Beauty

A few days ago someone I hadn’t seen in a long time came to visit me. We were catching up. We noted how we had both grown older, and we began comparing notes about how that had gone for each of us. One of the things he told me about was how much more beautiful people had become. I realized, with his words, that my idea of beauty had changed too. That started me on a train of thought that I want to share with you.

I have been delighted to discover, that one of the positive elements of getting older, is that a person can become, more and more, themselves. I have always related to this movement as one of becoming more and more unique. The advent of personal uniqueness has been a hallmark of aging, in my perspective. For him, this kind of development meant people became more beautiful! I like his perception, because I think it is true, and because I also think it represents an important evolution in my concept of beauty.

I have grown up in a culture that primarily conceived of beauty in the young female form. Setting aside, for this moment, what that has done to women, I want to explore what this notion of beauty has done to older people. I suspect some of the invisibility that many older folks experience is related to this way of seeing beauty. I also think some of the revulsion about aging has its roots in this very limited concept of beauty.

Beauty has for too long been primarily considered an external phenomenon. It has been an aspect of appearance. Sure, there has been some acknowledgement of internal beauty, like a beautiful personality, but there hasn’t been a wide-spread realization that beauty could be an innate quality that comes out with life experience and uniqueness. Beauty then is more like a diverse eco-system, a quality of Life’s devotion to profusion and diversity. Beauty, in this later conception, is a combination of internal factors and a relationship with more of the whole of Life. This notion seems more organic, humane, and lasting, than something that involves a winning a genetic lottery.

The evolution of my sense of beauty is also helping me perceive beauty outside the skin –encapsulated world I’ve formerly lived in. Now, I’m much more likely to see the complex beauty of something that has both an internal and external ability to find a certain kind of alignment. This has been especially true in my experience of those people and places that have endured the rigors of existence. I’m finding I’m growing more partial to scars, marks, wrinkles, and the wisdom derived from heartache. Beauty has become something marked by Life.

It seems to me one of the greatest gifts of being human has been the gift of being able to perceive the complex poignancy of Life. There is beauty in suffering the unknown for the sake of the whole. I can’t describe that kind of beauty, I think it can only be experienced. Beauty can be an inexplicable experience — a way mystery has plucked a gossamer heartstring — that resonates into every cell of being. Beauty can be a particular poignant moment, a flash of meaning colliding with attention. Beauty can be a state of mind that is revealed with showing up and being present. Beauty can be seen everywhere, if one is willing to embrace it all — especially those places where the darkness and the light combine.

I like Leonard Cohen’s realization that the crack is where the light gets in. My way of saying it, is that hardship is the hand of artistry. Beauty, on the way.

It helps me feel better about being involved in this transitory soup when I think that the experience of beauty evolves, and that as my eyesight grows dimmer, it also grows sharper. That also seems beautiful to me. Maybe death, which is part of Nature’s design, is really, as the poet Hafiz suggests, “a favor.” If so, that’s incredibly beautiful.

Medicine Moments

Illness, and the holiday season, combined to slow me down even more than my normal disabled, older self. And I’m glad it did. It seemed as if I was stopped. For what seemed like an eternity, I was totally in the moment. It was as if the tide had gone out, and revealed an always present but hidden structure. Under it all — my day-to-day activity — there was an unseen element, an energy that only became obvious when I had no energy. This Slow Lane is about that. I don’t know what it is, but I became aware of it, during my time of convalescence, during the time when I was down for the count, and so sick I didn’t care. Then, I was affected by something that exists unseen, and influences me. I hope I can refer to what seems a mystery without demeaning it.

I have been struggling to find the right words for this experience. It is so compelling, yet so shrouded, I am a combination of flabbergasted and awed. How could there be something beneath my usual awareness that holds such power, and that guides my efforts, without my knowledge?

I am beholding to the worldview of Native America. You see in that awareness, the idea of medicine appears in a more psycho-spiritual context. Medicine in the indigenous way of seeing things is healing, not only to the body, but also to the soul. This perspective helps me view my experience of barely moving, in an interesting new light. By being slowed down, even more than usual, I had an experience of something that always operates, something which resides inside of all my activity. I think of it now as a kind of medicine.

I think that the energy-less place I occupied when I was sick, which I called a feeling of “warmed over death,” was in fact a place near enough to this source, where it became somewhat palpable, but far enough away that I’m able now to reflect on it, and be caught up in wonder. I was sick enough that I got a little sense of how sick I have been. The illness was part of the cure. I had a medicine moment, through being slowed down and ill.

The paradox of such a happening is compelling. It makes me feel a sense of dizziness. I am here, thinking I am in charge of my life (or should be), when something else, something I can barely perceive, is generating a host of meaningful and healing effects. I guess that is just the nature of being lucky.

I don’t know, but I’m overwhelmed by a sense of the remarkable. In that sense of wonder I find myself engaged in a sort of magical speculation. What if, this thing I call my life, is a series of medicine moments, which pass by unnoticed, because I am so busy and distracted? Maybe, by being as sick as I have been, enduring this forced slow down, I simply am noticing what is always generating a string of salient possibilities?

I like the idea that I might be living out a kind of dual existence, a life partly of my own making, and one that is being created for me. Not exactly for me, something seems to be actively shaping this life, with me in mind, but for purposes I am barely able to guess. This sense gives me a feeling of having the wind under my wings, a sense of being lifted, scarily and surely, beyond my self.

I am considering, in this second, that this life I am accustomed to leading, is not what I have assumed (this is ultimately what is so hard about getting older). If I just slowed down enough, I believe I might sense, how much this life is composed of a series of medicine moments.

If so, I can feel how much I want to pay attention. I am enlivened when I notice, ennobled in fact. Life takes on a very different hue. From this place politics, sports, religion, sex, and wealth all seem less compelling and definitive. I am happy I lived long enough, to begin to think of my whole life as a medicine journey. I am living right in the middle of the playing out of a wonderful unfolding. Wow! What a way to enjoy the ill darkness.

I hope the light infects your darkness this year!

Not‑Knowing” Wisdom

It’s Christmas! I’m staying in, actually I’m a shut-in, celebrating in my own way. This time of year — add being sick, and alone, amounts to slowing down. This is a wondrous time to reflect. My mind could go back to the year I’ve just lived through, or travel further back to other Christmas scenes, but instead it is riveted upon this moment, wondering what all the uncertainty I feel portends.

This is ostensibly the beginning of a New Year. I wonder, will there be anything truly new about the New Year? The election continues to resonate. There is a lot of uncertainty in the air. The emotional tides are high. It seems that many of the old horrors are being warmed up. It is a time rich with feelings, fears, anxieties and apprehensions. There is an aura of teetering that colors the yuletide cheer. Going forward or going back, over the cliff or around it, becoming closer or more divided? — the moment quivers.

I’ve heard so many times this is the moment to stand up. Values are on the line, possibly the planet, certainly how we feel about each other, and ourselves. So much seems to be at stake.

I feel peculiarly out of step with the times. I am nervous, like many people, but I feel a sense of expectancy, like I’m participating in some kind of birth phenomena. The unknown, I sense, is delivering to us something unimaginable.  I don’t know what is here. I don’t have a name for it. I don’t know how to greet what is taking shape. Strangely, I can feel it happening in the midst of all the rehashed actions that are being called for. Evolution is taking the mess we (humans) currently are, and working us into a different shape.

It is times like this that I find myself wanting to pause, like this holiday season is helping me do, and turn to that rarest of wisdom’s for guidance.  Here, I’m not referring to the wisdom of the past, the wisdom of tradition and what we know, but the unknown wisdom of the present. It is the degree of bafflement in the air that arouses in me a sense of wonder, expectancy, and a desire to be open and wait. I am poised at a vibrating threshold. How I comport myself now will determine in some way what I will meet. This is a quantum moment, what I find, will be determined by my expectations, thus I want to be as open and as free of assumptions as possible.

It is at times like this when I feel so strongly the pull of not-knowing. There is such a spaciousness in the unknown, a darkness that is rich with possibility, a creativity that is guided by the formless. This is what I want to stand for.  There is a miraculousness afoot, which doesn’t depend at all upon the election results, but becomes palpable when one opens up to the larger Mystery — of what is going on here.  Let’s stop pretending we really know what’s happening. All of the certainty, ideological nightmares, and historical references are apt, but insufficient to this time. They are good for stirring up fear, anxiety, and hatred, but not very good for soberly leaning into the moment.

I am growing old. I’m not as interested, as I once was, in chasing my tail. Now, each moment has grown more precious, and I want to meet it, as it is. In being dragged around the block by Life, as many older folks have been, I’ve learned to open myself to each moment, to spend some time with it, to let it be, and to relish what is unknown about it. Life has introduced me to a whole set of unforeseen possibilities, I would have passed by many of them, because they looked familiar. Now, I come to this moment, with continued reverence for the Mystery that brought me here, ready to be surprised anew. Not-knowing releases me into the moment, it allows me to experience what is, and shields me from the tides of emotional upheaval that I am surrounded by.

There is one other thing I want to be sure to mention before I stop for this Christmas day. Not-knowing isn’t only good for calming the emotional waters, but is essential for re-enchanting the world. Magic dwells in the spirits of those, most generally elders, who are savvy enough to know, that they know enough, to know, they don’t know very much. There is a form of elder innocence that forms late in life. It isn’t like the innocence of childhood, based upon an ignorance of the world; in elder life it is giving up on relying upon adult like certainty, and meeting the world naked in a different way.

The miraculous nature of Life is obscured by too much knowing. Not-knowing wisdom frees the imagination, releases potential, and honors what does not want to be changed by fickle human emotions. To recognize the blindness knowing brings, means liberating all that has suffered the slavery of human hubris. The world is enchanting, and so is this uncertain moment in our nation’s history. Something is happening, and let’s wait and see what it is.