“I have worked with people who had a major goal in life that required decades of intense and sustained effort to achieve. And when they finally succeeded, they became severely depressed, because they expected something that the achievement of that goal could not give them. Joseph Campbell called this situation” getting to the top of the ladder and finding that it stands against the wrong wall.”
The people psychologist Stanislav Grof is referring to above may constitute a majority of we who populate First World countries. Many of us find ourselves at the top of a ladder that leans against walls we thought were right, not wrong, goals society and perhaps our families affirmed as an indication that we have arrived, that we are successful, and that we should be able to experience a happily ever after life. Let’s see, fame and fortune come to mind, as do power and status. There is something obvious about the false promise of these “walls,” for most of us know that reaching their summit will not yield lasting satisfaction.
Although we are not usually aware of it, the fulfillment we seek from the wrong walls we scale has to do with our soul, our spiritual essence. The longing to discover and rest in this “palace of nowhere” fuels our search for lasting happiness, enduring peace, and unconditional love; it is the failure to experience these idyllic states that lies at the heart of most addictions, those self-medicating escape routes we embark upon to avoid the pain of an inner void.
Paradoxically, the way to our soul is not a matter of ascending to imagined holy heights, but of descending into the sacredness of what former United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold referred to as a still point surrounded by silence. Our deepest longings await satisfaction if we would but yield to the ever present summons to enter the silence and rest in that still point. Perhaps it’s a matter of age, but resting is way more appealing to me than climbing ladders!
Attuned to Soul 