It’s New Year’s Eve, 1988. I’m traveling alone off the coast of Belize. After spending the day snorkeling, I’ve come down with a terrible infection. Racked with chills, barely coherent, I stumble across town to rouse the lone nurse from her holiday dinner. Grudgingly, she gives me some antibiotics, and I take to bed.
That night was perhaps the most important of my life. Twisted up in the sheets, raging with fever, I thought I was going to die. In those supposed last moments, I considered my life with deathbed candor. Having failed to make it as a Hollywood screenwriter after almost a decade of trying, I’d privately become convinced that my lack of success was well deserved. I believed that, deep inside, there was something wrong with me – a fatal flaw, an indefinable shortcoming.
Whenever that belief had arisen before, I’d fought it with all the resistance I could summon. Now, instead, I dove straight into wave after wave of enveloping hopelessness. It was excruciating, but there was also great relief in giving up the struggle. Maybe it was the semi-delirium that finally melted my defenses – I’ll never know. But when dawn broke and I was still breathing, the darkness inside me was lighter, too.
In the months and years that followed, I experienced both a personal and professional rebirth. I learned that letting go isn’t about closing doors, but opening them. With each door that opens within, we become more vulnerable. And the more vulnerable we become, in a sublime paradox, the more God graces us with spiritual power.
For information about Raphael Cushnir’s books, workshops, and private sessions, visit www.Cushnir.com.
.
