Coasting

I’ve been waving goodbye to my fading life.  I am watching the vitality drain out of what used to be me, and I am becoming unrecognizable. An inexorable force is working on me, changing my shape, attitudes, energy and dreams. The past has grown more firm as the present has grown more tenuous. This is a source of grief, as I witness my life receding, and a source of wonder, as I remain. What is it that holds me here, growing more naked, as on the day of my birth?

I am a sensitized remnant of a human life, a leftover piece, a memory of a being in process. Maybe now, when I have no flame remaining in my soul, no passion to fulfill, no work to do, I am more than I have been. I can intuit another life, one that is not filled with anxious doing. One that carries the peace of not having to be anything. I can coast into that possibility. I am being pulled into it, some seductive force is acting like a tractor beam, drawing me towards a peaceful emptiness. All that is left for me to do, is go for the ride of being carried along.

I have been grieving the life I am losing. Staying faithful to the values I once lauded.  Hunkering down, trying to stay true to what I thought mattered. I have only known a long — enduring disappointment — as the world has spun farther into space, becoming something unknown.

I am no longer caught up in drama, I am free to dither, to be unplugged. I lament the loss of who I have been, shucking off an old cocoon, and lingering here in some kind of featureless terrain.  Pondering, as I keep moving, sliding along under the power of mystery.  This coasting is a grief-tinged wonderment. I am not without life, but it is like a life I’ve never known. Sadder, wiser, spirit-haunted, and mysterious.

Coasting sounds like it could be fun. It’s like being on some kind of ride — no energy required. I’m old and energy-less enough that it sounds just right for me. I’m used to being a passenger, to being taken places. I think that’s what is happening now. I’m being taken some place. It isn’t where I have ever wanted to go, but as I am falling apart, I’m becoming more spacious, and less concerned.

Coasting isn’t a desirable outcome to one who has always thought one had to earn their passage. I’m not making this happen. I get no credit. Desirable or not, a product of my doing or not, I am being carried along squalling, with the same kind of unknowing terror/wonder, that is present at all birth. I’m just in that phase where I can sense the waterfall ahead. The ride is already eventful, even if the main event is not here yet.

What is coming isn’t here yet, but I am. At least what is left of me. In the meantime, I’m coasting toward it, and learning to not value myself for pulling the whole thing off.

 

 

 

 

 

Music as Soul Mate

As happens when one gets old, there is time, to look back into the life one has lived. This can often reveal some surprises, eras enjoyed, jobs that prepared one for something else, the luck of timing, and in this case, the role music has played throughout my life. I discovered an internal disc jockey who made sure I always had a soundtrack to live within, a musical addict, that felt beyond the sound, to the feelings behind the music. Rhythm played inside me constantly.

I first became aware of music when I heard “que sera, sera.”at 6. After that I was taken. The radio became a fixture in my early life. I think music gave me some ability to process my inchoate youthful feelings. As a young teenager, I began to collect records, first albums, then later 45’s. Music made me do it then; and it’s still making me do it now. I bounce to a rhythm —and would dance if I could — like I have done throughout my life.

I used to have a paper route. From age 10 to 15, I delivered papers to the same houses, at the same time, every day. It didn’t turn into a boring chore, because my father gave me a transistor radio, that I carried with me. The music of the late 50’s, and the early 60’s, transported me, despite the weather, from house to house. I didn’t know it, but I was developing a life-long love of music, a life-long pattern of being sensitive to the provocative nature of sound.

When I was a teenager I was moody. I used to go into my room, and listen to music for hours. It was my way of processing too many complex feelings. The music calmed me, and helped me feel connected to something beyond me. There were voices, lyrics, or musical sequences, that would reassure me. Somehow, the anguish and uncertainty of teendom seeped deeper into me, and became more bearable, because the music touched me. The world seemed —though it wasn’t — a more harmonious place.

Now, over 70 years later, I am still trying to make the world harmonious, by playing the music that elevates my being. Now its playlists, but I have followed a host of sound technologies, in my constant quest for the music that calmed down, and reduced the scary tensions I felt. Looking back, I see the many times music has accompanied me into the depths. I faltered all along the way, but the music never did. It always provided the soothing medicinal balm needed. I came to rely upon it, to help me come to terms with this sacred baffling existence.

Looking again — as this prolonged life allows me to do — I can see that my relationship with music has been one of the guiding elements of my life. If I believed in soul mates, which I don’t, I would consider music such a partner.

Certainly, it has always inspired me. Helping me feel the streak of goodness in our kind, the playfulness of Life, and my own uneasy journey through it all. It has brought many forms of pathos too. Enough so — I never suffer from a Pollyannish perspective of Life. I have felt the music of Life, and know some of its varied moods. I am constantly resonating along.

Music will, no doubt, be with me when I finally go home. It has soothed and provoked me all along the way. These final days it will help, as it already has, integrate the compelling nature of the mystery. The vitality of music has enlivened me, and carried me through this place of unknowing. I am surprised, and pleased, to re-recognize this old friend. My life is more harmonious, because of the rhythmic throb brought to my soul.

 

 

 

  

A Religion of No Religion

I’m an ad hoc monk. I don’t have a monastery, order, abbot or creed. I may be the only one of my kind. (I doubt it.)   My sole vow, is to live as spiritually and emotionally alive as possible. I have been coming to this calling for some time. I am an old man now, who has finally arrived at a solitudinal homeplace, he didn’t even know he was seeking. At the age of 76, I am at last finished with the things of this world, and now find myself, concerned mainly with the things that dwell in the margins.

It is a wonder to me that my life has carried me here, that my spirituality is intact, and that I’m still drawn to mystery. My life didn’t start that way. In fact, one of my fondest memories is of escaping the Catholic Church at age 13. Somehow, I got away, with my awe intact. Whatever moved me then, stayed hidden in my dreams, until it awakened again, at age sixteen, by the radio broadcasts of Alan Watts. Unknowingly, those meditations on Life, set me on a life-long quest I couldn’t have anticipated.

I spent my youth avoiding being drafted, and fighting the Vietnam war in America.  I didn’t know it, but living in California, during the 60’s and 70’s, meant that I got to be exposed to the most contemporary and wildest spiritual impulses on the planet. I absorbed the gestalt of the period, looking to the east, feeling weighed down and inspired by tradition, exposed to crazy wisdom, loving the Earth, and being shaped by a host of creative and sensitive souls. It was a spiritual education that benefited by the aspirations of a generation driven by idealism, wonder, and awe. Even drugs were briefly sacred.

The turmoil of those times also misdirected me. I spent years wandering, not knowing myself, trying to fulfill a vague, and often contradictory, sense of belonging. I was a home-grown immigrant. I kept moving, but I went nowhere. I had many potential careers, but none of them stuck, and I felt more and more like an alien.

Luckily, along the way, I got some good therapy, and my therapist could see me better than I could. So, she persuaded me to try grad school. Oddly enough, I attended the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, a school that was oriented towards developing the spiritual nature. To make a long story short, I ended up as a psychotherapist, who basically believed that each of us has a spiritual dimension, that needs to be adequately integrated into our lives, for optimal health. Many client-lives later, I believed this even more fervently. Also, all those people, made it more evident to me, that spirituality took many forms; religious, spirit-based, natural, scientific rapture, synchronism, and many others. I was inculcated into the depths.

The stroke and its aftermath finished the job. Since then, mystery has had its way with me. Looking, as I am prone to do now, at it all, makes me realize, how much I owe to the intrepid seekers, who gave birth to what I now think of a kind of indigenous spirituality, that emerged here in California. I call it the Religion of No Religion.

Thank Esalen, The Human Potential Movement, Gestalt and Fritz Perls, Humanistic Psychology, Micheal Murphy, Barry Stevens, Transpersonalism, Abe Maslow, Joe Campbell, and many others!

This is what I owe my monkish tendencies to.  The spirit of an age. Misunderstood, and perhaps antiquated, now, there are still a few of us captive of an awesomeness that goes beyond all names, and which keeps calling to us.

 Some of us are monks, responding as best we can. We don’t wear robes, have a creed, a book, or a begging bowl. We are novices. All of us.  Set adrift by the tides of illumined fate — we are monks — praying the liveliest prayers — in the cells of our hearts.

 

 

 

  

The Nameless and The Named

I am not I.

I am this one walking beside me,

whom I do not see,

whom at times I manage to visit

and at other times.....I forget.

                                                                             Juan Ramon Jimenez

Growing older has brought on an audacity, a form of care-free intention that surpasses the considerations of the past. Now, I am surging with a passion for truth that goes beyond the comfort zones I’ve known. I can feel within me a kind of necessity, an urge to go into the deepest recesses of my being, to give voice to what has been within me (all these years), but has never been articulated. I’m bracing for surprise, discomfort, and learning.

These are words I have never let myself utter or know. All along, throughout my life, I have been two beings. Without knowing it, I am a twin being. One known, and one not. One, the me I have mostly identified with, the other, some stranger that has popped-up, from somewhere within, to shape my life.

I am not just I, I am some amalgam of myself, and another being, who is also me. I can’t really explain what I am describing.

I don’t have any control of this other, who is me. I have had some premonitions, insights, and surprise behaviors. Awareness has come to me unbidden. These moments were too specific, too germane, too well-targeted for me to ignore. For instance, I wrote Embracing Life without even knowing I was doing it. I don’t mean it was channeled, or some form of unconscious free writing. I thought I was dying at the time, but something else was happening. I wrote for my life, the words and ideas just flowed. I marveled, learning from the what emerged, and felt compelled to keep going.

I wrote a book-length manuscript that was mainly composed of things I didn’t know I knew. Something in me knew what I was doing, but the one I think of myself as, had no idea what I was up to. I was so confounded, I thought that I would probably die when I finished writing. Instead, the writing brought me back to life.

Shortly thereafter, I became Lucky, and the truth is, I knew I owed my continued existence to some mysterious part of myself that now lived more fully through me. Since then, I have grown more aware of what I call another side of me. I still have no control of this being, but I rely more heavily upon it. I believe, I am more this unknown other, than I am myself. That sounds strange, and is strange, but is more true than ever before.

I have a story I tell myself about this bizarre twist in my journey. It is a somewhat convoluted one, containing ideas that I am grappling with, and claims I cannot give myself credit for imagining — which all adds up, to a life that is a bifurcated.  When I was writing Embracing Life I became very enthralled with holons. Holons, were I thought abstract ideas, that tried to convey the dual-sided nature of reality. Taken from holography, the holon was a way of describing how it was that a part of a holographic image could contain the whole image.

Everything, according to this line of thought, has a dual nature; it is a part of something larger, and a wholeness itself. That includes me. It is like there are two mes: one represents the whole, and one the part. Since I can remember, I have identified as one, not knowing the other. One was the me I felt myself to be (part), and one is the one I also am (whole).

It is here, in my later life, where I can now see that both are operating within me. This has been always been true. Aging has increased my awareness, shedding light on past behavior, and revealing something that knew what life-trajectory I was on, even though, I had no idea at the time. Some internal being took me into the world I’ve inhabited, leaving another part of me uncertain and anxious.

Exposure to what, at first, was only an dim awareness has changed my life. The deeply paradoxical notion of a natural disposition toward whole/partness has led me to an awareness that also joins what seems to be opposite. I now enjoy an experience that contains both, a here and now surfacy awareness of separateness, and a deeper sense of connection. One does not eclipse the other, they both coexist.

My attention is not riveted to one or the other, but to both, revealing their relationship, and the linkages between them. This kind of consciousness makes a host of things evident to me. As time has gone on, I’ve come to see, that I am simultaneously aware of myself as part of the all, and as all that is. I don’t claim this to be a specialized spiritual sensibility, instead I tend to think of it, as a natural outcome of living and evolving with holonic awareness.

Growing older has had the effect of sharpening my awareness. I can see now what I couldn’t see before. On one hand, I’m not who I used to be, on another, I am who I always have been. I occupy this world like an ordinary human being, aging along, struggling for meaning, and experiencing a variety of vulnerabilities. Similarly, I see more than I imagined — a being with an invisible history, and a reliable trust of the enlarging picture.

As I’ve grown older, my inner life has begun to become more apparent. This has revealed a movement within, that I have long noticed, but didn’t consider important. Now however, I can see that the one I have considered myself, has moved toward the one I don’t know, and that that one has become more palpable.

Looking again at my life, shows that the latter has always been present, and exercised great influence upon my life course. This is a disturbing perception. It leaves me wondering about how autonomous I am? The evidence suggests that I am subject to inside influence, and that that influence came from an unknown aspect of me. I may not be autonomous in ways I don’t really understand. When I consider that experience, and look at my overall life course, I see that both elements of my being pulled in a same direction, but at different speeds. Sometimes, the more surfacy me dominated, sometimes the unknown me prevailed.

All of these perceptions lead me to think of conflict. I wonder if there were moments in my life when each may have pulled in different directions? I remember what a risk it was for me to go to graduate school. I was not at all sure I belonged — not because of the school — but because my self-image was one of inadequacy.

I was depressed for a long time. I had worked a series of good, but dissatisfying jobs. My self-image was in the dump. Basically, I was living beneath my capabilities. The girlfriend I had then, in a drunken tirade, shamed me into applying for, and going to grad school. She could see my potential better than I could. I tell this story on myself to illustrate a period of my life where there was an incongruity between the different aspects of my being. The me I related to was less me than the one that began emerging, when I later overcame my hesitancy and went to graduate school.

It is now possible for me to say that my life has largely been defined, or composed, by the interplay between different aspects of my being. One seems more defined by the opportunities afforded by life in my family, community and culture; whereas, the other seems to me to be a manifestation of some other imperative. One is a situation-bound, historically defined aspect, more part-like and of the moment, than the other, who is defined by a bigger, more holistic, timeless, and universal picture.

I have read Carl Jung. My experience sounds like Jung’s conception of Self and self. He posited a higher Self, that had a more transpersonal nature, and combined conscious and unconscious, to live more congruent with the life-force. His conception explains much of what I experience, with one important exception. Jung believed that the Higher Self only became evident through the hard work of sustained spiritual practice. My life has not been dedicated to any form of on-going, regular spiritual practice. The twin centers I experience have become evident to me naturally with no particular stimulant; not hallucinogens, spiritual practice, or aspiration.

I did have, at age 55, a medical form of initiation. I knew my consciousness had been altered. I experienced a long (3+ years) near-death experience where I existed like a terminal patient without actually crossing over. While being dismembered, as I was with my brain hemorrhage, and subsequent damage, my sense of self went through profound change — but it is only aging — that has brought me to my present considerations. Growing older has provided a natural stimulant. Repeated experience, of dual centers, has had the effect of altering my awareness. It has brought me to a life pattern, that appears to me to be totally organic, and built-in to the human psyche.

I have not been prepared for this element of experience. I don’t really know what to make of it. Maybe, Jung’s conception adequately captures my experience. I’m not satisfied with it, however.

I am some sort of composite being, with an identity that conforms to convention and one that doesn’t. My way of describing what I am experiencing, is that there is in me an alternate identity, arising from within. It isn’t threatening to replace my customary sense of self. At this point it mainly seems to be supplementing my awareness, and boosting my presence. I am being introduced to a bigger, more nuanced picture. I am also much more paradoxically aware, by that I mean, I have a much stronger sense of how connected things are. All of this makes me a different kind of being, human in a way I never expected.

So far, I am not upset by this side of me — as it seems to be adding to my capabilities — but I am bemused, wondering what it could possibly mean? The sense that something else—a distant, vague, and uncontrollable part of me— operates, leaves me feeling vulnerable, but inspired, like I have a secret superpower. I also feel an inchoate sense of responsibility. I don’t know if what I sense is common, known, and reliable or not.

I do have a theory though. It involves the increasing longevity of human life, and the perception that a new chapter in the evolution of human consciousness is arriving. Species survival, for we humans, may be tied to an increased awareness of exactly how connected we are to the natural processes of the Universe. And, if my experience is relevant, and reflects an embellishment of our nature, then it looks as if these same natural processes, are at work, altering our species.

 

 

 

  

We, Who Have Outlived Our Lives

“Deep down in my soul, the flame has gone out.”

—     From “Longest Day” by John Mellenkamp 

I never expected to have this experience. But, for nearly a year now I’ve been living in the doldrums. That is an old nautical term, that hails back to the time that all ocean travel was via sailing. It refers to when the wind stopped, all motion ceased, and the sea was calm. Movement stopped, and no one knew if, or when, it would resume. In my case, the vitality and juiciness has gone out of my life. I am alive, but in no way, I’ve been before.

Recently, I caught myself, saying to friends, That I had “outlived my life.” At the time, I thought I was referring to a sense of no longer feeling any purpose. Later, the feeling blossomed into a more complete lethargy. I had come to a stopping point. Nothing stirred inside. I was bereft of movement. I went on, zombie-like, but I had no motivating fire in my engine, no life in my life.

I’ve been worrying, like many old people do, that I might outlive my money — but what has been happening is — that I have outlived my story. This has many implications for me. All of which add-up to a feeling of pointlessness. Maybe, this is just a phase, the wind will return, or another fire will start burning. But, I’m sensing something else. I am at an endpoint, a place where there is no longer a road.

I had a dream several weeks ago. I was at a graduation ceremony. I, along with several others, were graduating from a rigorous program. We were at a banquet to celebrate. The dream had other facets, not so important to this process. I later awakened with a great sense of completeness. I still feel it. I knew I had been through something significant. I was proud of myself and content. Yet, I did find myself later wondering ‘what now.’ I was ready to go on.

That’s where I am now. Only, there is no perceptible movement. Just this sense that I have outlived the program, graduated, and no longer know why I continue to exist. As you might guess, I wondered about this a lot. More so, as my uncertainty and lethargy have grown. All I know is that I seem to be motionless, going nowhere, doing nothing, feeling lost, wondering if I still belong.

I have begun to think of myself as a piece of flotsam left over from the great explosion of Creation. I’m here, having witnessed some of it, but now only a leftover, a sign of what was. I can attest to what has happened, but I do not have any perception of anything happening now.

Finally, this is an old person’s lament. Isolation haunts this vibrancy. Maybe, this is, the near-final gasp of an old way of being. Dying can be as messy as all birth.

I am also considering the possibility that by coming to the end of ‘my life,’ I am at last, living out ‘the life’ I haven’t lived. A life of not having to have a purpose, of being loved for no good reason, of having nothing to do. That goes beyond all the earthly forms of value I’ve been taught — and all the ways I’ve believed.

Maybe, I have graduated!

And, still, I have much to learn.

 

 

 

  

Failure To Thrive (Late Onset)

I’ve been sick for a couple of weeks now. It seems that I am suffering from an amalgam of differing ailments; asthma, allergies, stomach flu, and most germane to this piece, what I call “failure to thrive.” It is the latter that I intend to concentrate upon. Being sick in the winter time isn’t all that unusual — but becoming despondent is. This has been an eye-opening experience, one that has brought into my awareness, one of the most heartbreaking aspects of being human. When one is left alone long enough, one’s system begins to lose life.

 

‘Failure to thrive’ has traditionally been associated with the young. It refers to the way the organism of a young person loses energy and collapses from not being touched, or cared about. It is a very sad and tragic form of demise. Usually thought of as an orphan’s ailment, I have come to realize it is a very human form of neglect. Old people are also prone to it. I am now, someone who knows more about it, than I want to. I’ve been touched by the absence of touch.

 

There comes a point in some people’s lives where there just isn’t anyone around. This is inevitable, and we all should be prepared for it. These moments can be a lot of things; refreshing, disturbing, distract-less, elevating, abysmal, or happy; but they all are only temporary. An old person, like an infant, can be completely neglected. Even if cared for, the busyness, or involvement of another, can result in neglect. That’s when the failure to thrive can set in. And when it does, I can now attest, it is worse than depression, and kicks the legs out from underneath the will to live.

 

I hate to say it, but I think many of us old people need to guard against the potency of neglect. In my experience, this isn’t just about how often I get touched, although sometimes it is, but rather who is doing the touching, and with how much care. I find myself seeking out attention, like the hungry seek out food. And I’m learning my spirit needs attention, touch, and especially caring, as much as I need air. If I don’t have an adequate supply, I go out of existence more slowly than with the absence of air, but it is a painful form of drowning, never-the-less.

 

Recently, I learned that the highest rate of suicide in this culture is amongst people over the age of 83. This is even higher than the much more publicized rate of suicide amongst teenagers. Both are tragic, and say too much about our dysfunctional culture, but only one is considered a problem. The other reflects the neglect prevalent in the elder world.

 

Speaking of the environment, I have long contended that the old and the environment are on the same continuum — treat one badly, you do the same to the other — but this period of my life, is making more vivid, how neglecting one form of life (old people) is neglecting all forms of life. Nature is suffering from a failure to thrive too!

 

The Slow Lane has always been devoted to the notion that going too fast has obscured too much. Busyness, doing, staying active are all forms of neglect. Ones we too easily take pride in. It is the way of modern times, modern identity — and a lethal treatment of those, like old people, and the environment, who can’t maintain that velocity. This is efficiency at its worst. I have known for a long-time the cost of speed to our spirituality, but now I have a more vivid sense of what a failure to thrive is actually about. It has come for, and from, all of us. 

 

Neglect is an equal-opportunity experience. It isn’t something you want to experience; nor your family, friends, or other loved ones. It is a social disease, which is characteristic of our modern times. Guard yourself against it — but remember — you could be a carrier, and someone near you may be failing to thrive right now.

 

 

 

  

The Slow Lane

The storm had already broken when I began to write.  I was decimated by the stroke, and further assailed by brain damage. I began the Slow Lane while I was going down. It looked, and felt, like I was dying — losing functioning on a pretty regular basis. I wrote in some desperate attempt to feel like I was of some use. Nothing was very pretty or elegant.

In the beginning, I called it “Reports From The Slow Lane,” thinking that the challenges I was experiencing might be useful to my community. Amazingly, I could still think of others, as I was being pulled under.  In part, the writing of ‘reports’ gave me a sense of connection. I needed to feel less alone. I also felt like what I was going through could be meaningful to oth

“The Slow Lane,” from its advent, was an attempt to integrate the role of tragedy in my / the community’s life

Later on, I’m not sure when, I received the first gift of awareness that transformed my suffering. I didn’t know it at the time. I was too consumed with going down. But I fairly quickly realized I had been slowed down, and could no longer function at cultural speed. Suddenly, I got how much I was missing, when I operated normally. “The Slow Lane” became about speed, physical, psychological and spiritual. It hasn’t always been consistent, but speed has been a regular subject. The world changed as slowing occurred.

I started writing as a drowning man. Strangely, as I lost functioning, I gained awareness. New parts of me, came on-line. I was going down, but becoming new, a better, more aware me. I hope I captured some of those changes in those lost and confusing years. “The Slow Lane” helped me integrate a slow-breaking miracle, a time where nature re-made me. I discovered I could swim in the darkness. Writing took on a new meaning.

Since that time, “The Slow Lane” has taken its current form. It was written partially for you the readers, and partially for me, the writer. Hopefully, I have conveyed the benefits of hardship, and how much life shapes us using pressure. That is a lesson that we could use right now. I also hope “The Slow Lane” does something to increase awareness of the true miracle of being human. Human’s, I now see, become more as they become less. It has been a painful but enduring lesson. A lot of Slow Lane pieces have been about that. Reassurance as we age.

Now, it’s morphing into something else. I think it will always be about slowing, and the human condition, but I can feel some other awareness pulling me into another orbit. The monk side of me is trembling. The writer, is going to be more of the ventriloquist in the future. Meaning: the dummy will keep going. I am also going to be getting even slower. Feeling the call more. Going farther astray. Eventually gone.

There isn’t much, in the usual sense, to look forward to. Life is moving me slowly towards the barn. I intend to keep writing, to be smitten with learning, to be more and more at home with myself, but I feel the weeds parting, and me moving slowly towards them.  So, be forewarned, we are all headed in that relieving direction. The Slow Lane is too.

I’m not sure of the when, where, or how. I don’t know how imminent change is. I’m very human in that way. The unknown stalks me too. But, I can feel something coming, and I have a sense that it is beyond undoing. The moment remains a great favor to us, and I intend to be in it thoroughly. I want the Slow Lane to be there with me, but I’m not sure it will be.

 

 

 

  

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