Reflection N° 85 - Sadness

Sadness is the younger sister of sorrow, and remains with men day and night, even in the beyond, in dreams. Who did not wake up some time, in the dead of the night, touched by a great sadness, with the eyes full of tears, not knowing the motive?

Children experience periods of sadness, sometimes many days and do not know the motive; they remain silent, quiet, with a distant gaze; sometimes they weep softly, sometimes seek a silent refuge on the mother lap, or at a solitary corner, far away from others.

Adolescence, the intermediate stage when a being leaves the innocence of childish years to start the knowledge of life, with so many discoveries and surprises, is melancholic, sad, and mysterious. Young people look for companions of their age to share, by similarity, a dark inner state, illuminated by flashes of premonitions and glimpses. They take refuge in music, poetry, and solitary strolls; other, in rudeness, bars, and aggression.

But is in old age, when all has been made, right or wrong, and there is no more time for new illusions, when sadness stays like an uninvited guest, marking boredom of the day and sleeplessness of the night. Sickness, memory of the beloved who passed away, failures and loneliness lead senior people to a state of melancholy hard to overcome. Should one overcome this feeling that weight down with grief on the soul, or should we deepen it and experience all its facets until the time when it stops being a burden and becomes resignation?

Sadness is a symptom of an inner state that should be assumed or overcome, according to the relative matter. There are many causes of sadness: economy, health, family, feelings, the past, et cetera. Sometimes sadness is fleeting and mainly does not affect the development of the individual being; it is another experience. Other times sadness last the whole life, since its cause is unsolvable: a secret vice, some terminal ill, handicapped children, wishes never fulfilled, a vocational failure, et cetera. Spiritual and religious life is filled with sad souls that were unable to carry out their ideals.

Many of these situations have been considered by the Master Founder of Cafh in the beautiful Course “Sacrifice”, where he introduces a range of sixteen causes of sad states and proposes personal sacrifice as the best resource to solve problems. Even when he does not specially deal with it in his Teachings and personal advices, the main dilemma of sadness has also invaded the Sons of Cafh, whatsoever existential condition is. Because the source of this sadness is “Cafh is over”, like all things created in this world, leaving the souls within locked compartments structurally forsaken. But if we closely study the Teachings, mainly the last Messages, prophetic programs of action, we will see that a participation in Renunciation life is a proposal of future answering the problem. Cafh organization, Cafh Regulation is transmuted into expansion of the Renunciation Doctrine; by analogical contradiction, the mission that in the beginning was reduced to fulfill the Regulation article, became Universal Work for all, without regard for the differences of races, religions and cultures, as it occurs now. The conclusion of that beautiful task with Groups, Retirements and Meetings of Prayer and Meditation, gives rise to a very beautiful work: the construction of the New Age of free Aquarius, by vocation of love, under the wise and timely advice of Master Santiago Bovisio through his Teachings and assistance.

So, those Mother’s Sons who still did not understand the third stage of the Holy Order –foreseen and announced on many occasions by Messages, Teachings, Lectures and personal instructions– have a chance to rejoin on the Work. A time of sadness has been humus with many tears and disappointments to fertilize the development of these times. Without this grief, which can persist for many years, for some people since the Founder’s death, the seed would not germinate. If you do not cut the fruit and inter the germ in fertile soil, no regeneration is possible. In this new way to work for the sake of work, by fulfilling the Renunciation Law, none is to congratulate or rebuke, and there are no promotions or privileged authorities. It is only the Divine Mother a permanent witness of the soul efforts to fulfill its duty; She alone blesses without intermediaries and erases the soul sadness by giving peace and bliss. In the third stage, which is analogically opposite to the former, the soul cloistered in the fulfillment of its promises, is entirely reverted like a glove and devoted to the Great Work with silence, humility, and efficiency. The soul starts taking part in the Radiant Barrier of the Great Solar Initiate, Maitreya; the soul understands, loves and works on ideas and works of the New Humanity.

In lives of men there is a lot of sadness, and although externally these men are successful and bright, one should look at them closely and intimately to know them as they are. You detect their weakness behind their imposing figure in old age, when a balance of years and experiences leaves a sensation of void, of failure. Here you have some modern, known examples because have been and are on screens of the world.

The Pope’s sadness, Head of the Roman Church. During Saint Peter’s Masses, ceremonies of pomp and splendor as no other in the world, surrounded by cardinals, bishops and massive gatherings, sadness prevails in this solitary man, fragile and helpless, who is undergoing inner divisions, priesthood mistakes, and no chance to right the course of the ship driven by him. He is unable to go beyond that grand ritual he presides. This is quite sad.

Last years of the old, powerful U.S.A. President, Ronald Reagan, confined within a remote Californian ranch, suffering of brain diseases, not knowing anyone, and immersed in his incurable melancholy. This President of the most powerful country in the world, who was able to move armies anywhere in the planet by means of a simple telephone call, lacked sufficient lucidity to take a soup spoon to the mouth. Also this is quite sad.

A vague and sad look of him who was a great athlete, a boxing world champion, Cassius Clay, with tremulous hands by his incurable disease, wearing his professional gloves, and starting the Atlanta Olympic Games, at his birth city.

Hollywood stars, beautiful and triumphant, getting the Academy Oscar, the highest prize to success and fame! Later, as the years are extinguishing their figures and beauty, and the telephone does not summon them any more to a new agreement, an insuperable sadness turns grey those faces: later, shadows, forgetfulness, and an incurable sensation of failure ignores them forever.

If these stories are happening with lucky and successful people, winners, and favored by good fortune, how can be the inner drama of ordinary men without special chances –the majority of Humanity– who are known only to their neighbors and companions? It is the same drama, like that of the privileged, because all of them are immersed in a world of illusions and appearances, which is entirely empty. So as sadness of celebrities is known to the public, sadness of a no-name who did not find the realization path and repeats experiences of masses, is only known to him who undergoes his own ignorance. Men are bound to it when a civilization declines and lights are out.

There is a greater, universal sadness enveloping all of us, and including natural life, savage life, animals, plants, and things. It is absence of joy and of spontaneity shining before; it is darkness filled with human wastes invading every day wider and wider areas of the planet: deserts extended in Africa and America, Buenos Aires streets at nightfall, when cardboard pickers are breaking bags and scattering garbage; favelas, callampas and slum quarters expanded like a cancer in cities of America, family violence, lying and obscene TV, slaughters among human beings, and social hypocrisy of the powerful: everything. Some persons had foretold the end of the civilization by a nuclear war, and others, by natural disasters. Over there, people speak of pandemics and collective licentiousness. And here they refer to growing criminality, financial-economic bankruptcy, et cetera. Personally, in my opinion Humanity in this negative frame is dying of sadness; it has lost joy; it has lost hope.

It is not death that we know and fear: quick, inevitable, and fatal. It is worse. It is death by collapse of forces sustaining the human condition: sensibility, understanding, piety, fraternal love. And in case of disappearance or degradation of this qualities inherited from parents, does any humanness survive in us? Not at all. The spirit flees and hides, and the lower being appears. We have already written a Reflection about “Forms of Death”, with regard to two noticeable public cases: a North-American woman, Terry Sciavo, and Pope John Paul. Their deaths were painful, announced, and understood by all. But death by sadness, loss of spiritual condition, or dehumanization is beyond diagnosis and understanding. This death is overlooked by escapist tours, vacation on shores, spectacular cruisers, noisy entertainments, and wild vanity of money, social cosmetics, and a general simulation of daily togetherness.

In my view, sadness is a strictly individual matter, solved in intimacy. It sprouts from many illusions that every one brings at birth, and is acquired as the time passes by. The only solution, the fundamental answer to this problem is detachment. If a man does not learn how to renounce in life, will die sadly.

José González Muñoz
December 2006