Even Desolation is a Country to be Explored

Last year someone kindly gave me a book of daily meditations for grief, called Healing After Loss, by Martha Hickman. Each day has a quote by someone else and Ms. Hickman’s reflections on the quote. A few days ago the quote was:

“Even desolation is a country to be explored.” Sylvia Townsend Warner

There are some platitudes that people in our culture fall back on when confronted with uncomfortable situations, like being around someone who has just lost a loved one. A particularly distasteful one, to someone who is freshly grieving, is the intimation that the experience will make you a better, stronger person. I have hated the idea that grief could be a growing experience. It’s a horrible concept to imagine yourself profiting by the death of your loved one in any way.

But this quote has a different spin for me. This says: I’m here in desolation, what is this experience? What is here for me to learn?

In an earlier blog post I wrote about my first trip to the grocery store after Arthur died. I was raw and bleeding and it felt like it must be obvious to all who saw me. And yet the woman at the register acted like everything was ordinary. She couldn’t see my pain! I turned and looked around me with wonder: what sorrow was under the surface of all the people around me that I couldn’t see?

In her discussion of this quote Ms. Hickman writes of a Buddhist tale in which a woman whose child has died went to see Buddha to ask him to bring her child back to life. He told her he could help her if she brought back a handful of mustard seeds from a house where death had not visited. The woman traveled far and wide but she could find no one who hadn’t lost someone they loved. This experience taught her that suffering is a part of life. And she found a way to heal her suffering through compassion, understanding, and love for all of humanity.

This week three people I know are exploring their own personal countries of desolation. The first is a single mom who underwent emergency surgery yesterday. Her mother died a few years ago so she was lacking that most basic support. What worries must she have endured in the few days between her trip to the ER and her surgery?

The second is a man who has worked brutally hard for fifteen years to build a successful business. Today he had to tell his lenders that he will default on his loans.

The third is waiting on test results for a fatal illness.

I find myself holding these three in my heart, walking that desolate country with them, holding them close. And I can do this only because I have become so familiar with my own personal desolate landscape.

Through the exploration of the country of desolation—the understanding that everyone lives in this place at least some of the time—I am beginning to experience a profound fellowship with everyone on Earth, bringing a deep compassion to life. I ask every day that my exploration will open my heart to the suffering of others and help me to love without judgment or condition.

Note: The Buddhist story brings to mind Jesus’s admonition that if your faith was as a mustard seed you could move mountains (Matthew 17:20). What is it about mustard seeds? I know they are tiny, but is there something else?

Footnote: I'd like to give credit for the quote but Ms. Hickman does not provide any information for where these quotes come from.

The Importance of Contrast

I’m reading John O’Donoghue’s book on Celtic wisdom, Anam Cara. Yesterday I was struck by this line: “A friend of mine who loves lace often says that it is the holes in the lace that render it beautiful.”

In the photo to the left, the white lace pattern is clear against the black background, but when it crosses the other white fabric the pattern is hard to see.

My dear Arthur, a musician, often said it is the ‘holes’ in music—the silence between the notes—that make it beautiful.

Artists talk about ‘negative space,’ the importance of defining an object by juxtaposing it with not-that-object.

One of the first lessons a photographer learns is the importance of contrast—light and dark combine to make a great photograph because it is contrast that creates the illusion of dimension.

I think this principle of contrast is applicable to matters of the heart also. I thought I knew what compassion was before Arthur died, but my experience of grief has taught me how shallow that understanding was.

I have had a very blessed life, with few major difficulties or misfortunes. I had a long-term relationship with a man I loved and who loved me. Of course we had conflicts, but we felt we were soul-mates. My experience of life was shifted to the ‘positive’ side.

But then Arthur died, and I have been plunged into darkness. I know what it means to have a broken heart, to feel anguish, to ache with loneliness. And out of this brokenness I have discovered something wondrous: a deeper understanding of love and compassion.

Through the contrast given by loss I have a fuller appreciation of the love I had with Arthur. The pain caused by this gaping hole in my heart has opened my heart to other’s sorrows in a whole new way. I see now that my earlier compassion was mostly intellectual; now it’s become experiential. 

I am grateful for this change.

Grace

Grace is a concept I have struggled to understand. I was raised as a Christian and learned in that context that grace was something God gives to undeserving human sinners. When I rejected the religion of my youth I rejected grace too, and thought no more about it.

When I developed my HACLG (hac-ul-gee) system for my spiritual path (honesty, humility, acceptance, compassion, love, gratitude) I would say, “gratitude is as far as I’ve gotten and it wasn’t easy for me to get to gratitude!” [I used to call this GLACH; read my blog post about it.]

Then my beloved husband Arthur died, and there was an aura around his death that could only be called “grace.” I couldn’t think of another word to describe what I was witnessing. What I saw was a profound alignment with the way it was, a dropping of all resistance and opposition to the flow of the universe. And it was so beautiful. Arthur was graceful, in every sense of the word.

I saw then that grace was a second ‘g’ to add to my system. When you have gotten to the stage where you accept reality so fully that you are grateful for the way it is, you become filled with grace. You are in synch with reality; you are flowing with the stream of reality, not fighting against it.

I like this definition of grace from an online dictionary: “Seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement, form, or proportion.” That effortlessness can only come about from the complete lack of resistance to the flow of reality.

Yesterday I listened to President Obama’s eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was murdered in his Charleston church. I was awed by the fact that Obama took grace as his theme.

President Obama spoke (at about 18 minutes into his speech) of how the (alleged) killer couldn’t see the grace surrounding Rev. Pinckney because he was blinded by hatred. Obama continued that he’d been contemplating grace the whole week, including the grace of the families who lost loved ones, and then he recited the first verse of the song, “Amazing Grace.” The crowd went wild with delight. Then he said, “As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves.”

He kept returning to the theme of grace, and then ended with this thought (about 34:00): “the path of grace requires an open mind, but more importantly an open heart. That’s what I felt this week, an open heart. That more than any particular policy or analysis is what’s called for right now, I think…if we can find that grace, anything is possible. If we can tap that grace, everything can change.” Then he paused and said, “Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace.” And he was clearly moved by the concept of grace…and then famously he began to sing, and the whole crowd leapt to their feet to join him.

I thought at the time the singing might have been spontaneous, but according to the New York Times it wasn’t. However, the fact that grace was the central theme was President Obama’s idea:

Mr. Obama expanded on a short riff in the draft about the idea of grace, and made it the central theme of the eulogy: the grace family members of the shooting victims embodied in the forgiveness they expressed toward the killer; the grace the city of Charleston and the state of South Carolina manifested in coming together in the wake of the massacre; the grace God bestowed in transforming a tragedy into an occasion for renewal, sorrow into hope.

…

He also inserted lines from his favorite hymn, “Amazing Grace,” as a refrain, and, on the way to Charleston aboard Marine One, he told his advisers that he might sing some of those lines “if it feels right.”

I may disagree with President Obama about the meaning of grace, which he defined in the standard Christian context, but I am grateful that my president could leave politics behind and fill this important speech with such moral power.

Grace. So now my path is: H₂ACLG₂. Starting to look like a chemical equation for a spiritual life!

Following Point of View to Understanding

In 2007 my family gathered to celebrate my 50^th birthday. My nieces were aged 4 and 5. I bought them some inexpensive digital cameras thinking it would be fun to see what kind of images they would create.

Unfortunately the cameras didn’t take very good photos and it looks like we deleted most of them. But it was really interesting looking at their photos at the time, and I did save a couple:  

I was reminded of these photos by an article in The New Yorker about the GoPro camera, “We Are a Camera,” by Nick Paumgarten. The GoPro is a small HD video camera with different mounts that can be affixed to all kinds of sporting equipment. Mr. Paumgarten says an interesting feature of this camera is that

because it primarily points outward it’s a record of what an experience looks like…The result is not so much a selfie as a worldie. It’s more like the story you’d tell about an adventure than the photo that would accompany it.

The author’s son won a GoPro in a school raffle, and

On a ski vacation that spring, he affixed it to the top of his helmet…Even though the camera was turned outward, filled mainly by the sight of the terrain sliding past, it provided, more than anything, a glimpse into the mind of a dreamy and quiet boy…I didn’t need a camera to show me what he looked like to the world, but was delighted to find one that could show me what the world looked like to him. It captured him better than any camera pointed at him could. This was a proxy, of sorts.

GLACHH

Recently someone asked me to describe my spiritual path. First, I dislike the word “spiritual,” because I’m interested in being a more loving and caring person; I have less interest in connection with the divine. I think of my path as being more about consciousness; becoming more aware every day.

The basic components of my path are: acceptance, love, humility, compassion, honesty, and gratitude. For fun I thought I’d make an acronym to remember them better, and the best sounding word I could come up with is GLACH₂.

Gratitude: This has been a tough one for me. I seem to expect a lot from the world, and since my life hasn’t been perfect (according to my expectations) for most of my life I couldn’t see many reasons for gratitude. However, the foundation of my path is this concept: reality, as it is currently manifested in this moment, is perfect. This moment is whole and complete. The more I experience this, the more I feel gratitude for the way it is (no matter how it is!). I feel like I have a lot more to learn about gratitude, and perhaps that is why it ended up first in the acronym, to keep it present in my awareness.

Love: My definition of love is “the experience of unconditional acceptance of what is.” Loving what is means I am seeing the perfection of this moment of now; I’m not bitching about it and wanting it to be some other way. Loving what is dissolves the boundaries between the world and me.

Acceptance: My ego-identity fights to survive just like an animal, with fight/flight behavior. It seems like the world is almost never quite right, so I have to either battle to get my way or run from what’s happening. There is an option, and that is to face the world as it is, to bow to the reality of the now. This doesn’t mean I become a doormat, it just means I’m not rejecting what already is.

Compassion: Another foundational premise of my path is that everyone is insane (We are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity). Crazy people do crazy things. In addition, free will is a cruel myth. People don’t choose to do mean, cruel, or hurtful things, they are driven to do them by their mental programming. The only sane response is compassion: seeing another’s limitations without value judgment.

Honesty: I used to hide myself because I believed that if people knew what I was really like, what I really thought, they’d start laughing or run screaming. But then I felt like a fraud, and hated myself for my weakness. I began seeing how I was hurting people by not telling the truth. As a simple example, say you’re about to give an important presentation. I notice you have a piece of food between your teeth. It’s a little embarrassing for me to tell you about it, but wouldn’t not telling you the truth hurt you?

Humility: This is another one that has caused me some trouble. I used to confuse humility with humiliation. I couldn’t understand why anyone could want to be humble, it sounded weak and pitiful to me. I tried hard to never make mistakes and to do everything perfectly, because I believed that only if I was perfect would people like me. I couldn’t laugh at myself when I made a mistake. I’ve come to realize that humility is extremely powerful because it’s just recognizing the truth of my limitations.

Every moment is an opportunity to experience/express GLACH₂. Every moment I'm not experiencing/expressing GLACH₂ is an opportunity to learn about what I'm still attached to, afraid of, or angry about. 

You've Got to be Taught to Hate

The actor Kirk Douglas just published a blog post on prejudice at the Huffington Post called “On Jews and Justice.”

Mr. Douglas mentions the controversy over the Broadway musical South Pacific, which addressed racism head-on—in 1949. The play concerns an American nurse, stationed in the South Pacific during WWII, who falls in love with a French plantation owner. She has trouble accepting the fact that he has mixed-race children.

In addition there is a secondary romance between a U.S. lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman. The lieutenant worries about what people will think if he marries the woman, and he sings the song “You've Got to Be Carefully Taught":

You've got to be taught to hate and fear,
You've got to be taught from year to year,
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate.

Prejudice has to be taught. This is the key to compassion: a bigot’s thinking became twisted during his or her upbringing. This is the bottom-line of my book, We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity: The Mechanics of Compassion. All of us are confused in our thinking. All of us have been programmed to believe our particular culture’s reality. We all confuse our mind-generated reality with actual reality--this delusion is what makes us insane.

The South Pacific song made me think of a beautiful passage from Martin Luther King’s account of the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, in his book Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story [Harper & Row, 1958]:

I tried to put myself in the place of the police commissioners. I said to myself these are not bad men. They are misguided. They have fine reputations in the community. In their dealings with white people they are respectful and gentlemanly. They probably think they are right in their methods of dealing with Negroes. They say the things they say about us and treat us as they do because they have been taught these things. From the cradle to the grave, it is instilled in them that the Negro is inferior. Their parents probably taught them that; the schools they attended taught them that; the books they read, even their churches and ministers, often taught them that; and above all the very concept of segregation teaches them that. The whole cultural tradition under which they have grown—a tradition blighted with more than 250 years of slavery and more than 90 years of segregation—teaches them that Negroes do not deserve certain things. So these men are merely the children of their culture. When they seek to preserve segregation they are seeking to preserve only what their local folkways have taught them was right.

 What an incredibly beautiful mind to have been able to perceive this truth, right in the midst of the struggle!

We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity on sale!

My book, We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity: The Mechanics of Compassion, is now available as an e-book at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com. At Smashwords you can read the first four chapters for free.

Here's a brief description:

Most of us think we perceive reality directly and accurately, but we don’t. What we see is an individual mind-generated reality, heavily distorted by our beliefs and assumptions. We erroneously believe our subjective reality is actual reality. We’re all insane because we’re deluded about what is real.

What better explanation for dysfunctional human behavior than universal insanity? What better way to explain why loneliness, fear, and hatred are so familiar and love so rare? Why so many people need to use alcohol and drugs just to get through another day? Why half of all marriages end in divorce?

We are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity presents the idea that the primary cause of human suffering is universal insanity. Insanity is defined as: confusing our mind-generated reality with actual reality. In practical terms, this translates as confusing subjective opinion with objective fact.

For example: “I made a mistake” is an objective fact. “I made a mistake because I’m a loser” is a subjective opinion. When I think and act as if the subjective opinion is an objective fact I’m confused about what is real. It is this confusion of fantasy with fact that makes me insane.

Free will is shown to be a complete myth. Insane people do not have free will. We are driven by subconscious psychological forces over which we have no control. Recognizing our insanity means the end of blame, shame, and arrogance.

In addition, the recognition of universal insanity is the key to compassion: we’re not right in our minds.

By understanding that all hurtful behavior—from gossip to mass murder—proceeds from insane thinking, we can experience compassion for ourselves and everyone else.

The book includes references to recent scientific and psychological research that demonstrates how out-of-touch with reality we really are. Other references range from Zen stories to the Three Stooges.

I use examples from my own life to illustrate how we all build a personal subjective reality—My Story. I also share my personal growth as I face my own insanity.

This book is for adult audiences. There is a chapter on sexuality and passages in other chapters that discuss sex in an explicit manner.

Sanity is love. Love is defined as: the experience of unconditional acceptance of what is. This means that when we experience acceptance of reality exactly the way it is we experience love.

This book may transform the way you see yourself and the world.