One of the great insights that has served me well is, there is no truth, only perspective, and perspective is subject to change. It's always possible that what I believe today may change tomorrow. There may be new information, or an insight into what something in my past actually meant, or the realization of how distorted my perception has been. I can always learn something new, about myself and about the world, and come to see things in a whole new light. I can revise my thinking. My consciousness can expand.
When I find myself vehemently declaring I'm right, I try to remind myself that I may come to doubt the rightness of what I say. When I'm feeling blue, I remind myself that I can find another perspective on whatever is bringing me down. When someone is spouting what I judge to be drivel, I remind myself that no one, least of all me, has a lock on the truth, and this drivel-spouting someone may turn out to be someone I admire and may have something to teach me.
There is an aspect of this insight that all beliefs can change which is very disturbing to some people. If there is no Truth with a capital T, what is there to hold on to? We want an anchor, to receive the message that than create it. We want something outside ourselves that is carved in stone so we can feel safe, protected, armed with the Truth. This is why some people fight so hard against the idea of evolution. The model of existence as a slow but constant flow, as an evolution that is random and not heading toward any particular end, means that there is nothing unchanging to hold on to. Nothing is eternal. There is no solid permanent ground. If that's true, what is there to have faith in and how do we justify faith at all?
I'm going to leave those particular questions for another day. In any case, there are enough philosophers, psychologists, theologians and ethicists preoccupied with getting to the bottom of them, as if such a bottom exists. I'll just talk about my own experience. Coming to understand that all of life is an evolution, that my own life is constantly evolving has liberated me. It has given me humility because I see that I might not have enough information and it's possible I'll turn out to be wrong. It's produced empathy for another person because once I say I may not know it all, it makes me able actually to see and hear the person standing in front of me, without judgment or the need to prevail. It leads me to compassion.
Basho wrote that every day is a journey and the journey itself is home. That is the insight at the heart of so many spiritual practices. My life is movement. Experience passes through me. The meaning of my life is in how I open myself to experience and stay open to learn from it.
I've been feeling gratitude all day for how far away I've come from fear, what I call my terminal self-consciousness, second guessing my choices, being on my case so much more than off it, and many other things that were keeping me from feeling equanimity - at least from time to time. Fear made me a block of ice, unable to melt enough to learn something new. I didn't know it, but I was looking for faith, some hope that there was a benevolent force in the universe that wanted me, would help me, to be all right.
My fear was an unchanging oppression but faith was not. Faith grew and for every inch it gained, fear lost an inch as well. Slowly, growing faith brought my fear down to size, until I was able to find the courage to soften, to become receptive, to take the risk of surrendering so that something else, aside from me, could come in and help me change. I began to experience for myself the power of spiritual principles - powerlessness and surrender, faith and courage, belief in something beyond myself, that benevolent power for change.
No wonder I'm often flooded with gratitude. I've found the path to peace and acceptance even though sometimes it takes me a while to get there. When I feel gratitude, I'm thinking about all I have, not what I don't have. Gratitude comes out of the deepest part of me and fills me with love for the world. It has the expansiveness, the grandeur of deep connection to the world. I call it the aristocrat of emotions.
Sometimes, when I'm out and about, in the market or on the street, I see a mother and child who bring me to a stop. The mother is gazing directly into the eyes of her child and smiling, the child is doing the same and they're both happy. It's a completely ordinary moment, a mother and child sharing an intimate gaze, the look of security and mutual pleasure.
I don't remember my mother ever looking at me like that - gazing directly at me with pleasure and encouragement, making me for a moment the focus of her gaze. Maybe there were times when she did look at me that way, but I'll never know that objective truth. What I know is the truth I feel inside me, the image I have of her distracted by anxiety, always worried something is wrong and something bad will happen.
Years ago, I saw a documentary about a clinic in Toronto that works with mothers and babies who have attachment problems. They showed the first session of a mother and her toddler; during the whole session the mother ignored the child who didn't stop climbing all over her trying to get her attention. Over the course of a few sessions, the therapists very gently pointed out certain behaviors to the mother and suggested different ways for her to act. In a surprisingly short time, at the last session, the mother was paying close attention to the child, and the child was calm, resting contentedly next to her. It made me cry, that such a small consistent change in behavior could make such an enormous difference to the child. Why hadn't there been someone to show my mother how to make a difference for me?
In the coming days, I was as low as I've ever been. I was bereft, desolate, feeling the knife of despair for what I had never had - the sense that someone loved me unconditionally, acknowledged me, took delight in my existence. Added to that was not only the abyss of loss but also a great shame, as if the lack of my mother's gaze was my fault. It was classic, the way I had taken in the blame - and was still feeling it - even though I knew the problem was my mother's and not mine.
I saw very clearly what the absence of that gaze had done to the many aspects of my life, and I realized how my shame had imprisoned me in the very sense of loss I wanted so much to transcend. I had no part in my mother's inability to see me completely but I did very much have a part in the blame and shame I had laid upon myself. As long as they controlled me, I wouldn't be able to leave that very early wound behind. I wouldn't be able to heal.
I wish I could say that the realization of my imprisoning shame turned on the light and brought the changes I sought. But in fact, the hard work was all ahead. I had to find a way to accept the loss of what every child needs, and to neutralize my shame at being the one who wasn't loved. The search for psychological insight was useful but ultimately words and concepts only kept me at a distance. I needed to find the courage to feel what was under all my ideas, to let go and feel the whole constellation of rage, despair, shame and hopelessness that was always flowing like lava beneath the surface. I needed to find faith that if I let all of that out, I wouldn't be annihilated, wouldn't melt away like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz until there was nothing left but my hat of shame.
Staying on the path to courage and faith has become the main commitment in my life. To go on when progress is minute and slow, to keep on in the face of fear - to feel the certainty of a refuge inside me and the belief that I'm not walking this path alone - that is at once the source and the result of any change I've found. I'm freer than I've ever been and knowing what more freedom feels like, I want to keep walking, to find even more.
As a queen sits down, knowing that a chair will be there,
Or a general raises his hand and is given the field- glasses,
Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.
Something will come to you.
Those are the opening lines of "Walking to Sleep," a poem by Richard Wilbur. They remind me of when I was in graduate school and had paper after paper to write. With experience, I realized that even when I felt overwhelmed by the reading or was certain I had nothing of interest to say, if I sat in front of the computer - stayed in the chair - something would come to me and lead me on from there. As if obeying an order from the Red Queen in "Alice In Wonderland," I would start at the beginning, work through the middle and stop when I came to the end. I developed some faith that if I focused, something would come.
There is a deeper meaning to those lines; faith is the real topic Wilbur writes about. "Step off assuredly..." Step off - not merely face, but step off into the blankness, give yourself up to it, let yourself be submerged in that still, clear pool, that cloud of unknowing. And be assured, step gingerly, with confidence, in faith. Free yourself...and something will come.
In fact, we are all stepping off from moment to moment; we step off into what we don't know and can't see; we are always risking going forward into the unknown. I may do it with confidence or I may do it with fear, but confidence and fear are two sides of an ancient coin that comes from the past. I want to leave both of them behind, to face the future with the freedom of the blank, free of opinions and ideas that can only narrow my view. Faith is the ledge I step off from. Without it, I would be paralyzed, unable to take a step at all, and then I would miss the world as it reveals itself to me. I would miss all that might, undoubtedly shall come to me.
