The Gentle Art of Disillusionment

There’s an old Iranian myth about how evil came into the world.  In the beginning, the story goes, there was only Zurvan, god of Time.  Zurvan lived in perfect harmony with himself, for there was nothing else to disturb him, but he felt lonely, so he decided he would create a child in order to fill eternity with growth, change, and variety.  Just as he was about to create his child, though, he had the thought, “What if this is a bad idea?”  No sooner had he thought this then Ahriman, the god of Evil — whose name means “bad thought” — sprang from Zurvan’s brain.  Zurvan tried to fix his mistake by creating another son, this time out of his good thoughts, but the damage was done.  The two children grew up together: Ahriman was mean and vindictive, whereas his brother was kind and gentle.  When the brothers reached maturity, Ahriman reminded his father, “I was born first, so I deserve to inherit the universe from you.”  Zurvan could not deny his son his birthright, so he gave Ahriman the universe to rule, but he also said to him, “I am Time itself, so only I can rule forever.  Therefore, you will rule only for a limited period; after that, your brother will take over the throne.”  Zurvan then created Patience, a spirit that entered into all of creation — humans, animals, and plants — to remind beings that, though this world is ruled by bad thoughts for the moment, this rule will come to an end in time.

We do a lot of things to escape the rule of our bad thoughts.  We read self-help books, go to therapy, follow spiritual paths, often thinking that the point of these pursuits is to get rid of the parts of our minds we don’t like.  Whenever I teach a beginner’s meditation class, there is always someone who says to me, “I’m here to learn how to control my thoughts.”  But you can’t control your thoughts.  You can’t control them, because your thoughts are the consequences of choices you have already made in the past about what to think.  This might sound strange, but thinking is not a passive act like watching television; it’s more like making a promise, a promise that certain thoughts will have a place in your head.  And just as in the Iranian myth above, once we make a promise, we have no power to deny the thought its rightful place in our minds.

Bad thoughts are like bad leaders in a democracy.  You can’t tell the thoughts to leave until their term is up.  After all, you elected them.  What you can do is understand how these thoughts got to be in charge in the first place and make sure that doesn’t happen again.  This is what is known as wisdom, but wisdom depends on having the patience to accept the duration of every negative experience.  Normally, when bad things happen to us, we ask, “Why me?”  But wisdom isn’t born from this question.  Wisdom is born from another question: “It had to happen, but what can I learn from it?”

Last week, I heard an older man say something very wise.  He said, “A turning point in my marriage was when my wife and I agreed we weren’t going think about breaking up every time we had a fight.  We agreed to be as angry, sad, or hurt as we wanted, but not to think, ‘This is it.  I’m going to leave.’”  His words struck me as both practical advice and a good definition of fidelity.  Normally, we think of fidelity as a set of demands placed on the other person about how to act, speak, or think, and since others never really conform to these demands, at least not perfectly, we go around most of the time feeling betrayed.  That’s when the disillusionment sets in, and we take this disillusionment personally.  We think, “This person was so wonderful and perfect and now he/she has gone and ruined everything!”  As if the disillusionment wasn’t bound to happen anyway.

Worst of all, when we hit a wall with one person, we run in the opposite direction, generally hitting another wall (person) pretty soon.  And this is because we never take the time to stand in front of a wall and examine it or question it.  Can it be climbed?  Maybe there is a door right there in plain sight?  The point is not that no one should ever break up or drift apart.  Clearly, there are times when that is the wisest course of action.  The point is that we think disillusionment is the problem, when, in fact, the problem is our lack of patience to live with disillusionment.

If you think about it, the negative connotations our culture places on the word “disillusionment” are pretty strange, since “disillusionment” literally means, “no longer having illusions,” which seems like a pretty good thing.  Isn’t that the point of wisdom, to no longer believe in what isn’t there?  But we typically say, “Poor Tom, he’s so disillusioned these days.  I hope he meets someone nice, or at least takes a long vacation.”  Why are we wishing a whole new set of illusions for Tom?  In our American obsession with optimism, we treat disillusionment as though it were something shameful, when in fact, it is the healthiest emotion in the world — at least, if we know how to relate to it gently.  The problem is that we tend to associate disillusionment with depression, because we lack the conviction that there is anything out there other than our illusions.  But it’s only by being patient enough to let the world fall apart that we stand a chance of finding a love that does not require illusions.

We should be disillusioned with each other.  Not because we are bad or broken people, but because each of us is carrying around a lot of unnecessary baggage, and we owe it to each other to see past this baggage.  If you love someone, you will certainly discover baggage in him or her.  Just as important, though, is to be disillusioned with your own baggage — the same baggage that most likely attracted you to your beloved in the first place.  This is the hard part, because it clashes with our sense of romance.  But actually, the purity of love depends on questioning the value of one’s own attractions.  It’s important to reflect, “Are the reasons I am attracted to this person really that meaningful?”  The point is not to make other people or relationships look ugly.  Just the opposite: it is the pretty illusions we have about others that turn ugly soon enough.  The point is to find something else, some deeper beauty, in which to sink the roots of love.

Love is disillusionment, not in the sense of growing sick of others, but in growing withthem as they truly are.  Like the beauty of winter, love can be expressed in these words: “Let every leaf fall.  The tree remains.”

 

Paul Weinfield is the singer, songwriter, and founder of Tam Lin, a New York City-based band whose sonically-adventurous brand of folk music has earned it comparisons with Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Radiohead, and Talk Talk.  Tam Lin’s newest album, Garden in Flames (October, 2011,) is available for free download at http://tamlin.bandcamp.com/

 

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