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.
Showing posts with label powerlessness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label powerlessness. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
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.
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.
Monday, February 15, 2016
NOT YET
There's a famous section in St. Augustine's Confessions. He's had a wild youth - drink, women, and other things. Now, he's slowly coming to his God. But some part of him is still resisting. He finds himself praying: I most wretched in my early youth had begged chastity of Thee and said, "Give me chastity and continency, only not yet." He doesn't want God to cure him too soon; he still wants what he calls "the disease of concupiscence" to be satisfied rather than extinguished.
I so understand that "not yet." Any addict (and others) knows that terrible ambivalence - the desire to change and the fear of change. Who will I be without my old habits, whatever it is I lean upon? How will I get through? I'm the one who...how will I give up that story I tell myself? These questions come even when we sincerely want to change.
What takes us across? I wish I knew and could bottle it and hand out free samples. Some people spend their lives without having gotten across while others do; it's a mystery why that should be. I used to think it had something to do with intelligence or temperament or something else bred in the bone. But when I look around at people who have left ambivalence behind and managed to surrender, I see very few common denominators. There is probably the same percentage of good guys and bad guys as in the rest of the population. That's just the way it is.
Some people never come to the bottom of their self-destruction but some people do and they're the lucky ones. Surrender, the admission of powerlessness, is the moment when "I can't do this anymore" reverberates through your being. There's nothing else to do but to give up and turn forward, even when the hope that there is another way is faint and flickering.
Why for some and not others? Some would call it grace. Whatever it is, it's happened for me and I don't take any credit for it. All I did was pay attention and let the path unfold. Of course, that's not "all." At every significant turning, I was willing to surrender. Why? Well, that's the mystery.
I so understand that "not yet." Any addict (and others) knows that terrible ambivalence - the desire to change and the fear of change. Who will I be without my old habits, whatever it is I lean upon? How will I get through? I'm the one who...how will I give up that story I tell myself? These questions come even when we sincerely want to change.
What takes us across? I wish I knew and could bottle it and hand out free samples. Some people spend their lives without having gotten across while others do; it's a mystery why that should be. I used to think it had something to do with intelligence or temperament or something else bred in the bone. But when I look around at people who have left ambivalence behind and managed to surrender, I see very few common denominators. There is probably the same percentage of good guys and bad guys as in the rest of the population. That's just the way it is.
Some people never come to the bottom of their self-destruction but some people do and they're the lucky ones. Surrender, the admission of powerlessness, is the moment when "I can't do this anymore" reverberates through your being. There's nothing else to do but to give up and turn forward, even when the hope that there is another way is faint and flickering.
Why for some and not others? Some would call it grace. Whatever it is, it's happened for me and I don't take any credit for it. All I did was pay attention and let the path unfold. Of course, that's not "all." At every significant turning, I was willing to surrender. Why? Well, that's the mystery.
Friday, February 5, 2016
POWERLESSNESS
Isolation is one of my default settings. I distinguish between that and solitude - solitude is the alone time everyone needs - to reflect, create, calm down. My isolation is of another order - it's the thing that makes it hard for me to get out the door or initiate plans with people and stay in touch with them even when I want to. It's what keeps me invisible - lets me be invisible. It's a feeling that descends on me as soon as I turn away from people, away from the world.
There's no point outlining the anatomy of my urge, need, compulsion to isolate. I know enough about it; I want to know how to change. Powerlessness is one way in. Not the kind of powerlessness that's an admission of defeat, or enslavement or in fact anything negative. My admission of powerlessness is an opening. It allows me to take my white-knuckled hands off the frantic need to figure things out and change myself in an instant. There is no kindness to myself in that and it doesn't help in any case. Change doesn't come when the knives are out.
The powerlessness I mean creates a enough space so that I can take a deep breath and relax into the moment, this moment. Willfulness, the endless jockeying of my mind looking for a sense of control - all that dissolves and I feel myself expand. That's where the kindness is, the compassion. Without the calm that comes when I allow myself to feel that kindness, there's no chance at all that anything will change.
There's no point outlining the anatomy of my urge, need, compulsion to isolate. I know enough about it; I want to know how to change. Powerlessness is one way in. Not the kind of powerlessness that's an admission of defeat, or enslavement or in fact anything negative. My admission of powerlessness is an opening. It allows me to take my white-knuckled hands off the frantic need to figure things out and change myself in an instant. There is no kindness to myself in that and it doesn't help in any case. Change doesn't come when the knives are out.
The powerlessness I mean creates a enough space so that I can take a deep breath and relax into the moment, this moment. Willfulness, the endless jockeying of my mind looking for a sense of control - all that dissolves and I feel myself expand. That's where the kindness is, the compassion. Without the calm that comes when I allow myself to feel that kindness, there's no chance at all that anything will change.
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