Sacrificial passion (ICA)

This is being consumed by giving one's life to something new, to the point of feeling totally drained. Pouring one's heart out, one often finds one's self weeping with an indefinable sadness. In his book "Cry, the Beloved Country", Alan Paton depicts this state as he describes the pain of living under apartheid. In the movie "The Killing Fields", the American and the Cambodian reporters stand in this position as they decide to stay on in Cambodia after the fall of the Pnom Penh government. And it is reflected in the story of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem before his final entry into the city.

A dimension of this experience is a sense of awe, that is fear and fascination. Being consumed by care is like being on fire. One becomes one with the pain of innocent human suffering, not just with the particular concerns that are facing them. One is confronted by the temptation to succumb to the pain and become part of the problem instead of being part of the solution. Realizing the extent of the damage one could do, one nevertheless feels compelled to extend one's effort even more.

Caring with all one's heart brings an almost levitational quality in everything one does. Something beyond the normal sources of sustenance such as eating and sleeping keeps one going. One lets go of the props that supported one, the role one is playing and even the belief in one's own capacity to play it. There is a sense of being larger than life and more powerful than one had ever known one's self to be.

This state is number 39 in the ICA Other World in the midst of this World.