Integral Activism (Part 2)

It is important to me that I am constantly acting on behalf of my values each and every moment, in all my relationships with strangers and within myself. To do that, I have had to redefine inner work and make it more robust and engaged. I find that when there is no boundary between what is within me, and my actions in the world, there is much more likelihood, that I am going to be connected to the moment, others, and the Spirit. All of this comes to pass because I practice what I call an inner form of activism to complement my actions in the world.

The advent of these internal practices came about as I followed my own natural ageing process. I have slowly been moving inward. I’ve talked to other ageing people and looked at the limited research on this subject. The research shows a resurgence of spirituality in the latter years of many old folks’ lives. This, combined with the reports of my friends, and my own shifting focus, altered my perspective. I like the sense that I am becoming aware, in a different way, at nature’s behest.

When I had my stroke, and especially during this long aftermath of disability, I acquired (without intent) a new more connected way of experiencing things. This involved a greater emphasis upon inner life. Alive, in a new way (for me), I have noticed how I have been naturally embellished through the aegis of getting older. I believe this is a process of integration aided by the actions of life. This formulation of an integral activism is an outgrowth of a burgeoning awareness.

Inner work has become, in my mind, less “subtle,” and much more engaged and robust. Inner activism still relies on the cultivation of awareness (meditation, contemplation and prayer) but is much more active. It uses attention to actively practice increasing awareness in four areas that I have identified. Internal activism endeavors to:

• Uproot Internalized Oppression

• Free and Be Yourself

• Practice Community

• Cultivate Paradoxical Awareness

Uproot Internalized Oppression

There are a variety of forces at work shaping social reality, contesting for cultural adherence, and working at multiple levels, trying to capture us. This runs the range from group and class power dynamics such as racism, ageism and sexism to subtler forms such as advertising, psychologizing, and other forms of pathologizing or dehumanizing assumptions. There is a complex amalgam of assumptions that, when internalized, provide the preconceptions that limit others and lead to prejudicial beliefs. These beliefs rebound into a kind of self-negation and lead to a variety of self-image issues.

An example from my life illustrates, I have had to be around other disabled people to see more clearly how my able-bodied prejudices have poisoned my experience of other disabled people, and especially how these assumptions have impacted me.

This is a practice that involves developing an inner immunity to the internalized messages that are designed to keep us in a predictable place. The goal here is not to eliminate these messages/beliefs, but to identify and suspend them. As any interaction, or thought, arises it is reviewed to see if it expands or limits choice. This is an application of mindfulness that identifies thoughts and feelings that contain belief structures that limit.

Free and Be Yourself

This practice’s goal is freedom. It entails showing up authentically wherever one is. It involves a combined focus of attention, upon authenticity and inner conditions that inhibit freedom of expression. As you can probably tell this practice has several challenges, not the least of which involves self-knowledge. It acknowledges, that internal factors play as great a role in inhibiting freedom, as external factors.

To be as clear as possible, this practice is intended to support being oneself wherever one is. This means clearing the way within so one can give voice to differences, choose to offer a unique perspective, and add to the diversity of the moment. This is a practice that involves exercising one’s own freedom, by focusing upon, and suspending, the self-limiting beliefs that inhibit free choice.

Again, to use my life as an example, I’ve had to work with myself to show up as a disabled man. My wholeness, my humanity, is not obvious if I am unable to put myself out in the social world. To do so, I have to ready myself to face, out in the world, the very prejudices I know that are within me. My freedom to be me depends upon it.

Practice Community

The goal of this practice is to make the migration from separation to connection. This entails learning about, and practicing, the inner (and outer) conditions that allow interdependence. Immersion in intense social relationships necessitates identification with others, and the practice of internal capacities that connect one uniquely with the collective, lending surprise, authenticity, accountability and compassion to action.

Differences are highlighted (like my being disabled) in this practice and provide many of its benefits. The practice of community also provides insight into the way collectives create and maintain social reality. This provides a very dynamic environment in which practices of holding on to one’s uniqueness, can be seen as paradoxically related to the quality of social connection.

Cultivate Paradoxical Awareness

This is a practice that proceeds from, and best integrates, a sense of connection.  This practice provides the deepening of a broader perspective. The practice starts with the acknowledgement that one has grown knowledgeable enough, to know that one doesn’t know much. From this recognition emanates a greater awareness that inner, as well as outer, reality is composed of relationships that are paradoxically related. That means that things that appear solitary are joined.

The practice is essentially one of focusing attention upon the perception and realization of paradoxical connections. By cultivating this awareness, and applying it to all of reality, including one’s sense of self, there comes an experiential recognition of integrality. Combined with the other practices, a burgeoning of a broader awareness occurs.

As an example, I offer a highly relevant quote from Parker Palmer (from A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life —Welcoming The Soul and Weaving Community in a Wounded World). This quote illustrates paradoxical awareness and demonstrates how this mindset transforms situations. “If we are to hold solitude and community together as a true paradox, we need to deepen our understanding of both poles. Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from oneself. It is not about the absence of other people — it is about being fully present to ourselves, whether or not we are with others. Community does not necessarily mean living face-to-face with others; rather, it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other. It is not about the presence of other people — it is about being fully open to the reality of relationship, whether or not we are alone.”

This particular practice has helped me see how my disability has led me to new abilities. I now say I am Lucky because I have experienced the enabling loss.

Integral activism is a product of age, experience, and awareness. It represents the refinement of love. The world is a holy vision. Gaining access to this vision does not diminish the passion for justice. It refines it, and renders a new way of acting.

Emancipated Innocence and The Old Fool

I have, like most people, been fascinated with children. There is something about watching a child discover the world, which is absolutely mesmerizing. I learned that I could not conduct a group, a therapy session, or even a decent discussion, if there was a young child, particularly, a baby around. I would soon end up paying so much attention to the infant that I, and the other adults present, could not really carry on. I was captivated with the child. I didn’t want to miss their encounter with anything for the first time. I came to eventually understand that fascination, to grasp it, as a desire to see the world again — through the child’s eyes— allowing me to see the world, innocently, in all its raw magical potential.

Now I’m older, much older, and I’m delighted to be discovering there is another kind of innocence that makes the world come alive in a similar enchanting way. What is so unusual about this kind of innocence, is that it is so unknown, and yet, so similarly wondrous. Even more remarkable to me, is the fact that it seems to come on late in life. Strangely, this seems to be a form of innocence, which survives the slings and arrows of adulthood. Imagine that, an innocence that endures the horrors we all know.

It turns out, one of the benefits of old age, is that it comes with a fresh way of perceiving reality. I won’t go into the disturbing fact that everyone doesn’t uniformly have this experience. Instead, here, I’m going to dwell on the realization that some do. Life, for a few, turns over, and reveals itself in ways similarly magical as childhood, but different, in a particularly grown-up way. This through-the-looking-glass way of experiencing Life isn’t available to every grey person, but is much more common than realized, and could, if it were more thoroughly understood, lead to a greater awareness of just how miraculous this life really is.

I’m talking about something a colleague calls “emancipated innocence.” Notice the word emancipated. That word implies something really important about the process of returning to an innocent apprehension of the world. The world we know, is one we must free ourselves from, in order to have a fresh take on reality. Getting away, in this case, is far different than the transcendental assumptions that seem to prevail. Getting away from what has passed (and sometimes served) involves getting through all the heartbreaks, betrayals, achievements and accidents.

Emancipated innocence arises as a result of living out the rigors of life — it is an apprehension of what’s left — the miraculous. This kind of innocence arises inside —then transforms what it experiences. The old acquire this gift naturally. It comes as a result of living fully, engaging what life presents one with, becoming true to what is within, and keeping faith with the mystery of existence. It seems to derive from going beyond the advice of culture. Emancipation is a weighty weightlessness that takes courage, or is a result of adequate desperation — a pulling inward, away from the known world in favor of the unknown world.

Some old folks end up loose and free. How this happens, is for those of us motivated by whimsy, to discover. In any case, somebody truly original emerges — the old fool. The old fool is the apotheosis of what it means to escape the gravity of societal beholding. This is the person who belongs, not to family, friends, community, or history, but to Life. They belong entirely to themselves, and simultaneously, to the Universe. They have succeeded in integrating what seems impossible. The old fools are the ones who are elegantly non-conventional while being adroitly relational. They live not for a purpose — they exist because Life exists. They are like play, without a purpose or reason, not for the sake of anything, but out of the sheer exuberance of existence.

It is good to know that such humans exist. They aren’t an accident, any more than the rest of us are. Rather, they show us how much is possible. They restore, along with emancipated innocence, the level of enchantment in the world. It is good to know that in this world, with its threats, horrors and sadness, human beings can exist who know these terrible things, and yet are capable of experiencing and expressing the miraculousness of Life.

It is good to know the old fool is amongst us. It is even better to know that the old fool is within us. Each of us is someone Life might turn into somebody original, enough so, that despite the stupidity and insensitivity that haunts us, our humanness shines miraculously forth. The old fool is an embodiment of our essence. It is amazing what ripening can do for us.

Integral Activism (Part 1)

As I have grown older I have noticed that I have changed. My consciousness has been altered by the accumulation of years, experiences, hardships and the proximity of death. The losses and gains have piled up and rebalanced the scale of my awareness. This has caused me to rethink many things, and to make choices that are surprising me. My self-image isn’t what it used to be. I’m finding that all-in-all, these changes are leading me towards a deeper, richer life, a life that is more connected with the mystery of the greater immensity I am embedded in.

As I’ve realized this is the case, I find myself reviewing my life and realigning it.  This is a description of an important part of that process of redefinition.  The words and ideas that follow represent a work-in-progress. They reflect a transformational flow that has swept me up and is delivering a more sensitized, and older, being back into this world. What I see now is not what I saw before. What I feel called to, is only partly what I felt called to before. I am in flux, and my world is changing.

I have found a very interesting and unexpected phenomenon occurring in my life. It is one I am unprepared for. As I am aging, I am moving from having an external focus to a more internal one. This shift has befuddled and intrigued me. My inner life is growing — adding perspective — and complicating my self-image, and the world I live in. Unbidden, I am feeling and noticing things I once overlooked.

This movement is causing me to pay attention like never before. I am changing — becoming someone new in my experience — and struggling to find an adequate way to describe myself. As a result, I live unbalanced in a new way, in a world that is familiar and strange at the same time.

The most unexpected change has been to my outlook. In the past, I have seen many environmental and social injustices that were the catalyst for a lot of my actions. Now, I find myself acting in new ways, guided by my burgeoning internal awareness. This shift has caused me to reevaluate. I have some doubt about the activism I now participate in. It is closer to home, more in the moment, and a lot more circumspect. I don’t really know how to talk about it. Am I just getting old and tired, or seeing things with wiser eyes?

Recently, a new awareness has come to me. I call what has come of it, “integral activism.” This is a form of action that integrates and combines "inner" with "outer" awareness. It preserves my deepening sense of integrity. And opens me more to Spirit’s power. There is an inherent balance in it, because it calls for transformation without recrimination.

 

This form of activism emerges naturally from the realizations that are coming through my “inner” life. Engagement is organic, by that I mean unplanned, spontaneous, and authentic. Basically, I exemplify a value rather than promoting it. My form of integral activism creates pressure for change by my being the change desired. The choice to be active is not stimulated by any desire to influence or persuade another. There is no intent to change. That is left up to Mystery.

It is important to me that I am constantly acting on behalf of my values each and every moment, in all my relationships with strangers and within myself. To do that, I have had to redefine inner work and make it more robust and engaged. I find that when there is no boundary between what is within me, and my actions in the world, there is much more likelihood, that I am going to be connected to the moment, others, and the Spirit. All of this comes to pass because I practice what I call an inner form of activism to complement my actions in the world. 

Unrest

I’ve been feeling a lot of grief in recent weeks. I think I’ve had good reason to be in grief most of my life, but now is the time when I’m experiencing it most acutely.

Maybe it’s the election season, climate change, income inequality, or the fact I’m growing old in an ageist culture. I’m sure all of those things contribute to a sense of on-going melancholy, but I think that the grief I feel is the world groaning under the weight of so much confusion and hurt. I can’t sigh enough. The weight of global and personal unrest presses upon me, threatening to flatten out my existence even more than it already is. So, today, in this writing, like a broken prayer beseeching Mystery, I want to give my thoughts completely over to the restless heartache I feel within.

I can’t quite pin down what haunts me. There is a lot it could be. It could be the 40% of our nation that is suffering change so harshly that they are afraid and angry. Too many are willing to trade an illusionary wall, for the statue of Liberty. Idealized greatness is falling. It seems that the nation’s most central infrastructure, its citizenry, has been neglected for too long. And — I’m aware — the ice caps are melting, extinction goes on daily, and children are starving. As Leonard Cohen has said, “it hurts in the places where I used to play.”

This isn’t a litany of planetary suffering, nor a description of existential angst. It is simply a human cry. I don’t have the capacity necessary to hold the miraculousness of this existence, side-by-side with the sorrow I experience. The price of this ride is beyond my means. My eyes and heart are open, I am awed into reverence by all of this beautiful, and inexplicable foment. I am shaking. Shattered even, yet, there seems to be more. I don’t know what it is. But, I can feel its presence.

The landscape of the grief I feel leads me toward compassion. But, even there I am confused and overwhelmed. Compassion for who? Those who are under someone else’s boot, those who stick their necks out, those who don’t even notice, those who are aware of more than they can handle? My heart breaks for all of them, and because I’m human, sometimes, my heart breaks for none of them.  I am privileged enough to know the massive privilege of awareness. The foment doesn’t seem to notice — and cares in no way I understand.

And so it is, I exist in this seething miasma, lamenting a day that doesn’t go well, or sometimes, brought to my knees by an unexpected kindness. The moment holds more than I can take in. Still, I theorize I’m here to be a witness.  A kind of poster child for PTSD, I exist in a cauldron of dark goo, stuck to an unfolding, I cannot grasp. Being human, bearing the portion of awareness allotted to our species, is a gift I handle every day. Only today, right now, I think it is handling me.

My compassion extends to me. I’m getting old, and I’m seasick, from seeing too much. I find myself looking forward to death. In a cowardly, perhaps wise, stupor, I long for release. Like good bread dough though, perhaps I would best serve, if kneaded a little more. Existence seems to be buffeting me around, doing a good job of working me into a kind of malleable, unknowing haze. Fatigue was yesterday, today is just a hopeless openness.

I’m doomed to wonder. Questioning is so limited. What is coming is already here. I just have audacity enough to write these words, and to think they mean something. I’m not sure I could tell you what. But, I will marvel with you awhile, as the moon comes over the horizon. These tears, I find coursing down my cheeks, burn me with awareness, and remind me anew, this isn’t happening for my sake alone. I feel this unrest, this terrible blessing, because I’m made to bear it. The lamentable is so beautiful.

Nutrition

It is good to know what food is for, and where to find it. My body thanks me, and this knowledge, everyday.     The discovery of a new kind of food, was never on my drawing board, not anticipated, and actually more than a little difficult to take in. I don’t mean that is has been difficult to swallow, I mean that it has defied all my expectations. At my present age (68), I thought I knew enough about food that I didn’t t have to think about it much. But, a new kind of nutritional food has graced my life, and I’m trying to digest it. That is what this SL is all about.

There is a kind of social food that I didn’t know I’ve been starving for. It is an invisible, non-palpable, food that makes the heavenly scenario of us humans feeding each other, something even more miraculous. Many people know of the scenario of people feeding each other, with the assertion this is what we humans are capable of. But what isn’t so apparent is the kind of mutual feeding, which goes on when we share ourselves with each other. That is a feast of another sort.

What I’m trying to get at is the kind of nutrition that is provided when human beings get together, and really share themselves with each other.  This can be soul — food, invisible, not taken in with the mouth,  and deeply satisfying. This kind of co-constructed food is laced with meaning, intimacy, feelings, and human awe. It occurs in deep silence, and when two or more are gathered. It is utterly unique, moment bound, and profoundly mysterious. Somehow, this food, makes real just how hugely connected we are to each other, and to this incredible immensity we find ourselves within.

No wonder I hunger for it! Any gathering holds this kind of possibility. And I go away from too many meetings not only empty and dissatisfied, but in truth, malnourished. I didn’t know it, but I’m there, as much to find this invisible food, as I am for any group’s purpose. I often go away from gatherings dismayed and debilitated, smaller and less alive, shrunken by this unknown, unfulfilled hunger.

As I’ve grown older, I have at last identified the food I hunger for. I know something about how I’ve grown distorted, shrunken, empty and senseless because I’ve abided with this hunger without recognizing it. A few days ago, as I read Francis Weller’s book on grief (The Wild Edge of Sorrow), I realized I was riddled with sorrow about living as a shrunken, malnourished, flattened shade of myself. I am a zombie, more dead than alive, desiccated by hunger — a sad hungry zombie.

This realization, as painful as it is, is also liberating. One advantage of growing older is that I no longer fool myself about having forever to rebalance things. Death is too near. So, instead of just being alarmed, I’m going to make sure I get enough of this nutrient. That means I have to offer myself, as part of the ingredients of the nourishment I seek. I want to enter the social fray and be one of the cooks. I want to eat heartily.

I can feel in me a new awareness growing.  I’m leaving the ranks of the vampires, forever hungry for someone else’s blood, and returning to being human again. What I’m hungering for is now my criteria for any real social gathering. I want to be capable of a more public intimacy because I know that is how to stimulate the greater nourishment I seek. I am hungry for human interaction, not the cultural nicety of politeness, but the gritty desperation of other hearts befuddled and broken by the mystery of existence.

I’ve been starved long enough. Malnourishment is no longer the way I’m going to go about this life. I’m hungry for the real stuff. Human interaction. By that, I mean real contact. I’m so tired of being nice, polite, and silent. I want to cower before the real burdens we humans share, just as I want to exult over the miracle we get to share.

There is a social food, which feeds we social animals. I learned about it late in life. I knew I was hungering. I just didn’t know what for. It turns out to be something that only occurs when we get together. It is social food.  And, its nutritional value is up to us.

Rescue

She was a new member of a group I was in. She told us the following story as a way of helping us get to know her a little more. She opened the story by saying that when she gets stressed, she watches animal rescue videos. That’s how she saw the videos that revealed this story. When I grasped what the video held, what the story meant for us, I knew I wanted to write about it. In this case, it seemed to me, that this rescue rescues us.

She shared what had touched her so much. The video was about the rescue of lab animals. In this case it was a group of chimpanzees. They had spent from 30 to 50 years locked in cages in the nation’s laboratories. They were gathered, and taken to a chimp refuge, that had been constructed for them. The people at the refuge had put them in an indoor enclosure to give them a chance to adjust to each other and the alien environment they were in. There was a larger outdoor enclosure for them, and the video depicted what happened when they were introduced to it.

Finally, the day came when a door to the outside opened. The chimps had never been freed outdoors before. When the door opened grey-muzzled chimps stood and just stared. They had never seen the sky before. They had never trod on the earth, or seen and climbed a tree. They just looked out the door.

After a time, one ventured slowly out. Then another. Soon many of them entered, what must have been to them, a very strange landscape. Then they did something remarkable. They stopped and hugged each other. They embraced each other for a while, then broke up, and went on and explored the whole enclosure. Some climbed trees, some walked around, some played with each other, and some held back and remained at the door. The video ended shortly after that, with the commentator reporting that the rescued chimps were proceeding to learn how to recreate their dominance hierarchy and resume normal chimp life.

The story of these rescued chimps, and particularly their hugs, did something to me. I knew instantly that their story is our story. That we, as grey-muzzled humans, had spent most of our lives enclosed in a reality that isn’t natural to us. We are being released, by age, and by circumstance, into a larger enclosure. In some way, each of us old ones, is like those lab chimps. I haven’t seen my own natural habitat before. The landscape of old age is before me. Its never been seen before. And it is going to take a good, long hug to explore it.

I am an advocate for community. Maybe, that’s why the chimp’s hugs touched me. I have said that my real work is the restoration of humanity’s natural social habitat. That is what I experienced when the chimps embraced. I know that the instinct to embrace is a survival mechanism. We are social animals. If our lives are threatened we are drawn together, toward that embrace. The last, and greatest comfort, we can draw as we face the unknown, is the body of another. There is something about that bodily warmth, the quivering solidity of flesh, the heartbeat of another, which calms animal alarms. When we embrace another, we are embracing our selves.

It is my sense that the exploration of the unknown landscape we have been released into, (by virtue of reaching this advanced age) is facilitated by our embrace. For years now, I have been marveling at how much our old minds are enlivened by being in each other’s presence. There is no immunity to the ravages of an ageist culture like elder community. The warm embrace of rheumy hugs, familiar laughter, knowing looks, and compassionate hearts, rejuvenates my soul and lends resilience to my efforts. I am going to my grave, but not without knowing something about being thoroughly human. My sense of community gives me that.

Chimpanzees hugging reminded me about what really matters. There is no landscape like that of another similar body. Getting old, and being deemed useless, has allowed me to taste a freedom deeper than anything I imagined. Now a chimp’s hug, has reassured me. The way to explore this new largeness is together. I have experienced how my greying visage has come more to life because of the community I’m immersed in. The uncertain and awkward stories we have told each other, the heartbreaks and triumph we’ve shared, and the our tentative embraces, have introduced a new world. They are also providing me the temerity to explore it.

I end this piece with a poem. These are the words of Annie Dillard. I found them in her book Holy, The Firm. I turned them into a poem. They speak for themselves.  Each of us is alone. Each of us is a part of community, connected by who we are, as much as what we do. In any case, there is only us.

                                                            No One But Us

There is no one but us.

There is no one to send,

nor a clean hand,

nor a pure heart

on the face of the earth,

nor in the earth

but only us,

a generation comforting ourselves

With the notion

That we have come at an awkward time,

That our innocent fathers are all dead —

As if innocence has ever been —

And our children busy and troubled,

And we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,

Having each of us chosen wrongly,

Made a false start, failed,

Yielded to impulse

And the tangled comfort of pleasures,

And grown exhausted,

unable to seek the thread,

weak, and involved.

But there is no one but us.

There never has been.

                                                                              From Holy The Firm by Annie Dillard

l/d

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Here are the links to the YouTube videos that informed this piece.

https://youtu.be/mW_pK-b5YW0

https://youtu.be/ExEjXLMd4VA

Reverence

It started many years ago, after my stroke. I started writing, what later turned out to be my first book Embracing Life. I thought I was dying, so I didn’t think much of my intuition, at that time. I had been exposed to a lot of transpersonal thinking in graduate school. There was a lot of interest in states of consciousness, particularly enlightenment. Through investigating and teaching community I had grown an interest in development and came to see the relationship between consciousness and growth. And, in the final stages of writing, I wondered if old people were more likely to reach, what I called the farthest reaches of human development.

I was surprised later, when Xan and The Elder’s Salon came into my life, to have this thought reoccur and be confirmed. I discovered, mostly through observation, that life-experience, under the right circumstances, occasionally led to really refined sensibilities. Mostly the old people I observed had no idea that they possessed any unusual awareness.

I’ve been paying rapt attention to this phenomenon ever since. The years have accumulated and so have my impressions. Now, I tend to think something important is happening with some older people, something so significant that I can no longer justify waiting to describe it. There is a state of consciousness that some old folks manifest that goes beyond the expectations of experts in the field of human development. I call it reverence. I’ll get into why later, but for now, I just want to say that what I have noticed throws a lot of our culture’s images of human potential, aging, and consciousness, way off.

The gold standard for human development has been the observations of Erik Erikson. He enumerated, and described, 8 typical stages of human psychosocial development. There is a lot more to be said about Erik, his life, and the orientation that brought him to his observations. If the reader has such interest you will not satisfy it here. My intention is to focus attention upon Erikson’s final stage (from age 65 until death), he called it integrity vs. despair. It is my sense, that while Erikson’s view is germane and generally pertinent (regarding integrity), his schema is too brief, and leaves out an important facet of development that likely happens only late in life.

Erikson emphasizes integrity at this latest stage. His focus upon the satisfaction that arises with a life lived in alignment with self-chosen values seems very apt. Conversely the discovery that one’s life doesn’t add up can lead to despair and depression. So, I don’t have a problem with these assertions. They seem correct, but do not go far enough. What I see, and what I anticipate with the combination of the longevity revolution and the demographic surge of the baby boomers, is that a new longer life means that late life is expanded and encompasses more.

What I see is that some old people shift their self-image and their sense of the world they live in. Erikson had noticed how people became more inner directed with age, but he didn’t live long enough to know what this shift accomplishes. My observation, plus the research that is being done with people in their 90’s and over a hundred (the fastest growing demographic in the human population), reveal that this shift grows more and more significant with age. As a result, some old people have a very different take on their existence.

In some regard, that is why I think it important to make clear that a new, and very different, perception exists. I’m not going to describe this consciousness, this new psycho-social awareness in great detail here, but I am going to affirm the perception that there is a kind of ripening taking place, and that it is the result of changes that take place within.

The old are much more likely to perceive themselves to be a part of the Cosmos and constantly in relationship with it. They have gained an inner as much as outer perspective on existence. Reverence for being part of a larger being totally changes their outlook. They know themselves to be a contiguous part of a much larger process of Life. This alters their perception of themselves, others, the environment, and the human experiment. Death is less frightening, happiness more common, and they are much more likely to grasp the big picture as it is.

For too long humanity has suffered with images of isolation, competition, violence and cruelty.  This is an accurate picture of the immaturities of humankind. But, the new picture, that emerges when one grasps what human maturity is like, suggests that humanity has another face. Reverence, a new take on human ripeness, reveals a species, that has the potential to adapt to and revere life.

That, I think, is worth knowing.

Holy Curiosity

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. ... Never lose holy curiosity.

                                                                                                                          Albert Einstein

I’m a lucky fellow. I found this quote in a manuscript I was reading. The 82 year-old author highlighted her sense that we old folks have a special capacity, if we protect it, to be curious in a distinctive way. This comports with my own sense, and it excites me, when I catch wind that someone else, aging so magnificently, is also noticing it. It turns out, that Albert, in his old age, noticed it too. All of this noticing inspired me to look deeper into, what Albert, in his wisdom, called holy curiosity.

The notion, that questions are a lot more valuable than answers (than even knowing), was introduced to me, years ago, by my partner Xan. She used to say, “there is nothing so precious as a good question.” I was so full of myself, so full of, what I thought of as knowing, that it took awhile for me to get the value of what she was saying. Now, I think I’m getting it. The power of inquiry, of looking deeply into anything is moderated by the quality of questions one asks. Understanding this is changing my life.

Along the way, I’m grasping, that my willingness to experience more of the surprising is growing. I can’t really say that that growth is at my behest. This is an area where Life is changing me. Last time I looked, I wasn’t so keen on experiencing things that didn’t quite match-up with my preconceptions. It wasn’t that I was so arrogant (OK, maybe I was), it was more like I was just too human, not very mature, a product of our culture. Anyway, I’ve aged, and been ripened some. Unbidden, I’m finding a growing desire in my self, to inquire into this mysterious existence. In my mind, holy curiosity is coming on.

I especially like the part of this formulation that considers being curious as holy. Most of my life, I’ve just considered myself (and anyone who seemed like me) nosy. Einstein is suggesting another possibility. There seems to be some awareness that curiosity, the restless nature of my interest in getting at whatever is going on, serves some higher purpose. Wow! Who would have ever guessed being curious is a spiritual practice!

Suddenly, Life is turning out to be a mystery, a who-dunnit that features me as a detective. I like mystery novels, but I’m not sure this is one I would take out of the library. I know too much already about the protagonist. Or, do I? Maybe the mystery hinges upon the audaciousness of my curiosity. I have a mixed-mind, a deep ambivalence, that comes up when I begin to realize, that like it or not, I’m implicated, and somehow responsible, for what is passing.

Anyway, the sense that there is something innate in me, that manifests as curiosity, and that is in the service of anything spiritual, is mind-blowing.  I would be curious about how such a thing is even remotely possible, but I’m too overwhelmed by the notion. Holy shit, holy curiosity might be a real thing!

In the strange way my brain-damaged mind works (if, you could call it that), holy curiosity arises about the time a person realizes they know just enough to know they don’t really know anything. Then some strange alchemy starts taking place. Not knowing morphs into holy curiosity. The desire to experience what cannot be known, takes over. Then the holy shit gets really deep.

Einstein was obviously curious. He was treated like he was this unusual phenomenon, a genius, so rare, but in fact I think he was just an ordinary human being. Maybe he was different because he was so curious, but I don’t think so. I think curiosity is built-in, a compass that is capable of helping all of us find our way home.  It really is a return instinct. Like the one the salmon have — if we let it, it’ll help us find our own spawning ground.

Holy curiosity. It’s in us. The path home is marked by the desire to learn. I blush at never having considered this possibility. I also laugh. The real genius is evolution. Somehow, throughout the many billion years that are involved, this trait curiosity survives, and calls us deeper back to the enchantment that made us possible.

There is a school that develops holy curiosity; it’s called Life. We are right there, right now. Wow!