Yes. Yes. I am reminded of this lately. The only one who won’t leave you is your self.
“Everyone you trust, everyone you think you can count on, will eventually disappoint you. When left to their own devices, people lie and keep secrets and change and disappear, some behind a different face or personality, some behind a dense early morning fog, beyond a cliff.”
–Lauren Oliver
I’m still learning how to be my own friend. To find my deepest longing for union within.
Do souls exist before they are incarnated? What is a soul? I perceive soul as energy. When it is embodied, it expresses through the filter of a personality. Personality is shaped by genetics, temperament, and experiences. Does a soul retain the particular “flavor” of personality after the body dies? I would like to think so. I would like to believe that the infinite universe can hold the essences of all the soul-personalities that ever existed. Although I have no empirical evidence, the mystic in me is intuitively open to this possibility.
Where does Love exist? We exist in Love. We forget this, so we create suffering for ourselves and others. Love is the mystery of the universe; it exists in all forms as well as that which is formless. A body that dies loses its form. Yet the soul-personality remains with us in Love.
As to what these soul-personalities do, whether there is reward or punishment, I do not know. I do not believe there is a ruling God who decides on an eternal afterlife for each soul. I sense that when we leave our bodies and lives on earth, whatever that has separated us from complete union with Love is removed, and this is healing and redemption.
“Love is our liberation. There is no other place to go.” – Karen Maezen Miller
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!
–John Muir
God has come into my life. Now, don’t click away. Don’t let that word shut you down. I might not mean what you think I mean. It’s not a word I’ve used in my life for years. Stay with me while I meander through my story.
This is Smokey. He’s been around a long time. He was in the neighborhood when we moved into the house five years ago. He belongs to no one and everyone. For years, I would scratch behind his ears and say hello, and then I’d go on with my life. Someone fed him. Someone gave him shelter in bad weather. But he was just around, and I did not seek him, nor did he seek me. (Of course, my Stella cat was still with us until January 2014.)
In January, Smokey began hanging out in our back yard. He would sleep in our garden. He liked to pop bubbles with Claire. He starting sitting on my lap. He allows me to trim his nails. Even though we didn’t feed him, he stuck around. Last month, I began feeding him. I did this after he brought me a live bird he’d caught and delivered to my feet. So now he gets two meals a day.
I made him a little shelter when rainstorms came. But mostly, he likes to sleep on me or the mulch.
He was injured in early April, so I took him to a vet. He didn’t want to go, but once there he chilled in the exam room waiting for the doctor. I’ve never seen a cat so mellow at a vet’s office.
My husband is not open to having another pet, so for now, Smokey is not permitted in the house. He strides right in the front door some mornings, though, clearly telling us he wants to be ours. I usher him out.
The other day as I sat on my patio with Smokey on my lap, this thought arose: “Every afternoon, God takes a nap on my lap.”
Where did that come from? I don’t know, but it felt true and real. Last Saturday morning after I fed him, I reflected on the morning. And one sentence that came was, “I fed God breakfast, and now he has gone to stroll the neighborhood, looking after all the world.”
Oh my goodness. Yes. God sought me out. God has chosen me. God loves me, and I love God. This word — God — is loaded with so much history for me. It evokes vastly different meanings for people, and so I avoid using it. But this is what IS in my life. This cat. His arrival, his presence, is a call to sit and be quiet. An invitation to intimacy. I recognize God in my life. THIS is what it means to have a relationship with God!
Extending that metaphor, I experience God everywhere. In every person, animal, plant, and rock. God is everything and everywhere. God is found in acts of care, and God is found in simple being. My goodness! Now I get what namaste means! Yeah, yeah, I’d always known what it meant, but now I experience it in my being.
I have used many words to suggest what is divine in my life: Presence, the Mystery, Buddhamind, Spirit, Being, Ground of Being, Life, Chi, Love. They allude to what I mean; they can only suggest. Just as the a photo of the moon is not the moon, a word is not the thing it references. Something as multi-faceted as the Universe can be explored through science, math, literature, and art, but it cannot be totally integrated by the human mind. So we need shorthand, a word or a number, like X, to represent the holy mystery of All That Exists and our relationship with it. Lately, that “something” is the word God. So, God it is.
Sometimes it helps to name my inner state. So here goes.
I’m lonesome. Restless. Edgy. Feeling isolated, weighed down, slothful. Muffled. Not really engaged by anything. Or rather, not able to settle in and get absorbed by tasks. Avoidant of things I want to do, like writing or making art. Avoidant of things that need doing that I don’t really want to do, like cooking or cleaning. Wishing to be anywhere but my current location. Missing the structure of going somewhere and being with people working. The weird bit: I haven’t gone to a job in eight years. I’m feeling a little like I used to feel long ago: that my life feels too tight, constricted, doesn’t fit right.
I used to wonder if I’d ever feel comfortable in my life. I wondered if I might just be permanently broken. But still I resisted accepting my lot completely, always working toward my goals. And it paid off. I did eventually change myself and my life in ways that created a good fit.
For the first time in about 14 years, my life feels too tight. I’m noticing and naming what is true for me. That part of me gets to exist. I dislike how it feels, but it’s real.
And then I tell myself what this song says to give some balance; it’s a great mantra. Because after all, I get to be here. To be. So sit back and chill for six minutes; absorb the message and the music.
If the embed doesn’t work, go here.
What is real for me in this moment: life feels bittersweet. It’s October again. Soon it’s Christmas. It’s “Where did the time go?” Then it’s a new year, and the school year ends, and summer vacation evaporates, school begins again, and then: another new year. Life is like this, every year. I recognize this, every year. I remember this conversation with myself from last year. The older I get, the more time compresses.
I practice presence — living here and now — and I’ve gotten pretty adept. Compared to the me I was in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, I focus less on past rumination and future anxiety. But that doesn’t make the time pass more slowly. It doesn’t change the fact that this life is such a short stint.
Yes, there’s Presence. The intangible subtle Mystery to which we are connected, from which we arise and to which return. It is possible to notice and experience this daily. Sometimes I even live within and from it — from a knowing that defies description or understanding with the mind.
But lately I’ve been noticing: I like this current incarnation. I like being in this body, living this life. It is precious. Yet it all changes. And there is grief.
I found a photo of myself when I was seven months old. I look into that sweet baby’s face and feel such love for her. Her softness, her open expression. Her innocence. I look at my daughter, a lovely soul, and remember the delicious intimacy of holding her.
Life is doing what it does. I’m so grateful that I am, that I’ve gotten to be this person. It’s just passing so quickly.
I just had a good laugh at myself. I was out doing the Sisyphean task of pulling grass shoots showing up where they don’t belong. I heard a sudden hiss and LEAPED up. It was the water system turning on (Hub’s in charge of the timer, and it’s a new system). Good to know my reflexes are sharp. I was immediately soaked. So I decided: Coffee break!
The ubiquity of green shoots in the new garden reminds me of a cherished author, Bill Bryson, and his thoughts in A Short History of Nearly Everything.
“It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours — arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additions existence. Life, in short, just wants to be.”
Sometimes I am not certain I have the fortitude of heart — the courage — to be a parent. It’s too late, of course, because I am one. Yet as Claire grows up and into her personality and the world at large, there are times when I am uncertain who she is. The little darling I adored, and who was so much more manageable, has disappeared into a volatile, mercurial, brilliant, curious, glorious, and intense girl. Like me, only much smarter. She is so very quick to anger, and she turns that anger on herself.
I have what is called a “spirited child” — a child who is more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and energetic. Certain behaviors emerged in 2012 and 2013 that made us curious, and then concerned me. Particular social interactions, repetitive behaviors, and hyper-sensory issues made me wonder if she had Asperberger’s. So with a referral from her pediatrician, we saw a specialist in February. (It took eight months to get that appointment.) I was permitted to be in the room during the entire evaluation of her behavior and intelligence. It was fascinating. In the end, the experts declared that she does indeed have some traits, but that she is “too social” to be classified on the spectrum. High sensitivity is not considered a diagnosable or real condition of its own, though as a Highly Sensitive Person myself I believe it’s real. And the last test result is that Claire is really, really smart. Gifted smart. As some people (a family of teachers) we met while camping said, “Sick smart.”
Now, I’m bright. My husband is smarter. Our daughter is a combination of highly intelligent and acutely sensitive to not only the physical world, but emotions.
Yesterday she was home with a fever. We had two conflicts that resulted in meltdown. Now, I know young kids have meltdowns. However, I’m not sure how many of them say they want to hurt themselves because they are so angry, or try to scratch or bite themselves in an effort not to physically destroy things. And I’m not sure how many first graders sob and cry about how afraid they are of growing up and say, “I feel like no one understands me! I feel like you liked me better when I was younger. I wish I wasn’t so science-y and had so many big words, because everyone expects me to behave older than I am! I feel different from everyone. I don’t want to be so smart. I wish I didn’t exist.”
She cried because she wants to control her world, but at the same time, she doesn’t want the responsibilities and high expectations she feels are placed on her. She used words like “always” and “never,” and places the responsibility for her feelings externally. “You made me mad! It’s your fault!”
So what did I do during all this sturm und drang? I opened my heart. I breathed through my own exasperation, fear, and anger, my wish to grab her and lash out. I told myself, “This isn’t an emergency. It just feels that way, emotions are high.” I asked her to identify where in her body she felt the anger, and what it felt like. She said her chest felt like it had flames inside. She wanted me nearby but not to touch her. And I told her how my body felt listening to her. “My chest feels heavy, listening to you say you want to scratch yourself,” I said. “My story is that the anger you feel is very huge and scary and feels like a monster inside you.” She relaxed a bit. She agreed.
I talked to Claire a bit about the pain-body, a term Eckhart Tolle uses for the ego as an entity of negative energy. I described that we all have a pain-body, and that we have a choice whether to feed it our energy and attention and make it grow, or not. Negative self-talk, angry thoughts, judgements — all this fuels the pain-body. She said the pain-body is bad. And I replied, “It just IS. Whether or not you judge it good or bad, it exists. If you judge and resist it, you push away that part of yourself, and that feeds it too.” I told her that’s why I’m always suggesting she breathe and connect with the stillness inside.
As for the other part, about being different, I simply acknowledged all these feelings and contradictions. I held her as she sobbed. And within me, my heart quaked with this realization: I cannot protect her — from the world, or from herself. I parent diligently, I try to let go and give her independence, I teach her to understand and don’t parent autocratically or through intimidation. In other words, I’m trying to give her a loving, supportive home, and yet she has such anger and feels disconnected from others. I once said to another parent who was coping with a challenging child, “The trick is to accept the child you have, not the one you imagined you’d have.” Well, those words are coming back to me.
She is her own person, on her own journey. She is my heart, walking out in the world. My heart, completely bare and vulnerable. How will I survive this?
What else did I do when she was storming and I felt overwhelmed with this seeming stranger? I prayed, “Help me. Help me trust you, Life. I’m in over my head.” And I keep breathing and being still.
I am one who lives intimately with the roots of the earth. I am one who is hardy. I am one who moves deliberately. I am one who travels at the speed of eternity. I carry the earth and its Source in me.
I made a date with myself to go to Lori Krein Studios and play with collage today. It made me happy.
“We seldom go freely into the belly of the beast. Unless we face a major disaster like the death of a friend or spouse or loss of a marriage or job, we usually will not go there. As a culture, we have to be taught the language of descent. That is the great language of religion. It teaches us to enter willingly, trustingly into the dark periods of life. These dark periods are good teachers. Religious energy is in the dark questions, seldom in the answers. Answers are the way out, but that is not what we are here for. But when we look at the questions, we look for the opening to transformation. Fixing something doesn’t usually transform us. We try to change events in order to avoid changing ourselves. We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. That is the path, the perilous dark path of true prayer.”
—Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer
I don’t know what else to title this post. Back in the early days of blogging, people started blogs as social interaction. If the blog had a steady readership, the author would feel a need to explain any gap in posting.
Then, other writers started to mock the self-importance of those posts. Who cares why you aren’t posting? Either do it or don’t.
So I tried to avoid that habit. And while this post may sound a bit like an explanation of why I haven’t posted (and maybe get picked up by Sorry I Haven’t Posted, which, um, hasn’t posted in three years), I’m also simply trying to break the mental tomb I seemed to have sealed myself into. Well, that suggests action. It’s more like mental rigor mortis.
When I first began blogging in 2002, I updated often and at length. I was engaged this way for many years. I also posted photos of my artwork and crafts, and my poetry. When my daughter was born, I wrote about my experiences with her.
And then Facebook came on the scene. Most of my social group (online and off) migrated to using that, and I started to as well. And when Claire turned four, I decided it was time to back off on writing publicly about her in detail, and that gutted my motivation to write. I’d still post about crafts we did, and other activities, but eventually I moved it all to Facebook.
In the past year, when I sit down to write here, I fumble. I grope for something to say. I might have a wisp of inspiration, yet some part of me whispers that it’s nothing new, it’s just more noise in the world. Why bother?
And yet. Writing is how I sort myself out. How have I become so disinterested in what’s going on? One voice in me says, “It’s all ego driven.” My practice is to engage fully in the moment, with the world I inhabit and the tasks I complete. I have made a judgment that to be Buddhist requires forsaking the mind. I’ve projected that judgment onto my teacher (not that I’ve told her). In my head, Maezen says this, even though she’s never uttered those words.
Another voice in me calls out, reminding me of other reasons to write. In childhood I felt a deep yearning to know more about my parents, about their childhood experiences, about what they thought of life and current events. Now, as a parent, I understand the difficulty of dredging up memories with specifics to make a good story. Claire often asks me, “Tell me a story about your childhood,” and I simply don’t have access to the memories. Writing is a pathway into them.
I’ve also a strong desire to be known, seen, heard since childhood. I want my child to know about me, if she is interested when she is older. So there is some value in writing. I’ve approached my blog as a kind of commonplace book, where one might read and see what piqued my interest. But as I read Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, I am tantalized by the idea of a Codex Vitae. What is that, you ask? In the novel…
The Codex Vitae is something that special members of this fellowship “earn” the right to create, after rising up in the ranks. When written, it’s submitted to the fellowship, approved, and encrypted. 3 copies are made of the book, 1 goes to the central library, and 2 others go to branch libraries in other parts of the world. The key to the encryption is only given to 1 person, and it remains a secret until the writer’s death.
–Buster Benson, The Way of the Duck
He thought this was a great idea, and so do I. What if I created my own book of knowledge? A blog is a living book. And perhaps no one will read it, or only a few. My daughter might have no interest. After all, it’s a pretty large resource already, having existed for 12 years. In the end, I’ll die and this blog will go someday, but isn’t there some value in scribing my journey?
The truth is, I miss myself. For now, I will close with a poem that captures my hope:
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved youall your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.–Derek Walcott
I want to give a nod to two long-term bloggers who in the past week have given me encouragement to try again (even if they don’t know it): Whiskey River and Euan Semple.
And a link to an article from a blog titled Thought Catalog about how and why to keep a commonplace book.
“But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.”
-Wendell Berry
Via Whiskey River
If the embed doesn’t work, watch here.
Silence
Keiji, a long-time Zen student, approached his master and said: “I don’t see how there can be any enlightenment that sets you free once and for all. I think we just get ever greater glimpses of Buddha-nature, the vastness that is our true Reality. It’s an ever-expanding process.”
The master replied, “That may be what you think. But what is your experience, your experience right now?”
Keiji was confused, “My experience right now, Master?”
“Yes. Do you know yourself as Keiji, having ever-expanding experiences of Buddha-nature? Or do you know yourself as Buddha-nature, having the experience of Keiji?
