No Pain No Gain
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
-Plato
Reading the book “The Ethics of Star Trek” by Judith Barad, I came across the discussion of an allegory about the enlightenment of the soul, and the achievement of the good. It describes men down in a cave in chains. The chains keep them looking only at a wall where they watch distorted shadows of themselves cast upon it where they gaze. This describes the ignorance of man and the disillusionment that we experience. Once freed from the cave, we surface to experience the sun, the brightness of reality, and it is painful. No pain no gain is what Plato is describing here. But it is not that of going for a hike or pushing forward in a difficult yoga pose. It is the pain and the gain that our souls experience when we achieve freeing ourselves from ignorance and illusion that we know not has enslaved us in darkness. It is metaphorical darkness of course, but is still painful to emerge from it, into the bright light, when the veil is lifted from our eyes.
Another favorite show of mine, The Vampire Diaries, exhausts the metaphor of being “turned off” to what we truly feel, or to the pain of our lives and the evolution that we must partake in if we want to experience spiritual growth and improvement. We can “shut off” our emotions, and choose to enact the darkness of the illusions that we perceive on the cave wall as reality. We know not that we are in pain. We know not what is really happening to us, and we have forgotten the growing pains, the trauma, the story, and the truth of our lives. When we learn to live with the clarity that reality brings, this is accompanied by painful truth. However, the beauty is that when we awaken to the sun; the pain, of the emotional memory and the truth to our current lives and situations, eventually does cull and pass. We now know that there is a sun, and we learn to couple calamity with serenity. We learn that with pain comes gain. We learn to not “turn it off” while comforting ourselves with addictive indulgence or staying locked in a belief system that makes us dependent on others, or inhibits our free thinking. We awaken, we realize that life hurts, and the truth of this hurt is what is going to guide us upon our spiritual paths.
So, “the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light” implies that fear keeps us in our caves. I am literally afraid to wake up. I am probably also shameful of my shadows. I let the fear and shame discern my path instead of the enlightened thinking that will ultimately free me. If we continue to believe that our real shadows are not worth looking at, and if we refuse to feel the pain that goes along with admitting our faults, we may never grow. We become stuck, and we search for metaphorical locks to keep these doors shut. When we spend too long here, we begin to believe in the illusions of our shadows, and we create the false reality of true insanity. We continue to live in a house of mirrors, and we fear the breaking of the glass. If we are truly honest with ourselves, we admit that we do not know what lay outside of these mirrors, and this terrifies us. So we forget.
How do we remember? The AA program suggests living your life for others. It suggests that when we are honest with ourselves, as well as abandoning self-seeking motives, we will begin to feel the goodness in life. It implies that there is good to be felt about ourselves and the world, and that becoming selfless and spiritual will guide us out of the cave. I believe it is important to realize that it is not simply about ridding ourselves of our addictive behaviors. There is a path to embark upon. And finding the truth is often painful. But these growing pains will heal us over time. So we must not fear the light of true sobriety. Whether this is waking up out of addictive behavior, or whether your darkness takes another form, just know that even though questing sanity, reality, healing, and the pursuit of the good can be painful, it is worthwhile. We should be afraid of staying in the dark cave or the house of mirrors more than finding a way out. God, or whatever spiritual power we believe in, will guide us along the way. Accepting that we are blind is the first step to finding the way to the light.