Sitting In Limbo

Life passes. There is no wave, no conclusion, forward signal, or stop sign. The air is not quite immobile, not quite moving. Stillness prevails. But it isn’t peaceful stillness. There is a sense of stasis. It is, as if, there is a long pause between breathes. I don’t know if it is ‘in’ before ‘out,’ or ‘out’ before ‘in.’ But I know I’m in-between. Paused.

I can’t say what is happening. If, anything. The world hasn’t stopped, but things are happening in slow distant motion. Silently. As if, some kind of regulator was inhibiting the moment from proceeding. Awkwardness fills everything with pensive uncertainty.

It could be as obvious, as waiting for the new administration to take over on January 20^th. I’ve never felt so much like a lame duck. Or, it could be like knowing an asteroid is headed this way, but isn’t here yet. Something is getting closer and closer. I can feel it in the stillness of the air, in the aimlessness of my life, in the suspension that permeates things, but I can’t name it.

My days hold a strange purposeless purpose. I am on pause, but I’m not sure why I’m on hold. The Sun, Moon, and Universe are all doing their thing, faithfully, so I am not worried about being at the end, it is more like some new beginning is about to start up. Yes, this is some sort of pregnant pause.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really been good at these moments. I don’t usually react well to being on hold, or anticipating. Limbo and I haven’t been good friends. So, you can imagine my uneasiness. The longer hold lasts, the greater my dismay. Walking on eggshells is play, compared to what I’m feeling now. I’d rather be struck by lightning, blasted into pieces, than endure this much uncertainty.

Having said all of that, helps convey the discomfort I feel in the midst of this prolonged pause. Maybe, its just me, I’m just making up being here. I’m already disrupted, between who I used to be, and who I’m about to become. Am I somehow not me, or some other me? I don’t know for sure. The moment has blinded my usually sure inner eye.

I feel something weighing on me, it isn’t some gravitational thing, it’s more like portent, throwing my rhythm into an uncoordinated mess — a halting, faltering, semi-collapse. I’ve been caught outside my oyster shell.

It might just be I’m getting older. Aging is disruptive, inconvenient — and is a pause that renews — but usually only in ultimate terms. I can’t fathom what I sense. My senses have been made dull in worldly ways, but certain inner faculties have sharpened, and these, lead me to notice the strange pause that is occurring. Maybe it is because I’m getting older, that I’m able to feel it. 

In any case, I’m assailed by this sensation —while I’m on hold — something slinks towards us.

Something is poised.

 

 

 

  

Life’s Life

There is an antidote to the madness in the world now. While things outside us, which we have little power to influence, are deteriorating, inside each of us there is the possibility of serenity. This is a story of how that has become possible for me, and of how a variation of that, could be possible for you.

A few months ago, at age 99, my mother died. She left me lots of memories, and part of her estate. It turned out to be more money than I knew she had. Though surprised, it still didn’t put to rest my fear, that my money might run out before I die. A friend of mine helped me realize I was living in fear, and acting like I was disconnected. For some reason I heard her. I knew I had lived differently after my stroke, and that my name “Lucky” came from that time. So, I suddenly got that I had lost what I once knew, and that I needed to return to what had once been true for me.

So, began a period of my life I call “monk mode.” In it, I am recollecting all of the little practices I developed for myself, that contributed to my feeling of oneness with Life (my sense of the ultimate). During the dark years of my illness, when I was losing so much, I recalled that I had been reduced down, so that I no longer felt my life was mine. I was Life’s life. Later, when I lived, I realized it was that shift, that saved my life, and calmed me down. From thinking and believing I owned my own life, that I was losing, to realizing I was in fact living Life’s life. That shift enabled me to live fully as a radically disabled man.

Remembering, that I knew connection, brought a renewed confidence. I was returning to what I had already experienced. So, on election eve, many weeks later, when I could read the writing on the wall, I went to bed disappointed, but calm. I awakened in the middle of the night to a fear storm, but was able to go back to sleep, by shifting my attention to being Life’s life. I was beyond disruption. The assurance of what was within me, knowing that my being depended on identifying with Life, was so much greater, than any choices that the new electee would make. I am beyond his ministrations, and beyond the madness of our times.

I identify with Life. Not everybody does. I take my re-assurance from the knowledge that I am safely tucked under the wings of Life. But re-assurance is available in many forms; non-dual awareness, super-frequency life, manifestations of love, traditional spirituality, and other forms. The quality of inner life is what provides the immunity to what is happening outside. What is crucial is what is within each of us. The madness will go on, many will be hurt, change probably disruption will happen, but each of us is prepared, by the counter-weight of our inner lives.

Joseph Campbell used to say, “There are as many ways into paradise as there are people.” I say, “There are as many ways to identify with a larger reality as there are the willing.” Re-assurance, and immunity, follows.                                                                                                                                              

I hope you can find your version of being Life’s life. Then, this election, will be truly significant.

 

 

  

Incubator

My father shared a story with me before he died.  He prefaced the story by saying that he experienced his only miracle that day. It happened when he was kid, a boy of 9 or 10. I guess this was on the farm about 1935. He grew up in rural Iowa, before electrification. His mother raised chickens. One day, while he was in the house, he saw her incubating a bunch of eggs in the kitchen. He was amazed to see the chicks begin to hatch out.  He watched with wonder, as each egg shook with life, and the chicks broke their shells, and found their way into this world. This event touched something in him, that resulted in his remembering it 70 years later.

He told me this story, which he had never shared before, a few months before his death. I knew the moment was important to him, and was awed by a similar experience I had had in my last days of high school. As I was finishing twelfth grade, and confronting a new life, I attempted to write my first poem. It was about being in an egg, about to hatch out. The poem centered on the experience of being compelled to seek, a larger, less confining world to occupy. At the time I was very aware I didn’t know what was beyond my shell. I was caught in complex situation, between a world I knew, and one I didn’t.

I remembered these two events, my father’s story, and my own experience, while I was contemplating this life. This memory set me on a reverie, that is filling me with a kind of full-bodied awe. Taken by the coincidence of my father’s experience, and the vividness of my own recollection, I started imagining this life as an experience of being incubated. I have long thought of my life as a learning and growing experience. What if, I am here being prepared, for another, perhaps more complex existence? This question occurred in my thoughts — but it has a lot of explanatory value.

When I look back at my life, which aging is increasingly compelling me to do, I see that there are patterns of growth that I cannot take credit for. It is like I just got more mature. There was little, or no effort on my part. Seemingly, Life just grew me into something more.

During my reverie, I began to think of Life, as a kind of incubator. Things started coming together in a new way. I think of myself as “Lucky,” the product of some universal happenstance, but what if, I was really intended? Afterall, I am being raised here. Then perhaps, this life, which I call mine, has a kind of coherence, I’ve never considered before! Maybe all those relationships, jobs, failures, gentle moments, realizations, and griefs, have prepared me for a newer, broader life? The shell feels a lot like death now. I am confronted by a compelling feeling that I know: I am confined by a world too small for me, and caught before, a world beyond my knowing.

I grasp this pattern. I have been somewhere like this before. Despite the many indignities – the loss of vitality, health, social status, prestige, and a basic de-humanization — I am hatching out, becoming the next iteration of Life. I’m not old, I’m quasi-new.

The incubator seems to be working a kind of alchemical magic. Changing the grossly inexperienced, into something fit for the Universe’s needs. I like this reverie. It beckons me toward a new and unforeseen entrance.

 

 

 

  

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.

 

 

 

  

Mother’s Day

Today is the one day we assign to recognize some women. Women have a special role in the miracle of reproduction. To carry, labor, and then deliver. Women bear the child, and often, much of the selflessness that goes into raising a new being. It is a breathtaking process; one it seems appropriate that we have a holiday to remember and celebrate. Thank the Infinite that there is a female take on reality.

And of course, there is now a whole set of women, who have found there are other good reasons to be female. Life is so big and prolific. These women give birth to another fresh set of possibilities. They deserve recognition too! Mother’s Day is also Women’s Day in my mind. It is a time for recognizing the myriads of ways that women have extended themselves on behalf of Life. All of it has been a blessing.

It is a source of painful wonderment to see religion and traditional cultures, who do not value the feminine as thoroughly as they could. This is an aspect of mystery that we, as a species, are still learning to embrace. A part of the thankfulness of Mother’s Day is for all of the women who have found the courage, even today, to speak out, and draw attention to the way the feminine is still mistreated. The Goddess is afoot! And, we are so much better off for it.

A single day really isn’t enough to capture the day-to-day boon that we are   embraced by. Women bring a fresh perspective that commonly hugs and integrates more of our wholeness; they remind us of who we are, and in that way, they go further, reminding us of our place in the larger drama.  There’s little dancing without them.

Yes, there is a feminine darkness, a fertile abyss. Life would not be Life without it. The feminine can throw one down, turning one into the bird that flies only into the darkening deep. Life gets stirred by mysterious forces, some of them go beyond gender, but are informed by female sensibilities. The womb is Nature’s way of paying homage to this fact.

As a man, I am constantly surprised, and sometimes delighted, by what my women friends perceive. They seem to be privy to a caring intimacy I am constantly having to learn. I relish the awakening they sometimes bring. It is heartening, sometimes embarrassing, but usually very connective. I get to feel the rain of love and sunshine in those moments.

Men are as deserving of this kind of recognition. Too often though, it comes in the form of privilege. Ironically, it often takes a truly disabled person, such as I, to point out how much privilege disables, and hobbles men too. Women only have what Nature has privileged them with. Culture belittles us all. It is strangely equal opportunity in that way.

The doctor who saved my life, through performing brain surgery on me, was a man, but since then, I’ve been cared for by women. I have first-hand experience with the caring nature of women. I know the quality of my life is dependent on their caring. The words that appear here are totally dependent, and owed to the caring ministrations of women. The blessing came around to me.

Finally, mystery has its way with us. Somehow, it makes us who we are. For some reason it deemed at least two genders. There appear to be more. Each one is a blessing. Each embodies part of our good fortune. All together, the whole manifests —The real Mother — the progenitor of the Great Mystery, shows up!

 

 

 

  

Grief and Praise

“Grief is gratitude for Life.”

                                                           Martine Prechtel  

I first learned about the single Mayan word that meant grief and/or praise several years ago. I was smitten. It seemed to bring together two experiences of human expression that were both precious. They meant more to me when merged. I extoled this form of expression with the Elder Salon. I even wrote a Slow Lane about it. Now, because I have been grieving a lot lately, grief and praise have come back into my mind. It is deeply reassuring to me, and so inspiring, to recall that love’s intensity comes pouring out with my tears.

I need to remember, as the world careens so wildly, that my fear and anxiety, which feed my uncertainty, which finds expression through my heartache and sadness, have love at their core. I don’t like the inhumane violence I have been witnessing lately. It buffets my heart, and causes dark dreams. But it also reminds me of what is important. Life is precious, and I know it is coursing through everything. Even the impact of the gore, whether deadening, or heaven forbid freeing, raises life’s signature. I can feel evolution beating my heart, and directing my attention. I know, because I have experienced the oneness of grief and praise, that love, mine or otherwise, is directing the moment.

The experience of the oneness of grief and praise resides in the dark waves of seeming loss. One is carried away when the loss is great enough. Everything loses its meaning. Wailing, silent or loud, is all that can give the tragic its due. These moments, laden with hopelessness, are like storm clouds breaking into rain. They paint the world with the grim determination of ruthless nature. They also water the land, sow life, and break the heavy pattern that has prevailed. Loss breeds gain. Grief simultaneously carries praise. The heart breaks open and is enlarged. The pain that breaks it open is the love that enlarges it.

These seemingly dark moments carry a strange form of gravity. It is as if two worlds are drawn together by the import of what has happened. Each, infused with its own energy, grief (loss) and praise (gain) combine, and form a third world. A place where the Divine works it’s unknown magic — a world, full of a painful awareness and precious understanding.

I chafe at being so grown.

Peace lies at the balance point of grief and praise. It is an uneasy, hard won peace. But, peace never-the-less. There is no substitute for the experience of knowing Life has your back.  It may come in a tangle of broken waves, darkened with uncertainty, but enlivening anyway, infused by a light so bright it cannot be seen.

Tragedy is just another way of getting at us. It takes us beyond ourselves in unexpected ways.  And we only have a few poor means of expressing this miraculous feature of Life. Happily, the Mayans have come up with one, and our lives reinforce it from time to time. Grief and praise are related — they both are expressions of love ­—and of how deeply we are connected.

May you have enough!

 

 

 

 

Extinction

My gratitude comes from the sheer gift of Life itself.  

I have been having the experience of a terminal person, rather than of someone who only knows about death. Life has grown more vivid, now that I know the end is here. It occurred to me recently, that we humans are already experiencing an extinction event. It isn’t popular to mention this, even less desirable to suggest it is already happening. I think it is. Fair warning. That is what this Slow Lane is about. My subject is what some call “the end times,” what I call, “fulfillment.”

I am not under the thrall of some ‘New Age’ dream about transformation. I sense death and destruction in the air (literally in our atmosphere). I can see where the trends are heading, and I can feel despair and anxiety growing. I directly experience the grief in my soul. I am, at times, very ashamed to be human, cause look what we are generating.

I know as a writer — the wind has gone out of my sails. I don’t have several generations of others to write too or for. My audience is becoming dust. I don’t see a future to dream about. This awareness constantly disturbs me, upsetting the joy aging has brought me. The prospects, I see for my daughter, haunt me. I worry that my time on Earth, has somehow been tainted by this planetary suicide. For all of this, I feel immense, and on-going, grief.

I am only a man, what can I know for certain? Perhaps something surprising is going to play out. I don’t know! Humanity may have more chapters to play out.

But, dying has shed an alternative light on all of this. I am experiencing the way inevitability enhances life in unexpected ways. Take conflict, for instance, the inevitable lack of resolution, leads to a living with conflict, and no sense that it has to go somewhere. Relief lies in inevitability. There isn’t really a dominate world-view. The end insures a complete life. The clouds of expectations give way to acceptance, a quality far too scarce in our current human world.

I have, as I have been coming to the experience of dying, witnessed the way it has altered my being, making me more human, and sensitizing me to the miraculous nature of this existence. My later years have been the best — they have led me to be more fulfilled in life — than I would have ever imagined. Because I have witnessed, and know fulfillment, I can imagine that it might be in the offing toward the end.

I have been blessed, if you want to call it that, with enough time in the darkness, to know that darkness is another form of Light. It is, to be sure, the form I most fear, but it is also the experience where I have been most alive, available, malleable, and aware. The darkness, I’ve learned, is the womb of light and change.

Because I am a creature of darkness, I can think that the coming time, as opaque as it is, might lead us into a blaze of glory. A warm, friendly, inexplicable dark and massive bonfire. As we become more subject to the darkness, the better angels of our being are roused into being.

Suicide is not the end, nor is it, when it is collective.  Instead, it just might be fulfillment of a sort. 

 

 

 

This Moment

Who 

you are

cannot

 be fully contained

 by what’s happening

to you

 just now.

That’s right!  The moment doesn’t capture all of who you are. Think about it. Are you only who you are, when you have one of the mini-rants, you go on, when you are confronted by the political divisions of our times. Of course not! Nor are you solely like you are, when a baby is around. Humans are such complex beings, that no moment can fully capture the wholeness of our being. So, your worst moment, only says a little bit about you. Maybe enough, for some people, but never very much. Beware of judging on too little information.

I mention this, because too many of us fall prey to this tendency, for quick and too simple judgement. This is another of the ways that speed can be damaging. This is the most negative form of reduction. All too often, it is one of the sins we commit with ourselves. We are not just what we did with our last insensitive move. So, it’s time to let ourselves off of the hook. Knowing oneself means, knowing what runs deep and consistently, inside. The moment rarely catches our wholeness.

Yes, the moment is extolled. Certainly, there are people who, at times, are unable or unwilling to come into the moment. But, too many of us are defined by a moment. Getting into the moment, and getting out of the moment, are real skills,  that are more complex than many of us realize. The moment can be a trap. Don’t get captured by it! But, do find your way to it.

There are intimate, desperate, funny, defining, harsh, loving and liberating moments. They are all fleeting, and all deeply involving. They capture so much, and so little. Life is a parade of them. Enough of them, and you have a tendency. Then, you can start having a response. But, until then, watch out, they only give an impression.

The moment can be sacred. Transcendent too. In it, one can die. It is ephemeral — can be transporting, and enlightening. But, the moment can also trick and mislead. The moment can be eternal. It is what one makes of it. So, be careful.

In a moment, you will realize that this moment isn’t what you think it is.

This is a fair warning — that abuses the moment — to reflect some of it’s joys and limitations. It is a momentary reflection upon the moment, a comment on a complexity that can paint a lifetime.

Enjoy the strange, everchanging moments left you.

 

 

 

  

Dawdling

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

 Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.

 We cannot cure the world of sorrows,

but we can choose to live in joy."

                                                                    - Joseph Campbell

The pace of modern life is hectic, it is as if, speed and efficiency are the signs of a good life. We all know that isn’t true, but that awareness, doesn’t keep us from the consequences of speeding along. Who knew lemmings were so fast.

Every year, I promised myself long ago, I would write at least one Slow Lane that addressed the way we speed through this life. This piece hails back to that impulse, the one that served as the beginning place, for this long-winded diatribe about Life’s gifts. Speeding is decidedly not one of them, because it tends to obscure the real beauties of existence. Slowing down, not only reveals the real sorrows and miracles of life, but reveals how they are joined. It is this invisible (with speed) symmetry that makes the holy vision of the world palpable.

Lately, I have found myself grieving about another way speed, the pace of our race, has enabled the denial of our truest humanity. Like water that adhering speedily to the surface, creates a flash flood. Too many of us, caught up in the rat race, never experience depth, and as a consequence, never really know ourselves.

It makes sense that we are haunted by so many conspiracy theories (threats from others). It is difficult to maintain a life, that is so easily thrown off course, because of others actions. To maintain course, one needs the ballast of solid self. Speed, the over concern with having too much to do, denies self-knowledge. Constant activity prevents experience of the self. That is why some people keep themselves busy. They don’t want to face the emptiness, that comes with not knowing self. And that experience of shallowness inside, and distrust outside, is the recipe for feeling threatened by outside sources. 

The solidity and depth of one’s self provides the confidence in one’s self-motivated direction that keeps one on one’s self-chosen trajectory.  To get anywhere significant, one has to slowdown enough, to take one’s own measure.

Then going has intrinsic meaning — paradoxically —slowing down speeds one up.

The essential message of this tract is, that the holiness, created by the blending of the world’s sorrows with the world’s great joys, cannot be apprehended going too fast. Slow down, and feel your heartbeat. It is a part of the world’s rythem.

 

 

 

  

Clarity

Sometimes a feeling of the end comes, before the actual end comes. Anyway, you know it is near. That changes things, in some unpredictable ways.  A kind of shroud descends. The world becomes more precious, and each moment is laden with portent.  What crowds into everything is the unknown.

Death is near-by, waiting for the inexplicable time, the corralling moment, when everything known goes bye-bye. Waiting is. Still, the opportunity to fill the end, with all that has meaning, presses. It is a time like no other.

This is what’s happening to me.  I celebrated the New Year with a medicine journey. It turned out that the medicine was about being at the end-stage. Surprisingly, it wasn’t morbid. I was whisked from knowing about death to dying — and the world turned more vivid. Clouds parted. I became more completely me. And a familiar, but somehow freshened clarity, appeared. I am no longer waiting for the inevitable, I am the inevitable.

Dying is a trip. Things are more urgent, while other things, lose their urgency. And urgency isn’t about time, it is about accuracy and completeness. I have so much to give thanks for. Nuances have flags now, and I notice like I never did. Everything shines with a breathtaking clarity. The darkness is even darker, but more intriguing, and more filled with potential.  I love this sense of being blessed to be here, and knowing that I’m passing through. Dissolving into wholeness. There is a tenuousness to things that evokes preciousness.

If I’d have known dying was so good, I would have died sooner.

The end is here. I don’t mean in this moment. I don’t know when, any more than I did before. So, I could still be around years from now. I don’t know. But, I do know that the experience of dying suits me better, than what I’ve done until now. Things are changing. I can feel myself integrating, in unpredictable ways, the end.

Does this mean that while I am alive I’ll live differently? I don’t know. Will I continue doing some of the things I’ve been doing? I don’t know. Everything and nothing could change. Mystery seems to have gotten deeper. The moment seems more pleasantly infused with it. Not-knowing, and being OK with it, thrusts me further into a warm fuzzy unknown. Love somehow permeates it all, bringing with it a strange clarity.

My days are full of “I get to” instead of “I have to” now. There is so much relief that comes with things being over. I don’t have to try anymore. I am free, even from my own unfulfilled longings. I trust that the Universe knows what it is doing. There is nothing so relaxing as letting go.

It won’t be long now. Oddly, I’m more here now that I’m going.