Embracing Humanity's Pain - a meandering...

I wrote this piece about 13 years ago in the aftermath of Hurricane
Sandy that devastated parts of the Northeast in the U.S.  It seemed
relevant to resurrect it with what is going on in the world today,
with floods, fire, famine and ongoing, endless wars -
the state of humanity...

~

The images on TV back then of people on the East coast left broken
 and brokenhearted - calling out for assistance, as if they had been
abandoned - touched my heart, touching that same feeling of
abandonment deep within myself somewhere.  And I wonder, how
could I live in a contemplative bubble that I am wont to do - close
myself off to what is happening in the world, under the guise of
"spirituality"?  I can't.  There is no either/or.  It's all one Life living
ItSelf out here - just as it is...  Pain and Peace...  And maybe it's
really that I want to protect myself from feeling my own pain.
That's what global pain does.  It gets us in touch with our own
pain, our own vulnerability, our own helplessness to know what
to do for a hurting world, let alone our own pain.

I saw a woman on TV back then helping in the clean-up effort in
her own coastal town - crying - saying - "I want to go home, but
there is no home.  It's gone."  I turned away and cried silently in
my heart.  I can't imagine the devastation to the psyche that no
amount of religious platitudes of non-attachment, or non-dual
refrains of: there is no "me" who wants to go home - can assuage.
It is a deep wound of the heart to lose one's sense of "Home" -
to *feel* that sense of separation and loss.  I'm sure some have
 felt that in one form or another at some time in our lives,
whether it was a loss of a physical place, a person, or an
emotional/spiritual sense of "Home" - that led to a sense of
 deep "homesickness" of the heart.

And a lot of us know people in our daily lives who need our
empathy and our compassion, who have lost their sense of
"Home", feeling abandoned by "God" (however we know that
to be) - losing that felt sense of connection adrift in their lives. 
 I understand this deep wound.  I know such people. 
 I've been there.  I empathize.
  It is a helpless feeling not knowing how to help them. 
 It's as if some people's pain is so deep , it cannot be mended. 
 It is not a tangible "fix" on a practical level, or seemingly a
"spiritual"one either.  It is a deep pain of the psyche.   
It is a loss of "Home" - a loss of one's internal bearing of the
Spirit;an insatiable pain that no one and nothing can fill.  I'm
sure you've met them too. The ones whose hearts cry the cry
of desperation in a dark wilderness of the mind, like sleep
 deprivation, leaving a deep hollow hunger within. 
 How do we help these wounded wanderers?
  Like the displaced people of Palestine, and
 Ukraine, in their current reality... 
Breaks my Heart again...

It all trickles down, pain upon pain - or maybe I sound too morbid -
too dramatic...  But it's true.  We are all impacted by the pain of
others, by the global, collective pain of a wounded world.  One
person's pain affects us all.  And yet, many times, as I have
discovered, we are helpless to end the pain, and so we distract
ourselves from the pain, theirs and our own, by shutting it out,
and shutting down; by pretending that it is all a grand illusion,
a dream that we can detach from.  I have done it too, not wanting
to experience the pain.  But the pain ripples out anyway - through
humanity.  How can we *not* be affected - how can we not allow
ourselves to *feel* it...

Humanity's pain *is* my/our pain.  It's all a reflection.  And lofty
beliefs and "spiritual" words are dismissive, not helpful, because
they cannot be heard, or received by those caught in their deep pain...
Humanity's pain needs the embrace of an empathetic heart of
compassion...

~

There's nothing I can offer
that buffers the pain
that softens the heartache,
or heals the wounds -

And yes, at times I don't want
to feel others' pain,
because it is too overwhelming...

And because I have my own pain.

And what to do with that as well...

I sit with it and let it speak,
let it cry,
let it take me to the "mothering":
womb of the Silence of all Life,
and rest there - waiting;
petitioning the Cosmic Energies,
neither male nor female,
to intervene,
on behalf of
a suffering world.

Sometimes
that's all I can do...

When the "practical"
fails to touch the soul...

We pray...

And that is our offering
of love...

Mystic Meandering
2012

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Everyone Is Wounded - Rachel Naomi Remen

All people are wounded, but people who come here can't cover
it up the way the rest do.  Everybody has pain, everybody is
wounded.  And because [Commonweal] participants can't cover up
 their woundedness now that they have cancer, they can trust each
other. I can trust another person only if I can sense that they, too
have woundedness, have pain, have fear.

[When you have cancer, or other chronic or serious illness]
you feel separated from the whole  human race.  You feel
 as though you're looking at the world through plate glass. 
You can see other people, but you feel as if you can't touch them
 or be with them, because you are different.  They say that the
sense of isolation, of being separated from people who are
well, is as painful as chemotherapy, as cancer itself...

Years ago, when I was Associate Director of the pediatric
clinics at the Stanford Medical School, one of my
colleagues, Marshall Klaus, did a study which at the time
was extremely innovative.  He was chief of the intensive
care nursery, where all the babies were these tiny little
people you could hold in your hand.  Each incubator was
surrounded by shifts of people and millions of dollars worth
of equipment.  Everything was high-tech. Of course, we
didn't touch these infants because we'd get germs on them.
But Klaus decided to do an experiment in which half the
babies in the nursery would be treated as usual, and the 
other half would be touched for fifteen minutes every few
hours.  You'd take your pinky finger and rub it up and down
the little baby's back.  And we discovered that the babies
that were touched survived better.  No one knows why.
Maybe there's something about touching that strengthens
the will to live.  Maybe isolation weakens us.

Rachel Naomi Remen
Cofounder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program,
as interviewed by Bill Moyers in
Healing and the Mind

with thanks to Rod MacIver 
at Heron Dance
Rod is a survivor of 4th stage Lymphoma.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

"People don't care how much you know,
until they know how much you care."

whatever happened to compassion...

 

Fully Human, Fully Divine - Kathleen Knipp

Without ignoring or denying the story of our lives, we
can relax and experience that which is beyond story
through the simple practice of attuning to body and breath.
We can open the lens wider than our dramas and traumas
and reconnect with Source.

We find ourselves in our humanness, our extraordinary
fragility and our extraordinary resiliency - both.  And can,
without denying the story of "my life", the events, the
response I may be having to these events, without ignoring
that, without denying that, we can also open to that which
is beyond this story.  And it is so easy to forget, it's so easy
to have the events of our lives move into the foreground and
just fill the whole field with the dramas and traumas.  And
without ignoring or denying them, we can open the lens
wider and we can, through practice, reconnect with our Source.
It might not be easy.  We do that by beginning to feel our bodies,
feeling each part of the body and experience the sensations,
using all of our senses, while also accessing our inner sanctuary
to feel supported.

Noticing the breath and falling into the rhythmic cycling of
the breath, in a moment of suspension where we can rest.
When life presents its challenges, which it does, we can rest
in the rhythm of the breath - feel its caress.

...[there] may be the sense of slipping below the surface of
turbulence.  Sinking deeper and deeper to an absolute stillness.
Stillness so profound that it is impossible to disturb that which
is beyond time, sinking deeper to the very Source.  The Source
that reveals itself and conceals itself and emerges in infinite
forms... and begin to sense the infinite and the finite expression
as you - this unique set of patterns that form into a sense of me...

Kathleen Knipp
Excerpt from a Yoga Nidra Meditation
Fully Human, Fully Divine

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Shared Brokeness - Desmond Tutu

We are able to forgive because we are able to
recognize our shared humanity.  We are able to
recognize that we are all fragile, vulnerable,
flawed human beings capable of thoughtlessness
and cruelty.  We also recognize that no one is born
evil and that we are all more than the worst thing
we have done in our lives.

A human life is a great mixture of goodness, beauty
cruelty, heartbreak, indifference, love, and so much more.
We want to divide the good from the bad, the saints from
the sinners, but we cannot.  All of us share the core qualities
of our human nature, and so sometimes we are generous
and sometimes selfish.  Sometimes we are thoughtful and
other times thoughtless, sometimes we are kind and sometimes
cruel.  This is not a belief.  This is a fact.

If we look at any hurt, we can see a larger context in which
the hurt happened.  If we look at any perpetrator, we can
discover a story that tells us something about what led up
to that person causing harm.  It doesn't justify the person's
actions; it does provide some context...

No one is born a liar or a rapist or a terrorist.  No one is born
full of hatred.  No one is born full of violence.  No one is
born in any less glory or goodness than you or I.

But on any given day, in any given situation, in any painful
life experience, this glory and goodness can be forgotten,
obscured, or lost.  We can easily be hurt and broken, and
it is good to remember that we can just as easily be the 
ones who have done the hurting and the breaking.  We are
all members of the same human family...

In seeing the many ways we are similar and how our lives
are inextricably linked, we can find empathy and compassion.
In finding empathy and compassion, we are able to move
in the direction of forgiving.

Ultimately it is humble awareness of our own humanity
that allows us to forgive:

We are, every one of us flawed and so very fragile.  I know
that, were I born a member of the white ruling class at that
time in South Africa's past, I might easily have treated someone
with the same dismissive disdain with which I was treated.  I
know given the same pressures and circumstances, I am capable
of the same monstrous acts as any other human on this 
achingly beautiful planet.  It is this knowledge of my own frailty
that helps me find compassion, empathy and similarity,
and forgiveness for the frailty and cruelty of others.

Desmond Tutu
and Mpho A. Tutu

from: The Book of Forgiving:
The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves
and the World

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

Photo - thanks to Uradiance

 

Because We Are Human - Dr. Jacqui Lewis

I think grief puts us in touch with our vulnerabilities.
I think the feeling of grief lets us know the power of wounds
to shape our stories.  I think it lets us know how capable we
are of having our hearts broken and our feelings hurt.

I think it lets us know the link that we each have because we're
human.  Because we're human, we hurt.  Because we're human,
we have tears to cry.  Because we're human, our hearts are
broken.  Because we're human, we understand that loss is a
universal language.  Everybody grieves.

All humanity grieves,  All of us have setbacks, broken dreams.
All of us have broken relationships or unrealized possibilities.
All of us have bodies that just don't do what they used to do.
Though grief is personal, every person grieves.

Dr. Jacqui Lewis

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

An Inner Whisper - John O'Donohue

Human identity is complex.  Nothing is ever given simply
or immediately.  Even the simplest act of perception has
many layers... Time and memory often reveal things later
that were staring us in the eye, but we never noticed them.
The quest for the truth of things is never ending.  Every
experience is open to countless readings and interpretations.
We never see a thing completely.  In sure anticipation, our
eyes have always already altered what awaits our gaze.
The search for truth is difficult and uncomfortable.  Because
the mystery is too much for us, we may opt to settle for
the surface of things.  Comfort becomes more important than
true presence.  This is precisely why we need to hear the
discerning voice.

Somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice.  This
voice distrusts the status quo.  It sounds out the falsity in
things and encourages the dissent from the images things
tend to assume.  It underlines the secret crevices where the
surface has become strained.  It advises distance and opens
up a new perspective through which the concealed meaning
 of a situation might emerge... Its intention is to keep the heart
clean and clear.  This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or
known to others outside...  Yet much depends on that small
voice.  The truth of its whisper marks the line between honor
and egoism, kindness and chaos.  In extreme situations,
which have been emptied of all shelter and tenderness,
that small voice whispers from somewhere beyond and
encourages the heart to hold out for dignity, respect, beauty
and love.  That whisper brings forgotten nobility into an arena
where violence has traduced everything.  This faithful voice
can illuminate the dark lands of despair.  It becomes both the
sign and presence of a transcendence that no force or horror
can extinguish.  Each day in the world, in the prisons, hospitals
and killing fields, against all the odds, this still, small voice
continues to echo the beauty of the human being.  In haunted
places this voice carries the light of beauty like a magical
lantern to transform the desolation, to remind us that
regardless of what may be wrenched from us, there is a
dignity and hope that we do not have to lose.  This voice
brings us directly into contact with the inalienable presence
of beauty in the soul.

John O'Donohue

~

Photo from the Internet

The Troll in the Mind - Mark Nepo

We spend so much time
anticipating what will happen next that we miss
the whisper of Heaven that unfolds wherever we are.

Though I have known and survived
many forms of pain,
fear is the troll in the mind
that anticipates more.

And just as a loud noise prevents us
from finding the peace in the center of silence,
fear prevents us from finding
the inch of Heaven in the center
of whatever moment we are in.

Yet, no matter how much I've been through
and how much I've learned,
I can't stop the wave of anticipation.
No one can.

It is part of being human.

Mark Nepo
(a cancer survivor)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
 A dried rose petal with one eye
at the top and a big schnozz.
Looks like a troll to me :)

Prayer for the World - Mirabai Starr

Beloved One,
Living Light,
Spirit of all that is,
Thank you for welcoming us
To this sacred circle,
Comprised of every hue on the spectrum
Of the human community.
Be with us now
As we lean in to hear your call.
Stay close as we stand up
To speak your message of unconditional love.

Divine Mother,
Embodiment of Mercy and Compassion,
Enfold us in your protective cloak
As we dare to take in the pain of the world.
Give us the courage and strength
To drop our preconceptions
And step onto the field of global strife
Armed with the flaming arrow of unconditional love.

Sacred Friend,
Hidden behind the eyes of the broken,
Reveal yourself,
Let us behold the beauty of your face
In all beings, everywhere, always.
Where once we perceived only the impossible,
Blinded by our desire for circumstances, people,
And our own sweet selves to be different,
Let us rest now in what is
Alert to your power to astonish us
With the global awakening of unconditional love.

Holy One,
We carry legacy of our ancestors
In the marrow of our own souls.
We are all reluctant prophets.
We must be called and called again,
And yet again.
We turn and turn away,
We yield and bow and rise,
Until at last,
Clasped by the ferocious wings of your angels,
We declare, Hineyni.
Here I am.
Make of me a vessel of your divine will,
The will of unconditional love.

Great Spirit,
True Self and No-Self,
Fill the hearts of our leaders
With humility and holy awe.
Embolden them not to turn away from the Other
But to lay down their weapons
And take the adversary in their arms.
Infuse them with the fire
That melts swords into ploughshares
And spears into pruning hooks.
Show them the secret passageway from hopeless conflict
Home to unconditional love.

Father-Mother God,
May the Children of Abraham and Sarah
At last fall silent in the face of your radiance.
May our hearts soar in remembrance.
May our knees bend and our bodies bow down,
And our spirits rejoice,
Overflowing with unceasing prayer,
Resounding and cleansing and blessing all the land:
There is nothing but you,
Nothing but God,
Nothing.

AMEN.

Mirabai Starr

written in 2015
during the Iran and US peace agreements


With thanks to Michel at No Mind's Land

~

Photo from the Internet
digitally altered

Only Breath - Rumi

Not Christian or Jew, or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, Sufi or Zen...

Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East
or the West,
not out of the ocean
or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal,
not composed of elements at all.

"I" do not exist,
am not an entity in this world
or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve
or an origin story.

My place is the placeless,
a trace of the traceless.

Neither body or soul.

I belong to The Beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only That Breath breathing
human being.

Rumi

recited by Coleman Barks

Who Are You Without Your Spiritual Story? - Jeff Foster

Please don't talk to me of "Pure Awareness" or
"Dwelling in the Absolute."  I want to see how you treat
your partner, your kids, your parents, your body.
Please don't lecture me about "the illusion of the separate
self" or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen, take information that
doesn't fit your personal philosophy [belief].  I want to see
how you deal with people who disagree with you.  Don't tell
me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.  I want
to know you beneath the words.  I want to know what you're like
when troubles befall you. If you can fully allow your pain and
not pretend to be invulnerable.  If you can feel your anger yet not
step into violence.  If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow
yet not be its slave.  If you can feel your shame and not shame others.
If you can f**k up, and admit it. If you can say "sorry", and really
mean it.  If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.  I only want to meet
you.  Know your precious heart.  Know your beautiful human
struggling for the light.  Before all clever words...

Jeff Foster

Kindness - Penn Jillette

...All I want of America now is kindness.  That's all.
The past few years have filled too many of our friends and
neighbors with hate, and it breaks my heart.  Some people
started acting hateful, crazy and nasty so that they could win,
and then people who disagreed with them acted the same way.
They disagree in content but agree wholeheartedly in tone.

So many of us now agree with the message of hate, and play
"ideology" as team sports.  The message doesn't matter when
the medium is hate.  My friends who work on TV, people I
love personally, are using a tone and a meanness in their jobs
that they never used before.  Is hate where the money is?
I don't know if fighting fire with fire actually works, but I
do know that fighting hate with hate never works.

It makes me cry.  I've read about family members not invited
for Thanksgiving dinner because of political disagreements.
The Clash sang "anger can be power" and I believed it.  Maybe
I still believe it, but maybe I don't want power any more.
Can't we replace the word "evil" with the word "wrong?"
Everyone is wrong sometimes and nobody is ever evil.
The America I want is kind to people who are wrong.

I'm like a dog.  I don't hear words anymore, I just hear tone.
Anyone whose tone is kind will get my complete support.
Libertarian, Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Green...anything
else you got.  I've always been left out of team sports.  I don't
want to win enough.  I'm not part of a team.  I'm part of
humanity.  I want kindness.  There's no other team for me.
Let's love each other, and then discuss how to run the country
together.

Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller

With thanks to The Beauty We Love
for content and photo

A Plague of Intolerance - Thomas Merton

A mass movement readily exploits the discontent and frustration
of large segments of the population which for some reason or
other cannot face the responsibility of standing on their own
feet.  But give them a movement to join, a cause to defend, and
they will go to any extreme, stop at no crime, intoxicated as they
are by the slogans that give them a pseudo-religious sense of
transcending their own limitations.  The member of a mass
movement, afraid of his own isolation, and his own weakness as
an individual, cannot face the task of discovering within himself
the spiritual power and integrity which can be called forth only
by love.  Instead of this, he seeks a movement that will protect
his weakness with a wall of anonymity and justify his acts by
the sanction of collective glory and power.  All the better if this
is done out of hatred, for hatred is always easier and less subtle
than love.  It does not have to respect reality as love does.  It
does not have to take account of individual cases.  Its solutions
are simple and easy.  It makes its decisions by a simple glance
at a face, a colored skin, a uniform.  It identifies an enemy by
an accent, an unfamiliar turn of speech, an appeal to concepts
that are difficult to understand...  This is not "ours", he says.
This must be brought into line - or destroyed.

[Because of] this universal infection of fanaticism, the plague of
intolerance, prejudice and hate, which flows from the crippled
nature of mankind... [we] must labor with inexhaustible
patience and love, in silence, perhaps in repeated failure,
seeking tirelessly, wherever we can, to restore the capacity of
 love...

Thomas Merton
from - Disputed Questions
(written in the 1960's)

Thomas Merton was a Christian Trappist Monk
and social activist in the 1960's.  He was a strong
supporter of non-violence and civil rights.  In his
later years he became interested in Zen Buddhism
and promoted an East-West dialogue.  

He died in Bangkok in 1968.

~

Thanks to The Beauty We Love

Awakening From Awakening - Jeff Foster

This is a true story from Jeff Foster

Once, at a conference, I watched a spiritual teacher addressing
a grieving woman whose precious young son had just died.  Her
world had just collapsed.  An old reality had shattered.  She said,
"My heart is broken and raw."  He told her, "Your heartbreak is the
activity of the separate self, and therefore illusory, based in ignorance.
When the separate self dissolves, there will be no more suffering.
In Awareness, there is no death.  Awareness has no son."  He told
her she needed to 'wake up.'  She needed to recognize herself as
'Pure Awareness' - that she was pretending to be a victim, that
she didn't know 'who she truly was.'

And in that moment, I saw a deep sickness and inhumanity at
 the heart of much our contemporary spirituality.
The invalidation and shaming of trauma, the false promises,
the power games, and most of all, the suppression
of the divine feminine.  Making our grief, anger, fear and joy a
'mistake' or some 'sign' that we are not awakened enough, not
spiritual enough, not 'divine' enough in our embodied humanity.
The pathologising of our wildness.  The shaming of our fragility,
our sensitivity.

Friends, if this is 'spiritual awakening', I simply have no interest.
Let us [embrace] our fragile, vulnerable humanity!  Not run from it!
Let us bless our precious broken hearts!  Not pathologise them!
Let us infuse our deepest human experience with empathy.
  Send a curious, warm awareness deep into
the wounds.  Not to mend, not to fix, but to feel!  Not to 'awaken',
but to penetrate and be penetrated by Love.
The awakening of the heart. 
The remembering of the magic we knew when we were very
young.  Let us embrace our painful feelings.  Not see them as a 'sign'
of our spiritual failure, or our inability to manifest, or our ignorance,
or lack of strength.

Let us wake up from the old *concept* of  'awakening'.
Return to the sacredness in our humanity!

and

Meet each other in the fire of living.  Be present with each other,

instead of trying to fix [correct/dismiss] each other.

Jeff Foster
[A Non-dualist with a Heart:)]

Facebook

[brackets mine]

Beyond The Yellow Brick Road...

I wasn’t sure I was going to write about the most recent violent tragedy here. I’ve been attempting to find the words all week.  My heart feels a deep compassion for those who *survived* this most recent act of violence; for the ones who are traumatized deep in their psyche, that will carry this wounding for life.  My heart aches for their brokenness.  May their hearts and minds find solace and healing. 

~

We all live in “The Matrix” of a sometimes painful world – a name coined by the title of a famous movie of the same name – a world apparently gone mad.  As many of you know, “we” experienced yet another traumatic, violent event a week ago - one of many violent outbursts from “The Matrix” that continually occurs all over the world everyday.  But when they happen in America, or very close to us, we tend to be shocked – as if we feel we are immune to such happenings.  Then we get focused and fixated on the event – on the drama - and “the evil one” with 24/7 TV coverage.  But what if the “evil one” is a messenger – of sorts?  What if these tragic events are a cosmic wake-up call to come out of “The Matrix”: our dramas, our characters, our illusions and delusions of comfort and entitlement, safety, security and conformity – a call out of our dualistic “spiritual” ignorance.

What if the “evil one” isn’t – well – “evil”? What if he is just like us – experiencing deep pain, confusion, anger, mis-identifying with his character, experiencing mental illness due to the circumstances and events in his own life – and then acted out of that deep pain.  I’m assuming, like me, you have known people who have acted out of deep pain and despair.  Even if they haven’t become delusional and killed anyone, or themselves, they still wreak havoc in other people’s lives – emotionally, and sometimes physically.  But are we not also supposed to try to understand and have compassion for these so-called “dark ones”?  It’s much easier to throw people into black and white categories – and dark dungeons – finding self-righteous dualistic explanations of good and evil for the tragedies that play themselves out in life – like a movie. 

Isn’t it ironic that in a country where the majority *watch* violence, in the movies and on TV, or video games, or read it in books, or even write the books, that we are appalled when it actually happens *to* us.  Just *watching* the violence from a distance allows us to be unaware of the consequences of violence, the trauma that is experienced for the rest of one’s life, whether it be soldiers with PTSD, or the consequences of domestic violence, world terrorism, or domestic terrorism, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse – and every other kind of abuse that man does to man in its ignorance of its own True Nature – our Eternal Beingness -  not to sound too abstract, too esoteric, or too simplistic here.  Isn’t that why some of us are on the “spiritual paths” that we are on – to discover and *know* this Heart of Beingness that we are – some call it Enlightenment.  And isn’t that what ignorance really is – the *not* knowing this Beingness that we really are - which then creates all this havoc and suffering; duality, separateness and drama; the need to separate black and white, good and evil; the need to separate ourselves from life’s darkness, out of fear – as if we could.  I’d like to think that simply living more deeply *aware* of our True Beingness is enough… But maybe that’s a delusion as well…

“Spiritual teachings” say that whatever happens is all part of experience of “The Matrix” we live in – the result of the deeply grooved habituated matrix of the unawakened mind – AND – that it all happens *within* the greater context of Non-Dual Beingness/Consciousness; Beingness seamlessly experiencing ItSelf…  In other words, Beingness/Consciousness experiences and is inseparable from the totality of human experience.  There are not two separate entities called Beingness and human, or “good” and “evil”, or dark and light, opposing each other, independent from Beingness.  It’s hard to accept that the dark and the light are of the same Beingness, especially in times like these.  Almost sounds blasphemous doesn’t it…  We want to separate them out, and say no, that can’t be right!   It should be all light! – all “good” – all “peace.”  This *shouldn’t* be happening.  But it is…  Can’t we *do* something about these people!? (As my mother exclaimed.)

Some spiritual teachings say that the Pure Beingness (Consciousness) that we essentially are allows life to be exactly as it is, experiencing it all, embracing it all with deep compassion and love for humanity’s brokenness and the unfolding of life as it does. We share our humanity – and – a universal compassionate Beingness beyond the sometimes villainous characters we meet on the yellow brick road…  But are we able to see that Beingness from the open, aware, compassionate Heart of Being - no matter how clouded in darkness that may be…

There is only
Grace and Love…

~

“It is time to wake up from the dream of non-duality,
with its clichés like: “there is no me”, or
”there is only Oneness”,
and truly meet each other.
For it is our sons, our daughters, our mothers and fathers
and husbands, and beloved friends that have just dropped dead.
No formulas about reincarnation,
karma, soul journeys and the existence or non-existence
of the afterlife will hold up here…

[It is the] furnace of intimacy – the intimacy
of the broken heart…”

JeffFoster

Pruning Trees - Pruning "The Situation"

For those who have been reading this blog for a while, you may remember my post on Creating a Heart Tree last year.  Our River Birch is old and last year much of it died off.  We did deep root fertilization both last Spring and this Spring to see how much of it might come back. And of course I put little heart stones, sage and Faerie ornamentation at it’s base to “help” – if only in my mind. :)  We love our symbols :)  It really started to come to life again last year – but only about half of it thrived.  As you can see, it remained bald on top.  So we spent Saturday pruning the dead wood.  Tree artists we are not, but we did a pretty good job I think.  It looks a little dwarfish, and asymmetrical.  Yet I love still having this little guy in the front yard.

 

Pruning: to remove dead parts to improve growth – to cut out what is superfluous…  Who knew that pruning a tree would become a metaphor for working with “the situation” that I spoke of in my previous post.

As we were pruning – me holding the rope and DH climbing the ladder with the chain saw to reach the dead wood - our neighbor came walking up the sidewalk with his chain saw in hand and offered to assist.  I mean, how can you refuse a man with a chain saw, despite “the situation”, right?  Yes, this is the same father of “the situation” from my last post.  Which once again proves to me that life is a continuously unfolding story, and we never know how it’s going to unfold.  My mind thought – this is interesting.  I wonder why he’s doing this.  How can I say anything to him about “the situation” now with this generous offer of help?  Actually his offer of kindness was quite skillful in a way – it diffused “the situation” for the moment.  So we exchanged pleasantries and gratitude and the pruning began.

As the three of us engaged in the act of pruning, focused on the tree, it became clear that now was not the time for discussion.  It became clear, to me anyway, that somehow this was a time of getting clear, clearing away my image of him as “enemy” and to see the essence of the situation, to let go of the mental stories I had been telling myself, and to experience his basic goodness and humanness – and mine as well – at the heart of the interaction…  This is not to make light of “the situation”, or to deny that there aren’t issues here that need to be addressed… I am still being watchful - but with more detached mindfulness, a deeper sense of awareness, and less of the mind reactive, angry energy that wants to “catch” his son in the act, to try to control his behavior and get him to see the “wrongness” of his actions.

As a wise commenter said on the last post, “make friends…”  And I interpret that to mean to make friends with “the situation” – not the kid - but the situation – to make peace with it. If I befriend the situation, then he and his son are no longer my enemies and I am at peace…  Bazinga!  Sometimes these irritants in life are offered as a way of seeing beyond the surface situation, to the pearl of wisdom in the situation.  The neighbor’s offer of help and presence working along side us actually diffused my emotional reactivity to “the situation” – my projection, my mental habituation about “the situation.”    And I think that had to happen before any discussion could occur.

With space from “the situation”, and pruning some of my emotional dead wood, I realize that I have been attached to my anger and reactivity about “the situation.”  Thus I was held captive in my own emotional castle of protection, feeling under siege, fortressing myself against “the enemy” by maintaining a reactive stance, instead of seeing clearly and responding from a clear space, as another wise commenter said – using  Manjusri’s sword…  But what I didn’t realize is that I would have to use that sword to cut my way through the veils that blinded me, and not bring my baggage into “the situation.”  It remains to be seen if I can actually do this – to stand in the clear ground of Being within and take the appropriate action without my mind-muddied passive aggressive reactiveness getting in the way.  Only time will tell…

Who knows what effect this “tree pruning” work will have on “the situation”, pruning out the dead wood of my emotions towards “the situation” – allowing a new awareness and consciousness to flow… For now there are no resolutions.   And yet I feel a door has been opened for the possibility of dialogue.  My heart has softened towards “the situation.”  I’m not about to do battle with a 13 year old.  I’m amazed that a 13 year old could create such anxiety, anger and reactivity in me!   There is still a sense of watchful waiting, of discerning the most effective approach.  Asking questions like: How do I need to engage here?  Through my self-imposed mental suffering about the situation, through a sense of wounded anger and “rightness” of my position, through a sense of false power that comes from a need for self-protection? Or, from a place of awareness of our shared humanity with an open heart…

The pruning continues…  It may take a while :)