Existential Vulnerability by Lucky

There is a natural state, a kind of awareness that everyone experiences. This state, for good reason, is rarely described. I suppose the experience, though very common, is hard to capture with words. I know I feel daunted. The vulnerability that attends existence isn’t felt and experienced the same by everyone.  Words cannot convey fully what happens, or what it is like. In fact, there seems to be a deep ambivalence that attends the experience and protects one from it.

Regardless, of the natural limitations that make this part of being human so impossible to convey, I’m going to try to penetrate that ambivalence enough to refer to this facet of being alive. I know I cannot do more. For, although I think our shared existential vulnerability unites us, I am aware that what we commonly experience does not easily translate into words. The condition that animates us into existence, and attends to us throughout life, often evades us, precisely because of its power in our lives. There is a natural reticence that comes with a deep realization of how fragilely we are created. There is a state of paradoxical nakedness that accompanies each of us no matter how well dressed our station in life. The fact we are alive is so precious and so evanescent!

The vulnerability of existence, the knowledge that each of us is here, and that we did nothing to make it so, somehow sheers from us bravado, and reduces each of us into a quivering mass of meat. This experience underlies everything. Whether a banker, professor, miner, or street person with delusional thoughts, each can be reduced to that same steaming heap of dust. There is humility and a implacable justice that attends this leveling off. All are really nothing, and oddly and inexplicably something. This is the raw state we share.

Recently, I heard someone with a heart pacemaker describe waking up in the middle of the night, with irregular heartbeats, and wondering if this is the moment, the way she was going to die. I have reason to suspect that most of those reading these words have had their own moments like this. Everyone knows our time could end any moment and few of us live like that. I am writing about this, not because I think we should be trying to live out each moment with this awareness. I do.

What motivates my writing today is something quite different, I want to underscore the perpetual fragility of all of our lives. This aspect of what we all share, brings out the compassion in me, and most importantly, arouses awareness in me.  I share the same mysterious origin as others, I am related to them by virtue of the common mystery of our existence.

I find this fact of life compelling. Underneath all of the differences I seem to have with everyone there is this one commonality. We came from the same place. And we all are going back there. No matter who we are, or how well we think we’ve lived and loved, or honored any belief system, the truth seems to be, that we return from where we never really left. All of us, are bounded by the unknown.

Existence is so precarious, uncontrollable, and liberating, that it is a solace to me. It seems that there is a built-in sense of community in our shared sense of vulnerability. I can’t think of anything: ideology, religion, gender identification or not, money, social prestige, intelligence, or particular insight, that overrides.

Integration by Lucky

“The seat of the soul

is where the inner and the outer world meet.

 Where they overlap,

    it is in every point of overlap.”

                                      — Novalis

I don’t know why I dread writing this piece so much. It seems like the assertion of a naturally occurring kind of integrative process would be good news. The overlap, as Novalis says in his brief aphorism, is the “seat of the soul.” For me, the amazing thing is that Nature seems to be guiding us (by that I mean we humans) towards greater integration as we age, and an increased likelihood of achieving the overlap. That realization thrills me, but something else bothers me. I don’t know what it is.

First, I’ll start with the good news. Aging has an unexpected effect. My guess is that the integrative process, which I have come to see as the principle developmental and instinctual thrust of later life, has languished out of sight, because of the blindness of ageism, and the inability to break wisdom down. Nature, never-the-less, seems intent upon ripening human beings into a fuller expressions of themselves. The instinct of integration kicks in during later life in some unexpected ways. The productiveness of commercial and economic activity gives way to the productiveness of increasing uniqueness and becoming more fully oneself. The outside moves in. Creation seems to matter more, in the long run, than the economy.

Devaluing the old, devalues our own future. The human potential movement reveals just how ageist our culture is. The most experienced, most mature, and ripest of us (humans) have been ignored, and worse yet, mistreated. The present is dominated with either/or thinking of the worst sort, and doesn’t acknowledge the benefit of any form of integration. The overlap is not even a possibility in this kind of polarized world, at least not in our human-made world. Fortunately, Life has a larger agenda. Some people escape the gravitational pull of mass assumptions and become more. They are the true elders. Their lives reflect a kind of wisdom that comes from a higher order of integration.

I can fairly easily grasp the warm pleasure that permeates my body when I consider, and notice within, the compelling attraction of freedom and integrity. These by-products of integration have a gravitational pull of their own. But I notice I still feel some trepidation, an unnamed anxiety starts flooding my being, I feel like I’m walking more deeply into a minefield. There is something dangerous here. What could it be?

I’m not sure. It does occur to me, as I dwell on this uncertainty, that pointing out the natural flow towards integration might be construed as an attack upon the other, earlier in development, positions. Am I doing another version of what is so prevalent in this world? Am I saying that polarization is bad? No. I realize that one has to live fully through each stage, to ever even hope to get to anything like the big picture and actual integration. Aging is fraught with lots of difficulty. Not the least of these difficulties has to do with the question about how to hold the past?

It is so hard to talk about the full-range of human development without giving full and essential recognition to every stage in the process. Being human is all of it. There isn’t a point where one is more or less human. All stages are essential to becoming a full human. What does this mean? I don’t know, I’ve only recently begun to grapple with this picture. I thank God, I have lived long enough to actually see this much of the picture. It’s a marvelous vista I get to behold. But it’s a demanding one too.

For instance, I can see that we (humans) are complex. It obviously takes a while for us to unfold fully. And at each step in the process the world looks different and we become capable of different things. None of these developments is all of who we are capable of being. And all of those stages are favored by some, as the way it should be. Human history is full of conflict. Much of it has had to do with asserting the preeminence of one stage of human development (as embodied by a particular culture or individual) over another. I don’t want to add to that misdirected hostility. I’m not asserting that the aged perception is better, only that is different, and that it adds to the larger picture.

I think a big part of what it adds is the perspective gained from integration. Later life is about the coming together of seeming opposites. Inner and outer, as the poet Novalis points out, and also action and stillness, anger and peace, solitude and relationship confinement and freedom. These are seen as opposites, but can also be seen as single points, spaces on the spectrum that overlap. I think our ultimate ripeness is like that, the places were opposites overlap, places of integration. And, each stage in the ripening process adds to that integration.

This is delicate terrain. I can feel the Great Mystery at work. What I think I know, which comprises the discoveries I am uttering here, are my best attempts to give voice to what I couldn’t possibly know. Integration seems to include not knowing. I wonder if it includes the audacity of expressing what one doesn’t know?

Wonder — by Lucky

Like Mystery, everything seems to be shot through with wonder! The spaciousness that flows from these places, within all parts of reality, leaves me breathless. I am disturbed, by living within so much magnificent mystery. Because this is so, I’m finding it harder and harder to think and comment about anything. Probability seems to dictate that no matter how I look, or which way my attention is drawn, I behold a certain amount of wondrous uncertainty. Its all so much, so mysteriously undetermined, while being solid, that I wonder if I can even sensibly write about it.

Reflecting, as I am, on this aspect of my experience, and trying to find words for it, is, no doubt, part of the foolishness I was born with. Somehow, without any intention on my part, I’ve become aware of something so thoroughly palpable because it isn’t there. I mean, rather crazily I’m sure, that what isn’t there is what seems to accompany what is. And, even more strangely, gives it shape, dimension and meaning.

I was never prepared for this kind of perception. And it seems, that uttering anything about it is hopeless. Still, I keep thinking that there should be someway to talk about it. There seems to be something about reality that contains a probabilistic something that keeps everything connected and free. How is that possible! I don’t know, but I have noticed. The perception thrills me, and it leaves me befuddled. I can’t adequately articulate this aspect of my reality, yet it is so awesome I can’t ignore it either. I feel compelled to share it, and at the same time, I am aware that I am not really able to describe it.

So, what am I talking about? I can’t really say. I am trying not to use, over and over again, the words mystery, uncertainty, wonder and unknown. They need a rest, and only dimly refer to what vibrates in the background. I want to convey, and hear other’s perceptions about, this quick-silver facet of each moment, because somehow sharing such befuddlement is deeply reassuring. Maybe that’s what I’m doing here, noticing the wonder that keeps my heart beating.

Anyway, it seems like, in my dottage, this awareness has come on stronger than any past point of my life. I have a mixed reaction to this awareness. I love it. It seems so freeing. I have been released from all assumptions about what is going on here. Simultaneously, I feel a sense of foreboding. It is making me a more eccentric old man. I am being herded by Life into a smaller and smaller corral. Becoming more unique, is hard on a social animal, like me.

All I can say, honestly, is that I am growing more and more impressed by the sense of wonder growing in me.  My life is changing. I can feel it. Maybe this is death setting in, or maybe, I’m finally coming to Life. I no longer can say. Whatever is happening, is unbidden, I know that, or do I, maybe in my childhood, I called in this late-life sense of wonder. All I seem to know now, is that the flow is carrying me, through this canyon, where the walls are made up of a kaleidoscopic experience that bedazzles and befuddles me.

I could say Life is wondrous. That seems true. Putting that awareness alongside of my awareness of how cruel, destructive, hateful and arbitrary Life can be, leaves me on-edge. I teeter between hope and hopelessness. I don’t know why I can see all of this, but I do. Some days it hurts, some days I feel so lucky. All I can really say, and think, is, isn’t it a wonder!?

Isolation — by Lucky

I’ve found myself giving a lot of thought to isolation. As a savvier than normal old person I have a particular apprehension about the nature and effects of isolation. I don’t think it is very healthy for we social animals. I am also concerned about the costs that we all pay living in a cultural world where isolation is normal. Our lack of community, combined with our general distrust of each other, adds up to neglect of certain parts of our shared humanity. This is the source of my dismay. It is also something I can feel.

I’m sort of not really isolated. By that I mean that I have worked on staying connected. I have my disabilities to thank for some of that. I literally could not survive if I didn’t have caring others in my life. I am also a community-builder, one of those people who actually believes community is our natural social habitat. I’ve been a pain in the ass to my friends that way. The upshot of all this, is that I have more people in my life than many single, old people.

When I was making reassurance calls (see my last Slow Lane) someone said to me that I seemed to have lots of contacts, and therefore wasn’t all that isolated. I said at the time, and feel it more strongly the more I think about it, that when one lives in a cultural world where isolation is the norm, being as socially connected as I am, seems-like more than it is. Surprisingly, I feel a sense of isolation, even though I’m more connected than the average bear.

Isolation, it strikes me, is particularly harsh and corrosive to we old people. I’m already disabled, and somewhat used to asking for help, but most folks haven’t adapted to the break-downs that come with elder life. I know how hard that is. I saw a national news story a few weeks ago, which proves this point. It was about an 85-year old veteran who had returned from a hospital where he had just had surgery. He made the news because he called 911 to get help. His refrigerator was empty, and he was in no condition to go shopping. Luckily, one of the 911 operators was a social worker, who bought him some groceries. Imagine, his story made the news, because he’s a veteran.

The story concluded by saying over 40% of people over 65 didn’t have any kind of support system. In my book, we are the veterans. Life kills us all off, eventually. But, in the meantime, let’s all pay attention to how we choose to live. Isolation is our doing. Our social nature is somehow askew. There is so much we could say to each other, if only one could listen. There is so much beyond what we could say to each other. Age takes you down into the moment and dares one to show up.

My circumstances teeter on the relationships that support me. I suppose you have that same vulnerability. Now, these relationships are in good shape. And, they are because I am my own primary caretaker, and I have a deep awareness of the danger of isolation. I still have some influence over my own fate, but if I couldn’t take care of myself (and I’m not far from not being able to do so), the isolation that is prevalent in our social realm is likely to determine what happens. That is part of the backdrop of my life.

So, I think about isolation. I have an on-going apprehension about the erosion of community. Lately, however, I’ve grown more aware of how my friends are being affected. I know health suffers when people don’t have enough social life. But lately, I’ve become aware that the medical community has diagnosed cognitive decline as a brain impairment (a purely mechanical thing, perhaps responsive to brain exercises or medication) rather than addressing the decline in interactions and caring. Getting together, doesn’t reduce memory loss, but does put it into a healthier context. Old people who are more connected live a different quality of life.

This issue is probably too vast for one of my Slow Lanes. But, the level of isolation we modern humans live with, is part of our lifestyle being out of balance. I think that the speed of Life we live with, amounts to passing each other by.

Not only that, I think the speed we maintain also means that we have a tendency to pass our selves by.  I am growing more aware of how many people isolate themselves.  I was ethically concerned, as a therapist by the reliance on the consulting room and confidentiality, because they reinforced social isolation. To me, those things had a tendency to undermine community. Now, I’m finding so many people who have adjusted to isolation. They are prone to isolate themselves rather than get themselves out into the social hub-bub, where they can continue being surprised and growing.

My concern about how isolated I am, isn’t so much about my own personal situation right now, as it is about what is going on all around me. I guess I’m a good example of one being affected by the social environment I’m living in.

I go so far as to say, “a person who is socially cut-off (no matter if by oneself, or larger cultural processes) is not actually a whole person.” That may sound harsh, and perhaps is, overly judgmental, but for all practical reasons, if isolation is allowed to prevail, it is too true.

Showing Up and Letting Go by Lucky

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy."-Joseph Campbell

I’m learning something new about “showing up.” I have spent years practicing the Four-Fold Way, thanks to Angeles Arrien.  In latter years, I’ve counted on the belief that if an elder could just “show up” as him or herself, such a person would change the world. It would happen automatically. Just by daring to be present completely, an old person could embody a different way of being. By “showing up,” one could exemplify choices and reveal possibilities. So, “showing up” has always been a powerful practice. It promised me a chance to serve by merely being myself.

A few years ago, when writing Embracing Life, I realized that the Four-Fold Way held possible synergies that could unlock even more energy. I could see then, what I am learning now. When we combine “showing up” with another practice from the Four-Fold Way, “surrendering attachment to outcome,” or letting go, it becomes something even more powerful. It seems that I can only “show up” so much, if I don’t let go of the outcome. This realization is changing my life, and making it more possible to experience a deeper meaning in Joe Campbell’s words.

An earlier experience of this quote left me feeling angry. I thought, as I read it, that Campbell was advocating for some kind of denial, a spiritual bypass of the agony in our world. I couldn’t imagine “joy” showing up in the same sentence with “the sorrows in the world.”

As I’ve grown older, that earlier attitude began to change. I could feel something like that in what was unfolding around me. Old people were growing happier. They were becoming more comfortable in their own skins, more free and expressive, less emotionally reactive and truer to themselves. At first, I was suspicious of these changes. They seemed to be the changes of the privileged, those who were insulated from the woes of the world. My own increasing happiness was suspect. I was, like my counterparts, ripening into a deeper me, and becoming happier to be me. Life seemed a better place. I wasn’t sure this was a good development.

I wasn’t convinced that my increasing sense of wellbeing and happiness represented an improvement. How could I be happier as the house I lived in was burning? “Surrendering attachment to outcome” seems like a bitter betrayal of the Life on this planet. It is tantamount to letting the house burn down. It may be an acknowledgement of what I’ve always known and haven’t liked; I am not in control. Things go their own way. But, giving in to reality, while a definite relief, seems like abandoning ship, surrendering the garden to the gophers, and becoming complacent at the critical hour.

Here’s where paradox, something I have been learning about, as I have grown older, is important. Letting go lets one be with Life, as it does what it will. The house may burn down, and everything I love may go with it, but I will no longer be denying what is true, which is, that Life is occurring here. I feel an increasing joy because of my obligation to Life. I know about what Joe Campbell calls “the sorrows of the world,” and I feel an obligation to respond to the call of the moment. I can do both.

Maybe once, as a less mature person, I held a black or white belief, that was an either/or way of seeing things, but now, as an aging person, I am privy to a perspective that is paradoxical, both/and, where my joy and the world’s sorrows coexist. I am happier, and that happiness is filled with grief. It is a more mature and complex form of happiness.

The miracle, for me, is that I couldn’t have gotten to this joy if I hadn’t learned to combine letting go (and paradoxically gaining the world) with “showing up.” I am present in this world of perfect imperfection, because I am no longer trying to make it conform to some idea of perfection I hold. I couldn’t have learned this lesson, if Life hadn’t insisted I live on Its terms instead of mine, and “showing up” and letting go, brings me to that lesson.

I’m still learning and happier for it.

*          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *           *          *

For more pieces like this, go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com (2010 thru 2013) and http://www.elderssalon2.blogspot.com  (2014 on)

To hear archived versions of our radio program, Growing An Elder Culture, go to www.elderculture.com

To read excerpts, or otherwise learn, about Embracing Life: Toward A Psychology of Interdependence go to http://www.davidgoff.net

The Wild Kingdom by Lucky

I am a critter, a wild being of nature. I come in the form of a social animal. I’m a complex organism coupled with this environment and unimaginably adaptive. I have evolved here.  I have been endowed by nature with a strange combination of abilities.  My kind is still evolving. I have a complex form of consciousness that pervades nature, but seems to reside with difficulty among my kind. The irony is that many of us think we are domesticated, tame, but I don’t. I think the wild permeates my nature. I know it.

There was a time, it has been much of my life, when I didn’t know how much of a part  of nature, I am.  You see, I grew up among other wild beings that mistakenly assumed that they had slipped the noose of being an animal; a part of the larger whole of teeming Life. I was brought up to believe that I was separate, special, and ultimately tame. Life, in these latter years, has shown me the hubris in me and in my kind.

The years I felt separated from Nature, from my deepest self, were painful, for many reasons, but none more so than the feeling of uncertainty I have had about belonging. I was lost, a member of a species that had lost touch with the dignity and beauty of its place within Nature. I learned the ways of not belonging, of distrust. I suspected others, the environment, Life, and most painfully, myself.

The years have piled up. The heartache of not belonging became normal. Environmental degradation just became a typical aspect of being an unnatural being. Alienation, the emptiness of not belonging, became a way of life. I was savvy enough to know better, but not developed enough to be better. I just limped along cut-off from my own nature, in fact, cut-off from most everything.

Today is different. Oh, the pain of feeling lost goes on! For all too many, Life still seems to be distant and retreating. The blood that surged in the most primitive part of my brain restored my animal nature. In civilized terms I lost a lot, but I was held onto by Life. In animal terms, I was bestowed with an experience of my true nature. Since then I have been fascinated with human nature, aware in a strange way, of my place, as a human being within the whole of Life.

Being an animal amongst humans isn’t easy. Besides the huge distrust that is everywhere, governing too many human relations, there is an insistence, even by those who claim an informed perspective, that the human being is so alienated, that almost nobody but the enlightened soul is capable of becoming one with Nature. I would suggest otherwise, but few will listen. Alienation runs deep now. Fleas know my blood is good, but other humans don’t recognize my animal nature. There is the heartache of not belonging, and the additional but different, heartache of belonging.

Life has taken on a more instinctive feel now. I know things with a kind of certainty that I never had before. Don’t get me wrong. I know I have a kind of pretend certainty, that comes from the arrogant, hubristic mind I developed to protect my self in the detached world I had lived in, but now, when I meet some new person on the trail, its like I have smelled their butt. I know who I can trust and why.  I can walk into a room filled with other human beings, and sense how things are going.  I have reason to believe these are innate aspects of my own human-animal nature that have been with me all along, but have been overlooked in my rush to become civilized.

Ageing is deepening this sense. I believe my proximity to death and Life are ripening me. They are aiding my process of returning to my true nature. As I, like many old people, become more unconventional and less defined by the larger culture, I find myself, growing wilder. With greyness has come a kind of freedom that one only has in the wilderness. I like it; at last, I’m getting to be what I am.

My inner life is blossoming. The process of being a civilized animal held me by focusing enormous stakes on surfaces. I have escaped the bondage of roles, rules, and of having to preserve myself as an economic being. Now, that which has always been within me is bursting forth. It’s like spring in a high mountain meadow. The true part of my true nature is welling up from within. I like this development.

All in all now, when I am with a group of humans and we are sharing some kind of project, I know that I am in the midst of wild things. I am on vision quest in the human wilderness. I am excited, humbled and thrilled to have returned to the herd, an elder, savvy and wild, because nature made me this way.

Life is the Teacher — Lucky

“Cultivating an inner life is a radical act today. And it is not as simple as it once was. There was a time when there were not so many workshops, seminars, CD’s and books that directed inner growth. Even more than today, we were left to our own devices. It seems like we’ve made progress, it seems like we live in a world were inner life is readily supported. But, all too often, the easy availability of these options only perpetuates the illusion that the real difficulties of life are optional. Learning is obscured.

Life is the real teacher. Experience is the real purveyor of knowledge. True self-building, real spiritual and psychological development, comes from living in the cauldron. Life graces us with the limitations that can convince us, because they are so challenging, that we are truly living and part of a larger drama. The roles we play in that drama are seldom defined by us, but the way we play them is. Self-building is complicated by virtue of the fact that we don’t get to solely decide what roles we want to play. Life never abandons us, that is the good news, but Life looks after its own, and in the process asks things of us. That is the more complicated news.”  (from True Things an unpublished work of David “Lucky” Goff)

It is ironic to me that I’ve gotten reintroduced to what I already know. This, apparently, is part of the “complications.” I, as the author of Embracing Life, have had to be reintroduced to how much influence Life has, and to how much self-deception I harbor. I have put this perception, which came to me as Life worked me over, someplace where I couldn’t forget it, but nor could I remember it. I think it was just too hot to handle or, it was too far over my head.

I have felt relieved to know that the winds of evolution, personal and transpersonal, are at my back. But I haven’t been so pleased by what is being asked of me. I haven’t wanted to be the one who faces the misdirected attempts I, and others, have made, ostensibly, on behalf of growth and maturity. It would be enough, to just feel elated by the recognition that Life is providing me with — all the raw materials and experiences I need to grow an authentic and original self. I think I am so slow taking in this reality, because there is some part of the music I don’t want to face.

I guess I’ve grown attached to the idea that I’m the Captain of my own soul. I like thinking that if I just do the right practices, enough, I can reach some kind of enlightenment. I don’t think I’m alone in desiring this. It seems to be very human. Although, I am stunted and hurt by this belief, I want to believe that my very human effort is enough. Maybe, I’m still catholic enough to want to believe some other human is going to save me. I’ve looked to others for spiritual guidance, teaching, good therapy, and a sense that if I could just get it right, I could feel good about my self and this life. While these efforts have brought some short-term relief, they have also contributed to the depressing belief that I am somehow flawed, because relief doesn’t last. You’d think I would be glad to be free of that belief. I am, and I am not.

I am not, because facing the truth that Life is the Teacher, makes it possible for me to see that all the years I devoted to being a teacher, therapist and helping professional served more to maintain an appeasing kind of misdirected effort towards consciousness. I see now, that I mainly camaflouged anxiety, by providing a presumed path that reassured others. I provided a well meaning, but never-the-less misdirected guidance. I now can see that that same tendency prevails everywhere, and is widely in demand.

Life teaches us, not so much through helping professionals, but more through unexpected experiences. Teachers can concoct great exercises, spiritual guides can offer good practices, but none are able to customize a growth regime like Life.

Life is the Teacher, shaman and coach, that delivers in an idiosyncratic and thoroughly original way. I may want it to be my power, or in someone else’s hands, but Life does Life’s thing so thoroughly and well, that it really doesn’t matter what I want. Life has my back, even when I don’t, and think I do. Accepting this reality is harder than it looks. To honor this new truth, I have to accept that misdirection is part of how I am taught. Life is the most interesting and unruly teacher I’ve ever been exposed to. I am alive at Life’s discretion, and I am being provided with just the experiences that make me who I am.

Life teaches me, and I am slowly catching on. The view of my life, Life’s life, is changing.  We are collaborating to create something original that can serve. I am along for the ride, and although I’m ambivalent, I’m glad I can now see more fully the fruiting that is happening within me.