Author: anda

“I thank you, deep power
That works me ever more lightly
In ways I can’t make out…”
                   Rainier Maria Rilke, “Like a Holy Face”


Learning from Rilke #13

Deep power 
In these dark times
when the news might well be 
that the stars have burned out in the night sky,
and the rivers refuse to run,
you seem hidden
as if in the bottom of the ocean.
I see only the whitecaps of waves.

You are in the stems of daisies.
I see only the flower.
You are in roots of trees.
I see only spreading branches.

Deep power,
you are In a piano playing, the guitar strumming,
In the hands that hold love, the hands that make art
and poems spoken wise.

Yet though you move in my blood and breath,
I see only my body
and trust only my heavy, fearful certainties.

Still 
out of my sight
beyond my knowing
you appear 
 working lightly,

If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted…
If all of it didn’t keep me from coming awake…
                             ~~~Rainer Maria Rilke, “If Only for  Once”
If only
we didn’t grow old
or die,
we would be
Forever 

still chanting “if only,
and “why this?”

It is our way
to long for Paris,
then need Rome.

Our way
To find
gold
and then 
need diamonds.

Our way 
to swim against the current,
to change the course of the river,
to run,
run
against the wind.
~~~~~~~~~

Most people live their lives in an incessant alternation between heaven and hell. Getting what they want, they are in heaven. Losing it, or never getting it at all, they drop to hell.  Hell is the stiff resistance to what is…Heaven is the opened heart. Hell is the tightened gut.  ~Stephen Levine, Who Dies, An Investigation into Conscious Living and Conscious Dying 

Levine talks about the preference machine that a person becomes.  We spend our lives seeking pleasure and happiness, running from discomfort and unhappiness, to approval from disapproval., to admiration, from failure. In our running from one side to the other, we exhaust ourselves. We become exhausted  by life.

Who is this who is never satisfied?

The “self. “The reason we are preference machines is that we cling to our idea of our “selves” so tightly.  As Levine explains, “Thinking in terms of ‘I’ and self-gratification, we live a life of stiff-armed hell, denying the process we share with all who exist…Most of the moments of satisfaction in our lives we cling to, making a temporary heaven into an increasing hell.”  Living to reach satisfaction—something we can’t seem to achieve– we set ourselves up for disappointment as a lifestyle.

As children we tried to understand who we were supposed to be, and so we made a story from the bits and pieces: the scowls, the smile, the annoyed parent, the overwhelmed parent trying to reach impossible goals. The child’s fragile, newly forming “self” created a story of why she seemed to cause adults to respond as they did—that something else or someone else was preferred. As time went on, any evidence that fit the story was filed away and added to the same basic story of people and things being “not good enough.” Since adults also appeared to be dissatisfied with who they were and what had, we followed their example of becoming preference machines ourselves.

Over the years I found it necessary to re-parent myself through therapy and various helpful groups, but the “self” I thought I was remained a constant. After all, I needed to have an identity and better a familiar dysfunctional identity than none at all.

The new story I was encouraged to tell myself was “I am now loveable, strong, invincible, etc.”  So, I tried to be more than human. That did not work. That was actually a child’s version of what a grown-up could be. Dismantling that story of “I” requires an adult to be in the room. 

The child is an observer who ingests what is set before it. The grown-up is a witness of what the child’s story of the ideal as the only acceptable identity. The adult becomes adept at undefining her identity. Not clinging to how she would prefer herself and life to be. She no longer is controlled by herself as a preference machine.

Zorba the Greek–from the movie of the same name– is a good example as he dances in the face of life as “the whole catastrophe.” Like Zorba, she accepts life’s changing partners. and dances to whatever song life is playing. Buddha would shake his booty with both of them.

 “…Waves, Marina, we are ocean! Depths, Marina, we are sky!
Earth, Marina, we are earth, a thousand times spring.
We are larks whose outburst of song
Fling them to the heaves.”
~~~Rainer Maria Rille, “Elegy to Marina”

For Barbara

My friend,
you breathed music from your flute
made fresh the air.
The notes still float on the breezes,
after all, where could they have gone?
They still play on each breath we take.
You, who seem silenced,  
are heard  (your laughter!) in our memories,
felt in the air we
inhale and exhale, in time to your
breath-created music
and follows the rhythm of our pulsing hearts.
Together we are in concert
our voices rise and fall,
and you remain sung, 
yes, you remain
for after all, where could you go?
The starry roof of the earth
covers us all
we are held safe 
with you as if in a perfect boat on the ocean
as waves rise and fall like notes
coming and going 
in tune with continuous creation
where we find you still.

From Walks with Yogi “You Complain Too Much…”

Somehow, in feeling our own pain and sorrow, our own ocean of tears, we come to know that ours is a shared pain and that the mystery and beauty and pain of life cannot be separated.  This universal pain, too , is part of our connection with one another, and in the face of it we cannot withhold our love any longer.

–Jack Kornfield,  A Path With Heart

I write imperfectly and may find later that I disagree with myself…but then, if, we say the metaphor for enlightenment is Paris, I’m still in Peoria. On a bicycle. Pedaling  to the Eiffel Tower will take a while, but I’m on my way…

The other day my brother said that, although he liked reading most of my blogs, he enjoyed the more light-hearted ones more, that others can seem like “complaining.” He said the ones that describe the good results of my efforts are more helpful than to read about my past and present struggles. I know there are other readers who would  agree with him and have the same critique of my blogs—be more positive, they say, don’t complain too much.

So, I’m going to complain about that…

My intention isn’t to write my blog, my book or my poetry only for my own benefit–though certainly it has helped me– but also for those who are ashamed of their “flaws” and afraid they will be rejected if they reveal them.

Some people say I am brave to reveal my dark side, the character defects, the struggles. I ask  why should that take courage? How sad that we must be brave to share about our vulnerabilities, our imperfections.  One of the reasons people heal in groups like AA is because they are finally safe to admit they hurt, that they have hurt others, that they are confused, that they feel lost and out of control, and  that the demon of craving and attachment has turned them into what Buddhists call, “hungry ghosts.”  The miracle is that when addicts and enablers finally face and admit those “shameful” things, their shame lessens and even evaporates.

My poor, sick alcoholic parents  did not like it when the kids complained because our unhappiness fueled their guilt, which in turn increased their drinking. In Al Anon I learned that they did the best they could considering how ill-equipped for parenting they were.

The loudly unspoken  rules my siblings and I understood were:   “Kids are not allowed to complain. It upsets the adults. If you upset us, it will make us drink.”  My brother and sister rarely  complained.  They were good kids. I was not good. I was unhappy; and children were not allowed to be unhappy. There was hell to pay when I complained, yet I never wised up. I couldn’t ignore or deny my parents’ fiery, violent rages.

I couldn’t hide that I was upset when I found my father holding back my mother’s knife-wielding hand. I was unhappy about being  thrown  down the stairs because I had been crying too much. I showed alarm when I awoke in the middle of the night to hear plates being thrown onto the kitchen floor, against the walls.

Kids in alcoholic families are supposed to take care of everyone else, do the bidding of others. The Supreme Rule in such families:  Do whatever it takes to keep the alcoholic “happy” because if the addict is unhappy, everybody pays.  I broke the rule. I was the complainer, the problem, the reason mother had migraine sand father was passed out in the basement.

In adulthood, I learned  I needed help and that before I could leave the past behind, I needed to question the old rules. I turned to AlAnon and Buddhism—-which turn out to be the same truths put into different language. 

A definition of Buddhist mindfulness is non-judgmental seeing. Seeing things as they are, not as we think they should or shouldn’t be. AlAnon taught me to see how a thick blanket of shame and fear covered life in an alcoholic family. I write to lift the blanket, shake it out, let light and air in. I write because I don’t think I am the only one-–even at my advanced age–-who has removed the blanket and who doesn’t want to go to sleep under it again. Dare I say this is a type of wokeness. I dare say so. 

I write about my demons because if I face, name, investigate and learn to love them, they will no longer clamor for my attention, demand my self-loathing and cause me to blame others. I don’t think that is complaining too much.

A number of years ago Yogi, my Sharpie-mix, died of an incurable kidney disease, then another dog I adopted died of another incurable disease a year later. Most recently, a college died from an aggressive brain tumor. I too am of the age when I am closer to the end of my life than I’ve ever been. Aging requires acceptance, over and over. So does youth, but it’s easier and even applauded to resist acceptance in youth. That is also why being young is difficult.

Now what? The sand is shifting beneath my feet. What some refer to as “ego”—-my conditioned self—- wants to suffer and cling to stories of regret and loss. My ego is the holder of memories. Its memories are vivid. It constructed its identity from messages heard in childhood and sometimes asserts itself in my adulthood. This ego/identity needs people, places, and things as it wants them, or it suffers. Since life is seldom as I want it to be, my ego has had plenty of opportunities to suffer. 

I was reading the section in my book (Walks with Yogi)that talked about the time Yogi was diagnosed several years ago. Here is what I wrote:

Yogi may have six months or perhaps several more years to live, but he is dying. I laid down on the bed next to Yogi and listened to a recording of Ram Dass who, with much physical and mental effort, was being interviewed about how he was coping after his stroke. I listened, my hand on Yogi’s warm, smooth belly. Ram Das told the interviewer that his body had a stroke but who he really is did not.

Yogi woke me twice in the middle of the night. He has to pee often now. I stumble down the three flights of stairs and onto the street with him again. This is now. This requires acceptance, not resistance. Because it is now reality. What of it? This is sand shifting as it always does.  

Since my ego lives in the past and future only, when I enter the present moment I finally feel the feelings ego wants to avoid—sorrow, love, compassion. I see what is in front of me, not behind me or in some future. I see Yogi’s patient acceptance of things as they are. I practice emulating his fully present, fully alive example. Yesterday I invited friends, those whom I had told about Yogi illness, to have a picnic dinner with me at the beach. Ego would prefer to spend more time suffering, but the real me chose to live fully, besides, dogs sense and respond to depression and worry. My depression and worry should not be Yogi’s problem.

The sky was overcast and we took shelter behind a large rock resting our backs against its comforting heft. We toasted Yogi. The sun came out for a while before it set and we watched with pleasure. Two dolphins rose and dropped behind the waves in the distance. I became so filled with the beauty of the present moment with the power of being accepting of impermanence that I felt compelled to run down the beach. I know that is what Yogi would have done.

Doubt
Is a servant,
essential
as lamp light
in the dark room.

It is the stop sign
we ignore
at our peril
as, driven by certainty,
we crash.
Still, bruised and battered,
we mistrust doubt.

Doubt
is an explorer,
a guide
to the opened door
leading to 
ocean,  
meadow, 
vast, cloudless sky.

We must return
wild,
guided by wind and moon
to find our way.

The journey made simple
When we find the way out of
the wilderness of cities.

Then
Into the forest
Along the shore
Up the mountain
Through the meadow
We travel.

Our sight, then, like a wolf’s,
Made clear by
Scent and touch 
More than eyes alone .

Our body, like a river
Bend and stretch
Run fast or slow
Over rocks, below branches.
Going home.