Spiritual Graduation
There are infinite levels of personal growth and development. How can you ever know for certain that you have graduated from one level to the next?
Congratulations, you graduated. Pomp and Circumstance, a hat that went out of style centuries ago, flowers from Aunt Mildred, champagne in a nice restaurant with Mom and Dad. The future is bright for the educated and responsible, says the Valedictorian. You’re just glad to be saying goodbye to grades and term papers, at least for a little while.
When you graduate in school it’s obvious. You can’t miss it, even if you’re just graduating form second grade to third. But how do you know when you’ve graduated from one spiritual level to the next?
Think about it. When you grow spiritually, how do you know? Has anyone ever had a spiritual graduation party? There are infinite levels of personal growth and 
development. How can you ever know for certain that you have graduated from one level to the next?
development. How can you ever know for certain that you have graduated from one level to the next? Simple. Life gets harder. There are infinite daily details that make up the smooth running of a home. As mothers we constantly are managing a bazillion details to keep the family healthy and clean, never mind maintain our own sanity. For the most part we have our schedules and ways of doing things that more or less work for us. But have you ever thought to yourself, What’s wrong with me? Why is it that I don’t seem to be managing they way I always have? Then you think for a minute, and realize, Oh yeah, I had another kid. Or went back to work, or spent half of this week working on a PTA project.
Sometimes we see this dynamic on a more personal level. My friend Janice found the first years of her marriage to be incredibly challenging. Janice is a very bright, motivated University professor. She married a sweet warm pediatric dentist. Maybe because she was raised in a rather emotionally dry environment, she was very attracted to Donny’s warm and dynamic personality. She wanted to be close with him, but their communication styles were very different. Both Donny and Janice were really committed to making family life work, and invested a lot in the early years of their marriage. With time they grew closer than they had ever imagined possible. Recently Janice called me, and told me that her marriage had gone rocky again, and she couldn’t figure out what had changed. There didn’t seem to be any external factors rocking their nuptial boat. Janice felt like a failure. After years of therapy, introspection and grueling emotional work she felt like they were back at square one. She was beginning to wonder if all of her hard work was worth anything at all, as it didn’t seem to have gotten her anywhere. After some thought, I congratulated her.
“Janice, in those first few years you grew so much together. You know that, and even though you are upset right now, the investments of your heart have born many fruits. Just like a third grader will not lose a growth spurt even if his height stagnates afterwards, your growth hasn’t withered. But now you and your husband are older wiser and more complex people. You have graduated from elementary school of marriage and are approaching high school. If you continue to grow and invest together you will be able to create villages of intimacy in areas that have been an uninhabited wasteland. You haven’t fallen back, you are simply ready for the next level.”
Rebbe Nachman teaches, based on the Gemara in Succah (52) that the greater a person is, the greater his evil inclination is. That means that as you grow, so does the spiritual force that opposes you. Just like in a video game, when you have mastered one level you go to the next, and it becomes more challenging. In the tetris of my youth I would be doing fine, and progressing from level to level, until the screen would start hailing those bricks at me at such a dizzying pace that I couldn’t keep up. Life tends to be like that. There are periods that things seem under control, and then there are times that no matter what you do it feels like you are trying to run a marathon in quicksand. It doesn’t mean you have fallen, it means that you have grown. Picture yourself as a spiritual weight-lifter. Once you’ve aced one level The Master Trainer is going to push you harder. It might be tough, but you are a spiritual super-hero in the making!
We celebrate graduation, and don’t mourn it. We have pocketed their lessons and moved on. We go through life planting our hearts, and reaping growth and experience. We are wizened and weathered along our ways, but no worse for the wear.
Next time things get tough, especially in marriage, throw yourself a spiritual graduation party.
7/26/2010
so true Thanks for a really interesting article. It happens so often when faced with a difficult situation I forget everything I’ve learnt and I don’t realise how much I’ve grown. It takes a good friend to remind me.
7/26/2010
Thanks for a really interesting article. It happens so often when faced with a difficult situation I forget everything I’ve learnt and I don’t realise how much I’ve grown. It takes a good friend to remind me.
6/25/2010
I like this article so much, thank you very much.