A
monk
for 19 years, Bruce Manaka fled the hallowed grounds of his
meditative lifestyle as he learned to decipher and embrace
the messages brought to him by the voices of illness and confusion;
and what he learned threatened to uproot and destroy every
belief and notion that he had about God and the monastic lifestyle.
Nearly crushed beneath the weight of this inner struggle,
he found that his heart would not allow the rebuilding of
a new life upon the rubble of old beliefs and assumptions.
God—or perhaps delusion—was asking for the unthinkable
and unspeakable: to walk away from the church and to relinquish
the monastic life. his heart was inviting him to dance with
the darkness within, to look at all feelings most avoided
as a monk, and to create with the finest listening all that
wished to be expressed and loved. Delusion or not, he made
the choice to walk the path of dark mystery, trusting the
guidance within that the bridge over the ocean of suffering
is created as we step out in faith, and not before.
After
having lived for almost two decades in the secure and ordered
environment of the monastery, Bruce stepped out into a world
that—within two months—would experience the horrors
of 9/11. Ill-prepared to navigate the roiling ocean of life
in a world he had very little understanding of, he drifted
headlong into storms of dark fears, not yet ready to fully
trust the compass of his own heart. Like a small boat in a
monstrous storm, he was tossed about by the harsh dreams of
the world until one day he was awakened by the voice of his
heart, which called him to abandon the small bark of timidity
and to dive into the depths and drink in the whole ocean of
creativity.
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