one said it would be easy.

When Moses spent 40 days on the mountain, I'm sure it wasn't easy.

What did everybody else do? They opted out. They took the tablets.

But in all of God's commandments, God's promises, and God's allegories, nowhere has any prophet ever said "Don't worry. It's going to be a cinch."

If we want real healing, we have to start accepting that it can be difficult. Extremely difficult. Even painful, at times.

But it's worth it. Because it's real. And that's what makes the difference.

I have been through some blazing hells in the last two years. I have been through a lot of chaos, pain, anguish, hate, desperation, and darkness. I have been so torn up that I just could not write anymore, because I didn't feel like I was in a clear enough place to offer anything of service. God knows, is anybody still looking at my blog? I don't know. All I know is that I really needed this time. I want to send my love and gratitude to everyone here, and to everyone who has supported me along the way.

But amazing things have also happened, in the same period of time: I have found love. I have gotten married. I have found a new family. I have moved into a new home. And I have played a hell of a lot of notes, with a lot of warm, vibrant, pasionate, loving people. And if I may say so myself:

The soul can heal from anything. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

Enlightenment is real. I'm dead serious, it's real. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

Love is real. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

Look up.

Feel the love in your heart, and let it guide you.

Happy New Year to everybody.

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