Card #187 – Working in Hell

Human corporeal incarnation can be ecstatic and glorious, but it can also be, as we all know, difficult, laborious, and sometimes agonizing. Bodily illness and privations can oppress us, and often we must labor with mechanical resistance, the endless mundane tasks which are never really completed because others are always piling up. Scarcity of resources, disease, wars and the long skull shadows of history, surround us. If you stop and allow your gaze to be arrested by such realities you can become paralyzed with dread.

I start by realizing that I have a tendency to over commit myself and assume that I signed on for this sort of challenging incarnation. This assumption is empowering and minimizes self-pity and victim/poverty consciousness. Then I set to work — time to bail out the leaky boat and do the best I can with the resources at hand from awakening till bedtime. Get into a rhythm with the work. It is far better to be working in hell than to be unemployed and languishing in hell. Of course, if you can find a better place to live and work, by all means, relocate. But wherever you are there are times when you just have to work your way through adverse conditions. Feel the solidarity of every living thing on this plane of existence that deals with Winter, famine, drought, illness, oppression and obstruction. In the Bible, Eccl 3:19, it says: “For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even [in the end] one thing befalls them both. As the one dies, so dies the other. Yes, they all have one breath and spirit, so that a man has no preeminence over a beast; for all is vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility)!” So don’t feel that you are the only one being picked on by fate, acknowledge the hardships, but get to work and see what you can do between now and bedtime.