I was meditating this morning, focused on my breathing, when I heard a voice say, "Step out of your fear." I've heard it many times before and always see a circle of low stones, the size of cinder blocks, though made of stone. I see myself step over them and sometimes, when I've repeated, step out of your fear many times, and imagined myself stepping over the stones, fear leaves me and I calm down.
This morning, the stones changed into a doorway with all its symbolic meaning. I imagined myself walking through. But the image wasn't resonating in me. Then I saw a gate, a tall one attached to a fence or walls, a gate that clearly marked one side and the other, under a broad blue sky. I wanted to pass through and know myself in a different place.
I focused on that image for the rest of my meditation. I was looking for something I've felt before, the moment when suddenly there's no barrier between image and me. I've taken it fully into me, or it's taken me. In a sense, the kind of connection I mean is an obliteration, a sudden disappearance of the walls between me and the world, between me and self, and self and object. In short, a mystical experience. It didn't happen today but it's happened before and I'm sure it will again. I know I'll stumble into those moments of exquisite obliteration.
I come back from those moments with the seeds of change. I don't think about it. I don't make up stories around it; I don't think that moment means X, Y, or Z. I move through my days, busy with other things, but underneath, deep below the crust of self-consciousness, those seeds are growing. I don't realize it until one day I find myself doing things differently - writing more, cleaning things up immediately, making commitments and keeping them, not getting angry at the slow driver in front of me. I have more often a feeling of equanimity.
I don't know how it works. In that giving over of self, there is the sense of very deep expansion. Do the molecules in my body expand, reorder themselves, initiate new wiring? I'm not seriously considering that theory, but who knows? Stranger things have turned out to be true. Whatever the mystical moment is, it's the place where change begins, the place where healing at a depth I can't fathom takes root.
There are things I know with my mind and things I know with my body. I want both kinds of learning but for me it's in my body that deep connection comes into being. And sometimes, I who compulsively puts everything into words, want to be silent as I sit with that.
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
One night, lying in bed waiting for sleep, it suddenly came to me that whatever else had happened or would happen, I had made the crucial turning, done the work I was meant to do. I had climbed out of the bushes and gotten on the path.
Before that crucial turning, I felt fragmented, full of contradictions, self-loathing and despair that I would ever be able to change. I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me but I couldn't see what it was; at the heart of me there was a mystery I'd never solve because I didn't even know what was mysterious.
But I made the crucial turning. I had a spiritual awakening. I discovered something beyond and behind the problems and fears that filled my thinking, about myself and about the world. I'd come to understand certain universal spiritual principles - surrender, detachment, atonement, meditation, ongoing self-examination, service - and slowly those principles became the context of my life. When something bad happened, I asked myself, which one of those principles will help me get free? Do I need to surrender or let go or accept what is; do I need to ask, what is my part? Do I need to take a moment to sit quietly and find the energy of those principles inside me? How can I apply those principles so I can climb the ladder they provide to a higher perspective?
I have many regrets about the past and on most days I wish certain things were different now. I wish the blues and lethargy didn't come around to claim me. I wish my life had more continuity. I wish so many things. But there is a continuity, an unspooling ribbon beneath my feet and it supports every step I take. It's the path, the solid ground of faith in the principles that I've lived with for a very long time. Faith has grown in me because I've experienced time after time the solace and freedom they always give me when I remember to breathe deeply and make the effort to connect with them.
I'm a great procrastinator. Sometimes, I put off things I actually feel I want to do. I want to have a clean house, but I procrastinate about actually cleaning. I want to take those bags of clothes to the Goodwill, but I put off taking them. In fact, I can let them sit under the dining table for weeks. There are many others tasks I can postpone doing and for as long as it takes me to get fed up with what hasn't been done.
When I was in graduate school, I put off writing papers until the last minute. That "until the last minute" is very much a part of procrastinating. But maybe I was ruminating all the time I wasn't writing so by the time I sat down I had a good idea of what I wanted to say. That's putting a kind spin on it, but that might be the right thing to do - procrastination is a prejorative and I have more than enough issues I blame myself for, blame which generally makes it harder for me to do anything about what I'm blaming myself for in the first place.
There's another more subtle procrastination and it has to do with internal change. I want to overcome my habit of zoning out, of wanting only to lie on the bed, watch a video or just stare at the ceiling. I've come to call it a habit because in giving it a name, I bring it down to size and have a realistic chance of change. The only way to do that is to act in spite of my desire to zone out - but I push away, put off facing whatever it is at the heart of my resistance. Holding myself back is an action - not the one I think I want but a willed action nonetheless.
I've spent a very long time trying to get to the reasons I put off even important things and hold myself back from change. Why do I have this resistance? But there's another habit, my repeatedly telling myself I have this resistance and blaming myself for not pushing past it. That's a story I tell myself - I am the one who can't get past my resistance - and it's a habit of mind so ingrained, so huge inside me, I don't register how often I tell myself that story. I think it's reality, my only reality, and I despair of ever changing it.
I spend a lot of time analyzing myself, taking my temperature, trying to put into words what I think is going on inside me. I believe in self-reflection. But trying to understand the reasons for my procrastination hasn't helped me change all that much. But I've come to think of my self-analysis as a distraction. Looking at my procrastination from every angle keeps me entertained while I'm procrastinating. By this time, though, I know there's no magic, no fairy dust that will descend and make it easy for me to hop, skip and jump to act. If I want to get those bags of clothes to the Goodwill, I have to shake hands with my resistance, my habit of procrastination and see that I'm bigger, my being is larger than those two old friends. Then there's hope that I will take my eyes off the ceiling, stand up, drag the bags to the car, put the key in the ignition, shift into drive, and go. There's no help for it. Shift into drive, and go!
Years ago, I was on the cross town bus in New York. I can't remember where I was going - for that matter, I can't remember where I was coming from. The one thing I do remember is at some point looking up, and there standing across the aisle was the most beautiful boy I've ever seen. He had the kind of beauty that compels you to stare and I couldn't look away. He was tall, with rosy cheeks, light eyes, dark hair - I guessed he was fifteen or sixteen. I suddenly thought, he's at the peak of perfection, and he may never be this beautiful again.
Why do I remember him all this time later? I think it was shock that imprinted him on me, the shock of coming upon beauty suddenly, all unaware. The usual things float past on any given day but only a few of them actually register and fewer of them stay with me for very long. But looking up and seeing the boy split the day open. I wanted to drink him in, take him, the sight of him, inside me. I understand now that I did take him inside; his beauty has stayed with me.
A few years ago, I saw a show of photographs by Josef Koudelka. In black and white, there was a series he took of gypsies - musicians, little boys pretending to be musclemen, the small village in which they lived. Other series were landscapes with ancient ruins and portraits and some that were almost abstractions of light and shadow. Many were candid shots of people encountered on the street doing all the ordinary things people do, transformed by Koudelka's eye into time-stopped importance. It's not quite right to call them candids; they're very carefully framed, many with the converging lines of a deep perspective. All of them have a feeling of stillness and space. I thought they were art and they were beautiful, not only the images but the meticulous way they were A. There was a lusciousness to the blacks and that's what drew me. The depth of the blacks, their richness, gave me the sense that no matter how long I looked, I'd never come to their bottom. I couldn't look away.
Over the centuries, philosophers and others have filled the world with words about Beauty. A vast number of people have put out their own versions of Beauty's definitions and standards and aesthetics. I've read some of those words - writing and reading about Beauty is an interesting way to pass the time. You can talk about the Platonic ideal and what Kant and a good many others said about Beauty with a capital B, but those concepts are very far removed from the actual experience of beauty, the interplay between subject and object, of merging with the object, that creates the intense feeling I recognize as beauty. This is what the boy on the bus and the Koudelkas have in common. They gave me the same experience - they pierced me to the bone, stopped me in my tracks, made me unable to look away.
Of course I remember them. Beauty, that intense experience of beauty, turns out to be indelible.
I was talking to a friend this morning. She feels she isn't doing enough to find a job, not sending out enough resumes, or making enough calls. Well, I said, sometimes you actually aren't doing enough, but other times you're too much on your case. It's a fine line.
I thought about all the times I've teetered on that line. Usually, like my friend, the line is between: am I doing enough or do I have unrealistic goals and am''''' too much on my case? I can be doing something important to me, like writing, or something I wish I never had to do, like vacuuming, or just about anything at all, and I often get the feeling that the writing isn't deep enough or the vacuuming not complete enough. Is that right, or am I suffering from a perverse perfectionism, the kind that tells me everything I do falls short of some imagined, abstract standard buried deep inside.
There are other times when I teeter on the line because I have a decision to make. Should I walk away from this man because we've gone past the point of no return, or should I stay and try to work things out? Would it be better to leave this town where things never quite work out, or stay and try harder? My busy worried mind can come up with reasons for either side. So I remain teetering, caught by ambivalence in an anxiety of doubt.
And this despite my knowing by now that the problem isn't so much the relative merits on each side of the line - although they're important, too - it's ambivalence itself, a very old pattern, almost my default position. I learned to doubt myself as a child and that doubt has carried forward and still undermines the adult I am. It's the issue behind the issue. And I know my ego can convince me of anything, and then a moment later the reverse. I know that desire, self-interest and willfulness all cloud my view. It's easy to blame them, because I know they are very real, but knowing all that doesn't stop me from choosing one thing and quickly thinking the other is what I should really do. I teeter on the line.
What will help me act despite my ambivalence? What will give me the courage to get off the fine line. Many insights about my ego, fear and doubt have helped me chip away at. But there's something else. Actual change comes when I go deep inside, as deep as the ambivalence is. I have to sit with it, feel it and embrace it. I have to surrender my guilt that I have it, my despair that I can really change. The only way I've found to do that is to get quiet and try to clear my mind. To meditate. All through the day, I can take deep breaths and feel the expansiveness a clear mind brings. Eventually, I see that one side of the fine line emerges as the one I want to choose. I find the courage to act because experience has taught me that there aren't any mistakes, the kind that I thought would doom me or plunge me into the abyss. There is only what I do and choose, and if it doesn't work out disaster wont' come because I know there is a refuge inside me that will never let me down.
My ambivalence used to be a giant ball filling the sky but step by step I've brought it down to size until it's so small I can put it in my pocket, look forward and walk on.
The other day, I was reading about a man who had gotten lost on a hike in the mountains. I was most interested in how long it took him to realize that he was in fact lost. Evidently, we are always making mental maps of where we are - the familiar like your house or the way to your office. When we're in unfamiliar places, we need some time to orient ourselves. We try to construct maps of where we think we are and where we think we're going. The man in the mountains had a image of a lake that should have been up ahead. Even when he could see that the terrain wasn't matching what he knew it should be, he kept thinking the lake was just over the next ridge. He couldn't register where he was and continued to believe he was on his way to where he wanted to go. He rushed ahead trying to get over the next ridge and used up energy, made bad decisions about what he was capable of, ignored the growing danger of being alone in the woods.
He was lost in the mountains for five days and it was only on the fourth that he came fully to realize and to accept that he was lost. He stopped trying to make his surroundings conform to some idea in his head. He began to map out where he was and focus on what he needed to do to survive. Rescue came on the fifth day.
I hardly need pick out the metaphors. Rushing to make reality conform to my own mental maps. Continuing to deny the reality of where I actually am. Using up precious energy in denial. Wanting so much for something to true that I can't see what's in front of me.
In a sense, this is the human condition. Each of us wants what we want and sometimes desperately so. We all are sometimes blinded by our ego wants and needs and can't see beyond them. We can run for a long time before we notice we're not getting any place at all, that in fact we're lost, without a clue about what to do next. Anxiety and dread build because some part of me senses that something is wrong, I'm afraid to be "lost". But it turns out getting lost isn't the worst thing; the worst thing is continuing to insist that I know where I am.
Eventually, the bubble of denial has to burst and then comes the moment of surrender. It's the moment when I accept that I've been holding on to illusions and wasting my energy, my creativity, by insisting on my own distorted version of reality. I open my hand and anxiety and dread dissolve and I feel energy because they are no longer sapping me. I surrender and don't fall into the abyss. Instead, I float free, able to see what is. In that moment of clarity, a path opens up, one that will take me where I want to go. I find a place of refuge inside which is always my home. I can't get lost. I carry my home with me.
I've been thinking about survival again, both physical and psychological. It's impossible to predict who will survive a blizzard on Everest, or being castaway at sea or lost in a forest - any one of so many possibilities for being stranded and possibly hurt. But there are certain traits that all survivors share: an ability to come right into the moment and see the reality of what's happened and what in front of them needs to be done first. Staying calm, even when there's fear and anger. An assumption of responsibility, not looking for someone else to save them or someone to blame. Breaking things down to small, doable tasks. Believing they will succeed at the same time they're ready to accept whatever will happen. Being grateful they're alive. Aware of nature and its beauty.
While these are things that will help you survive accidents and natural disasters, they are also the stuff of psychological survival and spiritual growth. Come into the present. Find a place of refuge inside so you can let go of fear and anger. Take responsibility. Do what you can do on any given day. Open yourself to the beauty of this world. Have faith. Practice acceptance.
It's not surprising that all kinds of survivors have so much in common. No matter what we're facing, it's our hearts and spirits that determine the outcome. The good news is that all of them can be cultivated. We can keep them in mind as we go through the day, and as we go though whatever life brings.
This afternoon, a friend reminded me of the great spiritual principle, "Have no preference." Walk through the world and your life without desiring this or that, labeling good or bad, running away or running toward. Surrender all evaluating and judging. Be only a neutral filter of experience.
I understand no preference as something different from acceptance. Acceptance is what I come to after the fact; it's the step beyond experience when I process what has happened. Inevitably I label it as bad or hard and difficult and I work to find a way to be all right with it, with whatever happens no matter what.
But no preference is something I walk with in the moment. It's a constant state of presence. It isn't active or reactive; it's simply the membrane in my consciousness that lets the wind of experience flow through. Residing in no preference means it doesn't even occur to me to put labels on whatever happens in the world or inside me. All simply is.
I'm reminded of Emerson's transparent eyeball, something that doesn't reflect but absorbs. "...my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing: I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."
I like "absorb" instead of receive. To absorb is an action while to receive suggests passivity. I want to take everything in, to merge my consciousness with everything that is, to touch the universe free of my oh so very opinionated ego. In a sense, to have no preference is to have a mystical connection to experience, to exist in that vibrating state of intense clarity, to feel no separation between self and other.
Alas, I am rarely in that place of no preference. The dailiness of life is filled with choices and opinions. I couldn't get through if I didn't value or discount or judge experience as I go. But I often have a deep seated preference that gets me into trouble. I decide which way I want, even need things to go and if they don't I feel disappointed or rejected or inconsequential, some bad feeling that can be the start of a descent down a rabbit hole. I've come far enough to know that the way out of those bad feelings is to find acceptance of what is, and when I fully connect with it, bad feeling goes.
If I could live with no preference, so much of my pain in life would never exist in the first place. But I think the most I'll manage is a few moments of truly being a neutral filter. But I don't forget hose moments and they give me a goal, an ideal to aspire to. I know that it's the journey not the arrival that matters. It's the journey that makes me alive.
Sometimes, I feel I can talk about anything. Pick a word or a phrase and I'm off and running, discovering as I talk the way one thing leads to another and, if I keep the chain going long enough, coming to something interesting.
There are other times when I feel I have nothing to say at all. My mind is blank and I lack the energy to focus it in on anything. I'm in the fog. I sense that words, images, ideas are flowing through but I barely catch any of it. That's the purpose of the fog; it keeps me in that strange state between focused thought and a constant flow of undifferentiated consciousness.
I think of being in the fog as time-wasting even though I know how productive it can be. My subconscious is churning and occasionally I catch a word or image that releases the energy I need to think about it. I begin talking to myself and one thing leads to another. When that happens, I can feel my insides sitting up, becoming alert. I come out of the fog into clarity. They are each other's flip side.
But I can't rely on the occasional nugget in the fog. If I want to get anything done, I have to purposely focus. That focusing is coming into the moment; it's simply being present, aware of being present. So much of that state is about doing, as if sharpening my thoughts, reaching for clarity brings out the desire in me to act, to think or do something concrete, substantial, an act of mind or body that leads me forward toward something productive.
I let myself slip too easily into the fog. It's an old habit that I'll only break if I practice coming into the present and focusing, through meditation, but also just by looking at the things in front of me, my laptop, my fingers pressing on the keys. That reminds me of QWERTY and the fact that I actually took a typing course in high school and how my parents said I didn't have to go to college - I could go to secretarial school instead, and that was typical of them - not understanding who I was and what I wanted. And how much of a hindrance that was and still is. And...And...And.
One thing always leads to another.
