Lifeletters

I was in the line at the supermarket a few weeks ago. In front of me was a woman with her grandson, about three years old, sitting in the cart. She was in her fifties, with tattoos, and long blonde bleached hair. I noticed, as we stood in line together, that I had made her into someone separate from me. It was easy to notice this, because my heart and my body closed down. It was as if she was standing outside a boundary, a line that I had constructed.

As soon as I became aware of the separation, I became very curious about it. What was it about this woman that made it difficult for me to include her in my own being? What was it about how she appeared that moved me to exclude her, to treat her as an object?

After a minute or so, I realized it was the Pepsi bottles in her cart, the Pepsi that her grandson would probably be drinking.

As soon as I realized this, I could feel myself begin to relax. I began to engage in something which I used to call inquiry, and which often feels to me more like prayer. It’s a willingness to see beyond the filters of my own conditioning, to open to conscious presence, to that which is true,

“Okay,” I said, speaking to the love and intelligence that live in every being, and that are always available to us, when we call on them. “Help me to see this woman. Allow me to see her through the eyes of the heart. I am not going to let a few Pepsi bottles stand between me and the magnificence of who she really is.”

As soon as I began this inquiry, this small prayer, everything started to change. The reality that we construct in our minds, with edges and lines and boundaries, is really so fragile. It can disappear in a moment.

I heard her speaking to her grandson with such love, about how fast he was growing up. Then her husband appeared, a beautiful man, tall and bright. They stood there together, right in front of me, sharing a stream of sweet love with their grandson.

By this time I wanted to speak with her, but she already at the cash register. Then I saw how wrong I really had been. This woman spoke to the young girl behind the cash register with such a natural warmth, as a fellow human being. She did not put a barrier between them. She paused, looked her in the eye, and took a few moments to really connect with her.

Then she and her husband strolled gracefully away, with their little grandson and those bottles of Pepsi.

I love being wrong like that. I look forward to the next time I am wrong like that! “I don’t know anything, “ I told myself, as I left the store, thinking I might get myself a Pepsi to celebrate the occasion.

I don’t know anything, and yet I do know that I no longer need to fall for the stories my mind makes up about how people appear, on the outside. The ideas, the stories, happen so quickly. In one split second, that wall comes up, and someone is standing on the outside of it.

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A student and friend of mine went surfing in Oregon over Christmas. We has a conversation, a very brief one, when he returned.

“You can’t half catch a wave,” he said. “You have to commit to it, and then once you’ve caught the wave, you have to surrender. If you try to control it, you’ll never make it.”

That image contained something for me, something that just kept working away inside, like sand in an oyster. In the nondual coaching I do with people, we learn how to ride the waves of our feelings in a very similar way. There’s an edge, right at the heart of this practice, where I am no longer controlling my feeling, no matter how intense it is. But I’m not allowing the feeling to take me over. I’m meeting that feeling without any resistance at all, just like when I paddle up to that huge wave. It looks terrifying if I’m separate from it, trying to control it. How can I manage it? One little movement away from that wave, the contraction, the self- protective curl, and I’m lost in struggle and fear and dismay. I have to enter the wave, become one with it, or else it becomes my foe, my enemy.

It’s quite an obvious thing when it comes to surfing, not so obvious when it comes to the chaos that life brings to us, and the feelings that emerge when we are being tumbled around in that wild unpredictable flow. It could be something small, like a computer that crashes. Or it could be something bigger: a house that burns down, a diagnosis of cancer, the loss of a job.

So much of what we are taught in our culture is about being on top of things. We don’t want to break down, lose control. That’s like the ultimate humiliation-something to be avoided at all costs. But the surfer isn’t on top of the wave. He or she is one with it.

A dear friend who is a teacher, a therapist and a Vietnam vet, told me about a time during the Vietnam war when he and his group of men had to cross a field. It was just a few hundred yards of rocks and grass and mud, with the Viet Cong camped on the other side, not far away. If they could make it across without being seen or heard, they could escape down the river on the far side of the field. Travelling with them were some men from the villages, simple and very wise. One of these men helped my friend prepare for crossing the field. He was slapping mud all over his face, arms, hands, and neck, as camouflage.

As he did this, he was talking to my friend. “There’s just one thing you have to do, if you want to cross this field and come out at the river alive, “ he said.

“What’s that?” asked my friend.

“Become one with the field,” the villager replied.

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I live in a small community, a little town in the mountains of British Columbia. In this place we cannot take refuge in the anonymity of the city, although sometimes we long for that. I see our community as a mandala, a living web, in which something that one person experiences ripples through the whole mandala, because of the interconnection. Over the past 10 days, I have witnessed so many different aspects of life moving through us all: wives weeping for their husbands, mothers terrified for their children, friends celebrating new beginnings, clients who want to end their lives. The intensity of what has been displayed before me can sometimes feel like it’s too much. And if I begin to believe that, then it really feels true, that it is too much. But there are other ways to experience this, much wider views.  One of them comes from the indigenous teachings of the medicine wheel, which are not really any different than the nondual work that I engage in.

In the west of the medicine wheel, it is said, “Each situation shows me who I am, and each being is an aspect of myself.” To take this in, to really receive it, is to allow it to penetrate deep into my being, into the body, into the cells. Then I find I can sit in the middle of all this suffering, and all this joy, without being able to separate myself from any of it. Someone who feels a killing rage is showing me an aspect of myself. Someone deep in grief, someone who feels grateful for simply being alive, someone who longs to offer their gifts to the world—I can’t stand apart from anyone anymore. Then how do I know how to act, how to help, how to contribute to the situation?

I don’t. That’s the truth of it. In this moment, I don’t know. I can’t go back and pick up what worked so well yesterday, because this is a brand new moment. It never happened before. All I can do it sit and open to the unknown. And then listen. Just listen. Not with my mind, not with my ears, but with all of me. And see what comes—trust this place of not knowing, even though I want to know, I want to have solutions, answers, expertise.

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I spent some time yesterday with a longtime friend of mine, who is also a teacher. We were talking about how we used to think of the movement of evolution in our lives in terms of ‘awakening’ or ‘realization’ or ‘enlightenment.’ Now we both speak of this as simply ‘growing up.’

Growing up has tremendous appeal for me, at this stage in my life. I notice however, that some of my students and clients get a glazed look in their eyes when they hear these words. The idea of ‘growing up’ seems to be taking them somewhere they don’t want to be, probably into the realm of their own half-alive, highly conditioned parents. The way many of our parents were is not grown up. They just got stuck, and didn’t know how to keep moving.

Being grown up is something else. It’s showing up, letting ourselves be seen and heard, just as we are. It’s learning to live without hiding, without making excuses for ourselves. It’s giving up the safety of what we think we know for the vastness of what we don’t, what we can never really know. It’s trusting that we really do have the resources to meet the immense challenges that life brings us, and that these resources include our friends, our community, and our reaching out to ask them for help. And growing up means taking responsibility for our lives.

The circumstances of my own life have forced me, over the last few years, to learn a whole lot about ‘radical responsibility.’ I’ve had to inquire into what this actually means, and how I can embody it, really live it, every day of my life. Now I’m hearing about it everywhere I turn. It feels like a wave that is building, in the ocean of our collective consciousness.

This summer we explored it quite deeply, in a 5 day retreat I gave. The recurring question that arose for most of the people there was this: “What is the difference between radical responsibility and blaming myself for what happens?” I know that I struggled with this question for years.

In order to engage in this inquiry, we need to begin by coming back to the simplicity of our own moment to moment experience. Who creates this experience? Is anyone else the source of my experience? Can I, in all honesty, hold you accountable for what I am experiencing?

In all the years I have been teaching, not a single person has been able to answer ‘Yes’ to this question. So we all know, when we drop into a space of simply being present, open and clear, that we are responsible for our own experience. In each moment, whatever I receive from the world, from my relationships, from the circumstances of my life, comes through the filter of my own conditioning.

It’s really not so difficult to understand this. Look at Nelson Mandela’s experience in prison for 26 years, and ponder for a moment what someone else, with a whole different stream of conditioning, might have made from that situation. Someone who interviewed him asked, “How did you endure all those years in prison?”
His answer was, “I wasn’t enduring. I was preparing myself, for the possibility of leading my people, when I was released.” That is radical responsibility.

If I want to access my own power, clarity and awakeness in the field of my relationships, I have to take 100% responsibility for those relationships. And this is where most people, including myself, want to back off.

“How can that be?” they wonder. “Surely the other person has some responsibility too? If I take all of the responsibility on myself, isn’t that too much? Won’t I be blaming myself for everything that isn’t working?” These questions and doubts are very natural. Let’s have a look at them.

It is true that the nature of our relationships is co-creative. How you are, how I am, impacts and affects the other person. That is undeniable. But to be aware of the impact is not the same as saying, “You made me feel like this.” As soon as I try to wiggle out of taking 100% responsibility, I start to give my power away. I cannot change you, I cannot demand that you be different than you are. The only place I have any power at all is with myself, my own willingness to work with my own conditioning.

As soon as I start to think that you need to do something, to be different than you are, I have left the place of the grown up, the adult. I am no longer standing on my own two feet. My well being depends on you. I need you to change so that I can feel better. This is how a child perceives the world.

Does this mean that I should tolerate abuse or neglect or repeated acts of unkindness from you? Of course not. That’s going much too far. When I try to imagine what this kind of responsibility would be like, instead of living it and experiencing it directly, all I have is an idea. The idea is a pale shadow, next to the reality. When I simply stand in the place of radical responsibility, it is very clear what I am no longer willing to tolerate. When I take responsibility for being the source of my own love, my own unconditioned respect, then I do not get entangled in all of these complications. Everything changes, when I am willing to see myself as the source of my own experience.

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Beyond living and dreaming
there is something more important:
waking up
(Antonio Machado)

A man I work with was telling me about how he spent the Christmas holidays with his family. He went back home to the big city to spend time with them. Before he arrived, he decided to try something new: he followed the impulses and desires of his heart, his authentic being, instead of going along with conventional expectations and traditions. While he was there, the connections he had with his family and friends were intimate, surprising, and deeply fulfilling. One morning he had a spontaneous and life-changing conversation with his mother.

I was feeling a lot of joy as I listened to him speak. Then he said this:

“It was wonderful, to be so present and open with these people I love. And there was a lot of anxiety. It wasn’t overwhelming, but I could feel my heart fluttering a lot. And it was not easy to sleep at night.”

The kind of anxiety that was arising for him is what I call sacred anxiety. I used to experience it when I was engaged in a lot of public speaking. I learned, after struggling with it for a while, to welcome that anxiety, to open to it and let it move through my body. During that time I discovered that the best talks I gave were when that anxiety was present at the beginning, not the talks where I was calm and sure of myself at the start.

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This is a story told to me by a dear friend. Her name is Jessica Adams. I asked her if I could use her real name and she said yes. I am passing her story along because it was of great benefit to me. When I listened and received it, it was no longer a story. It was more like a homeopathic dose of medicine. It spoke to something I have always been aware of, and enlivened that deep knowing, gave it power and clarity. I am writing the story as if Jessica herself is speaking, so that you can hear it just as I did.

“I was at home one evening,” she said, “when all of these different aspects of my mind arose from within. They just appeared without warning, so many of the different viewpoints I have: judgments, resentments, sorrows, and longings, all of them just displaying themselves before me. They continued to arise for quite a while, as I remained present. And then something happened. A clarity arose out of nowhere, a very profound and simple realization: that my life, just the way it is, gives me everything I need. It doesn’t need to be any other way. All of the beliefs I have held about how it could or should be different—if only this or that would happen, then I could be happy—they just dissolved. Without having to think about it, it was pefectly obvious that none of these ideas were true. What was I thinking? My well being does not depend on any of these things: a husband, a better place to live, a pefect job.”

“That must have been quite a relief,” I said to Jessica.

‘’Yes, “ she said, “but the most wonderful thing about it is that now I can really be happy when good things come to the people I know. There is no longer anything in me wondering why I don’t have that, or why that didn’t happen to me. So I can rejoice in their happiness, without any reservation.”

After I listened to Jessica, I remembered a time many years ago in India, when I was listening to a teacher reading a scripture. In this particular teaching there was a description of a realm called ‘heaven’ or ‘the god realm.’ All the wonders and beauties of this realm were vividly described. Then it went on to say, “This realm promises so much, but it is very difficult to be happy here for long. Because no matter where you are, no matter how much you have, the nature of the god realm is that there is always someone above you, someone who has more than you do—more fame, more prosperity, more intelligence, more insight, more friends, more lovers, more fun.” This being the nature of this place, it is often referred to as the realm of the jealous gods. In an instant I realized that this scripture was actually describing human life—we don’t have to go to heaven or to the god realm to see what it is pointing to.

That was the beginning for me of an insight that has been growing and deepening for many years. (I’m kind of a slow learner.) One afternoon a few years later, I came into my mother’s room. She was lying in bed reading a Buddhist teaching. She had just read something about karma, and how we gain merit through positive thoughts and actions. “ Guess what?” she said to me. “If we are kind and virtuous, we can accumulate merit, and end up in a really great place. We might even go to a god realm, a place like heaven! Isn’t that great? I never knew that I could actually go to a place like that.”

“I don’t know Mum,” I said to her. “I think the promise of a place like that is really overrated.” I explained to her what I understood about the nature of such happiness. She was not impressed. “You just want to be so free,” she said. “I don’t care about all that. I’ll just go to heaven and hang out there for as long as it works.”

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Oct. 18.09
Lifeletter #39

Divine Unease

There seems to be a kind of inner restlessness, a divine unease, bubbling up in all kinds of people these days, in relation to their work.

“I used to be okay with this job,” they say, “but now, it just doesn’t feel quite right. I feel like I should be doing something else, something different.”

“What do you want to do?” I ask

“I don’t know. That’s the hardest part. I just can’t imagine what it could be...I’d just like to participate in something, be a part of something, and be of benefit.”

“Ah yes,” I say, “that’s it, isn’t it? There’s something deep in the heart, something totally natural and uncontrived, that wants to fully participate in life, and be of benefit.”

“Yes,” they reply. “I can feel it, and it doesn’t go away. But what is it? I really don’t know.”

It amazes me how easily we can feel that not knowing is a terrible problem. We interpret it as a closed door, a sign of something wrong. That’s how we’ve been trained, almost all of us--to think that knowing is good, and that not knowing will get us into trouble. When we believe this perception, we create suffering for ourselves. We reject what we actually have, which is the space of not knowing. And when we reject what we have we do not empower ourselves. The only way to empower ourselves, to treat ourselves well, to respect ourselves, is to work with what we have.

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It’s summer, the time when family members come to stay. I live in a town that is full of tourists all summer, and I’ve seen quite a few of these moments--in restaurants, on the street, in the park--when conflicts erupt between family members, and a perfect holiday appears to be ruined. I’ve also had several clients call me this summer, saying, “My mother-in-law is here for 2 weeks and I thought I’d be fine but I need help now!” These are the moments when when we feel trapped, cornered, by our own reactivity. We find ourselves behaving in ways that we never would have chosen.

One client, Claire, has been telling me about a summer visitor who was expressing viewpoints about different races and religions that were extremely judgmental. Claire found herself smiling on the outside, and boiling inside with anger, unable to respond for fear of what she would say. These excruciating moments, no matter now unwelcome, are the fertile ground for our own evolution and transformation. And usually, in a situation where we feel bound and trapped, our thinking has created a world of polarities or extremes. Claire was like someone caught between a rock and a hard place. Her only two alternatives seemed to be a kind of false, smiling acquiescence, or a fierce confrontation.

Both of these are extreme positions, based on a sense that this person is totally ‘other’ and separate from us. And if we look a little deeper, we’ll see that it’s not really ever the other person that is disturbing us-- it’s our own reactions. We can’t find a way to be ourselves with them, and we don’t know how to deal with all of the conflicting thoughts and feelings that are arising.

In the Radiant Mind course, there is a great exercise, in which I consciously spend some time with a person who is outside my comfort zone. No matter how liberal or tolerant I imagine myself to be, there are usually certain kinds of people that I avoid. It appears that I avoid them because of who they are, but what I am really avoiding is my own experience when I’m with them.

Whenever I do this exercise, I end up picking the rowdy street people in our town. And when I spend time with them, I get to see a whole stream of conditioning that sounds like this: “What’s the matter with you? What are you doing-you are wasting your life! Clean yourself up, and go get a job.” I hear these voices inside my head and they sound like my grandfather, not me.

All I can do is just open to everything that is arising in the field of my awareness, without pushing any of it away, without trying to change any of my thoughts and feelings. Sometimes the voices and the feelings get more intense. But if I can just hang in there, without getting upset about how uncomfortable it is, they start to fade away. And I’m left with a clear and simple sense that this person has nothing to do with any of my judgments, and they have a perfect right to be exactly as they are.

Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of non-violent communication, speaks about an experience he had in an Indian rickshaw, listening to a diatribe of hatred coming from one of the other passengers. He got so angry and so hurt by what this man was saying that he had to remind himself many times about the principles of non-violent communication. He just wanted to tell that person that everything they were thinking and saying was totally wrong. Until he realized that he was becoming just like his fellow passenger.

That’s what we overlook, whenever we get caught in our own points of view. As soon as I deny you the right to be the way you are, as soon as I believe that you really need to be different, I have fallen into a belief structure that is based on judgment, separation and violence.

When Claire and I were speaking about her visitor, I said, “When you are simply present, fully aware, not avoiding or judging, then a space opens up in which you are both allowed to be just as you are. And in that space, you’ll find a way to be with her beyond the two extremes of stifling your own response, or jumping down her throat.”

“What would that be?” she asked. “I just can’t imagine how I could respond to her in a good way.”

“You won’t find out by thinking about it,” I said. “You’ll find out by allowing yourself to be fully present, exactly as you are, without trying to change any part of your own moment to moment experience.”

“Okay,” she said, “ but just give me an idea of another possible way to be here.”

“Well, “ I said, “You could listen to her, and then say, “I’m hearing that you have lots of strong viewpoints about certain kinds of people. I imagine you must have had some powerful experiences to support what you feel about these people. So these views are very real to you--I understand this. And yet I have dear friends who fit in these categories. How is it that we have such different experience with the very same people? Have you ever wondered about this?”

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