Look for the Door that is Opening

When one door closes, look for the one that is opening - or that you couldn't see until now.

For every setback, look for opportunity. That is a provocative statement, hard to accept when you feel betrayed or shamed or in the depths of grief or loss. When you have lost your job, or your partner has walked out on you, or you have made the worst mistake of your life, how can you accept the idea that “by what you fall, you can rise”?
You have nothing to lose by proceeding as if, despite appearances, there may be a gift in the loss. You can try saying to yourself, "Okay. That went down the tube. That door closed. Wait a minute. If that door closed, where's the door that might be opening?"

You may want to consider the cases of people who have been savagely beaten down by life only to rise again, showing us that there can be a tremendous gift in a wound. I think of Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad, who helped hundreds of fugitive slaves to escape to freedom in the North in the years before the American Civil War. Aged about eleven, she was nearly killed when she was hit in the forehead by a two-pound lead weight hurled by an angry overseer. She carried the scar for the rest of her life. One of the effects of the wound was that she developed a form of narcolepsy that required her to take short and sudden “sleeps” in the middle of any kind of activity. It was during those “sleeps” that she saw visions that showed her the roads and river fords and safe houses to which she was able to guide escaping slaves, avoiding the slaveowners’ posses.

When we are seized by terrible emotions of rage or grief in our own lives, we can choose to try to harness the raw energy involved and turn it — like a fire hose — towards creative or healing action.

You will want to remember that a path of transformation, you reach a point where you break down or you break through, and sometimes the breakdown comes before the breakthrough.

Sometime a fair amount of Chronos time is required to appreciate what Emerson called “the compensations of calamity.” He wrote that such compensations become apparent “after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the remedial force that underlies all facts.” [2]

In a difficult passage in my life, I was hell-bent on pursuing a certain project that I calculated would pay my bills and give me some room for creative expression. But every time I tried to push forward, I found myself blocked. Something inside me resisted my ambitions, and the world seemed to rebuff me at every turning.

Despondent, I sat down and tried to make sense of my situation.

Suddenly, I had a clear vision of myself from a witness perspective.

I saw myself beating on a heavy wooden door, studded with metal, banging my fists until my knuckles were raw and bloody. I saw myself pausing to take a few rasping breaths, seemingly exhausted, before pounding again on the door that would not open.
Okay, that's how it is. Like many night dreams, my spontaneous vision was holding up a magic mirror to my actions and attitudes. Was that all?

I felt a prickling sensation at the back of my neck. I found myself drawn from my observer position into the scene, which was more alive to me now than the family room where I was sitting. My second self was still beating his fists uselessly on the unyielding door. But the prickling sensation was guiding me to turn around and look at something invisible to him. I turned to my right, and saw an elegant, mysterious figure beckoning me with a crooked finger. There was a Trickster quality about him. He was standing in a beautiful archway. Behind him a winding path led up a slope among flowering trees into a landscape of beauty and abundance. I felt that everything I was seeking in life was through that arch.

The Gatekeeper waited for me to grasp what he was showing me.

My vision and understanding were still far from complete.

If all this bright promise was waiting for me, through an open door, what was I doing beating myself bloody at the door that would not yield?

I turned to study again the situation of the Robert who was beating on the door. I discovered two things. While with one hand the Gatekeeper was beckoning me through the open gate of possibility, with his other hand he was holding that heavy, metal-studded door shut. The real shocker was that I could now see what was behind the door I had been desperate to open. The space behind it looked like a jail cell. I had been exhausting myself in an effort to put myself in a place of confinement.

This powerful vision led me to make some radical life choices. I abandoned the project on which I had been working for months. Little by little, I found myself on the path between the flowering trees, in a world of ever-burgeoning creative possibility.
The vision helped me to gain clarity on some rules for conscious living that work for me:

1. When one door closes, or won't open, look for the door that opens onto better things.

2. Before you push too hard, check whether you are at the right door.

3. Recognize that there is a Gatekeeper in life who opens and closes doors, and be ready to honor him (or her) and pay the price of entry, which may simply be a clear eye and an open heart.

Here are three more, borrowed and adpated from great minds.

4. As long as you stand in your own way, you will find the world stands in your way. (Thoreau)

5. What is in your way may be your way. (Marcus Aurelius)

6.Certain errors are stations on the road to truth (Robert Musil)

References
1. Robert Moss, The Secret History of Dreaming (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008) pp.182-188

2.Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Compensation”, Essential Writings (New York: Modern Library, 2000) pp.170-1.

Text partially adapted from Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.