Kurt testing the waters of Puget Sound on January 1st, and testing his new knee
This morning I bundled up for the first time in some weeks, and headed out to my meditation hut in the woods behind my house for a period of sitting meditation. This has been my customary way of starting the day for years. But last month I had knee replacement surgery, which among other things put a halt to my formal meditation practice through the holiday season. It has been interesting, and instructive, to experience the impact of that pause in my body, and in my state of mind and heart. There has been a certain dullness and distractibility that has set in, a certain mental lethargy and physical restlessness, a palpable lack of focus. Also more opportunity to get hooked into catastrophizing thoughts, as the onslaught of distressing news continues to roll in from around the planet. The temptation to go dark inside myself with the dark days of the season, and the dark flavor in the news, is its own invitation to wake back up. Thank God we can always pick our practice back up, no matter how often we put it down and slide back into forgetfulness. Our practice is always there waiting for us.
My hut is open air, so this means sitting in the cold and the dark at this time of year, with all the night sounds of the forest there to greet me. I live on an island in Puget Sound, and built my house on the edge of a large forest. In the hour before dawn, there are always owls, holding forth with their shadowy voices that literally echo across the forest. Great Horned owls this morning, whose simple question, repeated endlessly in call and response, took center stage in my meditation this morning. Near and far it repeated.
who who Who Who Who?? who who Who Who Who??
Who do I want to be? Who do I choose to be? Who am I, beyond the passing changes and sorrows of this world?
Let’s be honest. We are beginning the third decade of the new millennium under storm clouds that seem to be coming from all directions. A national politics in shambles. A bifurcation and polarization of the culture unseen perhaps since the Civil War. Open calls from the highest places in government to unleash long-simmering hatreds and violence against minorities. A frightening dismantling of the rule of law. The media a dumping ground for fake news and outright lies that increasingly go unchallenged and unquestioned. A climate crisis spinning out of control, with no national consensus that it is even happening. I feel and hear from so many people the same thoughts. The same fears. The same bewilderment and overwhelm. The same upwellings of outrage, sadness and grief.
These are searing, heart-wrenching realities to make sense of, as we enter this new decade. If there is any consensus across the social and scientific divides, it is that these conditions are highly likely to get worse before they get better. We are going to need to be our best and most grounded and courageous selves to withstand the headwinds.
In that sense, mindfulness is not just about making ourselves comfortable. It is not simply self-care, though that is important too. It is certainly not a means of escape from the storms we have already entered. Our mindfulness practice invites us continually to turn toward what is, rather than away, or in Rumi’s words, ‘to meet our dark thoughts at the door laughing, and invite them in,’ rather than slamming and bolting the door against them. Only when we do that, with an open heart and mind, can we manifest wise action to meet and heal the suffering of the world.
So again, the owls were important teachers to me this morning. Who is it that is caught in all this fear? Who is bewildered? Who is outraged or lost in grief? Our practice reminds us that we are bigger and more powerful than our passing thoughts and emotions, no matter how intense they may be at times. We are not our fear, our outrage, our bewilderment. This is as true when the chips are really down as when we are simply dealing with the daily diet of small joys and sorrows. Our true self, the self that can step back and simply observe and feel these emotions, without being perpetually highjacked by them - this is our greatest ally. This is the background spaciousness of Awareness itself, which is big enough to hold all these difficult thoughts and emotions without being defined or disempowered by them. As my colleague Gordon Peerman has written in his book The Body Knows the Way: Coming Home Through the Dark Night, “Ask yourself: Did anyone in all your schooling or religious training ever invite you to be aware of awareness itself? Has anyone ever invited you to notice the background consciousness in which different foreground contents come and go?”
This background awareness can be present to fear without being itself afraid, present to outrage without becoming outraged itself. Connecting routinely with this background awareness is what our practice invites us continually to do. Showing up in this way is a powerful antidote to despair, and an equally powerful catalyst for wise and creative action to mend the world.
We are not going to come through this unscathed. But no one ever has. Who do we want to be, as we live into the joys as well as the sorrows that our turbulent times are dishing up? This is simply our moment. This is just how it is. We have enormous power in determining what we do with it. And there is enormous potential for joy in embracing that power.
Happy New Year!