The Neutral Zone

In any transition there are three parts going on simultaneously. We’re most often conscious of the endings—the losses, and the new beginnings, however faint they are. We are less conscious of the third, and often predominant part of transitions—the part where we are lost and uncertain. Endings are often painful, beginnings are exciting, but it’s the disorientation—the not being able to find firm footing that can be most challenging.

William Bridges, in his wonderful book Managing Transitions that is now out in its 25^th anniversary edition, talks about these three stages. He is very clear that although change can happen quickly, transitions, the processing and living into the new circumstances of our lives, happens in stages and over time. These stages overlap and at any point in the process one can predominate.   When I first Transitions many years ago shortly after moving to Worcester and beginning a new job, I was most struck by Bridges naming the amorphous not-knowing aspect of transitions—what he calls the neutral zone.

The neutral zone is the place where we don’t know where we are or what direction we need to be moving in. We have trouble focusing and feel uninspired or depressed. We seem to be spinning our wheels. Endings are not complete and beginnings are not clear. In the changes that are happening we have lost the foundation we counted on and we can’t even discern what direction is forward and what is back.

I have often thought that the Tibetan Buddhists are pointing to the same mind-space with their image of the bardo—that realm where souls abide in between incarnations. The bardo is portrayed as a dangerous place because you have no human agency. You are adrift without the power to make choices. You are blown about by the winds of karma. You cannot cultivate intention or awakening in the bardo. It is a time of waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

Sound familiar? Almost like being in the middle of a pandemic and still not being sure if we are in the beginning, middle or even perhaps nearing the end of the outbreak. Were you planning to travel this fall? Go to a conference in the spring? Travel oversees next summer? Now we don’t know how to plan and can’t clearly imagine what our future will be like.

With schools beginning in just a week or two, it’s not even clear if our children will be in school or at home. And even if we think they are going to be in school, they may only be there a few days a week. And there’s no guarantee that once they go back there won’t be another spike of infections and they will be sent home. Again.

It’s hard to live in the neutral zone. Our planning minds like to create clear pictures of the future. Of course, we never really know what will happen from one day to the next, but when our mind has a fixed plan that is reasonably close to what seems to be happening, we are able to ignore our true ignorance and the ultimate unreliability of reality as we imagine it.

The pandemic is pressing us all. Our President is using this as a time to illustrate the power of positive thinking. His hope seems to be that if he draws out attention to the good things and gets everyone to try really hard, we can beat the virus without wearing these silly masks and taking collective action to limit our physical contact. If we wait long enough this strategy might work, but only after a level of suffering and death that is far beyond anything we have encountered to-date. Positive thinking and willpower are rather weak forces in the universe. They can be helpful, but only when practiced in the context of working with some large unfolding reality of experience.

In the neutral zone, patience is the deepest practice. Waiting. Keeping vigil. It can be helpful to know and name that this place of uncertainty and inaction is a necessary part of the process. Everything takes its own time and sometimes there is nothing to be done other than to take care of ourselves right where we are, to remember that we are together even in our separation and to know that even in the confusion and uncertainty of the moment, our true life is right here.

Balancing Risk and Care

This morning, a little after five, I sit in the full darkness. The glow of my screen illuminates my fingers’ peripatetic movement over the black keys of my laptop while cars on Pleasant Street already plow through the early morning, intent on delivering their unknown drivers to distant locations.

The quiet roads of the early pandemic are slowly returning toward normal volume. I suppose this is good, but already I miss the early days of silence when this terrible virus brought normal life as we knew it to a screeching stop. It was a little like a snow day when everything is gratefully suspended and we hunker down in our cozy homes and wait for the snow to melt. But this was different. We were fearful but most of us had hopes that in a few weeks or perhaps a month or two, we would resume normal life up right where we had left off.

It hasn’t worked out that way. Now six months in, we’ve been through one wave of sickness and death here in Massachusetts. My friend Barry Morgan died unseen and will never come back. Others are struggling with the after effects of this dangerous virus. Infection rates are now quite low but threatening to rise again as they have in so many other parts of the country. What will the second wave be like? A small, barely noticeable rise or another perilous spike of infections, hospitalizations and death? Now, credible people like our family doctor say that two years is reasonable estimate for when the virus will really be under control.

Meanwhile, we get on with our lives as the weird mix of normal and physically contracted that they are. Zoom seminars and retreats make learning and connecting possible beyond our wildest dreams. Want to go on a Zen retreat in Ireland but don’t have the money to fly over? No problem. Want to learn how to scream-sing like a rock star from one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject in South America? No problem.

But if you want to visit your elderly parents or have your children return to the ordinary melee of school and friends that we assume is healthy for normal growth—then you’re in a quandary. We’re in a quandary. Our ongoing predicament requires us all to continue to practice precautions that still feel very un-normal.

We have some neighbors near our place in the country (a quiet street in a nearby section of Worcester) who seem to think the pandemic is over. A nice young couple, they have a continual parade of friends over for dinner and hanging out. No masks, no apparent distancing, no fear. Though we occasionally hear their voices and laughter while we practice our Zoom-Zen (our internet connection is better there than here at the Temple), that’s not our main concern—the spread of COVID is. Do they think they are immune? Have they carefully increased the bubble of their contacts through negotiation and planning? We don’t know, but we are careful not to get too close.

The behavioral decisions that balance safety and connection are exhausting to make. They are not individual decisions. It’s not just about how I feel, but about some considered estimation of how my actions will impact the people in my bubble and all the others around me.

My grandson is about to enter pre-school. My actions impact him and his safety as his impact me. The pre-school is taking reasonable crazy precautions and everything will be all outside for the first few months. But then what?

My elderly parents are at their summer home by a lake in Vermont and need a family member with them for safety. Is it safe for them for me to go up even if I get a COVID test prior to travel? Is it safe for me to come back to my ‘bubble’ even given their carefully planned rotating care-takers? How do we make such decisions that are so fraught with unknowable consequences?

It’s exhausting. Probably no easy way other than continued attention and conversation including as many dimensions as possible. Being up to date on recommended guidelines and local regulations. Reading the latest about how the virus is transmitted and what are best practices. Taking into account the emotional dimensions of these decisions and the different levels of risk tolerance that are comfortable to all of the people involved.

Then we make our best decision and onward in this ever-shifting new un-normal.

Morning Moon

Against the pale blue,
the moon’s remaining
sliver easily abides
before its appointed
vanishing into
the coming light.
Fired pink
by the rising sun,
clouds come too.
The slight moon
flickers and sooner
than planned disappears
from view. Even
this is precious.

Waiting for the Morning Glories

The morning glories are refusing to bloom again. Like most years, they have already grown lush and covered the pergola with their generous heart shaped leaves. And like most years, there is this long delay before the buds and flowers come. I’ve been waiting patiently, but yesterday while driving to my bi-weekly speed shopping in the early morning at Trader Joe’s with the other old folks, I saw two gardens with lushly blooming morning glories. Granted they were the dark purple variety, not my preferred Heavenly Blue, but still I was jealous.

You can’t start morning glories until the weather is settled in the spring. They don’t transplant well so the tough and tiny round seeds get planted directly into the soil, but not until the nights are consistently above 50 degrees. Where I live, this is sometime after the beginning of June—depending on how adventurous you are. If the weather is warm enough and you soak the seeds overnight before you plant them, they spout quickly and grow at an astonishing rate of up to several inches a day—eagerly climbing whatever string or vertical support is handy.

Every year, the morning glories reach the top of the pergola in three or four weeks. Then they continue to grow—twining around other tendrils at the top and sending other shoots to follow the first climbers. Now in mid-August, two and a half months later, the morning glories are a mass of foliage that looks wonderfully healthy and lush. But still not one flower or even a bud.

I’ve read that morning glories don’t flower if the soil is too rich. But I grow them in relatively small planters and don’t enrich the soil or give them supplemental feeding. In fact, the mass of foliage so far exceeds the amount of soil they grow in that in the hot weather I have had to soak the planters twice a day to keep the foliage from wilting.

With the cooler weather, I’m conscious of the limits of the season. Some plants do well until the full frost comes. But the morning glories die after the first night in the mid-forties. This could come as quickly as mid-September, though more likely a month after that. It’s a brief window.

Of course when the morning glories do start blooming, they will produce scores of blossoms daily—impossibly lovely and delicate swirls of powder blue—each one a miracle of craftsmanship and design. Each flower flourishing for one brief morning, then the thin tissue of blue collapses on itself and falls away. Only to be replace the next morning by other blossoms. It’s a lovely and extravagant display that delights me every year.

And every year I have to remember to appreciate my impatience as part of the fun of it all. Like a little child who wants to read the same book over and over even though he knows and because he knows the ending, I wait eager and excited as the pages turn and the days go by. The ten tiny morning glory seeds have directed the show quite well up to this point and I have to trust that again this year they will accomplish their miraculous destiny.

Time of Disconnection

It’s a lovely cool morning. Autumn is on its way. The intense heat of the summer has temporarily released us from its grip. I am relieved and slightly disoriented.

The neighborhood is quiet. No cars on Pleasant Street. The sound of the Temple garden waterfall floats over the always distant rumble of the highway several miles off. I know it’s quiet when I hear the highway—the pulsing artery of commerce that keeps our consumer culture in business.   Silence, as John Cage taught us, is just the space in which noise appears.

Or we could also say that there is no silence. Always some subtle sounds of the breath moving in and out, the heart beating. Once, in the hospital, they checked to see if my carotid artery was functioning properly. Putting a listening device on the side of my neck that recorded and amplified the sound, the technician and I heard the great pulsating rushing—the sound of the blood rushing from my heart up toward the tender regions of my brain. She was rather neutral about the whole affair, but I was greatly excited to hear the roaring streams alive in my body.

I had an uncomfortable day yesterday. In the morning, I wrote and wrote and nothing held together. One thing came after the other and I couldn’t find any pattern or shape that felt right. I would either lose the thread or would find myself working hard to write something that was of little interest to me.

Most of my day was like that—a feeling a subtle and pervasive sense of disconnection. Even watering the plants and wandering in the garden didn’t help. The roots of my self felt parched and unable to connect to any nourishment. Still alive but held in solitary confinement by invisible forces. There were no walls or bars. The door was not locked. But I could neither find it nor open it.

Some states of mind are difficult to see clearly. Sometimes the light of awareness is diffuse and unable to focus. Like a day on the coast of Maine where the morning fog refuses to lift and one has no choice about clarity of vision. Of course, the trick is always to appreciate where we are, but sometimes this appreciation is nowhere to be found. I did my best to settle in to the place I was, but it was not comfortable. I really don’t like this particular feeling of powerlessness and disconnection. In the end, I just lived with it.

Patience is one of the qualities of mind that Buddhist call the Paramitas – the Perfections. These qualities are both the path to awakening and the result of awakening. (The traditional six Mahayana Paramitas are: generosity, discipline, patience, energy, absorption and wisdom.) Yesterday, having tried everything else, I opted for practicing patience.

Sometimes there is nothing that can be done. We can either rest where we are or we can keep trying to be somewhere else. Or, more accurately, we try some alternating combination of the two. I recommend doing something if you can and not doing something if you can’t.

Eventually—and sometimes eventually feels like a long, long time—things change. Difficult states ease and new possibilities emerge. The glue of things begins to hold again and the water somehow reaches my parched roots. Metaphors are plentiful and I once again begin using them indiscriminately.

For this, I am grateful.