Slowing Down

Two major sources of grief, and one delight have come over my horizon. They haunt me. As much as the world is changing, I have detected very little movement regarding these first two matters. And, I am elated by the last one, a surprising development, which alters everything, despite efforts for or against it.

This brings me to explain. I started sharing the Slow Lane writings, some 10 years ago. They evolved from being sections of my journal, which I felt moved to share with my community, to what you see appearing here. I gave these written reflections the title of The Slow Lane to emphasize my awareness that slowing down, something the stroke and brain damage did to me, revealed other important aspects of reality. My altered time sense was my motive for sharing this new (to me) perspective.  

As I mentioned, it is now 10 years, since I began sharing the wealth that came to me, because fate slowed me down. Every year, to celebrate the importance of the altered perspective that I have been introduced to, I have written one, or more, of these Slow Lane pieces, emphasizing the dangers of speed. I wanted to give words to how life-changing this awareness is. Sadly, one of the grief’s I have, is that life keeps speeding by. My humble words have made little difference. The bubble of my naivete has burst.

This loss of narcissistic hope has furthered my second grief. I have a sense of what is being missed as the cultural and commercial worlds speed along. I feel the ache of all, that isn’t just slow, but moves at something other than the machine speed of our times. The grief I feel— is the grief of Life — being overlooked and overridden by the cultural exigencies of the moment. There is a little piece of everything that is dependent on relationship, which expires under the pressure of speed. I ache in all the places, where I know connection lives. I feel the violence inherent in hurrying.

Living under the weight of racing — I long for the freeing relief I am finding — as I am aging. Decrepitude carries many gifts. They all aren’t about the illusion of being somehow young. Some just creep into life, slowly transforming it, into the miracle it is. I have been pleasantly surprised to discover, that along with greying and wrinkling, comes time. Time to move at the pace of authenticity, to genuinely go the speed that satisfies.

So, this is my delight, a feeling of elation really. Life has conspired to create an era of human life, whereby we humans, despite our culture-of-origin, wealth, education, or position, are slowed down, and confronted with our own existence. For a while we, humans, become human beings (as opposed to human doings) again, naturally. Life delivers an age of integration, a delicious interlude, a chance to catch up, a glimpse of the big picture, and noticing, suddenly becomes intelligence. Old age isn’t a sentence. It is natural democracy. Anyway, I like it, because it provides lots of slowly unfolding perspective.

I’ve written, too many times, that “speed kills.”  I’m not so young, or naïve enough, to believe in efficiency anymore. An inconvenient truth, is that the slow way is actually the fast way around. I’ve learned that we are more complex than most of what motivates us.  The truth is, that the lie of efficiency, and doing things faster is, that what matters to me, the subtle signals of relationship lines, and fields of connection, are de-valued, and like the old, are dismissed and abandoned. This is waste not efficiency! What delights me, is that Life has taught me this, and what grieves me, is that I live in a cultural world where this important lesson has been largely ignored.

The truth about speed, in a Universe that has taken billions of years to get to this moment, is that it misses what really has gotten us here. The Universe had the patience; one might even say the wise necessity — to unfold Life within the bounds of time. It takes time to create a miracle, while it takes almost no time, as most hustling businesses believe, to innovate. Slow is actually the sign of quality, while speed only delivers short-term benefits (and then only to some).

Try panting your way through life.

I’m tired, all the hurrying wears on me. I don’t have to participate. In fact, I can’t. But, I’m still affected. The rejuvenating relationships that feed, and sustain me, are under assault. I worry about the future, about the young, the planet, life as a whole. And therein, lies a darkness, I am not in a hurry to get to. Instead, I want to bask in the ever-present glow of enoughness. Eternity is right here, right now.

If, I go slow enough, I sometimes perceive the stealthy timekeeper, the one who has a moment for each existence. When that happens my fears dissolve, and breathing becomes easier — as does all life. If only I can develop enough immunity, to what is going on around me, to not forget, and try my version of hurrying too. 

Grief

The way of things brings me to this topic. It occurs to me that living in a social sphere where grief isn’t present all of the time is like living in an artificial bubble. The air lacks something. And my eyes too easily adjust to an environment that misses much of what makes me most human. I’d much rather suffer the pain of grief and loss, then suffer the disabling (blinding) effect of being cut-off from a key element of Creation.

Grief isn’t very pretty, and it definitely doesn’t get me invited to many parties, or social gatherings for that matter, but it does balance the scales, providing a sobering experience that puts Life into perspective. In this season where climate change has become explicit, I cannot help but wonder how much hurting is coming about because grief has not been part of our social climate. Letting the salving effects of grief into my life, has been one of the best things I’ve done for myself, my community and environment. The anguish I feel, and express, connects me so to the larger things my life so depends on.

I have been blessed by the work of Stephen Jenkinson. There are many things he says that I don’t agree with, but I think he really has a lot to offer when it comes to grief. For instance Stephen correctly (in my estimation) points out that grief is much more than a feeling. His point is that a person has to do something with it. Much that is troublesome about it resides in unexpressed grief. Doing something about it not only heals the hurt inside, but heals the world outside too. I don’t mean to say that there is something inherently spiritual about expressing grief (that is my experience), but here I am referring to all the many levels of hurting going on in any given moment. Grieving gives reference to all that hurts about life.

There is plenty of hurting to go around. Many people believe it shouldn’t be added to by anyone’s grief. Some folks think grief should be hidden a way. They see it as purely personal. I do not. When I, or someone near me opens up, and lets the hurts of Life be expressed then I begin to notice my connection with everything else in Life. Grief that expresses the sheer difficulty and pain of being human bonds me to others, and to the existence we share. Grief then has an effect that is like rain on the parched earth.

I don’t want to just talk about it.  The words cannot adequately express the emotional experience beneath them, but they open a door. For me, the more my awareness has expanded, the more grief I feel. My grief starts with personal failures, the spouses I failed to love, the heartaches I caused other women. The many painful errors associated with parenting. The insensitivities I heaped on friends and family. The many poses I maintained throughout my life to fool those around me (or myself). I have only been so accessible. I simply couldn’t understand myself, or others. There is so much I didn’t see on time.

Then right on the heels of my personal choices comes the equally bitter realization that all of my stupidity and bad behavior has abetted the bigger painfulness of Life. I am caught up in the destructiveness of Creation. I am the instrument of so much loss. I am involved in a seething sea of transformation. I have no choice about how much I fail to grasp. I live by eating other living things. I am wracked by change and changelessness.

None of this latter heartache is my fault it is simply the fee I pay for existing. I’m savvy enough to really get the dark side of Life, and even better to grasp how pain and difficulty serve Creation. So for me, grieving is honoring the complex and paradoxical nature of this existence. It is living with heartbreak. Anticipating the miraculous twist. Opening myself is a deliberate act of affirmation. It may come with breath-rendering sobs and tears, but that is only because my body knows no better way to hold the beauty of what I find myself involved in. I am smitten, torn, elated, frightened and awed.

My life is part of what I do with the grief I experience. I can’t help that. But how I carry it — I do have some choice about that. Carrying it more openly, being perpetually broken-down by it, connects me with the incredible symphony of Life, and lets me feel right at home with you.

Freedom’s Cry

Waking up isn’t easy. That’s why so few of us do it. Walking through the doorway that separates one from feeling connected with the larger processes of Life is a fearsome thing. It takes a rare courage, or a desperate kind of necessity. Anyway, it isn’t for the weak of heart. Have you ever wondered why? I have. I started out thinking it should be relatively easy. I reasoned that we humans, and the world in general, could use such a sensitivity to carry us through. I still think that, but I no longer am so naïve to think it should be easy. The need goes on, it even increases, but wakefullness remains elusive, for good reason.  The heart and mind have to go through a fundamental change, which can only be achieved through a deep immersion in the pain of the world.

Joy follows. That is why the truly illumined ones laugh. The price of waking is the recognition of how asleep one has been. This little bit of paradoxical wonder maintains a permeable membrane that is strong enough to keep most people from breaking into the light. Gain is connected with loss, but to get to the gain one has to go through the loss. There is no more sure barrier than the realization of limitation, the inescapability of death.

Life follows a perilous path. It is a high wire act all the way. New life, fresh insights and capacities are accessible, but only through perishability. Acquisition requires letting go, surrender, the collapse of aspiration and hope. This is not a path one voluntarily takes. It is a final, desperate resort. It is laying oneself down on the altar knowing that one cannot fathom an outcome. It is the act of one hopeless and deeply defeated.

The cry that baby’s utter when they come to life, is comparable to the shriek of recognition that accompanies the freshly awakened. It is a searing sound. With some strange mixture of grief and joy there is a full-bodied exclamation! Life is a combination of attributes linked by gossamer threads of feeling. A newborn’s skin is impeccably sensitive, and the freshly awakened discover skin that includes everything, vibrating with sensations too complex for words to tell. Pain and hilarity mix, paradoxical relationships abound, and the unlikehood of it all is joined by the on-going miracle of existence.

It is overwhelming. This is a new, on-going condition of life, this sense of overwhelm. And, there is nobody to talk about it with. There are people who say that they know, and maybe they do, but not in the way one does. The absolute has descended upon one and all that is left is uncertainty.  The dregs of existence now have an impossible luminosity. That light shines with a ruthless brilliance, that compels, confuses, and connects. Sleepy time has passed. Celebration, however, is muted by the immutable.

Awakening is desirable, but it brings a certain cloud of unknowing. It is like a storm cloud, dark with destructive capacities that refurbish and refresh the world. Grief taints existence, enlarging everything with a resonance of exquisite vulnerability. It is this fragility that renders beauty.

The only reasonable reaction to awareness of this level of incredulity is a cry. It is the involuntary howl of enlightenment; human and yet other-worldly. People come to consciousness in strange, unpredictable ways. There are no practices that lead to lightening strikes. The blessed one is introduced to sanity, that goes way beyond our notions of madness. There are no conventions, no patent assurances, no specialness at all, only a sense of being deeply at home.

This is all looked at favorably by our spiritual traditions. They extoll the enlightened perspective. Laughter seems to be the Master’s way. But what if it takes some time, effort, and energy to adjust? The freedom cry then seems assured. And, maybe the difficulty I sense actually exists. The world seems to have good reason to maintain its darkly illumined secret.

Escape Velocity

I realized something this week. It has to do with freedom, and is so contrary to the usual way I think about the advantages of aging that I just had to explore this thought. It has to do with overcoming the siren call of cultural manipulation, the normal associations which have so much to do with limiting our imaginations and choices. As I’ve grown older, and been exposed to so much ageism, I’ve been radicalized, to the point where I now consider myself a greying freedom fighter.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about one of the most important features of centenarians. People over 100 years of age are the fastest growing demographic group anywhere on the planet. They are the embodiment of the longevity revolution. They are a pretty interesting group. Each of them has idiosyncrasies that make them compelling, but what strikes me is the features they have in common. One in particular captures my attention. They have managed to escape the gravitational pull of mass mind. By that, I mean that they are no longer captive of the need to live up to any of the standards of the societies they are embedded within. They have achieved a degree of freedom that is unprecedented.

For a while now, I’ve known of this. Sometimes I even talk about it with friends and other older folks. When I do, I usually refer to these folks as ones who have achieved a kind of “escape velocity” of their own, which has allowed them to acquire an orbit of their own. They become totally unique. They are not governed from anywhere but inside.

Knowing of this facet of long life has amazed and beguiled me.  Recently, however, I began to re-think the notion of escape velocity. The usual association with gaining the velocity that defies gravitational pull has to do with speed. The assumption that prevails is that only by going fast enough one reaches escape velocity. In the paradoxical realm that accompanies old age it is a different speed that allows escape from the most egregious components of the cultural trance. Nature has already implemented this change of speed, but by and large we, like good automatons, resist it. I realized this week that the actual way of achieving escape velocity, and getting away from the gravitational pull of cultural hypnosis, is to go slower. Escape velocity at this age means slowing down.

I’ve written before about how speed kills, and how speeding along allows one to miss so much. These are definitely poignant inconveniences, but they have never been significant enough to slow anyone down. Now it seems that there is an aspect of nature’s design that slows us down. Aging seems to have its own kind of gravity. The upshot is that as people get older they get slower.

In our culture that is something to resist— a sign of a turn for the worst— the beginning of a downhill slide. But, in fact, it’s the beginning of a time when one, at last, gets to be themselves. Slowing down is a hallmark, a land mark of age, the beginning of a frontier of freedom. To ignore, and try to resist this inexorable force is dangerous. One’s internal integrity is at stake. So is the sense of belonging here in the Universe.

I remember a time, early on, when I was struggling with my own identity, being freshly disabled. Then a friend confronted me with a difficult question. She asked, “Are you a disabled person, or a person with disabilities?”  That question helped me re-orient myself. I was a disabled person, but I knew, that if I was going to live fully, and actualize my self, then I had to become a person who merely had some disabilities.

This situation is like that. This is a choice point. Are you a citizen of your culture, or are you a citizen of this life? Slowing down can help you make a real decision. It is a fundamental choice, one that has important ramifications for you, and your off spring. Cultural time would have you go fast and barely pay any attention to what is at stake at this point in your life, but nature is going to slow you, and give you the chance, if you want it, to decide for yourself who you want to be.

I hope you can find the internal wherewithal to make a good decision for yourself. And remember, escape velocity is actually slower than most of us believe (and frequently go).

Sinking In

As I’ve gotten older, particularly here in the later years of my life, I’ve noticed a kind of movement happening. I’m not referring to anything political or anything that one might consider a form of action. This undertaking seems to be occurring unbidden, rather naturally.  It is subtle, but never-the-less quite powerful. I have associated it with aging, because it doesn’t seem personal and as far as I know, I haven’t done anything that would bring this on. What I’m referring too is that I seem to be sinking down more into my own skin. My life is taking on more and more an inner dimension.

I think of it now like one of the old Tarzan TV programs I used to watch as a kid. Folks were always getting stuck in quicksand. I think I am stuck and being pulled in. It just occurred to me that one of the features of old age that I have been talking about lately is gravity. It doesn’t seem to be my friend. As I grow older I am shrinking. This feels a lot like that. I am being turned inward as my life experience increases. I am sinking in, pulled by some natural phenomenon, into unknown depths.

My early experiences with dreams and psychedelics make this a fairly non-threatening experience. I have generally liked the sense of direction that has come with having a more luminous inner life. This movement, appearing within me now, does seem rather odd though. I don’t know how else to relate to it. Just when my dreams have lost their intensity and regularity, this something else seems to be pitching in to captivate me. I’m dreaming less and imagining more.

I would say that whatever creative impulses I feel now all come to me in this same kind of unbidden way. My thoughts kind of loosely wander into strange places where, for some unknown reason, formerly separate things combine into unusual ideas. Yesterday, for instance, one of my brothers came into my mind and I imagined him doing something I’ve never seen him do. This kind of thing happens regularly now. I’m not about to report some weird form of precognition or even weirder synchronicity, but just the simple recognition that the thought of this brother doing that activity strikes me as endearing, and that tells me I want to see him sometime soon.

More commonly I find myself thinking of the past, envisioning an interaction, and remembering a specific person, place, or time in my life. Suddenly a realization involving my experience with that person, or with that time of my life, will come into my mind. All at once, I see that I was doing something other than what I thought I was doing at the time. Unbidden, my life (or another’s) will be revealed to me, in a light I’ve never seen before.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but what is happening is interesting, different, and sometimes illuminating. It happens often enough now where I’ve learned to trust it, and to pay attention. My life seems to be richer for it.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t wish for this kind of development. Like some kind of alter-me, this gift of weird awareness just snuck into the house of my being. It was never a guest I invited. As I’ve paid a lot more attention to getting older (I’m not trying to, but its occurring anyway) I’ve read that this happens. As people get into their later years they become more and more turned inward. Well, I guess the gravity of aging is pulling me in.

As this has been unfolding I’ve begun to wonder about what’s going on, and why it might be happening with me? Why this particular development? Maybe it’s a movement towards a more balanced being. I’ve never focused much upon being internally aware. That seems plausible. I’ve never placed much emphasis upon inner life. I never meditated, prayed, or been particularly contemplative. Maybe, this is a skill I always had, that maybe I inherited from a relative. Could be, I guess, though no one comes to mind. I come from a line of very pragmatic farmers.

I’ve settled on the idea that this turn inward is a species thing more than a personal thing. I kind of like the idea that evolution has got my back. I think this is a widespread phenomenon that helps each of us become more of what we are meant to be. Just as I am going to die inevitably, I’m going to have some internal capacity to look at my life, with internal eyes, eyes that see things differently, and aid me in seeing more of the mystery of what’s going on here.

I now believe that nature endows us with an innate capacity for an internal awareness that comes on-line later in our lives, to assist us with integrating the experience we are having here. I’m sinking inwards as I age because that helps me become myself, more unique and free. It also increases the likelihood that I can make an original contribution to my community and to this existence.

The quicksand is life taking me inexorably home. An aspect of that movement, like tidal action, is inward. So, I’m slowly sinking in.

Existential Vulnerability

There is a natural state, a kind of awareness that everyone experiences. This state, for good reason, is rarely described. I suppose the experience, though very common, is hard to capture with words. I know I feel daunted. The vulnerability that attends existence isn’t felt and experienced the same by everyone.  Words cannot convey fully what happens, or what it is like. In fact, there seems to be a deep ambivalence that attends the experience of existential vulnerability, and makes it hard to grasp.

Regardless, of the natural limitations that make this part of being human so impossible to convey, I’m going to try to penetrate that ambivalence enough to refer to this facet of being alive. I know I cannot do more. For, although I think our shared existential vulnerability unites us, I am aware that what we commonly experience does not easily translate into words. The condition that animates us into existence, and attends to us throughout life, often evades us, precisely because of its power in our lives. There is a natural reticence that comes with a deep realization of how fragilely we are created. There is a state of paradoxical nakedness that accompanies each of us, no matter how well dressed our station in life. The fact we are alive is so precious and so evanescent!

The vulnerability of existence, the knowledge that each of us is here, and that we did nothing to make it so, somehow sheers from us bravado, and reduces each of us into a quivering mass of meat. This experience underlies everything. Whether a banker, professor, miner, or street person with delusional thoughts, each can be reduced to that same steaming heap of dust. There is humility and a implacable justice that attends this leveling off. All are really nothing, and oddly and inexplicably something. This is the raw state we share.

Recently, I heard someone with a heart pacemaker describe waking up in the middle of the night, with irregular heartbeats, and wondering if this is the moment, the way she was going to die. I have reason to suspect that most of those reading these words have had their own moments like this. Everyone knows our time could end at any moment and few of us live like that. I am writing about this, not because I think we should be trying to live out each moment with this awareness. I do.

What motivates my writing today is something quite different, I want to underscore the perpetual fragility of all of our lives. This aspect of what we all share, brings out the compassion in me, and most importantly, arouses awareness in me.  I share the same mysterious origin as others. I am related to them by virtue of the common mystery of our existence.

I find this fact of life compelling. Underneath all of the differences I seem to have with everyone there is this one commonality. We came from the same place. And we all are going back there. No matter who we are, or how well we think we’ve lived and loved, or honored any belief system, the truth seems to be, that we return from where we never really left. All of us, are bounded, perpetually, by the unknown.

Existence is so precarious, uncontrollable, and liberating, that it is a solace to me. It seems that there is a built-in sense of community in our shared sense of vulnerability. I can’t think of anything: ideology, religion, gender identification (or not), money, social prestige, intelligence, or particular insight, which overrides this fragility. Human life is hard because this is a condition of our existence. It is also a commonality, which if we could honestly show it to each other, would bind us. One of the deepest levels of our shared humanity, is a liability, a susceptibility to Life, that has a way of bringing us together, despite the stubbornness of our adherence to being unique individuals. There is a paradoxical indifference here that takes us all in, and that teaches us how to do the same.

All we have to do is roll over in each other’s presence and show our bellies. By becoming as vulnerable as we are, and sharing this experience with others (human and non-human), community is exposed — the invisible connection (thought lost by so many) becomes evident again.

I’ll show you mine, because I know my act of disclosure will enhance the likelihood of you showing me yours. Let’s go through that doorway, as deeply revealing as it is.

Integration

“The seat of the soul

is where the inner and the outer world meet.

 Where they overlap,

    it is in every point of overlap.”

                                      — Novalis

I don’t know why I dread writing this piece so much. It seems like the assertion of a naturally occurring kind of integrative process would be good news. The overlap, as Novalis says in his brief aphorism, is the “seat of the soul.” For me, the amazing thing is that Nature seems to be guiding us (by that I mean we humans) towards greater integration as we age, and an increased likelihood of achieving the overlap. That realization thrills me, but something else bothers me. I don’t know what it is.

First, I’ll start with the good news. Aging has an unexpected effect. My guess is that the integrative process, which I have come to see as the principle developmental and instinctual thrust of later life, has languished out of sight, because of the blindness of ageism, and the inability to break wisdom down. Nature, never-the-less, seems intent upon ripening human beings into a fuller expressions of themselves. The instinct of integration kicks in during later life in some unexpected ways. The productiveness of commercial and economic activity gives way to the productiveness of increasing uniqueness and becoming more fully oneself. The outside moves in. Creation seems to matter more, in the long run, than the economy.

Devaluing the old, devalues our own future. The human potential movement reveals just how ageist our culture is. The most experienced, most mature, and ripest of us (humans) have been ignored, and worse yet, mistreated. The present is dominated with either/or thinking of the worst sort, and doesn’t acknowledge the benefit of any form of integration. The overlap is not even a possibility in this kind of polarized world, at least not in our human-made world. Fortunately, Life has a larger agenda. Some people escape the gravitational pull of mass assumptions and become more. They are the true elders. Their lives reflect a kind of wisdom that comes from a higher order of integration.

I can fairly easily grasp the warm pleasure that permeates my body when I consider, and notice within, the compelling attraction of freedom and integrity. These by-products of integration have a gravitational pull of their own. But I notice I still feel some trepidation, an unnamed anxiety starts flooding my being, I feel like I’m walking more deeply into a minefield. There is something dangerous here. What could it be?

I’m not sure. It does occur to me, as I dwell on this uncertainty, that pointing out the natural flow towards integration might be construed as an attack upon the other, earlier in development, positions. Am I doing another version of what is so prevalent in this world? Am I saying that polarization is bad? No. I realize that one has to live fully through each stage, to ever even hope to get to anything like the big picture and actual integration. Aging is fraught with lots of difficulty. Not the least of these difficulties has to do with the question about how to hold the past?

It is so hard to talk about the full-range of human development without giving full and essential recognition to every stage in the process. Being human is all of it. There isn’t a point where one is more or less human. All stages are essential to becoming a full human. What does this mean? I don’t know, I’ve only recently begun to grapple with this picture. I thank God, I have lived long enough to actually see this much of the picture. It’s a marvelous vista I get to behold. But it’s a demanding one too.

For instance, I can see that we (humans) are complex. It obviously takes a while for us to unfold fully. And at each step in the process the world looks different and we become capable of different things. None of these developments is all of who we are capable of being. And all of those stages are favored by some, as the way it should be. Human history is full of conflict. Much of it has had to do with asserting the preeminence of one stage of human development (as embodied by a particular culture or individual) over another. I don’t want to add to that misdirected hostility. I’m not asserting that the aged perception is better, only that is different, and that it adds to the larger picture.

I think a big part of what it adds is the perspective gained from integration. Later life is about the coming together of seeming opposites. Inner and outer, as the poet Novalis points out, and also action and stillness, anger and peace, solitude and relationship confinement and freedom. These are seen as opposites, but can also be seen as single points, spaces on the spectrum that overlap. I think our ultimate ripeness is like that, the places were opposites overlap, places of integration. And, each stage in the ripening process adds to that integration.

This is delicate terrain. I can feel the Great Mystery at work. What I think I know, which comprises the discoveries I am uttering here, are my best attempts to give voice to what I couldn’t possibly know. Integration seems to include not knowing. I wonder if it includes the audacity of expressing what one doesn’t know?