It happened to me on the night of September 19th, with a song called “Trial by fire”, by one of my favorite rock groups of all times, Journey. It was one of those moments that last barely a few seconds but have a profound meaning, and if you don’t evoke it again shortly, you have lost it. You lose it the same way you lose your dreams when you wake up in the morning and you don’t remember what you were dreaming, what you were thinking, that which seemed to you was born from an inspiration you never reach in the waking state. Curiously, a couple of days earlier, I had seen a documentary (quite disappointing) about lucid dreaming, and just that was being commented: a musician stated that he composed much better in his dreams than in real life. The problem is that later he would find it hard to recall the melody he had created. Well, with hypnosis or meditation is just the same: “inspiration” is short. And if you succeed transmitting something of what you saw or felt in that moment, it is going to be only a fuzzy reflection of what it was.
“Trial by fire” has always been a song that has transmitted me a lot, long before I remembered past lives. The rhythm so unusual, the feeling you perceive in Steve Perry’s trembling voice (possibly the best singer in history), that sort of restrained calm there is in the melody… It always makes me imagine a kneeling man, exhausted, who has never ceased to fight, but still finds himself facing a new trial, or a new test, and just for a second he loses all his energy and longs for everything to end. When you really want to carry on, but it is hard for you to find the strength.
You don't have to win and there's no need to fight
Now Roderic is not only the strong man he wanted to be. Roderic is the vulnerable, frightened child that couldn’t help his mother in a situation of absolute violence. Roderic is the man that couldn’t help his wife because the aggressors outnumbered him. Roderic is the man that had to witness, filled with impotence, how they slit the throat of his son before him and his mother. Roderic ought to have wept, but allowed that grief to be transformed into rage and hatred. As I recently said in my forum: “Roderic must now cry as a woman what he did not know how to defend as a man”. While I was writing it, I changed the verb “could” for “know”, as I tend to be that tough with my own past lives. But I think that it is in fact “could”. He wasn’t allowed to do it. The bad thing is that it is still hard for me to forgive him… forgive myself. But little by little I am getting there, especially when I remember I have to abandon myself to death… stop fighting.
I love it when the song says “Fallen down but not destroyed”. Indeed, sometimes we fall down, sometimes we end up badly, and emotions need more than one life to be processed. Now, when I think of Roderic, he usually is kneeling down, crestfallen, with his hair covering his face, with tears welling up under his eyelids, never ready to surrender, but wishing to be able to stop fighting. As in that occasion when, being Roderic chained, he was forced to kneel down before his lord and this one walked around him only a few centimeters apart, threatening to make use of his sword and kill him right there. At that moment I wished he had done it. But that death was not for common criminals like me. It was one of the latest humiliations I had to suffer, and I already knew then that gallows was my only possible end. But I wish he had killed me, so my lord would not have been very different from a common criminal like me, in the eyes of the townsfolk. And it would have saved me quite a few hours of extra suffering.
I feel that lives as Roderic’s, Susan’s or Katrina’s, are real trials by fire we set on ourselves to see how we react. It may be that we have a lot of quiet lives, and that is great, rest and fun are necessary too. But I think that every once in a while we need a challenge in order to know who we are in reality, whether we are becoming that person we really want to be or we are only deceiving ourselves thinking that we would act better than our neighbor if we found ourselves in an extreme situation.
The good thing is that, whatever happens, you are never utterly destroyed. And forgiveness, love and compassion are universal on the other side. There are no mistakes. There are only challenges and your strength to hurdle them. There will be more trials by fire, I am certain. I guess that, just as in sports —in my case, yoga— we become addict to them. We become addicts to life. And we always want to exceed ourselves… even though many times we won’t attain that.
Treasures in the jars of clay
Let the light shine out of darkness
Fallen down but not destroyed
It's just another trial by fire
In my song I'll send a prayer
Do you know me, do you hear me
Where the will to face this shame
It's just another trial by fire
Hello Mr. Moon
Can I have some time with you
Trouble keeps me runnin'...
You can see it comin'...
I know who shines down on you
Hello Mr. Moon
I've come back to talk to you
All my life I'm runnin'...
From the love that's comin'...
Saving grace please pull me through
In my doubt I can't believe
Like a wave tossed where the wind blows
Tears of faith temper my soul
Just another trial by fire
Just another trial by fire