Not Just Personal

Whatever you’re thinking and feeling, it’s not just personal.

It’s easy for many of us human beings to feel separate and isolated from each other in the intensity of our inner worlds—especially in this time of uncertainty when we all have so much less contact with each other than we ever have before. We can feel cut off and alone. Separate from other people and the rest of the world. For most human beings, this is a deeply painful experience.

We all have interior worlds that appear to be quite distinct from the world outside of us. There are two classes of objects in my experience: me and everything else. This is one of the roots of the great delusion of separation that is so troublesome for human beings. We assume that because our thoughts and feels arise within our consciousness that they are ‘private’ and ‘belong’ to us. But if we look a little closer, we can begin to notice that neither one of these assumptions is true.

Just ask anyone who knows you well what it’s like to be around you when you are in a bad mood—or a good mood. Most likely, they will tell you that you do an excellent job of communicating your inner states without saying a word. Being mammals, we are tuned into each other on many levels. Less than 20% of communication is verbal—the rest is from the myriad subtleties of physical presence. (Much of which is absent from video-conferencing, so even though it is a wonderful thing to be able to meet with each other on-line from a distance, it can also feel thin and unsatisfying.)

Secondly, though we talk about ‘my’ thoughts and ‘my’ feelings, where actually do they come from and where do they go to? Why is it, that after feeling anxious all day, something shifts and you feel differently? Maybe just for a moment, but why do you sometimes feel one way and sometimes another—in the same situation? We can point to reasons and perhaps even claim credit for ‘working with our minds.’ But, in truth, there is a great mystery to the things that arise and disappear in our awareness.

Of course, we all get stuck in realms of ruminative thinking and feeling that can be quite painful and discouraging. Sometimes, in these places, we can just remind ourselves of something greater and simply ‘change the channel.’ Sometimes (like at 3 a.m. in the morning when we can’t get back to sleep) we can’t and need to do our best right where we find ourselves.

In these moments it can be helpful to remember that what you’re thinking and feeling is not just personal. We are all awareness nodes for our culture and for the whole universe. What you’re experiencing is what human beings around the world are experiencing. Rather than being separate, you intimate experience, even of suffering, is what connects you with your fellow humans.

So, in the places where there is nothing left to do, is it possible to open our hearts to the fullness of human life that is what we most deeply share with every human being on the planet?

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Deep Democracy: An Invitation

In the early 2000’s, I traveled out to Yachats, Oregon to attend a workshop with a teacher named Arny Mindell. Arny had studied at the Jung Institute in Zurich, but had broken with the Jungian orthodoxy to create his own way which he called, Process Work. I had randomly picked up one of his books, LEADER AS MARTIAL ARTIST, while visiting a friend in California. I was captivated by his ideas and was amazed at how ‘Zen’ he sounded.

In particular, I was struck by Arny’s idea of ‘deep democracy’.  ‘Deep democracy is our sense that the world is here to help us become our entire selves, and that we are here to help the world become whole.’ This perspective of a reciprocal relationship between the self and the world mirrors the Buddhist teaching of dependent co-arising—that the self and the world create each other, I wanted to learn more from him. We are not actors moving about on a large stage, but we are constantly collaborating to create the world around us. Breathing in and breathing out, we are not separate from the world in which we live.

Arny also wrote ‘Deep democracy is that special feeling of belief in the inherent importance of all parts of ourselves and all viewpoints in the world around us.’ Each of us is a multiplicity of voices and parts. Rather than privilege some voices and suppress others, we should learn to welcome all the parts of ourselves. We don’t have to let the dark voices take over, but we do need to honor and listen to them, because they too have value and contain necessary wisdom.

Likewise, we need to be actively open all the voices in the world around us, not just because everyone has a right to be heard, but because only when we see what is happening from many sides can we fully appreciate what here and act effectively. Reality is a collaborative construction and we each see it from a unique and valuable perspective.

The coast of Oregon is wild and rural. The waves crash constantly on the rocky shore—on clear calm days as well as stormy ones. The week with Arny and his wife and teaching partner Amy (and 100 plus other people) was wonderful and challenging for me. Two things I remember most: first is meeting a person who has become a life-long friend. We have gone on to lead workshops together and she remains a dear friend and collaborator to this day.

The second thing that is still vivid these many years later is Arny’s amazing presence. He’s a small man with a huge grin. Everything that arises seems to delight and intrigue him. During the workshop, he met everything, even disruption, with a level of curiosity and trust that I had never witnessed before.

In LEADER AS MARTIAL ARTIST, he put it this way: ‘Deep democracy is our sense that the world is here to help us become our entire selves, and that we are here to help the world become whole.’ This perspective deeply contradicts our usual sense of life as struggle and the heroic individual who fights and subdues the dangerous territory around her. A Tibetan Buddhist teacher once expressed this same radical sentiment when he said: ‘The world is kindly bent to ease us.’

What if it’s really true that ‘the world is here to help us?’ What if, even in this time of uncertainty and fear, there is some particular opportunity opening for each one of us to learn and to grow in new ways? And what if, in some way, our individual thoughts, words and actions are important to our collective response as we learn to cope and perhaps even thrive as humans in this new world?

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Living With Limits

I hit the wall last night. I guess we all have limits.

We had some technical difficulties setting up the Temple’s daily Zoom meditation session. I had spent a long day talking to people in the thick of dealing with the challenges, anxieties and fears of these days—their own and that of others. And I just kind of fell into the darkness myself.

I suppose it’s dangerous to meet people where they are; to welcome and trust whatever is present. I feel so blessed to have a vocation, both as Zen teacher and as life coach where I get to play in these fields of authentic human experience and connection. Through my work and through my life, I have unrelenting faith in the underlying grace and ungraspable coherence that always appears when we stay long enough right where we are. But sometimes, it is just too much.

I never used to know I had limits. I knew I sometimes got tired and grouchy and withdrawn, but I never realized that these are signals for me that I can’t do any more. The problem is that I usually can do more and often try to do more—and this is where I get in trouble. When I go beyond what my heart can hold, I can still be present, doing almost the same thing, but there is a personal cost to me. Like a muscle that will overwork one day and then be sore and not able to function the next.

When I’m over my limit, I’ve found that it is surprisingly helpful just to realize that I’m over my limit. Even when I need to keep going in whatever I am doing, realizing that I’m overextending myself allows me to function more skillfully. When I don’t have a lot of energy or clarity, I can only trust the low energy and lack of clarity. Trying to pretend I am some place else is just more exhausting and not a very effective strategy.

Hitting the wall is the place where I begin I feel the exhaustion. I loose my natural feeling of connection and possibility. I get quiet and feel I just have to go on alone. It’s not a pleasant place, but when I recognize it and call it by its name, it’s not terrible either. And the gift of naming it – of knowing I am in a dark place and can no longer rely on my own skillfulness and energy – is that then I can do my best to practice what I encourage others to do.

So I do my best to let myself be where I am. I recall the question my Zen teacher gave me when I was in a dark place decades ago. ‘What is there here you have never noticed before?’ I look around and get curious the dark geography of this particular place. I allow myself to go slower. I give my self up. I remember once again that I am not the ruler of the universe (always a disappointment). I text a friend and set up a date for a six-foot walk. I go out and work in the garden.

I meet my life once again. Ah….just this.

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Shelter-In-Place or Stay-At-Home?

Listening to the radio yesterday, I was conscious of our struggle to find words to describe this particular time and place we are in. The radio hosts on NPR mostly avoided ‘pandemic’ and ‘global pandemic’, out of, I suppose, a wish not to make things more alarming than they already are. ‘Corona virus outbreak’ was used as a straight-ahead descriptor. But the hosts seemed most comfortable with ‘uncertain time’ and, the one I liked best, this ‘stay-at-home’ time.

This last phrase comes from our Massachusetts governor, Charlie Baker, who has refused to issue a ‘shelter in place’ order, but instead has issued a ‘stay at home advisory.’ Turns out that the ‘stay at home advisory’ is essentially the same as the ‘shelter in place order’ announced in other states. We’re supposed to stay at home except for essentials – buying groceries or medicine, getting outside for walks and exercise (though he didn’t mention it, I’m sure tending the garden can be included as a form exercise), and we’re to stay six feet away from each other everywhere we go. No going to eat at restaurants or gathering with more than ten people. So it’s the same instructions with a different name and a very different tone. Good for you Charlie Baker. The language we use helps shape the reality we live.

‘Stay at home advisory’ has very different connotations than ‘shelter in place’. I think of a stay-cation or getting a day off from school because of snow. The idea of staying at home can have the feeling of a taking a break. What if we’re all getting a big break? We’ve been freed from our cars and our incessant need to be going somewhere. We don’t have to ferry kids to school or to fight the traffic on the way to work. We get to try out that recipe we’ve been wondering about.  Time for those projects we’ve been putting off.

Of course, we’re all discovering that staying at home, even with those we love, has its challenges—especially when it includes either having to do the work we used to do somewhere else or with the not working and wondering how we’re going to pay for our ongoing food and shelter. Life is indeed, just one thing after another. But how we meet these challenges exactly determines the quality of our life—is our life.

‘Stay-at-home time’ also has the virtue of being a simple description of what we are doing—neither alarmist nor dismissive. The story of why we are having to stay at home can be frightening and overwhelming, but the reality staying at home is not the same as the reasons why. This is a useful distinction as we live into the days and weeks ahead.

Though the narratives that help us understand the world around us are helpful and necessary, they can also lead us into fearful places that seem to feed on themselves. Like a cow chewing on its cud, we ruminate – thinking the same thoughts over and over without actually doing much more than disturbing ourselves. ‘Staying at home’ might be a reminder for us to stay grounded in our experience of this moment. Rather than traveling great distances of worry and fretting, can we ‘stay at home’ and just cut the carrots, just put the toys away, just walk the dog, just sit on the couch and watch the TV?

While these are extraordinary and unprecedented times, the invitation of each moment remains our best option for finding what we are really looking for.

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Grieving What We Have Lost

With the arrival of the corona virus and our necessary social precautions to curb its spread, we have lost some of the fundamental rhythms of our lives. We are living into a new world that none of us had planned for. I find myself strangely caught between a sense of normalcy and a quality of surrealness. I still get up every morning and still have steel-cut oats for breakfast and still talk to people on the phone. But everything, including the future, feels deeply different – so different that when I talk to people I haven’t spoken to since this all started, I find myself at a loss for words to describe this what is happening.

Some part of the foundation of my life has been taken away. Things I didn’t even know I counted on are no longer here.

I went for a walk with a good friend yesterday. We’ve been walking and talking and eating lunches together for over twenty-five years. We always hug when we meet and when we say goodbye. It’s not a big deal, it’s just what we do—or did. Yesterday, both in greeting and in parting, we stood some small distance from each other and bowed. Now I love bowing as an expression of greeting and offering, but to bow to my good friend made me feel sad and slightly disoriented.

To lose what we had relied on, especially the things we didn’t even know we were relying on, is traumatic. Not only do we lose the particular behavior or experience, but we lose a sense of certainty about life itself. We realize, in these moments of traumatic loss, that our whole world is much more fragile than it seems.

On some level, we all know that everything changes and that we will all die. But most of the time, we unconsciously count on everything being pretty much the same as it was yesterday. We depend on knowing what there is to worry about—it’s the project that’s due next week, it’s making sure to get to the grocery store before we run out of bread, it’s dealing with a upset friend or child. But when we see that our whole life is more like a dream than anything solid, we are shaken to our subtle core.

We are all grieving the world we knew and the unwitting certainty we have lost. At times like these, remembering the many stages and conditions of grief can be helpful: denial, anguish, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – to name just a few. These are not a linear progression, but rather a way to understand the many emotions and mind-states that we may cycle through after a significant loss.

The wonderful Zen advice for what to do when you find yourself in any of these states (or any other), is to ‘do nothing.’ While we all have ongoing responsibilities, we also need to cut ourselves some slack as we adjust to the new world in which we now find ourselves. If you’re having trouble focusing, instead of just trying harder, it might be helpful to realize that you are going through a necessary and useful response to a traumatic loss. Take a break. Accept that you’re not going to be as productive for a while. If find yourself being more emotional and reactive than usual, realizing that this too is a normal response to a time of unusual stress and change can be helpful in stopping and taking time to recover before moving forward.

So my advice for the day – don’t try harder. When strong emotions or strong dullness arises, know that this is part of a healthy response to these unprecedented times. Instead of powering your way through, notice where you are, consider that it might be an important place to be for a while, and see if you can learn whatever it has to teach you.

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Making Use of Discomfort

A friend recently accused me of being relentlessly positive. I was slightly insulted. The teaching that the good life is simply a matter of thinking good thoughts and taking a positive perspective is pernicious, false and misleading. My lived experience corresponds much more closely to the Buddha’s first teaching: Discomfort and suffering are unavoidable parts of human life. And so far, as I have asked this inquired of hundred of clients, students and friends, everyone has reported a similar experience. No one has a life free from upset and anguish. (In the Christian narrative as well, Christ does not avoid our full human life but dies suffering on a cross – an image that, though disturbing and challenging to deal with, also aligns with the truth of my experience at times.)

In Buddhism, this teaching of the inescapability of suffering, is known as the First Noble Truth. It is not the first inconvenient or the first terrible fact of life. It is noble: something of value, something precious. And if our discomfort and suffering are precious, most of us are already quite wealthy.

As I was processing the accusation of relentless positivity, I began to see that it may come from this particularly Buddhist relationship to the inherent difficulty of being human. When we accept that discomfort is part of life, we can move away from our cultural affliction of fixing or denying whatever is unpleasant. When our negative experiences are accepted as part of our life, we can stop fighting and judging and running away. We can begin to be present with what is actually present in the moment. When we are present with what is right here, some new possibility appears.

This teaching of the possibility of suffering is not something you should accept. In fact it has very little value as something to just believe and talk about. The invitation here is to consider that this might actually be true and to look more deeply into your own experience to find out for yourself.

We could even practice right now with the anxiety and fear that some of us are feeling as we live into the rising tide of Covid-19 infections. Many of us are now staying at home with minimal physical contact with the outside world and a daily deluge of scary information about the pandemic.  We have to deal with our partners, our pets, our children, the blank walls and most especially ourselves in new ways. Everyone, especially ourselves, can get on our nerves.

What if we didn’t have to fix or even intellectually understand our discomfort? What if our anxiety and irritation and fear are natural and just one part of being human? What if the experience of this moment, whatever its content, is actually an opportunity to learn something new? To become more fully human? To be more fully alive?

I guess my friend was right. This teaching of the possibility of discomfort and suffering is a kind of positivity—relentless because it includes whatever is here, even the negativity.

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New Time Frames

We’re into the second week of our online Temple meditation practice.  Melissa and I (with Corwyn’s help) are getting more comfortable with the new logistics, but the details still require a new level of awareness while practicing.  (Maybe not a bad thing.)  Holding to our ‘normal’ Temple meditation schedule has felt like an important anchor for us and for our community in this time when so much is in flux. Seeing everyone together on the screen as we practice, alone together in our own homes, continues to be a welcome reminder of our connection and our interdependence.

My time-scale of expectation is also being disrupted. A week ago, we decided to suspend in-person practice at the Boundless Way Temple and go on-line for two weeks, then re-evaluate.  Some of us were afraid that this was overreacting, but it seemed reasonable to be cautious and error on the side of safety. It turns out that we wildly underestimated the scope, danger and time-scale of this viral pandemic.

No one can definitively say when this pandemic will end, but no one is talking weeks anymore. Various epidemiology modelers are now theorizing it will be months and perhaps even years till we are out of danger.  One recent article in the Boston Globe referred to the possibility of recurring periods of social distancing till the end of 2021. Yikes!

The truth is, we don’t know.

And the truth is that, here, in this situation, is where we find ourselves. Where we find ourselves in the sense that we don’t really know how we got here, we’re just here. (As I don’t know how I have managed to become a sixty-seven year old when I was sure I was a much younger person.)

And we find ourselves here in the sense that this moment and this particularly uncertain time is the only time and place where we can live our lives—where we can begin to know who we are and what we are here to do.

There is no other possible world. Things could not be different.

My wish this morning is that we might we all leave behind whatever is necessary to allow us to live full and meaningful lives – to meet these challenges and learn these new ways of being – and to appreciate this brief and precious gift of being human.

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Quite Encouraged (in a small way)

This early Sunday morning, my tiny seedlings glow a vibrant green under the fluorescent grow lights a few feet from where I sit writing these words. The cosmos seedlings are the already stars of the lot. One day, they will bear a profusion old-fashioned flowers on lacy greenery easily soaring five or six feet above the garden bed. They now stand a lordly three inches tall. Already I’m concerned that they may outgrow my improvised greenhouse before the weather is warm enough to transplant them into the garden.

The pansies that will one day be profusion of fragrant purple blossoms, are now just four tiny leaves. Invisible stems holding these tender green engines just a millimeter above the damp soil of their plastic four-packs. I’ve never grown them from seed and I wonder how they will find their way from here to there.

I’m most excited about my lavender seedlings. (Munson – an English variety) I dream of a patch of lavender at the top of the waterfall in the Temple garden. It’s lush and full of light blue blossoms and smells heavenly. Right now however, my lavender patch is in two four-inch pots, each containing nine or ten thread-like stalks a quarter inch tall. On top of each spindly stalk are two tiny leaves, a little larger than pinheads. Not a very promising start, but between my amazement that these minuscule seeds of black grit actually sprouted and my fertile imagination, I’m quite encouraged.

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Working with Anxiety and Fear

Anxiety and panic are deeply wired into our human experience. Originally these physiological responses conferred a survival value. Our ancient anxious ancestors were alert for threatening sounds in the dark (anxiety). When they heard the footsteps of the saber tooth tiger coming, they grabbed the baby and ran with all their might (panic). Their friends who were more grounded and relaxed, were eaten by the tiger. Thus the genetic material coding for panic and anxiety were passed on to you and me.   (And this is why it is so hard to meditate – very little of the ‘calm’ genetic material was passed on—we’re all still listening for the tiger.)

In these days of our collective challenge to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus, our lives have all been deeply disrupted. Some of us can no longer leave our homes. None of us can live the ‘normal’ lives we had even two weeks ago. The infection rate is still climbing and we don’t know what’s next.

Everyone I know is dealing with fear and anxiety. So this morning I’d like to offer a few perspectives and tools that might be helpful in working with these often difficult mind-states.

1) Anxiety and fear are a rational, functional and healthy response to the situation we are all in. If you’re feeling (and struggling) with these emotions, consider yourself a normal. These emotions disturb and mobilize us to help us break out of the grip of our normal routine. One of the challenges our civic leaders is dealing with is getting to increasingly small number of people who have not been taking this seriously – those that have not had a healthy level of fear and panic.

2) It’s OK to feel what you are feeling. Though it can be very unpleasant to feel scared and anxious, it is actually not a problem. The truth of feelings is that they come and go. Often our trying to avoid feeling certain feelings can be part of a trap that keeps us stuck right in the middle of them.  You don’t have to like what you’re feeling, but fighting if often takes more energy than just letting it be. You don’t have to fix anything.

3) Get curious. What are you really feeling? The words we use ‘I’m so anxious.’ ‘I’m panicking.’ can hide the more complex and subtle reality of our experience. Next time you’re feeling anxious, try getting curious about what is really going on. Slow down, take a breath and turn your attention to your body. What are the specific sensations appearing (and disappearing?) in this moment? What is it like for you right now? How big? How intense? Is there variation? What is there here that you might not have noticed before?

4) Pendulate. Like the pendulum of a clock, we need to swing toward and swing away from these difficult places. Intense feelings, whatever they are, take a lot of energy to be with and none of us can live all the time in that intensity. It is healthy to sometimes turn toward the very feelings that are most troubling to us. It is also healthy to sometimes turn away. Go out and take a walk. Clean your closet. Watch Netflix. Call a friend. You can (and probably will) always come back to the difficult emotional states, but we humans were born for variation. When we leave and come back, we have new resources and new possibilities.

These are indeed challenging times. Even in the midst of the uncertainty and fear, we each have an opportunity to practice opening our hearts to the fullness of life. Not always easy. Rarely smooth. But endlessly mysterious and filled with potential.

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Everything You Encounter Is Your Life

In this time of rising health and economic crisis, it is easy to see our lives as an endless succession of challenges. From one perspective, this is true, but it is not the only truth. No story we tell about our lives can match the fullness of what it means to be alive. Of course, stories are necessary (and wonderful), but we need to be skillful about noticing what story we are telling ourselves and whether that story is actually helping us or simply exhausting us.

One of the problems with the ‘succession of challenges’ view of life is that it places the emphasis on the ‘getting through’ rather than on what is possible right where we are. While it can be useful to imagine a time when you won’t be as challenged as you are now, this can also lead us to a kind of partial living. ‘Right now, I’ll just keep my head down and try to get through this. When things settle down, then I’ll breathe easy and appreciate my life.’

These are extraordinarily challenging times. We are having to learn new patterns of social engagement and economic uncertainties beyond anything most of us have ever imagined. As we move through the mechanics of our day – breakfast, lunch and dinner – we spin through endless scenarios of futures of disaster and salvation. This is normal and not at all a problem.

Today, I’d simply like to suggest and alternate perspective to the true story of ‘succession of challenges.’   I first read this in a book by 20th century Zen Master Uchiyama: “Everything you encounter is your life.”

The circumstances of the moment – both internal and external are the only thing you ever have. These circumstances are mostly uncontrollable, constantly changing and are guaranteed to be uncomfortable at times. (Sometimes wildly uncomfortable.) When we begin to accept these rather obvious realities, we can perhaps begin to be a little more at ease right where we are.

‘Everything you encounter is your life’ invites us to not put off our life for some other time when things ‘settle down.’ Instead of trying to fix and control and get through, we can turn our attention to being with and appreciating what is already here.

So, in the midst of anxiety and uncertainty – in the midst of discomfort and fear, can we take the actions we need to take to stay safe and connected, and can we also take the time to look around – to breathe and smell and taste and touch – to appreciate the tiny green buds that are just now coming to the crab apple tree and the rising energy of the daffodils as they prepare to release their golden trumpets to celebrate the returning sun.

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