Rilke and Unemployment

I didn't get another job I wanted. If someone had taken all my greatest passions and all my skills, then designed a matching position, this one would have been it.

But no. I knew within two days of the interview, when they hadn't yet called my references.

I've made job application my priority for a long time now. Years. Yet, nada. Okay, that's an exaggeration. I have three part-time jobs, but even together, they aren't enough to live on. So...

The last time this happened was when I gave up on getting a research job in my science. I'd been on the job market for three years without an offer, although that wasn't a reflection on me. There were maybe five openings a year in the United States and 200 plus decent candidates. The average PhD spent ten years post-degree before landing a permanent job. I was actually doing better than most having had several interviews.

But it felt like I was running head-first into a brick wall expecting it to vanish. I'd slam my head, fall to the ground, then get up and do it again. Over and over and over. After three years, my bruised brain and butt had had it.

As soon as I turned away from research, I got every job I ever applied for. It seemed that the universe had other ideas for me than to use my degrees in the obvious way.

So is the universe sending me a message, now?

The only other direction available would be to put all my job search energy into writing and marketing my writing.

Big risk. Very scary.

So I think about Rilke who wrote in Letters to a Young Poet that writers need to decide if they must write to live. If yes, then they should stop whining about the difficulties and "build [their] life in accordance with this necessity."

I made a decision fifteen years ago to put my creative voice first - even if it meant giving up a tenure-track professor position. But somehow, I kept reneging on that commitment.

Perhaps, the universe has decided not to give me a choice.

Which leaves me to explore the difficulties.

Ps.97: Fire marches out in front and burns up all resistance.

My interpretation from the NIV, Vulgate in English, the Ancient Root Transliteration Bible, Masoretic Text, JPS 1917, & Young’s Literal 

Grief, Joy, Rest

I'm learning yoga nidra. This is the yoga of deep relaxation and complete self-acceptance - the exact
opposite of throwing your body into extreme poses - as "yoga" so often means in the US. Yoga nidra is deeply relaxing. Yet like meditation, the practice brings increased wakefulness and awareness through greater presence to the whole truth of your experience.

In order to accept yourself you have to be present to yourself. You have to let yourself feel.

The version of yoga nidra I'm learning is called Integrative Restoration or iRest. It relies on body sensing and includes the practice of experiencing opposites as they show up in your body: opposite physical sensations, opposite emotions, opposite messages about yourself.

I've found this practice really illuminating, especially when overwhelmed by one or another difficult emotion like, say, grief. Flooded by intense grief, my body wants to hunch over with shoulders curled in and head drawn down. Feeling joy, my head lifts, chest expands, and heart opens.

The cat yoga pose has the drawn in quality of grief while the cow pose has the opened up quality of joy. I was already doing the cat/cow progression regularly as it is great for low back pain, increasing flow and movement in the lower spine. You don't even have to get on your hands and knees, but can do a version standing or sitting in your office chair.

Prompted by my yoga nidra practice, I began to go through the poses while feeling the opposite emotions: cat/grief and cow/joy, cat/grief and cow/joy. I let myself fully feel each emotion while expressing how it showed up in my body. Some minutes into this practice and I would be able to be fully present to both feelings at the same time. Amazingly, the emotions then began to balance. Neither was as intense as before and I arrived at a state of rest. I didn't need to suppress the difficult emotions, deny them, or distract myself from them. I found rest while still feeling the feelings.

How amazing. Joy plus grief equals rest.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Ordinary Light

After my monastic experience, you'd think I'd be suspicious of any self-proclaimed purveyors of Truth. You'd think I'd look first for the man behind the curtain. Still, I thought Amma was different - what with her free-hug darshan and "all money for charities" cant. Besides, many of my friends were Amma followers

True, her idea of karma was kindergarten simplistic & opposed to my own perceptions (people as completely separate and individually responsible for all positive or negative acts - which are totted up like a bank account). And of course, I never thought her some perfect, ego-less, goddess-on-earth or expected her organizations to be of pristine spiritual quality. Still I thought her a worthy guru, someone who channeled the divine energy more clearly than most

I was so desperate for help cutting through the fog so I could resonate with the divine light within. The way I had done in the monastery. The way I so thirsted for, but could not find in the world. Amma's darshan was thick with that energy. It rose from the crowd to fill the hall. I felt I could happily swim in it forever.

Amma's darshans were equally thick with buyers and sellers. The first time I saw Amma, my desire not to own stuff prevailed. I spent little and the marketplace atmosphere slid by unremarked. The second time...

That it was for charity bolstered my prickling desire for acquisition. The demon avarice overwhelmed me. Oh, not just to buy objects. I spent much on various forms of pure donation. Still... By American standards, I am a poor person. Yet, I spent all my pitiful savings. ALL.

This hit after I came home. To help myself feel okay, I decided to listen to people helped by Amma's charities, people much poorer than me, a homeless person who'd gotten a home, someone who couldn't afford school fees who'd been given an education. I searched the internet for the blogs, posts, notes, letters of real people whose real lives had been changed. I found...

Nada. Ziltch. Zip. Nothing but the glittering ads of the Amma organization, itself.

Huh? Given the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people her charities had served, surely some should have an independent web presence. Nope. Instead, I found disillusioned ex-devotees eager to tell the other side of the story. They gave massive evidence that Amma was but one more victim of the Guru Effect.

sigh.

Maybe people who truly have a larger opening to the universal, spiritual energy generally start out well. Yet more often than not, they get caught in the snare of pride. Followers are desperate for a divine savior. They want to worship the person, hang on her every word, etc. Glitz, hype & the need to appear as more than she is soon become irresistible. Pride opens the door. Soon all the little demons - desire for ownership, for relationships and for consumption (aka avarice, lust and gluttony) - are holding a rave in her house.

The 4th century, desert Amma, Syncletica, advised against teaching or leading others, saying, "As wax melts when it is near fire, the soul disintegrates in the face of praise."

She went on, "Pride attacks subtly and secretly a soul that considers itself zealous and diligent in discipline... The soul imagines that it has grasped matters incomprehensible to the majority, that it is superior. It forgets all its sins and mistakes. The soul is deluded with positions of command - with teaching posts and displays of healing. Thus deceived, the soul perishes and is destroyed."

In other words: the Guru Effect - when the clay that every guru has for feet rises to consume her or his whole being.

Does that mean there is no divine light, that there are no legit teachers or practices that can help us find that light in ourselves? No.

I've literally seen that light: in myself and in others. I know it is there. Waiting. Loving. Gentle. Eternal. Non-judgmental. Self, yet no-self. Reality. Ordinary.

Yet, there are no magic leaders who can take us there miraculously, cleaning out all our gunk without effort.

The Dalai Lama is another exalted spiritual leader with his own clay feet. He repeatedly says, "I am an ordinary man." It is important to get the message:

We are all equally ordinary. We are also all equally divine. Some folks are born more aware of their spiritual being - with a larger open channel to the universal energy. Some are diligent in practices that open their hearts to that energy through humility and compassion. Yet clay remains part of each and every one of us.

Clay and spirit. The balance goes one way. The balance goes another way. And there we are, doing and being life as a body and a spirit, as ordinary and as light.

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

Pain Gain?

Pain itself is not the point. (Although in the largest, universal picture, who knows what creative good it might serve?) Pain motivates me to do work I would not otherwise attempt - the work of going deep, of being present to all my parts - even the most mangled or corrosive, of embracing all of myself with loving tenderness - with no demand to change or fix.

For most of us, the first response to pain is to close up, hunker down and grow an impenetrable shell. Only that never works. The pain persists and grows under our defenses. Sooner or later, it breaks out in new ways, often through physical disease.

Was I just lucky that my defenses were never all that impenetrable? That the pain broke through with such persistence that each strategy to cope by not feeling soon failed? Maybe my pain was just bad enough that I had no choice but to keep seeking. I don't know, but I feel lucky.

The practice of opening to and accepting all of yourself takes a lot of courage. Desperation for physical, emotional and relational relief has been the fuel my courage required.

I sought help and I found it - so many teachers, companions and guides. I have also been the teacher, companion or guide for others.

Because this work develops what Buddhists call a vulnerable heart - what the old, Christian monastics called humility. Once you have practiced loving acceptance of all of yourself - the fine, shiny bits and the jagged, gunky bits - it is not so hard to be open and present to others. That kind of nonjudgmental listening to others provides great healing that is badly needed in the world.

So the seemingly selfish pursuit of relief ends up serving everyone.

And that is the point - a point well worth any number of pain-filled, sleepless nights. I know. I have 40 odd years of 'em to my credit.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The Fast Track Outta Here

Over brunch, my friend mentioned the study showing that multiple childhood traumas could knock 20 years off your life.

I grinned. "You mean I have a good chance of going home at 70? Wow" (Taking a wild guess at the longevity of various relations.)

Some years back, I saw a bodyworker who heard the voices of numerous disembodied beings. Once as we discussed the pains du jour, one of those beings said, "Of course you're in pain. You're doing such great work."

Ha.

People with a trauma history tend to have a slew of physical ailments. Because we signed up for the fast track. Because we are doing great work. We get such masses done so very fast, we are in the early release program. We get out while others have to keep at it for decades more.

'Course, I don't have enough of the studied traumas to get the demonstrated 20-year early release, but surely - given that I haven't slept well for over 40 years and am in constant pain - surely, I've managed to shave off at least 10 years.


*  *  *  *  *  *

Giver or Taker: Whose Generosity Is It Anyway?

In his Rule, Benedict says that monks do not bless the guests they receive and serve. It is the guests who bless the monks. This is especially true when the guest is poor, sick, or otherwise in need of care.

How un-capitalist! The one who "gives" - whether food, shelter, medicine, or instruction - is in actual fact the taker. The one who takes these things is the more generous giver. How our charity marketplace would be changed if givers gave in full knowledge that in doing so, they are the greater takers.

I was reminded of all this recently.

I don't see private clients much since I moved into the new house with my uncle. Not sure if it is the chronic pain and attendant lack of sleep, or that caring for my uncle absorbs so much energy and attention. But I will see an old client on occasion. A week ago one called.

Most of the time I perceive energy pulses in the body, or see colors and symbols that represent emotions & events. Once in a while, someone identifies what I see as a person or animal they know - living or dead.

For some reason, the visions flow freely with this client, and most of what I see are animals or people the client recognizes.

The client launched right in with little pause for centering breath. Soon my sixth chakra was buzzing and snapping - a sign that I've hooked into the larger, universal energy field. I think of it as my "spiritual reality check." It let's me know I'm in the presence of something spiritually true. 

Supposedly I was serving this person, but the greater service was the one I received.

My practice has been absolutely crappy lately. I'm swamped by the upwelling of old trauma. Insomnia scrambles my brain. I am lost in a choking miasma of longing for the spiritual connection I know is there, but can not feel.

A little nip at the spiritual source looms large to someone overwhelmed with thirst.

Yup. That guest definitely gave the blessing and this host received.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

More on Fear & Gratitude

There are lots of external reasons I might be having trouble finding a job - not least, Wisconsin's continued employment hemorrhage under Scott Walker that keeps us mired in the worst of the recession while other states begin recovery. And the one thing a writer must do to be published (or produced) is write & submit & write & submit & write & submit - letting the rejections wisp away like so much morning mist under the rising summer sun. So to greet job-seeking failure and play-submission failure with gratitude, as I talked about in my last post, does not mean I should stop applying for jobs or stop writing & submitting.

It is primarily a directive to release fear, be open to what is as it comes, and not to internalize social "failure" as a comment on the nature of the universe or my place in it.

Hard enough even without all the good reasons to fear. Such as being on the edge of not covering my bills. Or aging painfully in a country where, despite oodles of wealth, the only workers allowed access to good health care are fully employed professionals, politicians, and soldiers.

Still, fear is of no use. My conditions won't change if I greet them with fear. Worse, fear eats my creative energy while insisting I should quit.

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" is one of the more useful Jesus sayings. Great teachers from other traditions similarly say to let go of fear. Forget insurance. Forget living your life in order to amass enough fortune to protect you through old age.

There is no guarantee, here, that bad things won't happen to you if you do not fear. It is not a magic prayer bullet that can bring you money & cars & a hunky guy or curvacious gal. Your health may crash. Your home may burn. Your loved one may die. You may be exhausted day after day by the struggle to get just enough to go on. However it happens, you will experience loss and will need to morn. But moving through loss and grief without fear is one way to get on the road to the greatest good - directly perceiving the delicious, brilliant, flowing energy in which we swim and of which we are all made.

Whatever my pains and difficulties, on that road the only things that make any sense are joy and gratitude.

* * * * * * * *

Fear and Gratitude

Say we really, really want something and work very, very hard to get it and... fail. If our first response was, "Thank you. I didn't realize that thing I wanted was bad for me" how would the world be different?

That's what fills my thoughts as I ponder months of job application and play submission with no success in either department.

I lost my present house twice before finally getting it - once when it was listed as a short sale & once in the bidding after the foreclosure. But I WANTED it. So I kept going back - pushing, pushing, pushing. And then, the first buyer of the foreclosure fell through & it was offered to me.

"Yay!" I thought, "Look what dogged persistence (+ some earth energy manipulation) can do."

Now I think someone or something or the general synchronicity energy of the universe was trying to get a message to me, "This is not your house." I refused to listen and so here I am struggling along in an unduly difficult house.

Unemployment or massive underemployment (as is my case) can be miserable. Not to mention lack of access to medical care in the medically medieval United State. The future looms fearful. Time gets lost in a numb parade of unmarked days. Sense of self drifts into strange space. If only I could get up every day and do work wanted by someone who was willing to give me a paycheck for it!

But what if I just don't realize that, for reasons incomprehensible from my little, earthly, human point of view, this is bad for me?

Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear.

*******

Back to School Simply?

I left full-time academics in 1999. It took a year of exploring the idea before I handed in my resignation, and another year and a half before I finally left. Academic institutions have a year-long hiring cycle and so it was professional to hand in a year's notice. Yet also, when it came down to it, I didn't want to go. My dean would ask me to stay for another term and I'd say yes. I might still be there if I hadn't been scheduled to go to Siberia to look at schools and talk to teachers. I could ease myself out by moving right after my return.

That was my first step in simplicity. A three bedroom flat full of furniture, all full of stuff, got pared down to an 8x15 U-Haul's worth. I sold a few things, but gave most away - to friends and to a resale shop that supported people living with AIDS.

I didn't miss the professorial 60-80 hour work weeks, but I did miss the work, itself. I loved most aspects of academic life - even committee meetings. This was helped by the fact that I was in a collegial department with an interesting student population. But still, there is something about that life that suits me, no matter what the department or who the students.

Two years later, I was back in academics - working part-time on an education evaluation project. It was a temporary position and as it ended, I took the next great leap in simplicity. I got rid of my remaining stuff in order to go into a monastery. 

This was a physically and emotionally wrenching task. Most of the stuff I shucked on leaving DePaul was the unnecessary detritus of your typical middle-class life - like fancy, never-used dishes from Grandma. Now I was dumping stuff that mattered. There were my brother’s sculptures and my mother’s photographs, a closet full of colorful, eclectic clothes, gold earrings I bought in Ethiopia, an amber necklace from Siberia, and a string of ivory elephants my dad brought back from his first trip to Nigeria in 1963. There were read and re-read science fiction and children’s books, travel guides, world music CDs, the Madame Alexander doll my mom gave me for my fifth Christmas so I wouldn’t ask for a Barbie, and the so-o-o comfy, blue armchair I bought with my first paycheck from Arco Alaska.  My car, my computer, my blankets: the list was daunting. But of course, it wasn't really the giving up of objects that hurt. It was the releasing of what those objects symbolized - the self I had spent 50 years creating, getting to know, grieving over, and finally loving. Yet, I did it. I let go of the objects and the memories those objects represented.

When I left the monastery, I thought, "That was way too hard to do in the first place to turn around and undo it now. I'm not getting the job, the house, and the possessions back again."

Fast forward half a decade, and I want to do just that - if I can - well, not the objects, but the rest of it. I already have the house. Now I am applying for jobs. 

I still miss the dynamics of academic life. I miss going to an office and being part of a work group. I miss students. I miss tussling with intellectual challenges. I have all these skills that I rarely use. So I want to return. Maybe that is impossible after such a long hiatus... in this economy... in a town full of young, under-employed academics, but I am going to try.

So we'll see. In my semi-employed/self-employed state, it was a struggle not to accrue stuff. I wonder how that struggle will play out if (when) I get that academic position.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

Simplicity is a Struggle-some Dance

I don't like buying & owning & taking care of excess property, but go where things are sold & I get the twitchy desire to buy something. Anything. Even in the monastery, avarice constantly whispered in my ear, just like it does with everyone everywhere else. It really helped to have a tiny, monastic allowance to cover all my personal care products, clothes, etc (I entered seriously lacking in black garments and we were required to dress well). My desire might twitch, but my purse, being empty, could not answer.

Of course, one of the big disjunctions between the older sisters' words & deeds was their attachment to property. It was easy to dismiss, though. We were all there to struggle with our ego issues, I thought. If that was theirs, it was none of my business. Eventually, I understood that they were not kidding when calling themselves "free of ego" (to quote the oldest sister). Being "free of ego" they had no issues to struggle with. Their love of property was, therefore, a monastic value - as was every other personality foible & ego-attachment. Still, I could swim in the freedom of not owning stuff - 'though it  was a grind that we were required to pour our life energy into care of the monastery's excess property.

Now I am poor-ish, but have some cash, not to mention the need to fill the material needs of myself & my dependent uncle. Buying & owning still feel uggy, but not feeding the desire to buy is a bigger problem.

sigh.

Seven years post monastery, I constantly struggle to find balance. It is necessary to own some stuff - in & out of the monastery. It is convenient to own other stuff. 

An incessant, judgmental, inner dialog creates just as much mental fog as being pulled hither & yon by freewheeling indulgence in desire. Clarity lets the light in. Space for breath lets the wind blow through. Taking things easy opens a silence where still, small voices can be heard. So where is the balance? Not attaching is one thing. Not attaching to the desire not to attach is another.

double sigh.

What if this struggle for balance is all that our job entails? What if we are not here to achieve some angelic freedom from ego so we can coast through earthly life until our spirit is ready to give this body up?  Perhaps instead, our job is only to knowingly engage in the struggle. I hope this is so 'cause "engage in the struggle" is the one thing I can actually do.

Namaste

*  *  *  *  *  *

No Need to Fear Being Dead

I don't relish the pain of dying, but I don't fear being dead. Because I remember being dead. Well, only that first, exhilarating, upward rush of release - that feels like all the graduations, birthdays, and weddings rolled into a single microsecond burst of joy. After that, I get nothing - as if an impenetrable lead curtain lies between me and further knowledge.

It is enough.

The deaths I remember (and yes, there are several) were mostly violent, only I don't remember the trauma as traumatic, or any pain.

Each death carried important insight about life and the leaving of it.

Once I was burnt to death as I slept. A big bed, hangings, furniture, my body: all went up in a great whoosh of flame, smoke, and all-consuming joy.

What I learned? Wow, death feels good.

Another life ended with beheading by guillotine. Forget the French Revolution. This was the normal round of executions of petty criminals in some smallish town. I was a poor, nondescript woman. Stole a loaf of bread or something.

Not the first in line for the guillotine, I stood on a platform looking over the heads of spectators and the roofs of houses to the deep, deep sky. I breathed in the sense of life, becoming lighter and happier. Then it was my turn. I knelt, feeling the curved wood under my neck and looking into a basket placed to catch the heads. The basket was wet. Each flat, woven reed glistened. I heard a bit of drum roll as the blade was lifted and counted, breathing in life until I was as alive as it was possible to be. I realized I could live longer, but I could not live more. If I didn't die then, I would soon slip back into a physical and emotional roil that blanked out any sense of aliveness. So I would gain more days, but not more life. Better to live fully for a few seconds and welcome the death that followed. I felt so calm, so alive, so happy. On ten, a strange shlick! Then black.

I don't have any memory of that after-death.

What I learned? More time does not bring more life. Living fully is possible, but has nothing to do with resisting the passing of a particular body. In fact, just the opposite. The more a person is caught up in resisting and bemoaning death, the less alive she becomes.

I don't generally share these memories, but hey, with economic meltdown in the U.S.'s immediate future, how else live than by risk?

* * * * * * *

Reflections on the Wisconsin Uprising

One of these days the people in the U.S. will rise up and toss down our presently growing corporate tyranny. It has happened before & will happen again. Just won't be so easy as a few rounds of voting. For one thing, the prevalence and ease of manipulating electronic voting machines (including visual scanners) makes it unlikely that votes for a sane state are counted
Yet, even if the vote doesn't bring real change, the organizing energy is precious. Rejection of our rising capitalist dictatorship can only come when enough of us are willing to loose everything, and even be shot at. That kind of desperate courage arises out of economic & social suffering - the kind some in the U.S. are already experiencing. The suffering will spread due to the economic collapse being ushered in by extremist Republicans & appeasing Republicrates (like Obama & Reid). As we discover that we do not suffer alone, more and more of us will join together to choose life over survival.

It will take time. The tools used to jolly populations along have always been so very effective at dividing & conquering: fascism built on fear & hate of trumped up social enemies, & keeping folks silent out of fear of homelessness, starvation, and reprisal - while they must work more & more for less & less.

BUT capitalist dictatorship, like any dictatorship, like monoculture, is inherently unstable. IT CAN NOT LAST. The structure of any controlled system IS the very source of its destruction. Nature abhors perfect forms. Inherent in biology is pressure for diversity and new growth in small, overlooked spaces.

We had a vote in Wisconsin. Two entrenched Republicans were turned out of historically Republican districts. That's amazing. But it is also a bare beginning.

So the question is: how do we keep our spirits up so we can engage and live and have full, compassionate hearts for the duration?

* * * * * *

The Necessity of Hunger

"The number one reason to fast is that food tastes better when you are hungry." Augustine said that (more or less - I paraphrase 'cause I can't seem to locate the source). Augustine's not a guy I quote often given that he invented the doctrine of original sin, and blamed male lust on the women men lusted after. But I like this.

And I find it comforting. Especially as a strange coterie of Republican extremists and center-right Republicrates (Obama, Harry Reid & like-minded congressional "Democrats") eagerly pass legislation guaranteed to take the present, U.S. economic recession-bordering-on-depression into a full-fledged, undeniable depression. (We can't have a "double-dip" recession if the recession that started under Bush never ended - CEO salaries, global corporation profits and stock prices notwithstanding.)

But what if, in the larger spiritual picture, the role of these insulated, corporate politicians actually is to explode the U.S. economy? Could that be a spiritual good in the largest, universal picture? A creative passage of fire, a dark road that many people of this nation need to walk? Yes, huge, visible suffering will be visited on masses of folks - I expect to be one of the suffering. But out of that ash land, what might we grow?

So many of us, myself included, have lived with such a surfeit of guaranteed comfort for so long that we have no idea what food tastes like, a dry bed feels like, or how water quenches thirst. We need to rediscover hunger. For our spirits' sake.

For ten years, I walked the terrible dark road of despair and grief and self-hate. Many don't make it to the end of that road. I came out the other side with help from those I met on the way. I wouldn't wish the same journey on anyone. Yet I am also immensely grateful I was forced to go there. The perspective, compassion, presence, and humility I learned were worth the price and the danger.

I've yet to meet anyone who choose such a path. We have to be driven. Our coping strategies and comfort blankets have to be forcibly stripped off.

If the impending economic depression is just such a forced stripping away, maybe our national journey into the dark could bear equally valuable fruit.

* * * * * * *

Of what use pain?

My left hip is the most painful, and my right knee has hurt for the longest time. Yet in a recent Reiki session, those two places were completely open. Sometimes Reiki energy is sucked up by an off-kilter part of the body like dry earth thirsting for water. This was different. Energy flowed freely into my hip and knee - no obstruction at all - as if it was poured through empty space.

What if chronic pain is not just the unhappy indicator of a broken body? What if a body in pain is not even broken. What if pain is the side effect of the body serving a purpose - and doing this job well?

Yes, my sciatica results from decades of poor skeletal alignment. Yes, that skeletal misalignment was caused by muscles held tight all my life - with other muscles pulling improperly to compensate. Yes, those muscles first froze into a trauma response during childhood. And, yes, that scenario created an unbalanced whole whose misplaced wear ended up pinching and inflaming sensitive, sciatic nerves.

But what if, ultimately, pain serves another purpose than pointing up failed function of a purely physical machine? Perhaps an invitation to life-style change. Perhaps a call to heal buried trauma. Perhaps a loving-parent-push out of the comfort zone and onto the road of spiritual awakening.

Or perhaps a sign that the body is clearing and opening to receive greater energy.

Perhaps.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Fallen Woman

I'm falling down a deep chasm, grabbing desperately at branches, only to have my hand slide down, stripping the leaves off, and go on falling. There's the constant niggling of home repair when I have little energy and no money, the anxiety of poorly-paid, part-time employment, the suffering of chronic pain with no access to health care, and the struggle to give good care to my uncle.

"Why not just fall free?" my friend asked.

What a relief. Desperation and the mad scrabble to hang on is so exhausting. How much sweeter just to let go and fall.

Yet I am poor, aging, in bad health, and overwhelmed by unfamiliar responsibility. My choices led to this life, one that society judges as failure. So I feel shame as well as fear for my future .

Spiritual teachers say to live in the present. Can't say I've managed that when I was often swamped by regret and what-ifs. But I've lived as if I had no fear for the future - abandoning social and financial security when I felt called (by my creative muse or by God - feel free to choose the label you prefer). Not that I didn't notice the fear, but I set it aside pretty easily as unimportant. Until recently, I had no dependents - which allowed me the freedom to do so.

"Maybe it was never so easy to make fearless choices," my friend said, "but you weren't present enough to feel your fear until now."

This is likely. So is my present work to be fearless while truly feeling the fear? Not distracting from, suppressing or denying fear, but feeling how strong it is, acknowledging it, and then setting it aside as a bad guide?

Every morning I practice being grateful before I get out of bed. I have never lacked for any necessity. I lack for nothing now. If anything, I have too much. Okay, I have physical and emotional toil, but those struggles aren't the problem. It is fear and shame that fill my inner space with grinding tension as if I chewed on greasy metal filings.

My choices led to a life that society judges as failure and left me open to certain material challenges. That doesn't mean the choices were wrong. Not if what matters is doing my divine work in the world.

Chronic Pain and the Freedom of Constraint

Every North American I've met on the spiritual path (including myself) was forced onto it by chronic pain - physical, emotional, or relational. For me it was all three.

For 30-odd years, I suffered from depression and terrible insomnia. During the worst of it, I slept less than four hours a night and often not at all. Suicidally depressed, I dragged myself through an unending land of sodden ash--no color, not even grey.

In a desperate search for relief, I stumbled onto spiritual practices. Yet I never stopped crying for pain-free "normality," or railing against my unfair burden. It took a good long time to realize what a gift that pain had been. I had to uncover and heal my childhood wounds or die of suicide. I had to do spiritual practices or be consumed by a hell of regret, self-hate, and anger. Eventually I became grateful I was forced onto the dark road--despite the dangers. Because the dark journey bestows spiritual gifts of great value that can not be gained any other way.

Near two decades out of the dark, rigorous sleep hygiene still limits my life. More constraining is growing, chronic physical pain. Pain radiates from my back down my thighs and legs into my feet. Sometimes I gasp as a sharp pain shoots down a leg; more often it flows in a slow burn like lava. The first wisps appeared in my mid-forties. Now at 57, I'm never not hurting. At night, the low ferrous rumble of pain mutters in my dreams. No chair is comfortable, and I often can't stand for more than a few minutes. Occasionally my legs just melt away, as if they'd turned to mushy jello. To date, the last feeling comes and goes fast so I haven't fallen.

Yet, supported by a nightly 600 ml of ibuprofen, I'm in this play with duels (of which I have two) and a song & dance number. My part is minor, but I volunteered for a lot of crew (taking set pieces on and off). It feels better to move than to sit or stand still waiting (in a tiny theater where every backstage noise can be heard by the audience). Luckily nothing is heavy--even the swords are foam.

We are in tech week. The light crew is amazing--a smoothly-running team of mostly high-school-age kids who have been together through theater training. Watching them scale scaffolding to shift large light fixtures, I tell an equally young actor that at her age no one could have kept me off those scaffolds.

"You could still learn," she replies.

"Except that I now lack the physical ability," I say.

She commiserates, but I feel calm. Peaceful. No longing and no railing against an unfair universe.

"The thing is, if you turn your desire away from what you can no longer do, physical disability can open you to something you would never have found otherwise," I said, then stopped, astounded. The words came out of my mouth ringing with indisputable truth. Yet, I had no idea what they meant.

I once heard a calligrapher talk about the soaring creativity she experienced within the draconian constraints of her art. Strong limits gave her freedom to express herself. And energy, I imagine.

This was true in the monastery. I once spent so much energy deciding what to wear and when to wear it, what to eat and when to eat it, which entertainment to go out for or to stay home, running errands only to forget one thing and run out again--not to mention deciding when, how, and if to do my spiritual practices. All that energy was freed. All that mental space was freed. All the emotional space consumed by "should I or shouldn't I" was freed. I found myself in a huge space reverberating with energy, light, and creative possibility.

I no longer have the monastery's lovely schedule constraining my life by holding me in a rigid, outer carapace of no-choice.

But I do have chronic pain.

Perhaps when I learn to relax within my physical limits, and turn from mourning what I have lost, that same infinite inner space will open before me.

A little pain to live in such freedom? It is a worthwhile exchange.

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Poverty of Mind

I'm in a play on the recent, Wisconsin political uproar. It has witty, fast-paced, fake-Shakespearean language. Duels. A song & dance number. A cast of thousands (Okay, 14 actors play 47 characters, but it feels like thousands).

I have a minor part. Occasionally I'm jealous of the rest of the cast with larger roles. Most of the time I'm grateful. I watch the other actors dance about the stage. Hugely talented, on the spur of the moment they toss off delicious physical comedy matched by high-flying, verbal acrobatics. If I committed all my physical and mental resources to the effort, I could force an approximation. These guys do all that, yet have energy to burn at the end of rehearsal.

I can't do what they are doing. A small part of me nostalgically longs for the days when I could. Most of me doesn't actually want to.

I'd rather be slow.

Not only was I a dancer, but a well-honed, mental athlete. With a very high IQ, I could leap, spin and dash intellectually without the least effort. I've long since lost my mental edge and stare stupidly at brain-teasers that were once obvious. A good bit was destroyed by sleep aids I downed without regard for safety through several decades of intense insomnia. The rest?

A friend said she noticed that meditation has a mental-slowing effect. In growing inner calm, she no longer longs for intellectual leaping about. Yet she also finds she simply can't do it.

It is another kind of poverty. And it also offers freedom.

* * * * *

Choose Poverty

"Choose poverty in order to be present to the world." The sentence rose into my dreamy, mental drift during a guided meditation. Choose poverty to gain the freedom to be fully present.

On a Friday in early March, 2005, I turned my credit cards over to the monastery's Formation Mistress and closed my bank accounts - on Sunday I was entering the novitiate. As I left the bank, I felt an exhilarating rush of freedom. The freedom not to own. The freedom not to fear the loss of things.

Didn't last long. On Monday, I found that an old check hadn't cleared and I was suddenly in debt. But even that much taste of real freedom was illuminating.

Recently a fire wiped out a large, upscale apartment complex in my town. One young man lost everything, but when asked how this felt, said it felt like freedom. I knew this is what he was talking about.

Of course, it is a lot easier to live free of fear when your shelter, food, clothing, medical care, books, work, and anything else you might need were guaranteed by a well-off monastic community. Those sisters' homes might be owned by a non-profit corporation, but they had control as the corporation board. And that corporation owned some pretty cushy digs - better than I'd ever afforded on my own.

Sometimes I heard sisters boast of their feelings of freedom compared to ordinary folks in the world - who are so often eaten up by worry. The sisters think it is their superior lifestyle and practices. Perhaps. But I imagine their security is an important factor.

Still, so many spiritual teachers insist it is possible for anyone - in the world or within a well-off monastery - to give up the control and fear that comes with ownership. I hope some day soon I can be like the man who lost it all in a fire: let go and rediscover what real freedom tastes like.

* * * * * *

The Demon is Winning

"Tell the Demon Should to can it," I exclaimed.

My friend wanted to spend a nice Sunday afternoon lounging on the deck, but didn't think she should - never mind that she had just come through an emotional & physical wringer. Anyway, why does anyone need justification to lounge?

"A voice that speaks in shoulds always takes you away from the divine," I continued. "Shoot, it takes years of practice to be able to relax into stillness, in nothing-to-do. Most people never manage. They're too addicted to action - needing busyness for distraction or to numb out or to cover the hole left by their missing self-esteem."

My friend agreed and prepared to lounge.

As I drove away, a tiny voice whispered,"Tell the Demon Should to can it," and I started to cry.

Not that I have trouble lounging. Just the opposite. Add together a contemplative spirit, a mind fascinated by watching, and a body used to the freezing habit learned during childhood trauma, and my problem is moving, not stillness. How often have I missed something I'd been looking forward to because I literally could not get my body to move? An hour before it was time to leave, I might start haranguing myself, "Get up. Move," only to stay frozen immobile as the time to leave came and went, as I became five minutes late, ten minutes late, half an hour late, too late to go at all.

In fact my talent and need for stillness was the real reason those constantly busy sisters kicked me out. The monastic schedule was a reliable goad so I was rarely late, and the easily accessible, divine energy was so enlivening I rarely froze. But on my designated "desert day," I wanted to lie on the earth and drink the sun washing over the grass - not get busy with house and yard work like the rest of the sisters. Before I entered, I was told the "desert day had no one's agenda but yours"... except the sister forbore to mention that your agenda had better be cleaning the garage and raking leaves.

No, the Demon Should can't get me over lounging, but does it ever wring my heart over my mistakes. I should have done this. I shouldn't have done that. An endless cacophony of angry accusation overwhelms my mind, leaving no room for human or divine relationships.

"Tell the Demon Should to can it," the tiny voice pleaded, tired and sad, "I don't know if I can go on this way much longer."

* * * * * * * *

Sailing in the Sea of the Most Evil Practice

"Why not embrace the decay, relax into it," a spiritual friend of mine asked as I winged on about the toll of home ownership. Suddenly I remembered, I like weathering: crumbling brick, rusting metal, rotted wood. Not just like, love. I take pictures, collect pieces, sit for hours contemplating sun/wind/rain/snow working their weathering wonders across exposed surfaces... And gaze when I can into hidden places where bacteria, fungi, plankton, plant roots, and the byssal threads of molluscs so diligently run the great recycling continuum of life.

What is it about ownership that changes all that? Is it the money I spent? The sum was so much more than I would normally see in a year. Is it the weight of responsibility? If anything goes it's my fault. So one cracking brick means I am too awful to live. (We are talking 2-year-old perceptions, here, since that is the age of my home ownership trauma. So my life is presently being run by a catastrophic-thinking 2-year-old.)

Or is this just the difficulty of material existence in a system of nothing-but-change - the "suffering of having" in Buddhist terminology.

In his Rule, Benedict called private ownership, "this most evil practice." Since the Rule is a guide for bringing people into union with God through life in community, "evil" means anything which places a barrier between God and people - as individuals or as a group. Private ownership is a most evil practice because it so effectively derails our ability to let go and be at one with the divine in and around ourselves, or perceive the divine in others.

So what are we to do - those of us who need to live in the world and for one reason or another can't shuck our possessions, much less be wandering monks in truth (versus in name only as I seem to have become)?

Listen to Syncletica, that generous pragmatist. She talks much about the nastiness of possessions. For example, "those who live without possessions [can't be] harmed, since the majority of our griefs and trials originate in the removal of possessions," and the need for possessions is insatiable since "one who has nothing desires little, and on acquiring this little reaches for more. One with a hundred gold coins longs for a thousand. Unable to establish their limit, they constantly lament their poverty." Yet she also often says that not everyone is cut out to be a monk, but all are called toward the divine, no matter their path. Besides, those tidily ensconced in a spiritual community may face the worst difficulty:

"We [hermit women] seem to be sailing in the calm part of the sea while secular people sail in the dangerous parts. We also sail during the day, navigating by the sun… while they sail by night, swept along by ignorance. It often happens, however, that the secular person has saved her ship in the midst of storm and darkness by crying out and staying awake; we, on the other hand, have drowned in calm waters through carelessness in letting go of the rudder.”

An odd sort of comfort, but I'll take what I can get.

Namaste.

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