Inner Life

 

      Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination

                                                            Mary Oliver from The Wild Geese

 

There is one grace-filled aspect of aging, that I don’t think has been adequately acknowledged. I want to give it special attention. It is hard to do so, in this world that glorifies surfaces. What I want to focus on usually becomes most evident later on in life. Getting old means a growing awareness of an inner dimension. A shocking, often times slippery, movement in, sometimes adds to the confusion that sets in, when one ages. I believe this movement represents the penultimate development of later life, and is the thrust of ripening, that differentiates our species.

 

Inner life doesn’t manifest in the same way for everybody. It doesn’t manifest at all for some folks. Only the Mystery knows why. But, for others, it can be a revelation, a set of synchronistic events, a strange discomfort, a profoundly troublesome symptom, or an awkward knowing. There is a stirring that can happen at any moment, anywhere, inside or out, that one cannot hide from, and cannot easily appease. Something stirs and awakens, unbidden, and unlike what one might have been led to expect. Some seed of who one really is, germinates.

 

This is a birth that has taken a life-time to happen. This is the part of humanness that has been largely left to religion, because science can’t measure it. Something undefinable happens, a life-time takes on new meaning, and one is freshly revitalized. Old age becomes newly alive.

 

There is a lot of loneliness in later life. One of the hallmarks of this era is isolation. Old folks are left on the trail, to fend for themselves, to pass quietly. This neglect is horrific, but it does serve in one way. There is time to reflect — memory may be gone — but the stamp of existence remains. Reduced stimulation, and demand, enable the fruiting of the seed of inner life. Wrinkled, overwhelmed, and strangely happy, an old person stumbles toward the grave, having fulfilled some inexorable natural demand.

 

Inner life contains a kind of productivity that has been ignored by our materialistic culture. Assuming only that we are what we say we are, is a yoke we have placed on ourselves, thinking we are only valuable in economic terms. Our lives stretch out, beyond reproduction, beyond work viability, beyond even our assumptions about ourselves, to manifest the one capability that is our species alone. We are capable of becoming so much more! Alive in a more fulsome way!

  

Inner life reveals the real pregnancy we are. Partly formed, we are becoming! Becoming what, we don’t know, but the stirring within, the fact it happens later on in a human’s life, shows that something is coming. Something we cannot predict, but with appropriate attention, we can feel and experience. Life, as we know it, is a way-station, a means of moving on. 

 

Inner life can be fickle. Sometimes it is dark, cruel even — revealing what seems worst in us. What stirs is a Mystery. Sometimes unfeelable, something invisible changes everything. As seed carriers we don’t always know what we are carrying 

(or that we are carrying) for the world, but we are bringing forward something essential to the whole. It is an unacknowledged part of being human— a spiritual pregnancy— through which the future is unfolding. 

 

 

 

  

Flickering

I have a light, that when I enter the bathroom, and turn it on, flickers. I think that something similar is happening with me. I am flickering.  My flame has grown inconsistent. I am only sometimes what I have been. I’m still bright, but only occasionally. I’m not sure, I can always be bright when I want to be. Lately, I’ve begun flickering.

This is a new phenomenon for me. Oh sure, I’ve had my bad days. Those happen occasionally, but more rarely, than I am now flickering. I believe this is a sign of what is coming. I’m nearing my pull date.

Getting near the end, is the kind of near-death experience (NDE), that almost no one wants to talk about. I’m not sure why. I’ve been in this terrain before.  My stroke held me near death for a long time. It has been the most provocative learning experience of my life. Ah, but then, I didn’t know if I was going to die, this time, I’m more sure. I’m on my way out.

I’m OK with it. Not too afraid now. I’ve had a long time to reckon with death, I’ve come around to realizing that I have been dying all along. Over the years, I’ve given up so much. Death has been a constant companion. In fact, Death has made my life what it is — a miracle way beyond me. So, I kind of wait, with bated curiosity.

What I find difficult about it, is that we seldom talk about it. I don’t mean the conversations about the end, they are starting to happen now, in Cafe’s, and other public spaces, but the conversations I look forward to, are the ones about how Death changes Life. Death has been a friend, I’ve gotten to know.

It’s causing me to flicker now. I trust it, but I don’t know how best to respond to this form of reduction. I’d like to be with some others engaged in this part of living/dying. I wonder, what does flickering offer? I know I am moved to hold my loved ones more thoroughly. The world is more enchanting too, but is there something I’m missing? Perhaps, somebody else sees some other aspects of the light.

Flickering is sort of impolite. Our culture still admires the stiff denial of death. So, maybe that’s why the conversation is so rare, but from my viewpoint dying is as natural as living.

I’m flickering now. My days are numbered. The prelude is well underway. I am more alive than I have ever been, because the end is nearing. I am not consistently able to express it, but my happiness and awe are growing. I think I may be brighter when I am bright, and darker when I am dark. Both forms of light are accompanying me home.

I live now, without later being assured. It is tenuous, a moment by flickering moment proposition. I haven’t a leg to stand on. The world is a strange wisp, a dream that seems to be dreaming up the next bend in the river. Letting go isn’t totally in my hands now, but strangely I have to keep doing it anyway. That’s part of the nature of flickering. 

 

 

  

Learned Helplessness

I put two and two together this week— and surprised myself — by coming up with a sum I knew, but hadn’t really seen before. What I realized is, that I have been blinded — as in, made oblivious — to just how weighty and difficult some things are to faPce. I can’t see what isn’t supposed to be there. While blind, I can feel something.  I haven’t wanted to know, how utterly disabling growing up in this cultural milieu is. It’s like, the waters I’ve been swimming in, are more polluted than I thought. Furthermore, the pollution is paralyzing. Not in any obvious, visible way, but in a subtle, yet pressurized way.

It makes we humans less than we are.

I came upon this realization through the silent suffering of others. While investigating this silence, I got in touch with a dense field, that is permeating life. The best I’ve seen it described, is through the words of Martin Seligman, who calls it, learned helplessness. He is talking about a state, that results from exposure to pervasive abuse. My formulation, is exposure to pervasive socialization.

Some of us are disabled, by the realities we’ve been subjected too. We have both an inaccurate self-image, and an inaccurate picture of what is.

Each of us has been skewed — deformed by a constant barrage of aberrant interactions. Others, especially those closest and most important to us, have inadvertently been passing on to us, the latest and most significant prejudices. I don’t mean racial prejudices — although those are included — I mean about what is real, and worth responding to, and what is not. This includes the pressure to conform. All of this subtle force is often called love.

Remember, don’t color outside the lines.

It is so hard to find words for some things. That is because some things exist beyond the lines, some things are not only taboo, but unacknowledgeable. The totality of who we are, is beyond the recognition of the world we live in.

Find words for that!

Silence can be deafening. The unspoken often conveys what words will not allow. And, worse yet, silence can reveal the mute disability of learned helplessness — the silent cry of the unacknowledged. It is painful to be in the presence of this kind of silence. Agonizing to be in the presence of swallowed lies. Lies that are passed on so easily, and become new generations of deformed people.

When we fight to free ourselves of conditioning, like some old people do, we are fighting the constant flow of cultural propaganda. Not a political manipulation — but a very human desire to provide protection, and guidance, in a mysterious and dangerous world. We are held down, zeitgeist-wrapped, to give us a leg up, in a world that is really beyond our control. It is loving, and it is disabling.

Going beyond conditioning is a way of freeing oneself from bondage, learned helplessness, and over-zealous love. To be oneself, a unique being, is to go beyond — to quiver in the unknown — and to be more than what is called for. It is a courageous act. An act that is anything but helpless. 

 

  

Community Caregiving

 

“The immediate genius of generosity is that it draws us out of ourselves.”

                                                                                                                                                                                              Wendy Lustbader

I didn’t see the subject of this Slow Lane coming. I have no idea of what I’m going to write. I only know that the title set-off some kind of reverberation that has galvanized me to sit down and see what comes.

I only thought of caregiving as exclusively personal. I’ve had caregivers for almost 17 years now. I’ve been grateful, vulnerable, ashamed, and astonished by the care I’ve received, but I never thought about it in collective terms before, never conceived of caregiving in any collective way— except I have. Without knowing, or even noticing, I’ve been creating and supporting group activity, always intent upon helping a group become a ceremonial ground, a place where one can discover, and be, fully human.

Now, for the first time, I’m realizing that I am a community caregiver. Perhaps, many of us are. I hope many more will be. By labelling these efforts as community caregiving they become visible, and can be valued again.  Caregiving, in general, has been undervalued in this society. It is work that has been left to the underclasses, and the marginalized. It is as if heartbreak, illness, disability, and pain are a unwelcome part of our humanity.

As one of the old, I know that these qualities, as hard as they are, deepen our humanity, and tend to bring out what is most special about our species. Caring then becomes something else. It is supporting the futherment of human evolution, particularly of the heart. A caregiver is love manifest. A mid-wife at the door of Creation.

A community caregiver is someone who is sensitive to the tides of our larger connection. Not just the social dimension of who we are, but the entire ocean of our cosmological togetherness. Those of us gifted with this kind of awareness are moved by tidal forces to create celebratory events which make more explicit the ties of love that bind us, and make being human so poignant.. In any moment a social caregiver can be switched on, and does their best to attract and pull together a cluster of humans.

I didn’t consciously know I was one of them. I thought of myself as a caregiver, a man touched by hopeless courage, bound to what is deeply broken, but because I have lived in this fractoring culture, I never thought of myself as in service to any collective. I’ve been enlightened. There is something so big, that it calls us all in different ways, and some of us have to serve it.

Community, I think, provides an intermediate playground. It is large enough to be the something palpably larger, that it provides a glimpse, of the even larger wholeness we owe ourselves to. In this age, caregiving is gratitude personalized. Community caregiving is the Universe doing self-care.

I suspect, that the luck that steadily comes my way, is somehow related to the quality of community caregiving I do. The gift increases when it is given away. The Universe thrives and expands because caring does. 

 

 

 

Lucky

 The Slow Lane

I’m coming up on the 20^th anniversary of my stroke, and it occurred to me, to use the story about becoming Lucky to celebrate. That’s right to celebrate! You see the stroke has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I have told pieces of the story of why, but never the whole story, and now I think is the time. I intend to only briefly touch on the medical hell I went through, because the details of my particular situation, though plenty traumatic, are not really that germane to the story. I’m not Lucky because I survived, I’m Lucky because the experience transformed me. Here’s what I mean.

When I was 55 I had a hemorrhagic stroke, a blood vessel in my brain leaked. That altered everything. A few months later, after brain surgery, I developed a very rare brain condition, that set me on an unknown course of losing functioning on a regular basis. All of this (all that losing), led to the loss of my marriage, family, home, property, career, health and well-being. It was an immediately dark time in my life. Literally, my life had been turned into rubble. For much of the first few years I was dazed, angry, and full of grief. I had no idea what hit me —but I knew my life, as I knew it — was over.

Eventually, I lived alone, my marriage ended, I became disabled, and it looked like I was dying. My doctor scared me, by saying that medicine didn’t know what was wrong with me, and couldn’t treat me. I was freaked out, and freed to try other means of treatment. Nothing made a difference. After years of trying things, I ran out of resources, and resigned myself to dying. I remember, living for 3 years as a terminal patient (with a 24-hour planning horizon) and a sense that everything was over.

The transformation began so innocuously, that I had no idea it had begun. All evidence suggested that I was dying. So, what arose in me was a set of regrets. I didn’t want to go to my grave with what I knew. After a poignant and painful dream, where my house was boarded up, and closed, I realized I couldn’t stand not sharing with someone what I had learned about community. So, I started writing, using only two good fingers on the keyboard. I did it, slowly, to exorcise my regrets, knowing I might die soon, only to have, stuff that I didn’t know come out.

Whereas, I started, thinking I knew what I had to write, I wrote what I didn’t know I knew. I learned so much from myself, that I felt compelled to keep going. All that time, I was discovering, that within me, was a life, that I had no inkling of. In the process, David became Lucky. I didn’t know it yet. It was several years before I recognized the changes that had been wrought. But, there as I lay, unable to move, near the abyss, Life moved into me, and I was re-made.

Lucky was born of what was left of the man. It was through no intention.  I was nothing but a failed carcass. What arose from that piece of meat was someone that was Life’s alone. Unbeknownst to me— an operation by ‘invisible hands’ — was being performed. I’m still waking up to that procedure.  But, some unknown presence settled in, and set me on a new course.

Emotional intelligence grew, connection with the cosmos became more vivid, compassion took on a deeper hue, foolishness and play flourished, and I grew into a more internally free being. I knew my relations. I was delivered a decisive blow, dealt a disabling wisdom, mentored by mystery, and captivated by Life. Paradox became a friend. Lucky emerged as mystified rubble, doomed and freed by hardship.

Now I marvel in the world around me. Certainty has fled, and I know the real vulnerability of being human. Grief and praise have intertwined into awe. I wheel around amazed, overwhelmed, and grateful that I have lasted long enough to get here. I know the Universe is my truest parent and that I’m wanted.

Forgive my weirdness, after all, I’m a little demented — surrounded drunkenly by all of this magnificent wonder and hellish mistrust.

 

 

 

  

Ikegai & Moai

“It is good for we elders to be up to something,

                                                especially if it is with others.”                                                                                                   

                                                                                                          David “Lucky” Goff 

People are getting old all around the planet. Recent researchers have noticed. One looked at places and cultures (called Blue Zones) where there is a much higher percentage of the elder population than occurs here in America. In a number of places, there are 3 to 6 times as many centenarians (people over 100 years old) as in this country.

Cross-cultural studies have revealed that there are certain commonalities in these societies (diet, movement, spirituality, cultural respect), that may account for their longer, richer lives. Below, I address two social dimensions of longevity, which the people of Okinawa have given words to. There is a richness of wisdom, born of longevity and community, infused into these words. And so, I introduce you to the Japanese words, Ikegai and Moai.

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Ikegai (pronounced: icky-guy)

This word has traditionally referred, in Japan, to “having a life of meaning.” In Okinawa it took on a more particular meaning. There it refers to the importance of having “a life of purpose.” It appears that longer, higher quality lives, center around an experience of living purposely — hold on, because this is the social part — not just for yourself, but for others.

A good, long life, one filled with joy, and a desire to get out of bed in the morning, is one spent purposely acting to enhance life for everyone. Having a way to do it, that is direct, experiential, and not abstract is optimal. This is Ikegai.

The interactive nature of life holds a special kind of medicine that benefits all involved. The synergy of this invisible substance feeds and enhances life, giving energy to people, and increasing their health and longevity. This mutually beneficial way of interacting is known and practiced in some places. We can learn from the way of life that prevails in these places. Ikegai reflects a special human awareness, that can be translated into anyone’s life. It is part of the human repertoire, that aging activates, and that each of us can adopt, for our own and each other’s benefit.

Moai (pronounced: like the Missourri river, the big Mo-eye)

What distinguishes many of the places where longer life prevails is a kind of social embeddedness. In Okinawa, the pople realize this, in fact, cultivate it, by forming small groups (8 to 12 people), Moai, that just hang-out together. These are not activist or political groups, clubs — or groups that have any particular agenda. They are just designed to enrich social life, and to ward-off feelings of loneliness and disconnection.

Moai represent an unexpressed sensibility that pervades cultures where people live longer, more satisfied lives. Regular interaction satisfies something basic, in we  social animals. This is a kind of community important to well-being — because it embodies the spiritual need to be part of something larger. Some sense of social connectedness replicates community — the intermediary between individual humans and the Universe. In short, we need each other to fulfill our lives.

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We live in a rapidly changing world. It seems to be descending into a new level of chaos. In this dangerous time, it is good to look to some of the cultural practices of our kind, to help us navigate, and make the best of, the treacherous waters we now live in. Human have known, and embodied, miracles in the past. These words, show something of the social nature of those miracles. Armed with each other, we are as capable as ever.

 

 

  

Full Catastrophe Living

There is a line from one of my favorite poems that goes like this, “Whatever can be lost, will be.” This is what happened in Lahaina, and it is what’s happening to each of us, as we get older. The reduction, that is, the destruction of everything in Lahaina, Maui, is what is releasing the gestalt of strength, that is permeating and bringing together that community. It is heartening to know that kind of feeling, a kind of other-worldly strength, is a way human’s respond to shared devastation. The more thorough the loss, the more thorough the gain. Out of misery arises a joining spirit.

The atmosphere of strength, the shared regard for life, the overall vulnerability that permeates the people, is a natural reaction to what has happened. It is an arising of what is underneath all of us.  It holds promise for we who are ageing into the sunset. Life is slowly creating a Lahaina, a thorough-going disaster, that will generate new life.

Humans come into life with nothing, and they go out the same. But, unbeknownst to most of us, the mysterious feeling of connection, which underlies all things, arises, like it is doing in Lahaina, and brings us into its bosom. Losing everything, health and well-being, is a prelude. The rattling, anxiety-producing elements of Life, all have to do with accumulation and holding on, they inevitably lead to the anguish of letting go. Lightening up seems like a tragic loss, but it is actually a normal, natural, balancing of the scales. Inside the dark misery of loss resides a gain that is unimagined, and unanticipated.

Older folks are slowly being stripped. Time is taking everything. Doddering and falling are signs of what is occurring. Giving up and letting go, can be a wrestling match, a very sad and painful form of death march, a way we human’s try to resist the inevitable. And with each iota of loosening grip— a falling away from the conventional struggle our culture so prizes — comes a dawning awareness of the balm of renewed connection. 

To have the being you want to be, you have to let go of the being you are. It is painfully obvious. All birth comes with birth pains. The wrinkled, and gray amongst us, are past the event horizon, and are being dragged into what many consider a black hole, but instead it is the net of Indra. We are being devastated, our means of living is dissolving, we are fading into oblivion, only to find what does not change, the holding environment of Creation.

To live a full life, to care about what matters to each of us, and to meet such an ignominious ending, is hard to take — not at all what we wanted our lives to add up to. It is a bad way for the book to end. It can leave an unsavory taste in our mouths, even before we get there.

Did what put a spark in your mother’s womb really opt for this?

No!

If your life is falling apart, congratulate yourself!  Some new, more hospitable, Lahaina awaits you.