The Dawning Light

Over the past few posts I have been writing about what feels a lot like a transformative path. As a part of that process I have been becoming aware of my senses - especially my emotions - in a whole way. It's not that I didn't have emotions; I just did not experience them this way before. 

We all have emotions – they are part of our basic programming for survival. However as with all other things, the emerging ego seizes them for it’s own purpose. Thus the three survival instincts, survival/security, affection/esteem, and power/control, become self-referential in service to the ego. That is, instead of emotions that give us information about safety or security, they become emotions that protect the “well-being” of the ego and turn narcissistic. Emotions like love and affection, which are part of our DNA as relational beings, become schemes for the ego to gain praise and further aggrandizement. No wonder why we don't trust our emotions!

Psychologists tell us that by the age of five we have learned 90% of our total vocabulary. But while we were learning those concepts about the world, most of our world was bigger, faster, and smarter than we were as little children. Therefore, as the ego is forming, it begins working on how to protect itself and how to get what it wants for its self-perception, all of which are based on what Alfred Adler called our perception of “inferiority” as little ones. By the age of four or five, when the ego differentiation is completed, and most of our beliefs about the world (and our place in that world) have been formed, the ego has seized control of our emotional tools and turned them into self-referential and self-centered gimmicks. Innately, we know that this is wrong and for the bulk of us who have not done the inner work of clearing out that narcissistic tendency, we begin distrusting our full set of emotions. We have emotions but they are off-kilter. Oh, granted there are those among our species who don't suffer this malady, and they are truly blessed. But I have not been one of them; in fact, it took a long time to get here!

But here’s the clincher: when the ego is finally killed off – whether through the dark night of the soul or through some deep wound to its self-constructed idolatry – we break through that superficial level of emotional responses back into the real true level of emotion. In this deeper, pure level of emotionality, unencumbered by the need for praise, or coddling, or ego-stroking, emotions are true barometers of the world and directional indicators for effective living. What’s more, we no longer have to “obey” the emotional information (as the tyrannical ego demanded) but can take it in as part of what we need to be listening to as we make our way through the present moment.

That is the part I have been trying to find words for: that breakthrough to a deeper level. And as an added benefit, with the death of the ego, intellect is freed from it’s demand to show up as the smartest kid in the room and can be in service to others.  Freed from ego's tyranny, my emotions and my intellect can be used as they are meant to be. My inner witness just needs to keep ego out of the room and both intellect and emotion can inform my whole self in right action, right work, … It may be the beginning of what the Buddha called "the eightfold path."

Rising Strong

Recently I have been reading Brene Brown's new book Rising Strong, and I love every page of it - take that as highly recommended reading! But I would like to offer a slightly different take on the comeback from adversity.

Modern cultures, and predominantly the cultures descended from white, Anglo-Saxon, alpha types, have adopted the mindset that obstacles are to be overcome. We are programmed to set goals and pursue them with abandon. I even have a t-shirt with the motto, "I don't stop for obstacles; I destroy them!" and another with a Gandhi quote about power being derived from "indomitable will." But the wisdom of mystics from all traditions tells us that there is another way. According to mystical wisdom, the goal is not to knock down every hurdle and barrier so that we remain unchanging, but rather to allow ourselves to be bent and shaped by nature so that we emerge as re-formed and wholly new creations of that encounter.

Listen to how Rilke describes it in his poem The Man Watching: "If only we would allow ourselves to be dominated, as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need names." And the modern mystic poet, David Whyte puts it this way in Working Together: "We shape ourselves to fit this world and by the world are shaped again. The visible and the invisible working together, in common cause to produce the miraculous.
I am thinking of the way the intangible air passed at speed round a shaped wing easily holds out weight. So may we, in this life, trust to those elements we have yet to see or imagine, and look for the true shape of our own self, by forming it well to the great intangibles about us."

This journey of transformation has been one of learning to trust those great forces, and to listen to the creaks and moans of my branches and bones in the immense storm. It is allowing the forces in so that I might become one with nature, and in doing so, take my place as one with all humanity.  Like so many of us, I have spent my life amassing knowledge without understanding, chalking up credentials like so many bullet points on a resume. But in the words of Pope Francis, "Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it."

Rilke ends The Man Watching by saying, "Whoever was beaten by this Angel went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand, that kneaded him as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater things."

I have been awakened. I am feeling deeply (because I finally can). And while I may walk with a limp, like the Biblical wrestler of the angel, I have been resurrected as a stronger, and more fully alive human.

Only Moment by Moment

I am reminded each day that I am called to take this day, this set of 24 hours, this next hour and in fact  this next breath, moment by moment. While I sit here trying to set my intention for the day, my focus must be in the moment. How am I feeling this moment? Am I feeling alive and awake or sad and despairing?

This moment is the origin of the whole day and is, truthfully what sets my sails for the day and the journey ahead. By choosing to be joyfully awake and aware in this moment I am able to chart a course of productivity and usefulness.  By choosing to succumb to the sadness (thoughts and feelings that are driven mostly by wishing that I were somewhere else or that my current circumstances were not as they are) I am rendered a victim of those thoughts - most importantly because I am not present in this moment. If and when I am not present in this moment I am not capable of operating in this moment, which thus deprive me of any opportunity of acting.

Mindfulness is an awareness practice that puts us on the path by placing our feet squarely on the beginning of the path. Our (excuse me, my) human tendency is to want to look down the path and somehow be "down there" without having had to step onto the path at the beginning - where I am NOW.

Sometime next week my nephew will climb to the top of Mt. Kathadin, completing the end to end hike of the full Appalachian Trail having. He said, when we met up with him at the VT/NH border, that when he went in to a town to resupply, he always made sure to go back to the place he stepped off the trail - even if he knew there was an access point on the other side of that town.  He wanted to be mindful of completing every step of the actual trail.

There are no short-cuts in mindfulness.