The Road Toward Origin

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Years ago, I somehow intuited that anger is pain which has simply soured. If the pain is either kept from degenerating into anger or if the anger is regressed back into its original state of pain, a more useful, enlightened and possible prayerful state can be attained. With this wisdom, I learned to cry rather than to rage. I trusted that honest pain can be illuminating. In its midst, a person can glean a deeper understanding and sensitivity to issues. In contrast, anger is very often blinding. It doesn’t easily lend itself to the wider panoramic view of situations, necessary to work on them.

Last night, I needed this insight as someone lashed at me in anger in a very cutting way. Instead of arguing back, I cried and cried. I walked away, cried some more. I prayed to the Creator for help. While still crying, the person followed me and actually calmed down somewhat (though not entirely) and sat near me. We spoke. We honestly laid out our needs. No … we didn’t come to a solution or even to a tentative next step. However, at least there were new factors on the table that weren’t there beforehand. In anger, this honest meeting, even in the midst of disagreement, would never have happened.

This reminds me how much wisdom there really is at staying close to the origins or the roots. So many of life problems can be solved, healed, or viewed more positively by not losing sight of the origins and roots. In pain, it is a lot easier to be in touch with the origin or root of the suffering than it is in anger.

This is possibly why scientists are looking to genetics and the origins of our universe. While these efforts are certainly driven an intellectual curiosity, it’s also downright practical. Solving a problem at the seed level often cleans up issues at the trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and fruits.

However, getting at this original pure state, is often very difficult. Which explains why people often lay on the therapist’s couch for years before they attain insights into the origins of their problems. So this leads to an interesting question, “Why is it so difficult to discover the origins?”

We often stew in issues, not because we don’t want to know the origins, but, rather because somehow access to this knowledge is blocked. So how do we unlock the access?

There’s no easy answer. I thought years ago that studying Kabbalah would do this for me. It would serve as my shortcut to understand the origins and roots of created reality. To some extent it had. In fact, my learning the value of not allowing pain to degenerate into anger or reverting existing anger back into pain came precisely from Kabbalistic styled thinking. However, I found that sometimes Kabbalah’s teachings are worded unclearly, as the real material is very ponderous. Also, at times the teachings did not seem to address my need to understand more intermediate or lower levels of reality. When it comes to the cosmos, Kabbalah usually shoots for the top of the top.

So the need for the search for origins needs to continue in every field of study in general and in all personal lives in particular. With fields of study, what often helps is cross referencing across various disciplines and developing a more unified image pulled together from many legitimate strands and streams of thought. Often, a unified underlying theory of origin can develop from such efforts. So through a unity of accumulated ideas it’s possible to reach for the origin. Once the origin is discovered, further discoveries can be made using the newfound origin as the key to gracefully open more doors, multiplying the implications.

Other times, these efforts don’t discover the origin, but, at least they narrow down the range of possibilities to several possible origins of the situation under consideration. A narrow set of possible origins might be still more useful than a broad set.

In personal life, finding the psychological origins of our feelings, moods and needs is also a process of discovery. Except, that here the process of discovery often works differently. Whereas, in the physical sciences the approach is more quantitative, an accumulation of ideas and observations, in the inner self the process is more qualitative. It’s about discovering deeper states of self. It’s more of an attunement process than an accumulation process. This attunement is an ability which can be enhanced by life experience, meditation, reading, relaxation, therapy, etc. When attained, a person can make more informed life decisions that will lead to greater satisfaction and happiness.