TINNITUS

I have tinnitus, a ringing or hissing in the ear. I have the hissing version and the older I get the louder it gets. I used to be aware of it when my head hit the pillow. Now it's with me all the time and everywhere. It's left the confines of my ears and feels as if it filling my head. There's no cure so it ought to be blaring in my old age.
     Silence is a beautiful thing. The first time I went to the desert I was with a friend. We had left the main road and turned up a gravel path heading toward a ranch owned by a friend of my friend. For some reason, she stopped the car and we got out. When the engine died, I was stunned by the silence. It took a few seconds to permeate my body; I tuned into it in the way you have to look at clouds for a bit to see which way they're going. There was nothing else to do but stand still.
     My friend hated it - the silence, the rocks that bordered the road, the dry view we could see up past the road. I was right at home, more than home. I felt I had found the place I was meant to be. I felt comforted by the immutability of the naked hills. The were small enough I felt I could climb them.The breast of god, I thought. And no franticness of leaves. The rocks changed color all through the day as the sun moved across the sky. They were beautiful.
     I'll never hear that silence again. Tinnitus is with me in the middle of nowhere and or my walks, or working at home, anything at all. I ignore it as much as I can; it's better when I can fill my space with other sounds - music, conversation, a video on my Ipad, any way I can distract myself.
     Here's the thing: I'm amazed that I can ignore it as much as I do. Simply by turning my attention to other things, my awareness of the buzzing recedes. Not the buzzing but my awareness of it. I forget about it until I'm alone or thinking about it as I am as I write this.
     It's a metaphor, suffering receding when I put my attention on other things. And it's a good teacher - I've had to develop a certain discipline. Most of all, I have to surrender to it over and over again.
     
     
     

CLEARING THE KITCHEN COUNTERS

I used to have a lot of stuff on my kitchen counter - a canister of coffee, the coffee machine, more than a dozen knives held in a wood block, a small bowl for spare change, a roll of paper towels, and odds and ends that were meant to be temporary but somehow never moved. Sometimes, I had trouble clearing enough space to do whatever it is you usually do on kitchen counters but I hardly noticed the inconvenience. It simply didn't occur to me that things could be different.  
     Last week, I made a change. I moved the bowl of change onto a shelf outside the kitchen, found a place in one of the cupboards to store the block of knives, cleared off the odds and ends. That left the coffee canister and maker and the standing roll of paper towels. Now, when I walk into the kitchen I'm amazed at all the space. I could cater a five course meal without a problem at all.
     What took me so long? Why was I so able to ignore the inconvenience? Why didn't occur to me to make things easier for myself? I have some idea of the answers - these are questions I've asked myself many times before over different problematic areas of my life.  
     It turns out I have a high tolerance for inconvenience. I can step over a pile of papers on the floor for days instead of picking it up and finding a place for it. I can put off depositing checks in the bank despite knowing my account is running low. I can sit with the pain of isolation without making a move to connect with friends and go out. Then one day something shifts inside and I pick up the papers, get the checks in the bank, call up a friend and make a plan for dinner. 
     Full frontal attacks on whatever the problem is don't seem to get me moving. I wish they did, but there's a perverse resistance in me and it's that I have to work through. "There's a problem, why don't I deal with it, I have to deal with it, I don't want to deal with it." That litany goes round and round in me... until "one day something shifts." I didn't decide to clear off the kitchen counter - instead, I just found myself doing it. Clearly, the time had come.
     In the face of change, there's a pushme-pullyou inside me and as long as the conflict, the ambivalence lasts I can't force myself to act. I need to chip off little pieces, sometimes tiny pieces of my resistance, until, like Michelangelo's statues emerging from the stone, right action emerges from me. Why can't I hurry it along? I don't know, maybe I'll never know, but in any case, I've learned not to ask this particular why. After all, I know from experience: it just takes what it takes. 
     

I COULDA BEEN A CONTENDER

I knew a man who used the phrase, "psychic contender." He meant those people we carry inside ourselves, the ones we are always in competition with. Am I doing better or worse than him? Is she getting more than me? It's often a painful connection and usually with people we actually know - maybe I stopped talking to her, maybe we drifted apart and went our separate ways. But whatever the reason, there's some kind of anger and resentment at the heart of it.
     I have one or two of my own long term psychic contenders but sometimes others pop up for a day or two. It happened the other day. I saw something about a woman I didn't know though our paths had crossed with one degree of separation more than once. Someone once said that I was a smart version of her and I've carried that comment ever since; it's a flag I plant in the soil of well-being to comfort me.. 
     She's had a wonderful life, just what I wish I had. She's immensely confident, ambitious and worked hard. There was no doubt to stifle her ambition and eat away her confidence; she wasn't ambivalent; she knew what she wanted and went after it. She had everything she needed for success.
     I thought, well, I could have done that if I had had more confidence. I could have had her life. I let that thought float around my mind for a while, a delicious fantasy of the life I could have had. Then what I was doing came to me: if I wasn't who I am, I would be someone else, another me. How silly is that? I can't be me and not-me at the same time. And that the point.  My obstacles are mine, my voyage is mine, what I need to work out in this lifetime is mine. While it might be fun for me to imagine alternate lives, like a writer inventing and inhabiting characters, it ultimately only serves to make me feel bad about myself. Because those alternate lives are always better than mine - what would be the point of fantasizing one worse? 
     I see what that comparing does. It moves focus to a distant object, an imaginary construct, and takes it away from me. I used to be afraid to come back to my own life which I believed was full of problems, doubts and fear. But something has changed in me. Changing focus and coming back to me now feels like a blossoming, an expansion, a space in which I can work out my own stuff. We all have stuff, even the ones who seem to lead a charmed life. I don't want to be asking, why don't I have more, all those whys and if-onlys and should haves. I want to be in my own body, doing the things I need to, learning what more I can about how to be better, do better, not to shine in the world, but to have the deep satisfaction of knowing myself and getting more free.


     

CRINGING

"To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me..."

I have a definite marker when I begin going down. I find myself remembering things that make me cringe - what I said or did wrong, opportunities I couldn't make good on, times I tried to get away with something, people I wanted to know better who didn't want to know me. I have a list of them, my top ten, and when they begin coming into my mind, I recognize them for what they are, barnacles attached to my deepening depression. 
     Sometimes, I have enough distance to ask myself why I draw down this evidence for my own prosecution, but that distance doesn't quite neutralize them. I still feel the sudden upheaval in the belly, the flush of shame; those memories still have the power to make me cringe. 
     Over time, I've found ways to stop rehearsing all those incidents that make me feel shame. I've made another list, this one of things I've done right, the times when, without thinking, I said or did the right thing, when I had the courage to walk up to my fear, when I reached out with kindness. Above all, I've worked to cultivate compassion for my very human weaknesses, misguided efforts and illusions. I try to embrace them, willingly embrace all the good and bad with gentleness, so that I no longer see them with those value judgments. I see only aspects of my being, steps along the way, the grains of sand that have spun the beauty I see in the world. 
     I fall away from that embrace sometimes and one more time a memory will make me cringe. But I know what it feels like to be kind to myself and I always try to work my way back.
     
     

STORIES I TELL MYSELF

My mind so easily falls back into the familiarity of the stories I tell myself about me. The songs of my particular self...I'm the one who...these are my views and opinions...this is what my past means, this is who I am...All those stories - they're how I bring into focus who I think I am. They become the facade I present to the world, to myself, and I walk through my experience encased in its solid shell. 
     The facade has its purpose, to hide from me all I fear I don't know or am not certain about, the many doubts and fears, the confusion I'm afraid to acknowledge, much less feel. And yet...I sense that beneath all the stories I tell myself, there are deeper feelings - the doubts and fears - so I cling to the facade more tenaciously, in direct proportion to how close those feelings are to the surface. The more insecure I sense I really am, the more I hold on to the stories I believe will keep me invincible. 
     It's the razor's edge, to sense something so frightening and want so desperately to deny it. But the tension between those two poles can only grow until finally something has to give. The story falls apart; the facade shatters. But waiting on the other side of that cataclysmic moment isn't the annihilation I feared. Instead, it's as if I come out of a cyclone and stand before an open gate in a quiet sunny field. I walk through, leaving behind all the limitations of the stories I tell myself, the facade I've worked so hard to construct and hold on to. I have no thought or idea. I'm a beating heart, breathing, without need or expectation, without judgment. There is nothing to fear, there never has been. I am more "myself," more the vibrating being I am than I've ever been. I'm completely, magnificently all right.
     Tension, release - not tension, shatter. This is where the possibility of insight resides, in the stillness of surrender. 

MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW

I've decided to fill my days with small actions; I'm staying away from anything major. I get lost in the big things - the ones that fall under the heading of "Changing My Life."  Too big. So I'm thinking small, becoming interested in the doable. Just what is in fact doable? My decider needs some calibration so I'll be on a learning curve. We'll see where it leads.
     "Don't bite off more than you can chew." What absolutely brilliant advice...

CLEANING UP THE MESS

I'm revved up today, eager to be in the world, eager to be with people, eager to work. It comes from the sense that I'm making progress on issues that have long held me back. All the steps I've taken lately have been small and seemingly off topic, but in the swirl of my being everything is related. Cleaning the sink, dusting a shelf, clearing the tops of the bookcases - they're small victories against my resistance to anything that has to do with daily maintenance. Some part of me has been proud of that resistance; see, I'm not conventional, I'm a free spirit. But even free spirits have to take care of themselves and their portion of the world - you can't be free when you're dragged down by so much that is undone, unfinished, ignored. 
     I'm think I'm ignoring chaos and mess, but they take their toll. Papers piled everywhere, my clothes thrown on the back of a chair, the many tasks not done - I'm keenly aware of all I'm not doing and it doesn't take a particularly high IQ to get that the chaos outside is a reflection of what I feel inside. I know it, but it's a vicious circle. Looking out at the mess I'm creating only reinforces the mess I feel inside, while the mess inside creates the mess around me. It's overwhelming; I come to believe that even baby steps are impossible, and even if they aren't, nothing I do will make a difference. 
     So cleaning the sink, dusting the shelves, clearing the tops of the bookcases turn out to be actions that reverberate in my being. I see I'm wrong to call them small steps. They are messengers of new possibilities. And whether steps are small or large, they pave the way to change, and I remind myself that it's often said the first steps are always the hardest. 
     
     

THE ISSUE BEHIND THE ISSUE

A long time ago, a friend and I were talking about a resentment I'd been nursing and couldn't let go. After a while, she asked, "Well, what do you think is the issue behind the issue?" I was stopped for a moment - what a great question. I needed some time to think about it but eventually the answer came. My resentment had very little to do with anything the other person did or didn't do; it grew out of the part of me that was threatened in some way. Threatened how? I soon could give it a name - I was angry because I was afraid I would never get anything good, any of the things I wanted. That was the issue behind the issue - my fear that my life would be filled with frustration and desperation, that I would never have enough. Oh, that old useless fear. Once I understood that, the resentment faded away.
     In the years since, I've asked myself this question whenever turmoil arises in me. The issue behind the issue that stirs the waters on the surface - does it tap into the fears that make me see the world and the people in it and most especially myself in a negative light which in turn activates my insecurity, or self-pity, or envy, my pride, my competitiveness, or any of the other dark emotions that live inside me?
Over and over again, as soon as I begin asking what is my part in what I'm feeling, what in me is available for this self-defeating emotion, the instigating surface dynamic fades away.
     One more time, I see that it's futile for me to think I can control anything or anyone outside myself. I don't mind; in fact, I welcome the news. I no longer have to spend a minute on why you -- or life -- is or isn't doing exactly what I want. All my energy can now go into looking at my attitudes, which I can do something about. I can begin an honest inner exploration simply by asking, what is the issue behind the issue? What is my part? 

A SUBTLE SENSE OF HOPE

Yesterday, an opportunity to send my work out into the world came up. I felt a familiar flicker of excitement, but it was short lived - immediately an even more familiar voice said, no, that will never work, no point in even trying. 
     It was only in talking to a friend a few hours later that I realized what I had done. I had deflected a good possibility before I even explored it by allowing the voice of self-censorship to be the loudest voice I heard. I saw the pattern I've repeated so many times - an idea or opportunity arises and I deflect, squash, allow it to pass. It's as if there are templates inside me and when things present themselves I automatically sort them - in this case, opportunity went into the I-always-deflect template.
     Telling my friend put the possibility out into the world, instead of leaving it in my head where it could have drifted for days until it disappeared. We quickly made a step by step plan of what I could do to follow through and in the time since I've done what I said I would.
     All day today, I've felt a subtle energy, something light and clear. I've realized what it is: the energy of hope. Not the hope that I will put something out into the world which will be recognized and rewarded, but the hope that I can change the old patterns which have so often in the past kept me from doing so. I can't control what happens after I've done my part. All I can do, and it's crucial, is to act in spite of binding old habits. I can accept the challenge of change. 

TIRED

I woke up tired this morning, continued tired this afternoon and was yet more tired tonight. (This reminds me of the scene in Alice in Wonderland when the White Rabbit is about to read something to the Queen and asks, Where shall I begin? The Queens response: Start at the beginning, continue through the middle and stop when you come to the end. Amazingly sensible advice, good for any occasion.)
     Sometimes I think I ought to be able to transcend being tired. Take a deep breath, shake the cobwebs out -- and go! Not really such sensible advice, at least not tonight. I'll pay attention to my body, let it have its way. Whatever is on my plate, like Scarlet, I'll get to it tomorrow.
     

SEMPERVIVUM

I had a friend in high school who said that, since our brains have limited capacity, it's conceivable that we'll have to forget something in order to fit something new in. That in turn reminded me that in One Hundred Years Of Solitude, everyone in the town of Macondo develops amnesia.  They realize it's happening and begin labeling everything with its name - chair, table, etc. before total memory loss descends. 
     I thought of this while talking to a friend about succulents. I know something about them. When I had breast cancer a few years ago, I developed a passion for succulents of all kinds. I found nurseries online that were happy to ship them; I haunted local nurseries which inevitably had a limited stock. I joined the succulent society which has a sale once a year and some of the best ones I have come from those sales. I was well into this obsession before I learned that a genus of succulents is called "sempervivum," always living. Of course, I thought, I'm still in treatment for cancer. Of course I want to be sempervivum. I doubt that it was a coincidence.
     I've had many of these obsessions; I plunge right in. I love sub-cultures; I find it very human and very touching that people want to come together to share something they're interested in, even love. The succulent society, the antique watch society, the first editions society. I once ran across a man who collected barbed wire which evidently comes in different wire weights and a variety of knots. I don't know if he found a group of like-minded people, but it wouldn't surprise me if he did. 
     Another way to describe this succession of passions that claims me so often is that I have a continual need to learn something new. Sometimes I ignore work that I should be doing but I think it's a fair trade-off. Becoming interested, learning something I didn't know, fills me with an energy that spills over into the rest of my life. It's the energy I crave along with its bonus of new people and new facts, new ideas. My mind is directed outward, into the world and that's always a very good thing.
     Passion and learning - sempervivum indeed.
     

A WASP IN A COFFEE CAN

I found myself praying today, praying to I don't know what but that doesn't matter. When I ask to be shown what to do or how to let go, I'm looking outside myself for help and answers. I move out of being what a friend of mine once called a wasp in a coffee can, relentlessly buzzing and getting nowhere. I move out of trying to control, to impose answers and become receptive, patient, humble.
     Today I've been praying, "Help me do better. Show me what to do to help myself." Alone, I can't seem to find a way past the resistance that comes up so often when there are things I should do. Some days, it's as if my entire inner life has gone slack, lost energy, become a fog I'm barely aware of wandering through. Then, it's all about trying to wake up, rouse myself, dispel the fog and all its inaction. Some days, many days, I give in to the slackness and the idea of energetic action seems a million miles away.
     I want to do better. I want to come through for myself, keep the commitments I make to myself, accomplish what I say I'll accomplish. I want to follow through. Disappointing others is certainly painful, but there's a particular harshness to disappointing myself. It reinforces every bad thought I have about myself and confirms my poor opinion of everything that has to do with me.
     I want to do better. And for that I need help, the kind that comes when I let go of all my views and opinions, quiet my mind and allow some other force to come into me, a force that wants only good for me, a force that can help me get past all my resistance and willful turning away from the light. Only try. Only connect with the energy that's all around me. 
     Grant me the power to keep reaching out and when I fail as I know I sometimes will, grant me the courage to try and try again.
     

TROUBLEMAKERS

I've been thinking about troublemakers, people who want to stir things up.  I say "troublemakers" and think men but there must be as many women who want to make trouble.
     This kind of person is controlling and self-obsessed; she wants to make things happen and in a secret way. It's manipulation with an edge; I can feel the anger and resentment that drives her. I see a sneering face, a curled lip, something out of Richard III, and I can feel the satisfaction she must get out of secretly rocking the boat, upsetting the apple cart, causing chaos. She must feel a certain satisfaction in secrecy, that people are unaware of her manipulations; she's the only one who sees what's really going on. She's like an arsonist setting a house on fire; she wants to burn down others' peace of mind and contentment. She's operating on contempt.
     Everyone feels resentment and anger from time to time. It's why revenge stories are so cathartic - everyone wants to get back at people who hurt or rob us. But for most of us, resentment, anger, thoughts of revenge pass and I'm usually relieved that I didn't act on them.  For me, the thought of my waging a secret war, or bringing down trouble on someone else is more than agitating, anxiety provoking. It brings up feelings in my body that over time have become intolerable and I've spent a long time learning to let go of them. You could say I've developed a passion for peace.
     I'll never know why one person needs the rush her malice must bring, while another seeks equanimity. It's one of those mysteries of temperament, upbringing, the wiring in the brain. But I'm glad, more than glad, that I've turned out to be one of the ones who values kindness and compassion, and I'll work to deepen them.

GAZING AT THE MOON

My living room faces west. There are clerestory windows across the front. Many times at night, coming from the bathroom or bedroom, I catch sight of the moon in one of those high windows. I always stop to look but especially on nights when there's a full moon and moonlight comes streaming in. I stand still and gaze at the silver disk and think of all the people over thousands and thousands of years who have gazed up at the moon. Its radiance when it's full, the partial light as it waxes and wanes. I feel myself part of that great chain of being, of all the generations that have come before me beginning with the first homo sapiens on the savannas of Africa. All of us gazing up at the compelling mystery in the sky. It doesn't matter than men have landed on the moon; it is still compelling and mysterious and fills me with awe. So much on earth can fill me with awe - the beauty of the natural world, but gazing at the moon has a difference. It is off the earth, far away, and points me out into the universe, to a sense of infinite space which I will never fathom but which comforts me and makes me feel rightsized. The moon's light, its mystery, reach the deepest part of me and all I have to do is stop for a moment and gaze up.

ITCH

Sometimes in meditation I feel an itch. I like the challenge of not moving so I've learned to focus on wherever the itch is, and in focusing, I feel it disappear. Don't scratch the itch - it's a metaphor for life. How many times has something made me uncomfortable and I've rushed to chase it away? I so quickly want to get away from irritation and pain. But sometimes it's better to sit with it, let it develop and see where it leads. 
     When I'm in the right place, I know that all information, all events, are neutral, neither good nor bad. They are filled with something to teach me, if only I suspend judgment and allow myself to accept what is. An itch doesn't necessarily need to be scratched; it can be accepted, studied, focused upon until it dissolves away.

JAIL

I think so much about powerlessness, the spiritual kind, but the other day I was reminded of my experience with another kind of powerlessness. Many years ago my ex-husband and I drove from Los Angeles to Mexico City, then north again heading for New York. We were stopped at the border, the officers searched the car and found a joint in a box of typewriter paper we had forgotten about. We had some more hidden away. It was enough to get us arrested and taken to jail.
     As if in a movie, I heard the barred door close behind me and the key turn in the lock. I wanted to shout, "Hey, it's me, a nice Jewish girl from New York!" But I knew there was no appeal. They didn't care who I thought I was; to them, I had been in a car that had marijuana and that was that. 
     There were two other women in the holding cell, a Mexican prostitute and a small nervous Anglo who had passed some bad checks. I sat on a bunk, stunned by what had happened. For the first time, I, a politico in the Sixties, slowly began to be grateful for the rule of law. If the men who turned the key hadn't obeyed the law, I could have been locked away forever. But there was a process, a routine that jailers and officers and the courts all choose to obey, so that after two days we got out on bail. They dropped the charges against me and my ex-husband eventually got a suspended sentence. When we were released the first thing I did was throw away the dress I'd been wearing; I knew cleaning it wouldn't get the smell of jail out of it.
     That sense of powerlessness in jail, of a shocking destabilization, effected me more than I knew. In the next few years, I had a series of prison dreams, one in the Catacombs, another in a concentration camp and a strange one in which I was locked into something like a bamboo bird cage. I began to be phobic about being hemmed in, unable to get out of wherever I was. It took unexpected forms; years later, when I got off the ferry on Martha's Vineyard, I had a couple of hours of anxiety - there was no way off the island except on ferries keeping to a schedule. I couldn't leave whenever I wanted.
     The fact that I had experienced the jail kind of powerlessness in part led me an interest in prison memoirs, stories of people who found a way to be free in the most unfree of circumstances. Many of them were stories of spiritual awakening, even for the ones who had no religion. These people found a way to maintain their identity and integrity.They came to terms. 
     I see I've come full circle. The powerlessness I knew in jail was all about helplessness, robbed of autonomy. That led me to seek out stories about a similar experience, and that in turn led me to my own spiritual awakening, to a sure sense of my own always possible freedom, an inner autonomy no one can take away from me, no matter what. Full circle. One more time, coming a great distance in order to begin. 
     

SURRENDER, ALWAYS SURRENDER

So many people I know are having a hard time just now. All kinds of problems - health, money, family relations. When things are difficult and the future unpredictable, it's easy to get caught in fear and anxiety, and even when you have experience quieting the demons, so much energy goes into detaching and connecting with the part of me that knows I'll be all right no matter what.
     It surprises me that when I think of dire possibilities in the future, I feel I will adjust, accept what is and be all right. When I'm hard on myself I label this attitude nothing but fatalism or resignation. But most of the time I know it's the result of many surrenders, the kind that come I give up fighting the things I can't change. When I surrender, I feel an expansion inside; giving up demands and expectations, quieting my relentless ego makes room for a connection to the world outside me and the nourishing energy inside.
     I want to remind myself every day of the expansiveness of surrender.  More than remind, I want to close my eyes, take deep breaths and actually feel the expansion and energy. As a beginning, I will cultivate the willingness to give myself that gift.
      

RESISTANCE, AGAIN

I'm in awe of people who embrace routine. Housekeeping, exercise, work - they feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction from doing daily things. 

     I'm the opposite most of the time. I resist doing, getting up and doing, even things that I know would make me feel better. Exercising self-discipline in general would give me a real boost of self-esteem.  I know that and still I resist. Resistance has a certain feel in my body and I recognize it. You'd think being able to identify it so specifically would help me get passed it. But old habits die hard and I've had such a long time of falling back when resistance comes up.

     I've thought long and hard about why this is true. My childhood, my depression, my lifelong default position... those are interesting whys but as well as I know them, that knowledge hasn't led me to changed behavior. There needs to be some other way.

     In meditation, if painful feelings come up, I know not to run from them. I turn my attention to where that pain is in my body - my chest, my belly - and when I concentrate for as long as it takes, my attention eventually dissolves the pain. That practice can help me with resistance. When it comes and I feel it in my body, I can focus on it and let my attention dissolve it. Even if I don't get up and do, I'm sure the repetition of that focus, dissolving resistance again and again, will help. It may be in the long run, though I put so much pressure on myself to make it the short run. I can relieve some of that pressure, maybe most of it, if I cultivate patience and lovingly forgive myself again and again.

     Change will only come if I'm willing, and willingness only comes out of surrender, and asking help from the Spirit of the Universe or whatever it is I find myself asking for help. Something greater than myself, out beyond my conscious mind. I must remind myself over and over again to ask for this help. I know that simply in asking I'm helping myself along the way.     

     

THE BOOK OF JOB

I saw a reference to the Book of Job the other day and it set me thinking. Job's story begins with God and Satan talking about humans. Satan says that it's easy to be pious when things are going your way, but if suffering and loss come, then a person will denounce God. Nonsense, God says, consider my subject, Job. Satan then bets God that if Job loses everything, he will turn away from God.
     God makes the bet and then, one by one, he takes everything Job  possesses - his farm and animals, his home and family, even his children. He inflicts boils and other physical pain until Job is left with nothing but loss and suffering.     
     Friends come and argue that Job must have done something wrong but Job maintains he didn't. He demands to know why God has punished him; he knows he has nothing to deserve it. He demands justice from God. 
     God then appears to Job as a voice out of a whirlwind. He doesn't answer Job's questions directly. Instead, he reminds Job of God's greatness - it is God who has created heaven and earth and all the awesome miracles that have brought life and Nature into being. What is Job in comparison to that? Can Job bring forth the constellations in their seasons, or give the ibis wisdom and the rooster understanding? Job is only a man; how can he hope to comprehend the whys and ways of anything as vast and powerful as God? 
     Job immediately recognizes that he has no right to ask God to justify Himself. He must accept the fact of God's incomprehensibility and that there is no "reason" for his suffering that he will ever be able to understand. God sees his acceptance and in a very short epilogue restores to Job everything he lost and even more. 
     The story is asking how, if God exists, can there be suffering in the world. Why would a loving God allow his subjects to suffer? The answer is we will never know, we can't comprehend this vast and all powerful God and so it's pointless for us to ask, "Why?"
     There are many interesting aspects to this story, not least that God and Satan fall into casual conversation and in order to win a bet God allows Job to fall into almost unbearable suffering - what kind of a God is that? But what strikes me most is how the God of the voice in the whirlwind is imagined - as something so powerful and huge as to be beyond human comprehension. There is a great mystery at the heart of existence and we can't understand it. We can't know the reasons for evil or suffering. We can only accept them.
     The sense that there is something beyond us which we will never apprehend and understand runs through most religious and spiritual traditions. Where does that sense come from? Is it in our DNA? Why do so many of us feel a desire to give ourselves over to something far far greater than ourselves, to merge with, to lose ourselves in something infinite and eternal and universal? What is it in us that makes us feel the presence of a great mystery we imagine we will never understand? Why is that mystery so compelling?
     Books and books have been written trying to answer those questions. Many more have been written by people trying to describe in words their direct experience of giving themselves over to the mystery. I certainly have no answers, but I feel the truth of those questions, the reality those questions touch. When I think about those questions, the deepest part of me is stirred. The need for answers slips away; I only want to be close to the mystery.
     
     

GLIMPSES OF SELF

I spent some time with a good friend today and, as we gathered our things to go out for dinner, I heard myself say to her, "I wish I could see myself in the way that you see me." My friend loves me, she thinks the best of me, she always wants me to do well and be all that she believes I can be. It stirred me deeply that she has this view of me; I realized how important it is to me that I know what she thinks of me, even when, especially when I'm so far from sharing her view. It's as if there are two versions of me, the one I carry around each day that's filled with doubt and frustrations, fears and hopelessness - and the other version my friend presents to me. For a moment, her view of me was concrete, real; I felt I could step into the person she sees as easily as stepping into a dress. Somehow I connected the self I feel myself to be and the self she sees and it filled me with elation. 
     We all need to be seen and acknowledged and sometimes we need to know what others see in us. Friends and lovers, the people who love us, give us a glimpse of our best selves and just that glimpse can flood us with energy, encourage us to reach to be that best self.

A PURPOSE TO THE PAIN

It's almost impossible to see myself as I was, but every once in a while I get a glimpse of myself in the past. I hear something I said and can only shake my head at how misguided or arrogant or self-serving. Oh, sister, you have a lot to learn. I don't mind these recollections, in fact I treasure them because they show me how far I've come. I may still have buckets of arrogance and judgment inside, but I know for a fact that I can say - without pride! with all humility! - that there's much less of it. And I like to see that, because it's so easy to say that I haven't changed, that I'm fighting the same old battles, trying to break free of the same old chains.
     The fact is I'm not the young woman who was full of pride and thought she was right about everything. Life has done to me what it does to everyone - it's brought times of suffering, and the need to find a way out of suffering made me willing to admit I couldn't change circumstances outside me and I couldn't fix me. I began to understand that the particulars of the challenges I face usually aren't as important as the fact that I face them. I began to understand that if I was open to a wider meaning than the needs and wants of my own little ego I could think of my experience as grist for the mill of my liberation. Spiritual freedom became the goal and suffering was a means to that end. My belief in spiritual freedom brought suffering down to size. The desire to learn how to navigate my way through pain and how to let go of all the things that blocked me was greater, larger than my suffering. There was now a purpose to my pain; the lessons of pain, learning how to surrender it, helped me toward freedom.   
     When your life has a purpose, a meaning deeper than surface thoughts, actions and feelings, you can bear whatever life brings. You can't escape pain but you can see its uses. You can let it teach you all it has to offer.

HUMILITY AND GRATITUDE

Many times when I'm in turmoil I'm also in isolation. It's as if the turmoil entrances me and I forget that there are people around me who can offer help. Even more, some part of me wants to hold the turmoil close because it's so familiar. So I don't reach out because I don't remember to, because I compulsively cling to what feels familiar even though it's painful, and because the turmoil tells me nothing will help. I can't change. Why even try?
     There is another kind of remembering that helps me push past the wall. Through grace or luck or accident or effort, there have been times when I've reached out to people and tried to connect with spiritual principles. There are times when I've been comforted, allowed myself to feel the love of friends, and been given insight and hope. I have had direct experience of that letting go.  I know what it feels like and I know it's possible, possible for me. That makes it easier for me to want to do what I can to break out of isolation and let go of turmoil.
     There are two principles that most often help me remember and let go. Humility brings me back into the world; it allows me to feel how powerless I am; it makes me right-sized as I feel myself bow down before the universe. It helps me surrender the frantic need turmoil produces in me, the need to solve all my problems by myself, and with solutions that spring from a fearful, isolated self. Humility creates an ease and relaxation in me, I can begin to take deep breaths, I have space to reach beyond the terrible prison of my own making. In humility, other perspectives open themselves to me, ones from which I can risk showing myself to other people and I can connect with hope. Feeling that process, that opening, leads me to the other principle that moves me out of pain.  It's gratitude, which I think of as the aristocrat of emotions because when I am brimming over with it, I feel an unexpected grandeur, an expansiveness that fills me with love and acceptance. I breath in and out saying "thank you" and there is no room for turmoil or fear or pain. There is only a going out of myself, a desire to feel the world around me, to feel it with love.
     This is an endlessly recurring part of the path - to suffer, then to remember there are things that will relieve the suffering, then to allow humility and gratitude to lead me toward them.