I have been thinking today very much about the people who believed the world would end yesterday, sensing what they must be experiencing. I just got home to the mountain, the place paradoxically where I am connected to the news, after being in town very much this past week where I am disconnected from it as yet. I haven’t heard a word from the reports about what these believers must be thinking and experiencing today, only sensing it.

Though I did have a burst of laughter yesterday as some friends and I drove down Merrimon Ave. in Asheville and saw in front of a bus stop a set of clothes – shoes, socks, pants, sweatshirt and hat – laid out on the ground like the body within had just been taken up into rapture, I will say that for the most part I feel the pain of what people must be experiencing today as disillusionment, and I don’t take that pain lightly.

Who of us hasn’t been caught up in an idea or a plan that for whatever unknown reason made sense to us at the time, only to be taken down by it, completely disillusioned? In a Buddhist or Zen look at it, what can be more divine or empowering than removing illusions? In Jungian terms, those illusions are dreams of some kind of reality that only need to find their appropriate level to be sanctioned as true.

I have experienced the pain of disillusionment too many times to feel satisfaction in the confusion and readjustment people must be experiencing today. I will definitely be curious to find out more about what their stories are as I try to catch up with what I have missed this week, but I do cast a vote for compassion and self-reflection.