This is a video you must watch. If you have trouble seeing it embedded here, you can view it here. Take five minutes. Your heart will thank you.
It Just Goes On and On
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Category Archives: Buddhism
Afterthought
In asserting: God* exists, we merely bring down overpowering reality to the level of thought. Our belief is but an afterthought.
The transition from obliviousness to an awareness of God, is not a leap over a missing link in a syllogism but a retreat, giving up premises rather than adding one.
–Abraham Joshua Heschel
*or Brahman, Nirvana, Ground of Being, Absolute, whatever word stands for you
Brief Notes of an Adventure
I just returned from my first sesshin at Hazy Moon Zen Center. It was fruitful. I’m tired and glad to be home. All that I experienced is settling, so I hesitate to write extensively about it. Here are some brief reflections. The first one is from my drive down, when I stopped at San Luis Reservoir for a break. The entire drive leads through two mountain ranges (the Diablo Mountains with the Pacheco Pass and the Tehachapi Mountains with the Tejon Pass) and the central valley; it’s beautiful country. It’s a six hour drive (one way) — which is just right.
—–
Brief Notes of an Adventure
The lake — a bowl of glitter!
Winds whisper to water,
waves murmur replies.
A crow flies, snail snared
in its beak.
—–
Rooster crows, broom sweeps.
A car growls to life.
Helicopters thump the sky.
Pigeon wings slap air.
Sirens keen, dogs bark.
Zazen in L.A.
—–
My food – Advil.
My nectar – water.
My balm – sleep.
—–
Now the cushion
Now the breath
Now the work.
Samadhi does not
come in a box or book.
It cannot be imagined
or conjured.
Bells, incense, bows, chants
bring dignity and form
to the formless.
But above all,
it is about the work.
Breath.
Samadhi.
—–
Cresting the mountain,
valley a blanket spread low;
slices of miles served –
feast towards home.
–Kathryn Harper
Going On a Journey
“When you have completed 95 percent of your journey, you are only halfway there.”
— Japanese Proverb
And Now…
Today Bean asked to make Simba, from the Lion King. She hasn’t seen the movies but is obsessed with the songs, especially The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Hakuna Matata, and He Lives In You. She wanted to also make his father and an elephant friend. Thank goodness for paper plates, construction paper, glue and paint! Bean painted the whole thing. She cut the noses of the lions and them and the eyes on. She glued the elephants nails and eyes on.
Last week we made necklaces for each other, because on Thursday I head to Hazy Moon Zen Center to sit my first sesshin with my teacher, Maezen, and Nyogen Roshi. We used Shrinky Dinks, and I wrote her message to me and one to her (the handwriting is choppy because I wrote backward so it would read properly on the shiny side.) My favorite color is green and hers is yellow (though trending toward pink), so we’ll feel connected while I’m gone. I’m sure we’ll feel connected regardless, but this is a tangible connection for us both, a sort of talisman. It will be a fine time for Bean and her Daddy to go on special outings. I’ll be home Sunday evening from “Buddhist Summer Camp” (as Hub jokingly calls it) — one step (at least) closer to enlightenment.
Next up: thinking of something cool for dinner. It’s been mild this summer, but today it’s 95F! No complaints here. Hakuna Matata!
Summer Days
The lull of summer has me reading a lot but writing little. This blog has become a pictorial daybook with a few quotes tossed in for spice. Well, I blame the summer, but evidence shows that this is the trend my life has taken for the past year. Somewhere along the way I feel I’ve lost my mind. Not in a mental-illness sense, but more in a “I’m a thinking person who has thoughts about what’s happening in the world and am capable of articulating them.” Yet unfortunately, I feel increasingly removed from it all, and apathetic; I rarely read news or listen to NPR anymore. It didn’t help the other day when I read an article about Sheryl Sandberg in the New Yorker. I’m so utterly unaccomplished, my ego tells me. I’m just a mother. Just a housewife (and not an exceptionally good one at that). Just nothing.
But aren’t we all nothing? Everything changes. Human endeavor fades and is forgotten. Eventually we all end up the same place. And there is freedom in knowing and accepting this. Freedom to pay attention to what matters right now, and to enjoy this moment. That’s my bit of insight for today, because it’s late, and I’ve just finished sweeping, mopping, folding, washing, changing sheets, and pilling the cat. Meanwhile, take a peek at what’s been happening.
Bean earned her princess bike because she graduated to being a big girl and uses the potty. Pedaling and steering take concentration!
She also had her first session of swim lessons and loved it, especially her teacher. She’ll have one more week, and then we’ll see.
I did a lot of cutting, gluing, and tying, but Bean decorated with glitter glue and stickers. It moves beautifully in the slightest breeze.
We did this craft awhile back, right after 4th of July!
Bean had me draw the rainbow and face, and she colored the rainbow and decided to use beads for flowers.
Practice and Cycles
“When you practice every day, you come into resonance with cosmic cycles. After many days you can feel the diurnal cycle inside your work; after many moons, the lunar; after years and years the constellations come in. The whole spectrum of vibration, from the slow, lowest tones of turning galaxies to the highest speeds of inner light, becomes your musical realm.”
W. A. Mathieu, The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music
Music or meditation? Music as meditation? Meditation as cosmic music?
Oh Yes!
Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
–Victor Hugo
Updated 7/11 (because comments are closed and I didn’t want to take the time to figure out how that happened): Perhaps the quote makes more sense if it reads, “Life is the toast for which love is the honey.”
How Dharma Works
“It’s like the story of the ugly duckling. That’s a perfect example of how the dharma works. There was this bird that was born into a flock of ducks, and he was extremely ugly – so ugly he was barely tolerated by the mother duck. He was misshapen, he made funny noises that didn’t sound like a quack and he couldn’t waddle like the others. He looked big and clumsy, so he was constantly being teased and laughed at by the other ducklings. The more he tried to be like them, the funnier he looked, the more they laughed at him, and the more despondent and disillusioned he became. One day, while he was drinking from a pond, he saw another reflection that looked just like him. He looked up and saw another ugly ducking, and another and another. At that moment in time he realized that he wasn’t a duck at all. He was a swan. At that moment of realization he became perfect and complete, lacking nothing. There was nothing he needed to learn to do. There was nothing he needed to imitate. He was already perfect. He already knew how to be a swan. He was born with a swan nature. That’s what realization is — the discovery of what’s already there. It’s the discovery that you are a buddha, perfect and complete, lacking nothing. When you realize it, you are transformed.”
Lovely Blessing
Blessing the boats
(at St. Mary’s)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
We Are Always In Love
Lift your arm. Let it fall onto your leg. Simple?
Is existence simple?
Consider that there are two massive objects: the earth — the whole big round rock of it — and your relaxed arm. The reality of the earth’s gravitational pull can be experienced in the heavy fall of your arm. Drop your arm again, cosmically this time.
OK, here is a less obvious thought: the mass of your arm is attracting the mass of the earth. Earth-arm force is just as reciprocal as earth-moon force, or in twin stars, star-star force. The earth is falling toward your arm as your arm is falling toward the earth. The attraction is mutual. It’s love.
There’s a binding force in nature, and gravity is its large-scale expression. Every time you drop your hand, or take a step, or hoe the garden, it is the experience of eternal love. Our bones and the earth are lovers; they embrace when we sleep, they mate when we die.
–W. A. Mathieu, The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music
Raising A Momma
Mine, all mine!
At preschool, Bean had a tendency to hurtle into tears if a small thing didn’t go her way, or if she perceived some other child’s behavior as a slight. My response typically had been to croon, hug, and comfort. For instance, one day she brought a stuffed animal with her. In circle time we sing hello to everybody. When we sang hello to her and went on to the next child, she wanted us to sing hello to her animal. When we didn’t, she was more than crestfallen; she was crushed. She burst into sobs, got up, and came running to me.
Bean worried a lot about the other kids not liking her. She thought they might laugh at or make fun of her. (At this age, the kids are only just starting to play together, and she was worried about that?) She was moody. She wanted to control and direct the story of all the pretend play with other kids (and Mommy and Daddy). On the days I was working at the school, she wanted all of my attention. Especially when it came time for me to be in parent discussion.
I began to feel less like a mother and more like her pawn. The neediness in her was insatiable, and her behavior more like a tyrant. I talked with her teacher about it, and she suggested I back off a little. As an example, she talked about the day we didn’t sing hello to her animal. The teacher said, “Your response was to cuddle and reinforce the sadness. But another way to respond is to say, ‘That’s just not what we do here! We sing hello to the students, not all their toys!’ And to help her to lighten up and see it isn’t a big deal.”
And that’s when I realized something. I was teetering on the brink of overcompensating for my own childhood. Not every occasion of disappointment requires deep empathy. Part of my duty as a mother is to prepare Bean to ride with changes, to be flexible. I also had not realized how frightening it must be for Bean to have as much power over me as she did. When she was a baby, she needed all of me, and I gave it. What she needs now, as she moves into the world, is to need less of me. So I began to set more boundaries on what she could have of me. One day she forgot a toy in the car that she wanted for show and tell; it had been her task to remember. When I would not take her back to the car to retrieve it — since we’d gotten to class — Bean gave a world-class demonstration of temper. But I held firm, and she survived and learned a lesson about responsibility.
I continued to heed the teacher’s words that “what you pay attention to grows” and gave more attention to joy than sorrow. Remarkably, within a couple of weeks I, the teacher, and other parents noticed a significant change. Bean began to play with the kids more and less by herself. She participated more in circle time, singing and dancing. She didn’t intrude on me during discussion and instead after snack said, “Bye Mom!” and went outside to play for the last hour. She didn’t attempt to check on me, to get my attention or tell me “something important.”
To sleep, perchance…
When Bean turned three she attempted to stop napping. Her doctor expressed concern about this, because, she said, three-year-olds still really do need a nap. It was true. Bean only slept 9-10 hours at night, and I could see she benefitted from her naps. After a week of refusing to nap, Bean was falling over with exhaustion and emotionally explosive. She also got really sick with a high fever the day before we took a big trip.
Doctor suggested I offer incentives, e.g., “If you nap, you can watch a show after.” (Or whatever special treat might work for Bean.) The bribe of extra t.v. worked until it didn’t — about one week. I tried quiet time, during which she wouldn’t fall asleep but would rock and listen to music for an hour, but this still didn’t provide her the rest she needed. So I returned to the way we handled naps for the first seven months of her life. I rocked her, sang to her, and held her for the duration of the nap, dozing with her.
This worked well. We had preschool two afternoons a week and it was clear those took a toll, but over the school year her stamina increased. And with the steady increase of stamina came the resistance to nap again. I was able to override her refusal most of the time, sometimes by cajoling, other times by threatening (I’ll leave the room and close the door).
When I went away for my getaway weekend, Bean didn’t nap, of course. And when I returned, I allowed this to remain. She is adjusting. She is slightly more tired during the day than she used to be, but it seems a steady state. Her night sleep has increased somewhat, and the quiet hour rejuvenates us both. Best of all, a new world is opening up, the one where we can be unconcerned about “getting home in time” for the nap window. And rather than a two-hour semi-nap sitting up with a crick in my neck, I get one blessed hour to meditate and read while she rocks and listens to music.
So skinny she hula hoops with a cheerio
In April we took our cat to the vet for a blood test, and Bean happened to step on the huge dog scale for fun. The scale read her weight as 28 pounds. I was shocked. It couldn’t be right! She weighed 29 pounds at her annual visit last September!
I’d always fretted about Bean’s nutrition and eating habits. Except for bologna and hot dogs, she eschewed meat. She refuses all forms of milk: cow, soy, almond, flavored, regular, etc. She doesn’t eat much yogurt or cheese. She eats veggies, but only mostly raw. She eats fruit, but only a certain few. Meals involved me asking her what she wanted to eat and trying to please her. Dinners meant cooking something I knew she’d eat, but her whims changed. For awhile I even fed her separately.
Yet here she was weighing less. So we went to her doctor. I learned she had grown taller — 2.5 inches since last September, and since she hadn’t been gaining her growth curve was a little skewed. Her BMI is 13 (what I wouldn’t give for that). Overall, the doctor wasn’t worried because growth occurred. She suggested I take the PAMF Feeding Your Preschooler class for ideas I might use. I came away with a huge list of food Bean does eat and saw that for the most part she is eating well. I learned that my concept of portion sizes for kids was distorted. I learned that we’d be better served if I quit offering her snacks (even salad veggies) to eat while she watched PBS before dinner.
So I relaxed. We have all meals and snacks at table now. I established a firmer schedule and held to it; if she doesn’t eat snack when it’s snack time and decides she’s hungry before lunch/dinner, she just has to wait. I decide what to offer and she either eats or not. I sit with her for all meals (it’s no fun to eat by yourself). I’ve cooked more foods I like despite knowing she won’t probably eat them. Every meal now has bread on the table along with salad, so she’ll get something in her. And guess what has happened? Bean is trying more foods! She has decided she likes pepperoni pizza (previously only cheese would do), cherries, and breakfast sausage.
This combination of releasing the worry and desire to control and establishing parent-driven meal times and menus has freed us. I do my job: offer healthy foods at appropriate times. She does her job deciding whether and what to eat. Talk at mealtimes now focuses on topics other than food, and “encouragement” to eat more. I don’t think she’s gained weight so far, but I see now that I can relax and accept my little petite Bean and enjoy her. We enjoy each other and our meals more now.
The last step of toddlerhood
I want to keep potty-training stories to a minimum in consideration of Bean’s privacy. Suffice it to say that she’s been ready and resistant for some time, but in part her resistance reflected my own. There have been attempts to use the potty since she was two, but I didn’t push because I feared a power struggle. But last week Bean declared she wanted to wear panties (for the second month in a row, the first being April but she quit after a weekend). And I said okay, and that it meant the changing pad, diaper pail, and all Pull-ups were going away forever. (She hugged her changing pad good-bye.)
The first few days were rocky, and I despaired. But we have persisted, and I’ve devised a way to encourage and reward her daily for her effort and increasing competence. She knows she will be enrolled in swimming lessons now, and that after our trip east she’ll get a “princess bike” she yearns for. For shorter-term rewards, she’s getting smaller things. She wanted pink “tap shoes” (Mary Janes), and so this was her gift for completing one week of using the potty. She also lately pines for “princess bubble bath” and, of all things, an American flag, so her gift for the end of the second week will likely be those. They are small, tangible reinforcements of her success. Not too far in the future I see the sticker chart, small candies, and weekly prizes will fade as this function just becomes a routine in her life.
Momma is all grown up! At least for now, for this age and stage and minute. And Bean? Well, she jumps for joy!
The Beginning Results
I’ve been sitting twice daily for 15 minutes each time. It’s possible that 14 days of daily meditation does not make an adequate sample for assessing results (although I was also told when I began an SSRI that the effects would probably not be felt for weeks and within one week I was experiencing vast improvement), but I think it’s changed me.
In the past two weeks — one of them being my PMS hell-week, when I normally feel like my skin is too tight, am bone-tired, and am agitated and simmering with anger — I have felt something different. Calm. Centered. Grounded. Like a mountain. Unshakeable. Patient. Bemused by things that normally piss me off (stupid drivers, for example). Toward Bean, I have felt the wide open space of graciousness and being, just spending time with her. When we’re getting ready to go somewhere, I haven’t been in my usual flurry of cranky nagging, and we still manage to get where we need to go. As I wrote to Maezen, Bean has been responsive to this. The other day she said, “Mommy, I like the way you talk to me. You’re magic. I love you.” She’s been very affectionate — possibly also because my absence refreshed us both!
I feel a change in my interaction with my husband too. Rather than becoming snippy and defensive when I’m tired, or when discussions snag, I’ve remained clear and calm. I like him more. Or perhaps I’m encountering me differently?! I asked him this morning if he’d noticed any changes in me, and he admitted he had not, but that he also hasn’t been paying much attention. His head has been at work most of the time, even when home.
But possibly the most convincing (to me) evidence that meditation has helped is that I skipped yesterday completely, and as a result today I have that vibrating, irritable energy. I hear a stridency in my voice when I talk to Bean that has been otherwise absent. Perhaps the “honeymoon” of my mini-vacation is over, or perhaps it’s because meditation really has that much impact. The only way to tell is to keep sitting.
Poetry and Zen
I have posted this quote before, but it’s useful to have a reminder:
On Writing Poetry
Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there’s a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you’re writing your poem, there’s one less scoundrel in the world. And I’d like a world, wouldn’t you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I’m certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don’t think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say “We loved the earth but could not stay.”
–Ted Kooser
I’m sharing this after reading Maezen’s post of today.
Creeping Toward Commitment
For much of my life I’ve wandered on a spiritual journey without knowing quite where to go. One of the paths I began to explore in the late 1990s was meditation. I took a Vipassana meditation class, read books, and occasionally pretended to be serious about it. In 2003 I began this blog in part because of this interest (and in part because I had a therapy practice), although in my “About This Blog” section I made it clear I was not a Buddhist, lest readers feel mislead or take issue with my less-than-Buddhist perspectives. Having plummeted down the path of conservative Christian fundamentalism twice in my life — and driven loved ones away in the process — I’ve been reluctant and cautious about further pursuits.
In 2006, out of nowhere (and everywhere) a woman contacted me after reading my blog. She had read about my attempts to get pregnant, the miscarriages, the misgivings. She had recently published a book and asked if I would be interested in a complimentary copy. I said yes, although I couldn’t bring myself to read it for quite awhile. Once I was pregnant with Bean, I did read it, devoured it with gratitude and gusto, and I repeatedly returned to that book for comfort and wisdom.
That woman’s name is Karen Maezen Miller. She is a Zen Buddhist priest, a wife, and a mother. I credit her with helping me remain sane and growing into motherhood. After Bean was born and began to exhibit colic, I was panicked and beside myself with agony. Bean wasn’t sleeping. Hub was doing his best but he wasn’t sleeping either. I was terrified I’d do something wrong. Many emails sailed between us — me writing laments, she responding with love. And even though we’d never met, Maezen offered a gift: to come up one weekend and help out with Bean so Hub and I could rest. We talked on the phone to discuss it, and it turned out that this was enough at the time; just knowing the offer was sincere and standing and hearing her voice in the wilderness helped.
I’d seen Maezen subsequently three times; in 2008 she and her daughter visited me and Bean briefly just before Bean’s first birthday; in 2009 at the Mother’s Symposium and 2010 at a one-day retreat. I read her second book. I pondered her thoughts about the importance of having a teacher. And finally, last weekend, I had my first weekend ever away from home and Bean. I drove to Sierra Madre to spend the weekend with Maezen and her family; I also attended a beginner’s meditation class and a dharma talk at Hazy Moon Zen Center. And there it dawned on me that I already have a teacher — Maezen! — and that without realizing it I’d become a student.
It is time to commit. It is time to practice. So I’d like to introduce my new best friend, the “cushion of kindness,” as Maezen calls it. The technical name is zafu. And when I sit on my zafu, this is called zazen. This is where the revolution takes place. Facing a blank wall, alone, silent, counting my breaths, and being awake.
I am not yet in a position of making a formal commitment. That will come when it comes. It is not lost on me that one of my favorite quotes, which I encountered in 1998, is by Hui-Neng, a Zen monastic from the 7th/8th century. “The secret is within your self.” It’s been there all along, waiting for me to look, and see.
The other watershed quote that inspired me to move from Syracuse to Austin in the early 90s was by Sir Edmund Hilary, organizer of a Mount Everest Expedition, and it too rings familiarly as I observe what is changing. The snippet that motivated me I have italicized, but the entire quote is priceless.
“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his/her way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: What ever you can do, or dream you can; begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
My next trip to Sierra Madre will probably be later in the summer or fall, when they offer a three-day retreat at the center. So, hello world! My name is Kathryn and I am, at last, “abuddha” (awake).
The Heart Grows Too
The other day, Bean was watching one of her very-favorite-of-all-time-in-her-life shows: Dinosaur Train. It was the end of an episode; I was nearby on the computer. Suddenly she burst into huge sobs. I was startled. What happened? What’s wrong?! I asked her. Her chest was heaving, and she wailed out, “They s-s-said good-bye!! I’m so sad! I feel so lonely!!”
I sat down and pulled her to me while she cried. Then we backed up the show to see what upset her. She burst into tears again. The dinosaur friends were saying good-bye for the evening, going home to dinner. It wasn’t forever good-bye. Then Bean said the music made her sad. And I could see that. The notes are sweet, but they’re in a minor key and they descend. It’s intended to evoke a feeling of end-of-the-day calmness, but in Bean it triggered sorrow.
“Mommy, does music make you sad?” I replied that sometimes, music has the power to stir up feelings of sadness, joy, anger, and other feelings.
I realize not everyone will care to know the details, but in case you’re curious, I found the episode online (be patient while the show loads).
Dinosaur Train: Tiny’s Tiny Place
If you watch it, you can move the little orange slider on the blue bar so that the number of seconds remaining say 1:00 (minute). Play it from that point, and watch and listen. It’s about 30 seconds, but it triggered a giant response.
She has grieved before — when things don’t go her way, or something is lost or taken from her. However, this was the first expression and experience of grief as a “witness,” on a more existential level, with a situation not attached to her directly.
It made my heart clutch for a moment. There is so much more of that ahead of her. I hope I am up to the task of helping her learn to hold her heart, and those of others, in compassion.
Do It Now
Time is very precious. Do not wait until you are dying to understand your spiritual nature. If you do it now, you will discover resources of kindness and compassion you didn’t know you had. It is from this mind of intrinsic wisdom and compassion that you can truly benefit others….Moment by moment, we should look at life as if it were a dream unfolding….In this relaxed, more open state of being, we have the opportunity to gain the infallible means of dying well, which is recognition of our absolute nature.
–Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
How We Get Here Part 2: The Identity Project
To continue with my exploration (see this and this), I’m posting some thoughts from Singh’s book. I’m not certain I have the energy to do more than quote her, as I’m emotionally buffeted by some personal family issues lately (on both sides of our family).
So, we are born and we grow. We encounter “splits” in our being as we develop and the ego grows. Who we are narrows into mostly mind. We focus on developing language, rationality, competency within our world. Language is so powerful, so immersive, that we tend to forget we are in it. We mistake it, and thought, for reality. Our culture, the biosocial band, is a filter of myths, stories, and worldview that we are born into. We have not only a self, but a self-image. The ego is “an identity that conceives of itself as a separate and inner entity, existing inside the body somewhere in the region of the head, and assumes it is commanding the body from on high.” Singh continues:
We all believe and act as if our identity were something with substance, with reality, and with enduring characteristics. In point of fact, however, our identity is nothing more than who we think we are at any moment in time, a compendium of inner desires, aversions, memories, and tightly interwoven beliefs. Identity is something that exists only in being conceived.
We talk to ourselves incessantly to establish a sense of our existence. We narrate our lives, issue judgments, articulate opinions, engage fantasies, and chatter to ourselves constantly in our heads. We believe our identity is our name, occupation, relationships, diplomas, biography, etc. We are capable of introspection and self-reflection.
When the adolescent ego begins to look at itself, it encounters an existential abyss of fundamental dimension. When it begins to look inside, it knows that it is, but hard as it tries, it can never quite grasp what exactly it is. In some vague and slightly nauseating, slightly terrifying way, the mental ego senses its incompleteness, the flimsiness of illusion upon which it is constructed. The abyss is quickly side-stepped.
And where do we go as we dodge away? We embark upon the identity project.
The identity project, which arises at first out of defensiveness against terror, becomes a lifelong endeavor. We choose a persona (or several over time) and focus on becoming that. It might arise from our profession or relationships. For example, I was a a perpetual student and later a therapist. I was a single woman and am now a wife and mother. We work to solidify and secure these concepts of ourselves. And you know what? We achieve great things in this.
The level of ego is an elevated and encompassing level of consciousness — quite an achievement for our evolving and beloved species. Certainly, hosannas can be shouted for what we have achieved in our identity projects wiht the use of our faculties and talents. We have become capable, technological selves, acting upon the world in ways that further our own evolution. We have quintessentially lifted ourselves by our bootstraps.
And yet, we also create our own dramas, our own suffering. We are embroiled in the soap opera, forgetting that we are not the show. We are more than that, but we have forgotten.
Most of us plateau here, until we are informed that we are terminal and have a short time to live. Then we face the fact that we (as defined by our ego) are not in control. Nor are we complete or whole. While this terrifies us, it is actually good news. We’ll get to go home. And for some of us, we find a way to go home before we leave our bodies, through a dedication to meditation over many many years.
This is an extremely simplified synopsis of the journey into ego in Singh’s book. As I read it, I had an understanding that exploded between my eyes (in my third eye?). I get what Jesus meant. He was trying to enlighten people, to help them understand that this is not all that is, but that as long as we cling to our “treasures on earth,” we’ll not see this. His death was a way of showing what the ego must endure — its annihilation — which is required before we can transcend to unity with the Ground of Being. And I knew this, growing up I understood this, but it was laden with fear and ideas of hell and punishment and worthlessness. Later on it was tarnished by the stupidity of the simplistic “born again” prayers/positions espoused by the churches I was in. It was like buying eternal life insurance. Say these words and all is forgiven, but the focus on “being saved” from my sins and from damnation was misleading and eventually rang hollow for me.
The mental ego must die before true life, whole life, heaven, nirvana is found. And everybody will enter whole life, find unity, because every body dies. Buddha said it. Jesus said it. Many prior and subsequent mystics and philosophers have said it. The message is we each will get there, and we don’t have to wait until we are dying to do so (or to try). We can arrive at enlightenment; we can be born again. What does that really mean? What is that really like? What is transpersonal consciousness? What is connection with the Ground of Being/God/Unity? The ego, the identity we cling to, is deeply established. It must actually confront its fear of death (which pretty much qualifies as hell for me) as we travel the path of return. We will only know as we go.
I don’t even know if I should be writing all this here. It’s not polished. I’m tired and have little time for finesse. But that’s what I’ve got, folks.
How We Get Here Part 1
This is a rough and unrefined condensation of some of what I’m reading. I don’t claim to have answers but I will write without tenuousness. I’m not entirely sure of all the concepts and am not seeking debate. I’m just looking to sort it out for myself here.
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I am going to die someday. Sooner or later, fast or slow, it will happen. I was raised in a religion that depicted heaven, purgatory, and hell, and I felt fear. I left that religion and in my early 30s was bound up in it again, until the absolutism of the dogma and some epiphanies in graduate school prompted me to part ways entirely. I’ve been inarticulate about dying and what happens since then.
I used to wonder what I was before I was born. An atheist will simply say that we just did not exist, and after we die, we just won’t exist. Aside from the terror my ego feels (how can I not exist? what happens to me?), I know there is something else beyond this life. But before I can get to that understanding for myself, I need to understand how I came to be where, what, and who I am now.
We start out within the Ground of Being. We are part of it. The Ground of Being is life, and it is non-life. It is consciousness and not-consciousness. It is energy, it is matter. As Douglas Adams titled his book, it is Life, the Universe, and Everything. Before we are born we are part of it. This is a pre-ego state, a state of preconsciousness, a state of undifferentiation and no individuation. We are raw material.
So how to we get to where we are, with identities and attachments and all that this life entails?
In Singh’s book, she writes:
As we emerge out of the Ground of Being and into the physical world as a separate life-in-form, “trailing clouds of glory,” we are in a preegoic, prepersonal state. At birth we are only minimally differentiated from the Ground of Being. Inner and outer realities remain somewhat fused initially, and all awareness lies inarticulate, still partially embedded in the Ground of Being.
We start out this way, and at first we are all body: hunger, fatigue, touch, instinct. If you’ve ever been with an infant you know this. Then the remarkable changes happen as the infant’s brain grows, as concept and words develop. We develop a sense of self: me, mine, and of other, not-me. Babies start out unaware of separation and then become a aware. The First Dualism emerges on the journey to the ego.
We develop a sense of space and what is and is not ours. We realize where we end and another begins, the gap between subject and object. Then the Second Dualism develops: the sense of time, an awareness of past, present, and future, life and death.
The First Dualism, the first boundary, separates us from the experience of wholeness. Anxiety appears, as does repression and defensiveness.
Primal repression is a psychological as well as physical posture that, inwardly, begins to seal off or repress pure, inpouring Energy, the animating power of the Ground of Being. The Ground of Being, with its enchantment and ability to engulf, begins to be perceived as threatening.
Thus in our early childhood we close off our connection to the Source from which we came. We continue to split ourselves in early to middle childhood by forging a distinction between mind and body, the Third Dualism. “We lose our deep integrity, the unity of body and mind, which is the unity of feeling and attention — the ability to be present.” Our mind is given more authority as a judge or filter of reality. And then the Fourth Dualism arises: The split between persona and shadow, that is, between the person we believe we are, that we accept, that we show the world, and all the other parts of us that we disown, dislike, judge, fear, and hide from ourselves and others.
And this, according to the Christian theology I grew up with, completes our ejection from the Garden of Eden. We are part of the garden (Ground of Being), we are born, then we taste knowledge (the Dualisms, development of ego), which separates us from unity with the Ground of Being. I just don’t buy the crap about Eve (woman) being the one who fell to the temptation first (does it really matter?), and I don’t think of the “fall” as really All That Bad. It is just what is, and it is part of our evolution, our journey, through the experience we are having in this form and function, in this physical world.
And now my child is calling from her nap, and I must dash.
Spirit
Back in 2004, when my father-in-law was gravely ill, I happened across a book that I was compelled to buy: The Grace in Dying: How We Are Transformed Spiritually as We Die, by Kathleen D. Singh. I began to read it, and in the introduction the author suggested that if the reader was in the process of dying or reading this because a loved one is dying, to do the following: know that you are safe, all is well, and put the book down.
I took her advice. Four months later my father-in-law died, and I was with him for his last week nearly 24/7. It was a daunting, draining experience. I watched him take his last breath. In the process of his dying, it occurred to me that it seemed much like a labor. And having had a child since, I know it is indeed labor. But what, I wonder, is in the process of happening? Is dying just dying? The lights simply go out? What happens to the entity called “me, myself, or I”; is it really annihilated?
Or is it a transition, a birthing into something else?
I was raised religiously and have traversed a varied spiritual path. In recent years I’ve applied the term “atheist” to myself, though “agnostic” is probably more accurate. I do not need “god” as humans are able to articulate the term; I believe the universe is marvelous, and science is a way to explore it all, and isn’t that miracle enough? I am drawn to Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism, although I have not become a practitioner yet.
However, I did have a remarkable experience back in 1996 that at the time, I believed (as much as I could believe, which was really a process of trying to convince myself to believe) was the Holy Spirit. When I left the Christian religion (for the second time in my life), I categorized the experience as an anomaly, as an experience of self-hypnosis or psychological wish fulfillment.
I was a member of a conservative, bible-based, fundamental Christian church. The story behind the path that led me to that after years of atheism can be read here. Anyhow, one Saturday evening I remained after service. It was common for members to remain and pray with each other. This was a church where people sometimes experienced the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” evidenced sometimes by people speaking in tongues (seeming to babble) and being filled with the Spirit, evidenced by joyous, continuous laughter. Not hysterics, not banshee laughing, just a robust laugh as one would do watching a funny show.
One evening a woman sat on the floor experiencing this laughter. I observed awhile, curious. Another woman came over and asked, “Would you like to join and be filled with the Holy Spirit?” I answered yes, but expressed a worry that it wouldn’t “take.” She said, “Just trust. Let thoughts and worries go and just be with whatever is.”
I sat next to the spirit-filled woman, put my hand on her arm, closed my eyes, and waited. To my wonder, I felt a tingling warmth from her enter my hand and flow up my right arm into my body. Whatever words I summon to describe the experience won’t do it justice, but here goes: As I was filled with this feeling, I felt light, both weightless and incandescent. I began to feel a laugh bubbling up in me. I allowed it to come forth. I sat for however long, bathed in this energy, laughing gently, feeling joy. At the same time, I also felt a part of me was still there, observing. I was not generating or creating this. Nothing was forced by me. At the same time, I did not feel “possessed” or taken over; I still felt I had agency. It was an experience unlike anything I’ve known before or since.
At some point I felt satiated, full, and decided I was done. I removed my hand from the woman’s arm and opened my eyes. I felt new. I felt connected, united with myself and with everything. As I walked, my feet connected in a way that felt like I was the earth and the earth was me. I had a feeling of well-being, life, and love. This feeling remained with me for many hours. After the night’s sleep, it had dissipated. I did not seek this encounter again, and one year later I came to terms that I did not agree with aspects of this church’s dogma and no longer wanted to pretend I did. But I remembered this experience and cherished it awhile.
Then life happened, and the incident faded. Whenever I thought about it, I lumped it in the “I’m not certain what that was but it probably wasn’t real” category. Except… it felt real, and it still resonates like an authentic experience, an encounter with the energy that makes up the universe. While I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic god, I do believe there is something that makes the universe go, something science does not explain completely yet, that it is real, we are made of it, and that we can access a connection with it. (As Carl Sagan said, “We are star stuff.”)
And now I have reopened Kathleen Singh’s book to face the question of dying, of what it’s about and what might follow. The experience I had in 1996 was a glimpse. My hunch is that this connection is possible, is accessible via meditation practice over many years, and that it is our destination at the moment the body dies. As I read her book I will process some of my reactions here.