Gifts of Betrayal

 

 

“In shifting our orientation from the ego to the Self, there comes a point where we must allow certain aspects of our being or our lives to “die” so to speak.  Caroline Myss points out that many of us come to this kind of death through an archetypal betrayal experience…Regardless of the supposed cause or source of this “betrayal”, we come to discover that some aspect of our reality is no longer serving our growth and that it must be discarded or replaced.”

Gitte Bechsgaard, The Gift of Consciousness

 

We will all face “betrayal” in some form or another in our lives.  The lost job, the cheating lover, the illness, the devastation. In small and large ways, life will not turn out as we had hoped and prayed.  For the part of us that identified with what was lost, the ego, the betrayal can feel like an annihilation.  The ego is the part of ourselves that experiences life as separate and autonomous from the flow of life that runs through all things.  It is the part of ourselves that derives its meaning by identifying with outer circumstances as in “I am my money” or “I am because I am loved” or “I am because I practice yoga”. All of what the ego stands on, however, is subject to change.  Which is why the ego is set up to be betrayed.  Betrayal helps to extricate the ego from its firm grip on things.  Growing beyond the ego’s narrow view of things we find freedom, equanimity, and agility even in the midst of change.

 

When I was betrayed by a beloved, I recalled wondering where my belovedness and sense of being beautiful would come from now that I had lost the source of my belovedness.  For a long while I was filled with a dark grief and a physical feeling that I was falling such was the magnitude of this ungroundedness. But strangely, it was not all sad.  Only a part of me was dying.  The part that had come to believe that my belovedness came from the attentions of a lover.  What I found rising to meet me in that darkness was the light of love I have come to know as the ground of the divine source of life.  My confined and limited sense of love could no longer serve me in the midst of my grief.  The welling up of love from within would carry me through the grief towards a more integrated and expansive way of being in the world.  The betrayal in this way helped me to grow into a larger and more infinite experience of loving and belovedness.   

 

The betrayal obliterates the ego because it is an unexpected event.  We put trust in something that was not trustworthy.  Each betrayal forces us to give up more and more of the fantasy of control and to sink deeper into the actual way life is unfolding. Our egos have little to do with how things are going to turn out but it’s hard for this part of us to give up control.  We think we are driving the bus when in reality we are spinning a toy steering wheel stuck onto one of the back seats.  We need the ego to get us going in life to emerge from a child into adult.  But after midlife especially, operating from the ego won’t get us very far. 

This is not to say "bring on the devastation so we can all grow spiritually!" As a sign of our spiritual growth, we will hopefully be doing the opposite, serving as a conduit of love and healing in the world.  The devastation and betrayals will continue still as they have since the dawn of humans.  But may we through our practice help to bring the light of love, kindness, and care for ourselves and those in need.