A Sacred Symmetry

There is something woven in to the design of the Universe that positively captivates me. When I think of it, I can relax and rest in that awareness. Now generally, I would say that I have this feeling when I recall the web of Life that surrounds and includes me. And, while that is true, the realization that comes to me, when I recall how well prepared I am for the rigors of this journey through the Cosmos, tends to make me break out in a kind of thrilled happiness.

It seems, as I am getting older, that I am discovering that the Universe has supplied me with all the capacities I need to meet this life.  They are drawn out from inside me, by the circumstances of my unique existence. I experience this as a sacred symmetry.

Let me explain, if I can. I know that most folks have a hard time bearing this crazy and difficult life. There is more than enough hardship to go around. Loss is everywhere. Grief enters in to all of our lives, stealing our confidence, and leaving we humans vulnerable and aching. I’m not extolling a Pollyannaish belief that Life is totally benign. After all, I know in a very personal way, how much Life can strip one. Still, I find great relief in knowing that built-into this seemingly savage existence, is something so incredible that it balances all of the heartache it generates.

There is something inside of each of us, deep inside, that rises closer to the surface, when we are adequately challenged.  This something is mysterious and way beyond our control. It doesn’t seem to answer to our entreaties, prayers, hopes, and desperation. It seems to have an agenda of its own. We don’t get to have any control over its vicissitudes. In some ways, it is the inscrutable mystery of it, which is so infuriating and beguiling.

I don’t profess to understand. I just have had enough of a taste of it, to know I am “Lucky,” and to feel rather miraculously happy. The lack of understanding comes across in my inability to describe, satisfactorily, a phenomenon I know exists.  All I can do, is bow down, and acknowledge the unknown existence of something that has broken me into a greater wholeness.  I am more, because something saw to it that less provided.

I think it interesting that it took me most of a lifetime to even notice. Now, I think of this awareness as one of the gifts of aging. It appears that I had to have a lifetime of experience, and some of it not so good, to begin to perceive how lucky I truly am. I call it luck, but I know now, that it is the way of the Universe. I exist, and so, this part of existence, also exists within me.

I have long wondered how it is that we humans, in our scientific stupor, seem to have overlooked the remarkable intelligence that fashioned our bodies, and this incredible world we get to live in. We are just beginning to understand, that we don’t really understand much of what we have been endowed with. It is, as if the Universe, has some kind of immune system that operates through each of us. Evidently, Life has planned for the difficulties that besiege us.

Anyway, I live with a kind of re-assurance. Maybe, some hardship needs to befall mankind, to make more evident that something in the Universe has got our backs. It certainly seems like we have to get ourselves so thoroughly caught in a trap of our own making, to get, that this sacred symmetry exists between all of creation, and what mysteriously creates us.

Something wants us, enough to make us possible. It supports us enough, so that we get to live out our own perfect imperfect nature. I have come to see that mix of things as a sacred symmetry, a relationship between the whole and one of its parts.

Self - Soothing

Last Monday morning I woke-up knowing something was off. It didn’t take long before I realized it was me. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to face my morning workout. Ever since I had the stroke and lived through its long, difficult aftermath I have had bad days. In more recent years I have come to refer to these dark days as “grief days.” When I have one of these emotionally painful days everything gets more difficult, and I feel the weight that presses me to the Earth.

I had a lot of depression in my early life, but I found all of that disappeared when the stroke changed my life. Everything I knew changed, and depression became grief. Since then, in lieu of chronic pain, I’ve had chronic awareness, and that has resulted in me occasionally being overcome by grief. Monday was one of those mornings.

It was hard to get out of bed. I only aroused myself, because I had my Monday morning call with the members of what I call my WOW group. I didn’t know it, and this reveals how Lucky I am, but a miracle was on its way to me.

I had the good sense to be honest about my situation, to the old people who phoned in, for our volunteer conversation through the Senior Center Without Walls (SCWW). We have been talking with each other for nearly 2 years. I knew most of them were disabled too. I also know they are old like me, shut-ins too, people on the margin, looking for a little companionship to relieve the isolation most of us experience. I spoke to them about having a grief day, and assuming they had bad days too, asked them what they did to soothe themselves when it happened?

It was a stroke of genius, landing on this topic, because the conversation it stimulated was so poignant and touching, so profound and meaningful that I find myself moved to share some of it with you.  Remember, these are some of the most marginalized and neglected old folks that exist. They are in their 80’s and 90’s, and yet unknowingly they practice some of the purist coping mechanisms that we humans are capable of. For most of these old folks this was the first time they had ever talked about anything like this.

The conversation quickly turned to the issue of connecting with others or not. For many people, a bad day, defined differently by different people, led to withdrawal. For some it led to reaching out for contact. Other strategies emerged; these included food, chocolate, praying, reading the Bible, family, gratitude and humor. Not everyone could practice all of them. Some of the most poignant sharing came from those currently living on the edge and teetering from the heaviness of great uncertainty.

It was a good discussion about a significant difficulty. But, then it veered off and became a compelling, even inspiring conversation about self-love. One women spoke up, somewhat apologetically, and recounted a recent fall. She told of laying on the floor, checking herself out to see if any part of her was broken. She felt the wave of fear break over her. She managed on her own to get up, and go on with her life. What she wanted to share was what happened later. At some point, she stopped, and felt for herself, and began the most significant part of picking herself up. She spontaneously visualized herself laying on the floor, and extended to her broken fearful self, all the love and compassion she could find in herself. She reported that she had mobilized her own heart, and the love she had received from others, on the behalf of her own human-ness. The silence on the line indicated how much the group was affected by what she shared.  She reported holding herself, and captivated all of us.

This recounting can never capture the poignancy and vulnerability of that resonating moment, but it served to remind me, that I had known such a time in my own coming to terms with my fragility. Being human can sometimes be an ordeal — a loneliness so profound, a hardship unendurable, a blessing disguised as a difficulty — a challenge that obscures the opportunity. Her fall brought her heart home.

We all need to know, given this dark time we are living in, that there is always someone to love in the darkness. We all need to know, that the most heartbreaking and fearful circumstances, can mobilize what is best in us. Caring deeply and compassionately for oneself is the heart breaking open for Life, it is Creation carnate. She was apologetic — afraid she was revealing some selfishness — whereas we, the speechless listeners, only wished this kind of love was available to all of us.

It is. There was a time when Xan and I thought this capacity, self-compassion, was the hallmark indicator of elderhood. Since then we recognized that self-loving, of this kind, essentially differentiates the journey from a kind of arrival. Many of the old have discovered this is one of the gifts of aging. It is available to anyone, at any time, but it is those who have borne significant hardship, significant life, who are most likely to know of the effectiveness of self-love as a self-soothing capacity.

An Emergent Strength

I’ve noticed something. A capacity that is important. I completely missed it a couple of years ago, when I was writing The Evolving Elder. Now I think I was hasty, or not yet mature enough, to grasp what strength it takes, and that is available to some, to open up, and meet the world as it is. Because I can experience it now, perhaps I have grown. I want to reflect upon the way vulnerability becomes a strength. Of all the unlikely developments that occur, it seems the most unlikely would be the emergence of strength from a sense of weakness.

Mind you, I don’t think that this particular strength, the ability to meet reality in a vulnerable way, is restricted to elders. I do believe it emerges in response to life experience, but I don’t assume that the rare combination of hardship and the sensibility it engenders comes only to the old. Life is profuse and diverse enough, that anyone can be cast into a situation that grows this attribute. Since, I do think it is a product of life experience, I suspect it is more likely to occur to those who have been around the block most. But, I know Life is capable of generating it anywhere.

Why is this important? Well, first of all, to counteract the assumption that vulnerability is a sign of weakness. Then, more importantly, so vulnerability can take its place in the pantheon of Life’s gifts to we humans. In this case, I’ve come to see vulnerability as an essential quality of emotional, maybe even spiritual, maturity.

The ability to walk into threatening places is not fearlessness — it is rather the capacity to bear pain, fear, and anxiety for the sake of growth. That which grows one, is fraught with these difficulties. Maturity comes with a cost. Initiation always contains its ordeals. If there isn’t enough pain and death anxiety around then only pseudo-initiation occurs. The process might feel good, the words around it may seem on-target, but nothing of genuine spiritual and emotional significance is really occurring. If one doesn’t experience the vulnerability of potentially perishing then one can know that the risk factor is not high enough to generate genuine results.

When I think of how Life has grown this capacity in me, all I have to do is think about the apprehension that rose in me the first time I held, and looked at, my daughter. Then, I knew my heart was overcome with love for what could die.  I felt elation, love, hope, and a painful sense that Life was changing my orientation forever. As a first-time parent, I was thrust into a more exposed, and complex world.

The vulnerability I felt then was very different than the vulnerability that I experienced earlier in my life. Like everyone else I had very human parents, imperfect and sometimes insensitive. I have experienced the vulnerability of being exposed, of being unseen or unheard. All of these conditions cause pain, they leave debilitating holes, and they rain havoc upon relationships. They create a kind of susceptibility, a cliffhanging feeling of immanent peril.

I call it the vulnerability of being small. It takes another kind of vulnerability to be big.

Lately, I’ve come to see the enlarging power of grief. Connecting with the larger process of Life is an audacious thing. It means accepting so much. The pain and vulnerability of existence rushes in, and Life vibrates with uncertainty. A kind of radiant fragility, a fiery susceptibility emanates from the core of it all. What exists, in an explosion of energy, passes from existence. What is, is lost, to make possible what follows. The gains of new life are intimately linked to the losses that make them possible. This is a kind of magnificent vulnerability that is an innate strength. It is in us, a power of the Universe, coursing through our lives, just waiting for the recognition that comes to those who dare be big.

Grief and praise are linked in some cosmologies. For good reason. The vulnerability that is a strength, is derived from an experiential realization of this paradoxical relationship. The hardships of Life sensitize one. They bring home the deepest purpose of suffering — what one losses carves out a gain. Stepping toward this kind of awareness is a courageous act that takes strength, not the kind infused with certainty, but the kind that aches with the uncertainty. Vulnerability is the price of playing in the big league.

Maturity, as I have gotten older, isn’t what it used to be. Vulnerability is an ability, one that amazes me, and infuses me with pleasure.

Forced Growth

I am indebted to a woman who has suffered for many years with M.S., and who is now old, disabled and shut-in. She gave me the words that title this piece, and described an amazingly poignant experience I now want to focus on. She was reflecting, with a group of old people, on the difficulties associated with self-care. She spoke of taking care of oneself in the midst of the very conditions that age and infirmity thrust upon us, then she mentioned how these things had “forced her to grow.” Being the kind of person I am, I heard her, and began to reflect upon what all she meant by that comment. I want to share some of these reflections with you, because I believe they reveal the painful, miraculous and paradoxical nature of human life.

As an older person, I have slowly become aware that things I used to assume, are not the way I had made them out to be. This is one of those learnings, I experience from time to time. Because she was able to give voice to her awareness of forced growth, I was able to take it in. And what I am taking in —  is changing my awareness; awakening me to just how complex and incredible existence is. She basically shared her burgeoning awareness — that the tragedy that befell her — was the very same painful and shocking experience that had forced her to grow.

“Another fucking growth experience.” How often have you heard that expression? How often have you used it? We have the awareness that growth experiences can be uncomfortable and unpleasant, but do we really know that even tragedies like illness, disability and accidents have that same growth potential folded within them?  Out of the fire and ashes, a transformation can occur. That may seem like an abstract possibility for some lucky few, but is it really a possibility for the rest of us? Yes. And here’s why.

For many years she dwelled in the heartache of having her normal life snatched away from her. It was a long time of deep and agonizing loss, of loneliness, of anger and hopelessness. She didn’t know it, for all she could experience was the ache of grief and hardship, but something else was also happening. The very burn of painful loss was delivering a sensitizing awareness; a world was opening, as her familiar one dissolved. The scalding reality of loss carved out a new consciousness.

It took her awhile to recognize it, to believe that something good could come of something so bad. Then, she thought she was crazy for a while. But, eventually, she adjusted, and came to accept the fact that she had become more aware, sensitive and compassionate. Being broken down, by Life, had made her more whole.

What impressed her the most (and me, having gone through my own phoenix experience) was that the changes that took place, had occurred, without any effort or intention on her part (or mine, for that matter). She didn’t change deliberately; rather, she was changed by what she had gone through.

In reply to the question “why,” comes this answer.  There is a kind of molting that human beings go through, sometimes dramatic (like the traumatic experiences we had) but mostly just inconvenient, dismaying and uncomfortable. These “fucking growth experiences” mostly are accompanied by an experience of dread, but they turn out to be blessings in disguise, molting human-style.

Knowing this, which most of us begrudgingly do, doesn’t make the experience more pleasant or endurable. It doesn’t lead to praying for hardship, nor does it mean truly embracing those undergoing this kind of struggle. But this kind of awareness could provide a balm to the fear that haunts human activity. There is a maturing aspect of who we are. We don’t have control of it, but we can rely on it. It is human to molt into shape.

It might be useful to remember this tendency, this aspect of human nature right now. Life has our backs. Sometimes (maybe times like this) things have to get worse, before they get better. Everything has to be in doubt — the possibility of death brings about the possibility of Life. Nature regularly and faithfully forces growth, not out of malice (though it looks that way for a time) but out of a terrible kindness. Forced growth is that terrible kindness, or as Ram Dass calls it, a “fierce grace.”

Considering the possibility that evolution is at my back brings ambivalent feelings.  I like the idea that I may grow just because I am alive, but I am chagrined when I face the existential fact that I may be grown in ways I would not choose. I am always surprised that I am equipped for such vulnerability and adaptation.