Lucy at Diamonds in the Sky has been writing some interesting posts about the tendency to make a spiritual breakthrough then backslide. You can read some of what she says here and here, and this is a key passage:
I watched transformation of souls occur before my very eyes. I experienced it for myself. I felt the power of God in nature and witnessed it in the rain, wind and hail. I saw eagles soar and light shine on trees like something in a painting. Miracles were all around. And, I could sense a battle to stop this good from happening.
I remembered something from my Enneagram training about the difficulties of personal and spiritual development that it might help to share.
Don Riso and Russ Hudson (my teachers) developed an explanation of the personality’s levels of development that I wrote about in a post called Do our personalities change?.
We can make spiritual and personal breakthroughs with a combination of serious inner work and prayer (however we define prayer). But you know, that breakthrough place can be threatening. It is beautiful, but the air is thin and cold on the heights, the sun can be too bright. Our lungs and eyes need to adjust. And no matter the pain in our old familiar compulsions, they are at least familiar and there’s a fear in each of us that tugs us back down from that place of transcendence.
Don and Russ give the example of a peg stuck in a hole in a pegboard. If you loop a rubber band round the peg and stretch it in either direction, it’ll reach a a certain circumference on the pegboard. Sometimes a little higher and sometimes a little lower. The rubber band will get used to the scenery on that part of the pegboard.
What happens to us in those moments of spiritual transformation is that our peg (our real self) gets taken out and moved up a few holes. And that poor rubber band (our personality) gets a little altitude sickness and doesn’t want to stretch up above the peg, it wants to stay nice and comfy below the peg in the general area it got used to before.
It can be difficult to know where our personalities (or ego, if you prefer) end and our real selves begin. We have to be prepared for our personalities to fight us: our transcendent life is a form of death for them.
I guess pegs and rubber bands aren’t quite as poetic as eagles soaring, but I’ve always remembered that analogy.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
hmmmm. the word “backslide” really jumped out at me. not that the shoe doesn’t fit, but this situation for me feels a bit different. while i really resonated with:
“that breakthrough place can be threatening”…the battle i have felt recently feels much more like one coming from outside of me rather than an inner battle which i am quite familiar with and which is what i think you are speaking to in this post. a friend described my situation like this:
“it sounds like you suffer from the classic case of ‘a threat to evil’ disease! It normally seems to come after a tremendously blessed event where souls are set free from ‘disease’ and you are involved in that healing process. It’s as though all their diseases ball up and pounce on You.!”
i have definitely felt “pounced upon”, so this leaves me wondering if there is a difference between when we are standing in the gap or battling for others and/or trying to stand firm (i.e. not backslide) for ourselves? yikes…so much to consider!!
(and just in case you might be wondering…the eagles this time around were REAL and not simply metaphorical
poetic or not, pegs and rubber bands work quite well for this former accountant’s brain.
always delighted to hear your perspective!
Thanks for this Lucy, and for the distinction. The being pounced upon is, I think, exactly the right expression. It’s sometimes when I feel the most inept and hopeless after leading an Enneagram weekend that I get emails and letters saying how much difference it has made.
And I definitely realised the eagles were real!
Tess, this is exactly what I needed to read this morning! (Don’t you love it when that happens???) We were talking last night in my small group why we keep backsliding at weight loss when we know what we want and we know how to get it. This really helped me put a new perspective on it and I’ll be sharing it with the group next Monday.
Great stuff!
Jules, thanks. Weight loss – hmmm – one of the great difficulties of life!!
Thank you, Tess, for this analogy (?parable) that explains so much to me in terms I can relate to. I read this post yesterday (like HeyJules, it was exactly what I needed) when my head was literally hurting from several days of stretching.
Ah, I really do know this experience. So much easier to stay where I am than to experience the pain of growth.
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