There are three storms that come into your life. The first storm comes as a young adult. This the period where infinite potential gets its first crash course lesson. As a youth, it manifests in our consciousness as the over confidant (naive) child. We are of course confident in our potential, because we are, fueled in part by inexperience with failure and being totally unaware of the overwhelming malevolent forces in life.
When the first storm hits, you are hardly prepared to face the power and complexity of obstacles you never prepared for—it smashes your vessel capsizing you onto the shore. In versions of the Holy Grail myth, we see the young prince wander away from his kingdom drawn by the savory scent of fish left at a camp site over an open fire. The young prince, blinded by his hunger, quickly grabs the fish before thinking it may burn him and does so wounding his hand sending the kingdom into chaos. Our confidence blinds us, wounds us, and our will to survive is tested. It seems nature is programmed to to test animals and human alike. Our immune system works in the same way. Nature needs to know if you’ve got fight, it’s why so many young people have died at 27 years of age.
The second storm that comes into your life is when you have to face the wreckage made of your previous attempt at a passion or goal, except this time you have the lessons from the wound both propelling you forward and simultaneously masking higher complexity. Most people that have ever changed their lives drastically do so at the age of 25-27. For many, suddenly it’s as if the sun banishes the clouds and you experience the wind on your face and the taste of salt isn’t a bitter reminder of the burned hand from naively grabbing the fish over open fire, rather it tastes like the promise of a second chance. It’s much more likely this time you reach the shores you aimed for not too long ago when you were much more naive. The taste of victory of course unceremoniously wares off; in fact then the real struggle begins. Faces don’t mean what they used to, places you relied on are gone, because you look back and the the “house” of essentially you, is far away in the distance. Maybe someone who shared intimacy with becomes a stranger, maybe the passion you saw through isn’t quite what you thought it would be. You question your purpose because in fact what you sought was an entanglement of your limited awareness and it has been said by Jung, “A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.”
The third storm doesn’t take your journey ‘out to sea.’ The third journey is with you wherever you go. Wit, brass, gusto all seem too hot for something that melts when touched by your seeking mind, your senses escape you. You ask the sky “What is my purpose?” Perhaps you curse at the third storm, because you cannot solve things by your senses or by changing your material conditions with gusto, although plenty of bad haircuts, drastic bodily change occur for some.
This is the final storm of the process of individuation and journey into adulthood. It doesn’t stop the hands of tragedy but it certainly gives you the map to find the meaning in your tragedies. It’s the living example of a line of poetry by the Persian Rumi who once said, ‘‘The wound is the place where the light enters you’.’ When things seem most bleak, suddenly a star lights across the ocean (a synchronicity), illuminating the parts of your consciousness that were shrouded in the dark. People meet their twin flame, fall in love rapidly and suddenly, people change and choose careers that was itch at them all along.
You see something innately similar to the spark that once filled your eyes, you learn what was and what is and hold both of them over the horizon as the sun rises and breaks across the ocean. Transformation begins, an integration happens and no hurdle seems greater than the hurdles you have seen as large as mountains within your own heart obstructing your psyche (thus your path).
Like my journey, that is the hero’s journey in mythology. I could have told you when I first applied to college briefly after 9/11 to become a psychologist, my childhood friend enlisted to serve and never returned home the same person and how that time ripped my sense of reality. I could have mentioned how my restlessness with discovering meaning lead me to my second storm, as I joined the working class at JFK Airport working Ground Operations where only copious amounts of reading and self inquiry integrated my experiences leading to me writing my own books and releasing a body of music exploring these themes.
My third storm was making sense of my mind and integrating the pieces of my consciousness, while rescuing the elements of my capacity for divine joy and divine love. It’s these experiences that lead me to teaching my street smart spiritual psychology of living. As it’s much needed for the world—for so many people are busy about being in it but do not experience their potential or find meaning in what they do. If more people were to understand their own nature through the mythology and symbols of the human experience, our world would benefit greatly from individuals who may understand the framework of their journey so that they may seek, accept the losses, and march forward.
Perhaps it could lead to integrating their fragmented parts, empowering them to do what they fear the most, as I have by returning to the place I left so long ago; a fragmented young adult then and so unprepared to face the obstacles of life and the obstacles within. Redemption is the best story of us we know, I hope that your journey brings you to this community, at a time where offline and centralized places call us into restoring out of wells of compassion, faith, beauty, and love for the diversity of thought and imagination.
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