Noble Suffering

Life is suffering. This is the first of the Four Noble truths of Buddhism. I never really got beyond it. What I have learned from Buddhism is enormous. But when I heard that suffering was optional, I started paying less attention. I didn’t believe that. I was too much under the thrall of Carl Jung, who believed that suffering accompanied growth. I knew I suffered a lot, didn’t believe it was optional (if one only did enough spiritual practice), and thought it an element of growth.  This notion of suffering, seemed intuitively obvious to me

So, Buddhism became just one of the world’s wisdom traditions I valued. It wasn’t until a recent discussion with a friend, where he described the First Noble Truth to me again, that I came to the realization that suffering is noble.  I have probably misunderstood Buddhism for a long time. I still do, most likely. But for that moment, a light went on. Suffering, something I am almost always doing, is noble — worth considering as a contribution to the world.

It was this thought that meant so much to me. I am suffering, the need to grow, to become myself, to be bearable, to learn, to love properly, almost all the time. I have thought that it reflected poorly on me, revealing my immaturity. Instead, I realize I am just part of Life suffering. In fact, I’m beginning to grasp that suffering is part of what is moving me along, ripening me, so I can be more of what I am meant to be. Instead of being a deficiency in my being, it is a way I participate in the dance of Life. Wow, wow!

This changes a lot of things for me. It dignifies my suffering. I’m not just a weak parody of a human being, I am doing the hard work of learning to cope with the complexities of living. This living, means bearing up under the weight of so much pain. The world is beautiful, in fact, becomes more precious and beautiful, as a result of the suffering. It is, in fact, noble, to suffer so.

Over the last few months I have been suffering from the recognition that I had adopted a lifetime strategy of doing, to earn sufficient self-respect, and justification for my life. I am still doing it. To my horror, I see that I am caught-up in a bankrupt attempt to earn my way toward some kind of salvation. This pattern has pretty much defined my life, and continues, despite my now recognizing it. Watching myself being so robot-like is disconcerting and painful. My self-image is now trash, and rather desperately needs an update.

It is a period of good news and bad news for me. Good news, because I can see it. Bad news, also, because I can see it. The true dismay, is because I cannot change this pattern, at this moment. I am trying, and failing.

Now failing, though still humiliating, has a freshened sense of meaning.

While I get to a more intrinsic sense of self-worth, were my existence is enough. I am suffering a more noble suffering than I did before. It is painful for me reaching for a capacity I don’t have yet. I experience how much this pattern impacts me (and my loved ones), while I am reaching.

This is, for me, a more grown-up form of suffering. Now, I am linked with the expanding forces of the suffering Universe. 

 

 

 

Self-Care

I had a chance to visit, via Zoom, with a friend. His partner is experiencing profound Dementia, perhaps Alzheimer’s. He was doing relatively well, and had a good, in-the-moment attitude. I admired him, and what he is going through. As I interacted with him, I found myself thinking about self-care. I was particularly aware of how many people are drowning, while caring for others. We just don’t live in a culture, that prepares any of us for the rigors associated with caring for anyone suffering from a chronic condition.

Our hearts quite naturally go out to the one suffering directly, with a tragic condition, but little thought seems to go to the ones taking care of the afflicted one. A bad situation can grow, and become cataclysmic, when it takes down the family and primary caregiver. Very often, the primary caregiver has been sensitized and made more compassionate because of their caring. So, from my perspective, someone courageous via caring is at risk. That made me think about how risky caring is, and how much self-care it requires.

I have been involved with caregivers for over 20 years now. I’ve experienced a lot of caregivers come and go. The main thing they all seem to have in common, and when you think about it, it’s no surprise, they didn’t have much awareness of the value and importance of caring for themselves. They mostly thought the one they cared for was the one who deserved attention. Burnout is more than fatigue, but it is treated like a solely, physical phenomena. Even those that know better, are too often subject to the limitations of an insensitive culture.

People need to be mindful of the risks associated with caring. They need to be warned.  Not to dissuade them from caring, but to improve the chances that their caring hits the spot without peripheral damage. The caretaking realm, which is currently relegated to underpaid and marginalized women, is amongst the most blatant examples of the inhumanity of our market. If we truly cared, this would be a community endeavor, seen as an opportunity, rather than as an unfortunate obligation.

Caring is a big deal. It seems to come naturally to some, but requires a level of emotional sophistication that is earned. People learn the ability through experience.

Unfortunately, today, people are ill-prepared, mostly think their hearts are naturally ready, and learn the wrong lessons. We have a shortage of caregivers because we don’t prepare each other to care. We have as many broken-down caregivers, as we do ailing people. Caregiving is beautiful, dangerous, and hard to find. Self-care is a reason why.

Self-care isn’t just for caregivers, it is essential to anyone on a developmental path. It is a sure sign of self-regard, self-love — and is the most enabling attitude which allows one to actualize the gifts within. Some would say, as I do, that self-care, or self-love, is not narcissistic, but the root of all loving. Self-care is the most important ignored aspect of our obligation to ourselves, and each other, there is.

Self-care is a practice. A lifelong learning modality. It has depth, span, and changeability. It requires attention. You can’t grow yourself very much if you don’t take care of yourself. And, if you are looking for someone else to take care of you, then you are readying yourself to be taken care of how someone else chooses. Of course, all of us have to rely on others eventually. My experience, as a disabled person who constantly has needed to rely on others, is that the quality of care I have given to myself, has translated into the quality of care I draw from others.

Think about it — why should anyone care more about you, than you care about yourself? Because they are a caregiver. To grow themselves, they need to care.  Caring is the rarest coin of the realm. Self-care is even rarer.

I can only hope you know what I mean.

 

 

  

Aged Perfectly

Recently, a friend of mine, was telling me about a recent trip he took. He went back to where he had lived as a child. Deep in the Vermont countryside he visited his old home, and some of the little towns he knew when he was younger. As part of visiting the past, he ended up visiting the gravesite of his parents. He rediscovered that he also had plot there, and it already had an engraved headstone.  His grave stone read “aged to perfection.” This story set in motion the thought process that has resulted in this set of ruminations.

This revelation, the epitath already in place, was a source of great mirth and delight. It seemed such a good way to summarize a life. Everyone present, including him, laughed and smiled. A wondrous sense of justice and existential balance filled the air. The thought that Universe made his life just right, in the end, was just so soul-satisfying.

Later, I found myself thinking about it, and realized that I sensed that there was even more to it. In my mind, perfection didn’t wait until the end. I thought that he could die at any time, and at that moment he would be perfect. My thought kept going. It extended to — he was always perfect, even if he didn’t realize it, in any given moment. I found myself thinking that at same moment — he and all of us, are perfect. What if we lived in a state of constant perfection?

That thought ruptured some belief I had carried around for a long time. All the years of striving, the doubts about myself, the certainties about not belonging, began to melt away. I didn’t have to try to be better, I had already been perfected. All of my questionable attributes were part and parcel to what made me perfect. In fact, perfection wasn’t my doing, it was just part of Universal reality, part of the isness that prevails. I liked that mind-blowing thought, and I had a sense that there was something real about it.

After that, all I could do was just quiver. Currently, I am trying to integrate this perception. All of these years I have been playing out a rather macabre version of reality and my part in it.  I’ve been slinking through it, trying not to screw it up too much. I’ve had my false moments, when I thought I figured it all out. I’ve been up and down, always believing I should be something else, perhaps more holy, only to discover that where I am, just now, is another form of perfection. I am that I am. How could that be? Isn’t it reserved for subtler beings? Oh…..I’m getting the quivers again.

I don’t really know what I feel about all of this. I think I may be a mess of sorts. I don’t quite believe myself, yet on the other hand, I have this experience of perfection floating around in me. I am, and I am not, what I used to be. For sure, I’m more confused than I already was, but this time, I’m more confused in a positive way than I usually am.

In the back of my mind, there now lingers, a feeling of joy, a peace so still and profound, that no matter how rattled I am, I am not rattled at all. So, I write these words, knowing how preposterous they seem, but also knowing they contain some inexplicable perfection.

This moment is what it is, because it’s all here, perfectly mirroring the whole.

 

 

 

  

Selficide

I don’t know why it came to mind. I have been really sick lately. I had Covid, for the first time, last week. I contracted a strain that left me feeling shipwrecked in bed on a remote island. Being old, disabled and alone is not something I would recommend. Even the aftermath has been difficult, with fatigue and a perpetual energylessness. A week later and I’m still complaining that my internal lights haven’t come back on. Then last night I found myself thinking about suicide.

Sometime during the night, the lights came back on. I could feel the oppositional pressures that accompanied my sickness depression subsiding, and some kind of body/psychic energy returning. It happened in the middle of a depressed thought about the desirability of oblivion.  First, I pictured all of the people who have taken their own lives. In that moment, I related with them. Then, I thought about the greater subset of people who had forsaken their own lives, but had not as yet, faced death. I could feel the zombification of life. I could feel the creepy call of spiritual lifelessness, like gravity pulling me down into a mechanical routine.

Happily, I awoke into something resembling consciousness, and discovered myself thinking about selficide. I’ve used that term for a long time, to describe the move many people make (myself included) to get away from the choice that life frequently presents us with. Become yourself — at the risk of somebody not liking you ­— or dodge the moment, try to pass, and die a little bit. Commit selficide, rather than show up. It is the easiest way out of the difficulty of really being human, short of actual suicide. I was chagrined to realize I was still in the world where selficide was more prevalent, and preferred, than suicide.

I didn’t know I’d be writing about selficide today, but I awakened last night to the internal suck of depressions pull, combined with the overwhelming difficulty of rising to the demand of being alive. Sometimes I wish I could punt. It was enough to remind me of all the times where I shrank myself, in hopes of avoiding the rigor of real being — of having to be someone. I can’t tell you about how many times I walked away from myself, where I chose selficide over becoming more fully human. Being sick and dead, while alive, is probably more painful, than being sick and dead is. Still, it is preferable, it seems, to the burn of truth. Dying to avoid death, committing selficide, avoiding the certainty of uncertainty — its all part of the human playbook, and I have worn it thin.

So, I think about the rising tide of suicides amongst children, teenagers, older adults, and especially amongst us older folks, and I’m super-chagrined, but then that thought is followed up with the prevalence of selficide, and I feel a sickness more virulent than Covid. Having the lights go back on — after days of sickness and oblivion — to a world full of avoidance, is a mixed blessing.

I’m glad I’m largely past all of these dynamics. Aging has its gifts. Still, I find myself wondering how much selficide resides in the self-satisfaction of the older folks I’m mostly around.  How real is the gratitude, unknowing, and humility?I guess it makes sense — wondering about the veracity of myself, leads to wondering about the veracity of others.

It is amazing what a fever can generate.

 

 

 

  

Reverence

I had spent 2 and 1/2 years writing (my 1^st book) thinking I might die somewhere along the way. I ended up disabled, with a book-length manuscript, and wondering why I was still alive. The stroke, its brain-damaged aftermath, and its loneliness, didn’t kill me, so I had to find something else to do. Without realizing it, the writing had sent me along a trajectory I didn’t fully notice, or take seriously. I had written in the appendix of the book that I wanted to work with old people, speculating that perhaps they had developed into the farthest realms of consciousness, because they had lived longer, harder, and with more uncertainty. Little did I know, that years later (about 4) I would be immersed in elderdom, and would be discovering that old age brought with it the possibility of ripening.

The lifetime I traversed was arduous, but sugared with traces of transcendence. I joined the company of those who weren’t what they used to be, who knew enough, to know, they didn’t know much, and who found themselves way more open than they ever expected to be. Adult maturity turned into the introduction to a ‘looking-glass’ world.

Nothing was what it seemed. Vulnerability was the coin of the realm. All of this disruption led to a lot of growth. Some of it was forced, as Life had its way. People, including me, moved from the driver’s seat to the passenger’s seat. It is humbling, and strangely enlivening. A new semi-desirable era began.

All of this has been the way the world has changed. As I mentioned earlier, these changes knocked most of the hubris out of me. Life stripped me of some of my superfluities, leaving me more able to relish the miracle of what’s left. So much is contained in so little. Its more than a miracle! Anyway, these pesky losses prepared me for the unknown gains that are now altering my life. This passenger never knows where he is going.

This is a long way of saying that being dragged around the block a few times is a good way to learn what is essential. There are many types of drag, and many breath-taking times — they are all great teachers. And, they each teach the same essential message. With a creative fervor that goes way beyond expectation, Life teaches reverence. It not only happens when you are making other plans, but it surprises you, with the accuracy of what it does send your way. All to help you know your place.

After many years of being old, I came to see that these extra years, are a bonus that Life offers some of us. Out beyond the mere biological gift of reproduction, with time, another kind of reproduction takes place. Wrinkled and grey, this relatively new form of reproduction is an experience of becoming. A graduation of sorts. A human being becomes a little Universe attached to the bigger one, through bonds of love. In a protracted spasm of affection, reverence arises, and one experiences kinship with the Great Mystery. Not in any abstract, or imagined way, but as a palpable reality.

In my forties and early fifties, I could imagine this is true, in my sixties and early seventies, I had a more vivid sense of ripening, but now, I have become more of who I am, a small part of the whole.

The Universe is my truest parent. You too!

This is, the latest news from the senile sector. Academia, thanks to the power and sensitivity of Eric Erickson and his wife, has long-thought that becoming primarily integrous was the final stage of human development. But these last years have shown, that out beyond ideas of integrity, ego-transcendence, and aged lucidity, lies reverence — the experience of being part of a beloved Larger Being. Wholeness includes us!

This, of course, is unprovable. It lies where it belongs, in the subjective realm. I am thriving here, and reverence seems like the term that best describes what I am experiencing.  So, I’ll keep it. I am nobody, so I won’t have to defend it. But, I did want you to know. It just might be, that you are headed in the same direction.

 

 

 

  

Metamorphosis

As every flower fades and as all youth

Departs, so life at every stage,

So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,

Blooms in its day and may not last forever.

Since life may summon us at every age

Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,

Be ready bravely and without remorse

To find new light that old ties cannot give.

In all beginnings dwells a magic force

For guarding us and helping us to live.

 

Serenely let us move to distant places

And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us

But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

If we accept a home of our own making,

Familiar habit makes for indolence.

We must prepare for parting and leave-taking

Or else remain the slaves to permanence.

 

Even the hour of our death may send

Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,

And life may summon us to newer races.

So be it, heart: bid farewell without end. — Herman Hess

 

Metamorphosis. That is the term used to describe the shift from one form to another. It is the way Life changes and evolves. Through some alchemical magic that no one, scientist or philosopher, really understands, Life transforms the old into the new. The journey from one being into another also follows this pattern. Does it make sense to think any other possibility is in store for us?

 

In a stage by stage progression, life on earth has evolved, consciousness has complexified, and little mammals have become larger miracles. The way is already laid out. It occurs as each stage brings new awareness and capabilities, and then gives way to an utterly new and strange world, that offers new lessons, new functionality, wider spaces, broader laws, and new endeavors. 

 

Take the dragonfly as an example. It is first an egg laid near, or just beneath the surface. It hatches into a larvae, sometimes called a nymph, and lives underwater. It is fierce predator, which over-time, goes through several molts where it sheds its exoskeleton. Each stage of its growth means that it grows larger than its previous one. During its final stage, the nymph goes through significant changes, its body becomes more robust, and wing pads develop. It enters a pupal stage, where the nymph climbs out of the water, undergoes a final molt, and waits for its wings to expand and harden, and then flies into its colorful adulthood.

 

A dragonfly goes through much of its early life in water, then through the wonders of biology, changes media to air, and becomes a flying creature. We may be similar, except we go through several stages in air, before we change media, and through wonders we don’t yet grasp, enter a more subtle existence. The dragonfly demonstrates the pattern that Life uses to grow what is. Fearing death, we fear Life. Fearing the transitional moments, when something else (Nature) is in control, we are moved on.

 

Metamorphosis. Leaving the form of Life we know, doesn’t necessarily mean leaving Life. The afterlife may not be what’s next. Instead, it just might be a form of Life unknown to us yet, a form that might introduce new awareness and “new endeavors.” 

 

Metamorphosis is the scientific way of referring to the magic that dwells in each beginning.

 

l/d

At first I was mineral

Then I was a plant

Now I am human.

 

When, by dying, have I ever been made smaller?

                                                                               Rumi

 

 

 

The Living-est Moment

Somewhere along the way, I heard a poem that contained the words “living-est moment,” and it was like a bell rang inside me. What I experienced was a bomb going off. In a familiar way, I knew I had been captured by a metaphor, which I would have to write about. In my usual way, as a writer, I was excited. But, as time passed, and the time for writing neared, I began to feel dread. I have nothing to say, no eloquent ideas, no sense of how to proceed. The “living-est moment” evades me, leaving me baffled, and wondering what is going to come out.

I’ve identified some fear. Maybe, it occurred to me, the moment has already come and gone, and I simply didn’t notice it. My life might already be on the downhill side of such a moment. Being older is such an uncertain experience. It leaves me shaken and often dubious. I may no longer be capable of my “living-est moment.” Oh, that is a grievous thought.

I have to admit that such thinking sometimes causes me to tremble. That trembling is bad enough, but then I think my “living-est moment” is still ahead of me, and then I tremble even harder. You see, I have this inkling, that my “living-est moment” is going to come when I am confronted with my own death. Just as I get that I am on the threshold, I am likely to experience a burst, adrenaline will mix with fear, desire, relief, grief, and a deep unusual nostalgia — a good-bye filled with longing, love, and a sweet fulfillment. I expect it to be an intense multi-dimensional moment. Energy, of a sort, will flow in all directions.

I had the fantasy, when I first encountered these words, that I might write about the inner circumstances that might promote such a lucid vitality, but as time has gone along, and I had to admit to myself, that I just couldn’t imagine such a thing. What a disappointment! I couldn’t fool myself into believing I could produce such a moment. Somehow, this notion just didn’t fit into my pantheon of human potential. I couldn’t actually assume that my “living-est moment” was really mine.

That absence of belief disturbs me. It leaves me on a dependent edge, I have ambivalent feelings about. I love paradox. I consider it one of the gifts of old age. My understanding of paradox is that when I’m present enough to experience it, that the transcendent becomes evident. Those are times when I feel deeply reassured. But, my intuition that my “living-est moment” might be my last, and that it isn’t even mine, gives me the heeby-jeebies.

Maybe, I could take solace, in the experience that isn’t mine. I am growing ready to give up taking so much responsibility. I have labored too long, and hard, around the notion that it is all my doing.  This disturbing notion seems to indicate that something else is going on. Life itself, might very well be, responsible for what I cannot create, my “living-est moment.” Isn’t that a more pleasant thought. The Cosmos seems to have some kind of stake in a dust particle like me.

Now, I don’t know what else to write. I’ve revealed something of my state of unknowing. Even so, I still find myself wishing I could leave you with some kind of glib well wishing, a good-bye that expresses my gratitude, in case you bothered to read this entire foray into my gibbering.

All I can say, I guess, is that may you experience your ‘living-est moment” somewhere beyond the shape of my daydreams.