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“The closer we get to uncovering ourselves, the more difficult it becomes to face the truth. Sooner or later we stop running, out of sheer exhaustion and desperation, and turn around to face our image. The pain that we go through during this revelation is negligible compared to the state of grace that we enter into when we have finally moved on.”
–Christiane Northrup, MD, specializes in women’s health issues.
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Rumi says:
“Don’t look at your form, however ugly or beautiful. Look at love and at the aim of your quest. … O you whose lips are parched, keep looking for water. Those parched lips are proof that eventually you will reach the source.”
This relates to the post that follows.
John O’Donohue writes: “The body is … very truthful. You know from your own life that your body rarely lies. Your mind can deceive you and put all kinds of barriers between you and your nature; but your body does not lie. Your body tells you, if you attend to it, how your life is and whether you are living from your soul or from the labyrinth of negativity. The body also has a wonderful intelligence. All our movements, indeed everything we do, demands the refined and detailed cooperation between each of our senses.”
source: Anam Cara: a book of Celtic wisdom. (1984). Harper, p.48. image: David by Michelangelo (1504, Florence).
Here’s my dilemma. Again and again I meet people (I’m speaking of friends here) who tell me of a book or a speaker or an event which causes them to be excited. Something has touched them, stirred hope and enthusiasm, offered a way out of everyday chaos. My first reaction is not sympathetic joy* (Mitfreude in my old German) but a blend of sadness and envy … and the urge to offer bits of I-have-been-there wisdom. But I hold back, not sure how (or whether, or even why) to say anything.
For most of my adult life I’ve looked to the outside, to others, for ways to unearth and unload my burdens–only to discover, at long last, that the door to healing lies deep within my own heart. Granted, it took me six decades of floundering, wandering, seeking to come to that realization. Having been raised in the RC church, with its emphasis on “God is up there,” conditioned me to look that way. Gingerly testing the notions that “the Kingdom of God is within” and “You are Buddha” has led to neither paradise nor nirvana. A seemingly bottomless reservoir of pain keeps begging for attention, age-old wounds require attendance, and heaps of (im-)perfection long to be embraced. (I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s all my “stuff” or whether I’m picking it up from others or had it dumped on me in vivo; you know, as original sin or karma.)
Jean Vanier puts it this way: ”In our times there is a danger of thinking that everyone may become perfectly healed and find perfect unity within themselves and with others. This type of idealism is rampant everywhere. … And each day new techniques are born which will bring about this long-awaited healing. Personally I am more and more convinced that there is no perfect healing. Each human being carries their own wounds, their own difficulties of relationships and their own anguishes. It is a question of living day by day with this reality and not in a state of illusion …” (my emphasis**).
* In Buddhist practice, sympathetic joy is called mudita, a Sanskrit word meaning rejoicing in others’ good fortune. It is traditionally regarded as the most difficult of the four virtues or “sublime attitudes” for a practitioner to cultivate. The others are loving-kindness or benevolence, compassion, and equanimity. To show mudita is to celebrate happiness and achievement in others even when we are facing tragedy ourselves.
** See also related posts by typing “wounded” in the Search box at the top-right corner of this page.
Jean Vanier. (1986). Man and women he made them. p.3-4.
Kabir was the son of a Moslem weaver who lived in the holy city of Benares in the fifteenth century. His spiritual growth was influenced by Sufi poets and ideas of the Hindus. In this poem Kabir point to the centre of y/our heart where everything resides … always has, always will.
Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.
The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.
And the music from the strings no one touches,
and the source of all water.
If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.
The Kabir book: forty-four ecstatic poems by Kabir. Version by Robert Bly. (1977). Boston: Beacon Press, p 6.
Yesterday’s poem invites us to pay attention to what occurs in each moment: trees, water, rushes, boat, companion, wind, motion, stillness, movement, breath, thoughts, memories … It reminds me to let go of the life-long habit of gauging my worth by some external standard and measurable outcome.
Don’t get me wrong: these are essential components of living in the world, of meeting obligations, paying bills, “making a living.” It’s when they dominate and we lose contact with a simple blade of grass, our own breath, and the joys and pains of those near us – then we’re in danger of becoming an alien to ourselves. Fortunately, the gate is right there: turn towards it now. Sit still for a bit. Find your breath, notice your abdomen’s rising and falling. Be a witness to your own life at this moment.
“Becoming mindful has to do with letting go of ambitions to control, solve problems, or achieve anything. Instead we choose to bear witness. A witness … is passive in the sense of deliberately not manufacturing anything. Rather a witness is willing to observe, be receptive to, and learn from whatever arises. … We enter into the confusion and mystery of whatever is happening with a curious, experimental attitude, not knowing what might be discovered, but welcoming, appreciating, and savouring what is. We slow down, and let go of automatic reactions that normally tell us what something is and what it means.” –Greg Johanson & Ron Kurtz. (1991). Grace unfolding: psychotherapy in the spirit of the Tao-te ching. Belltower, p.13
These lines are in David Whyte’s poem “What to remember when waking”:
You are not / a troubled guest / on this earth, / you are not / an accident / amidst other accidents / you were invited / from another and greater night / than the one / from which / you have just emerged.
With so much talk about “self-improvement” and “change is good” (especially as new year’s resolutions are coming home to roost), it is tempting to think that there’s something wrong with me, that I’m flawed somehow, not good enough. And then I notice (or, as happened today, when someone reminded me) how easily I project this view from myself unto others.
Whenever I catch myself doing this (and I’m not good at that J), I turn to a question which Zen Teacher Joko Beck gives her students: What is this? What is it that bothers me? How does it bother me? What or whom does that remind me of?
I stay clear of why-questions as they tend to, at least for me, lead to because-answers, get me thinking about problems and ways to fix them rather than allowing me to listen to what actually is at that moment.
Then, after a few moment of this gentle excavating, I ask the next question: What is going on right now? Where—in my heart, my body, my feelings—do emptiness, longing, confusion, sadness, loneliness, despair, etc. reside? As my breath of awareness washes through a lifetime of deposits, I open up–allowing myself to be taught by my body, by the Self which knows. Rainer Maria Rilke writes:
I love the dark hours of my being. / My mind deepens into them. / There I can find, as in old letters, / the days of my life, already lived, / and held like a legend, and understood. / Then knowing comes / I can open / to another life that’s wide and timeless.
D. Whyte (2004). The House of Belonging, p.27; A. Barrows & J. Macy (1996). Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love poems to God, p.51
. Look for this gate for related topics in previous posts.
A few months ago, in the middle of the devastating experience of losing a beloved (see tab “grieving”), my therapist-guide and I came upon a gate. On the one side utter darkness, the place where my heart resided then. On the other side of the gate, a vast landscape stretched in all directions, as wide as the eyes could see, and beyond. There I stood, for the longest time, my left hand resting on top of the gate (the kind you’d find at the entrance to a garden, no higher than 3-4 feet). My body was half turned to the dark side, my head the other way, eyes looking straight ahead, attracted to the light, longing to proceed but hesitating to expose the fragile ego. I (we) remained standing at the threshold for a quite a while (for three weeks as I remember), repeatedly testing the possibilities of moving through the opening, mindful not to rush, not to frighten the fragile heart.
In The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade tells us, “The threshold is the limit, the boundary, the frontier that distinguishes and opposes two worlds–and at the same time is the paradoxical place where those worlds communicate, where passages from the profane to the sacred world become possible.”
Angeles Arrien, a cultural anthropologist and one of my teachers in the Metta program, writes, “Because we live in a society that has lost many traditional initiation rituals, we have lost the ability to recognize the signs that foreshadow transition–the modern term for initiation. We may realize that we are going though a transition, or that we are changing. But because we are unfamiliar with initiatory rites, we do not perceive that we stand at the gate. We do not comprehend that we need to open it and do the required … integrative work” (The second half of life: gates of wisdom, 2007, p.7).
The day you were born
a ladder was set up to help you
escape from this world.
–Rumi
Again, I invite you to read and re-read these quotes … and once more … deliberately and aloud. What do you hear? What do you see? What sensations arise in your body? What would you say is the work that lies ahead? If there is/were a gate, what would look like? Describe it; sketch it with pen or coloured felt pens. Where are you in relation to that gate, where do you stand, where are your feet and where your hands? What feelings arise as you contemplate this gate and what it ‘contains’ ,,, and what it foreshadows?
Look for this gate for related topics in previous posts
Do you ever make (or think about making) New Year’s resolutions? It seems natural to reflect on life’s path as one stretch ends and another begins. My wish for you is that you’ll take a few moments each day–undisturbed, in a quiet place, for yourself alone–to reflect on where you are in your life’s journey right now. That, by itself, is a worthy and necessary act: instead of rushing into yet another plan, to stand still and see what is.
If you’re game, please read each day’s offering (starting with yesterday’s post ”door number one”) and let it sink in. Read it once, read it twice. Read it aloud as poetry is meant to be read. Listen to your own voice saying the words. When the Inner Critic pipes up (as it will, that’s its purpose) gently acknowledge its presence and ask for time-out (which you are entitled to any time you wish). Exhale and read with your mind and your heart. Listen also with your body as it expands and retracts around certain words and images.
Some texts will speak to you immediately, others will seem inappropriate to your view of things. Regardless, allow words and their meaning to penetrate your armour, to find their own way in. That’s all you need to do. You do not have to “make sense” of everything right away. Here’s then is today’s reading:
Henri Nouwen writes: “You keep listening to those who seem to reject you. But they never speak about you. They speak about their own limitations. They confess their poverty in the face of your needs and desires. They simply ask for your compassion. They do not say that you’re bad, ugly, or despicable. They say only that you are asking for something they cannot give and that they need to get some distance from you to survive emotionally. The sadness is that you perceive their necessary withdrawal as a rejection of you instead of as a call to return home and discover there your true belovedness” Nouwen, H.J.M (1997). The inner voice of love: a journey through anguish to freedom, p.12.
Each day from now into the New Year, I plan to post a quote or poem for reflection and encouragement. Please join me in letting these words find their way to where our deepest desires reside.
Either you will
Go through this door
Or you will not go through.
If you go through
There is always the risk
Of remembering your name.
Things look at you doubly
And you must look back
And let them happen.
If you do not go through
It is possible
To live worthily
To maintain your attitudes
To hold your position
To die bravely
But much will blind you
Much will evade you,
At what cost who knows?
The door itself
Makes no promises.
It is only a door.
I thank John Jeffery for inspiring me to make this offering. A fellow-graduate of the Metta Institute, John leads wilderness retreats for end-of-life caregivers and individuals with illness.
