Embracing Mystery

I hold little space for mystery. I've come to this awareness. If I can't explain something, I will often dismiss it.  I'll say to myself: “I just don't have all the information. Once I have all the facts, I'll unquestionably be able to solve this problem.”  Except when I can't.  And then I am left feeling unresolved and unfinished, and that is so incredibly hard for me.  I am a person who likes to see something through, beginning to end, and then tie it up in a nice neat bow.

I think mystery and I got off to a rough start though.  Early on in my life I knew someone who would use the concept of mystery as an excuse to not hold them self accountable for their behavior.  This person would not reciprocate initiating phone calls and emails as I would in the relationship. In my frustration, I would again make contact by phone or email, and that person's response would always the same: "that is so strange because I was just about to contact you." They might even add something about a dream they had had recently in which we were together.  Then they might push it over the top and describe the dream using an eerie tone that would suggest I was to be in equal awe at how the universe was working in such “mysterious” ways.  I would just roll my eyes.

I’m sure that early experience left a bad taste in my mouth as far a mystery is concerned. Which is unfortunate, because I know the pho-new-age-mumbo-jumbo is by no means the whole mystery story.

I was recently discussing this with a colleague. She is someone who holds a lot of space for mystery. I was telling her about a couple of recent experiences I had had. The first was a very close encounter with a hawk. The second was a situation of crossing paths with a particular individual at Target after many years. My colleague had several larger meanings attached to my two stories, and I noticed as she spoke my body began to tense up as my resistance to mystery arose to the surface.

It seems to me there is a spectrum for belief and disbelief in mystery. I think folks on one end of the spectrum use language like explanation, theory, formula. Folks on the other end of the spectrum say things like "god works in mysterious ways" and "everything happens or a reason." What's interesting though, is that on both ends of the spectrum there is a rigid concreteness to things. A 1 + 1 = 2 if you will. There is a sense of order and control; two very appealing qualities for human beings- me being no exception.

At the far end of the belief spectrum, I have a coworker who says she would never give a knife or shoes as a gift to a friend. The knife would lead to the friend "cutting off" the friendship. The shoes would lead to the friend “walking out” of the relationship.  I have a family member who saw a grey heron on the same day her loved one died, and she now believes each heron she sees is her same deceased relative coming to visit her.  And I have a friend who tells me frequent stories of sounds that go on in her house at night including lights going on and off by themselves. She believes these are ghosts.

All of these individuals describe these examples as mystery.  And I generally don't agree, but I listen, respectfully.

On the other hand though, at the other end of the disbelief spectrum, there are those who boil life down to pure biological cause and effect.  Sheer fact.  Can I see it? Can I smell it? Can I touch it? Can I hear it? Can I taste it? Which for me, is limited as well.  It does not fully capture the whole of what I experience in this life. 

Take for example a springtime flower like the lilac in my backyard. One could easily walk up to my lilac bush and begin to talk about its Latin name (Syringa) and how photosynthesis operates (which is truly incredible in my humble opinion), and then just leave the lilac experience at that. But that would be incomplete, wouldn't it? To walk up to a lilac bush and not take in its intoxicating fragrance is akin to going to Orlando, Florida and skipping Disney World. The smell of a lilac is like no other, and to lean in to the flower and breathe it in is just heaven on earth- even for those of us who do not believe in heaven.

And it doesn't end there, because let's not forget the color purple. I am smitten for flowers that are the color purple.  In fact the line written in Alice Walker’s book "The Color Purple" felt like it was written just for me. She wrote, "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." I remember in the first Unitarian Universalist church service I ever attended the minister quoted that very same line of Ms. Walker's, and I audibly sighed and thought to myself, "I'm home." Because to me, I've learned that is my experience of mystery. The aroma of a lilac and the magnificent hues of the color purple in nature. To go no further than that. No meaning or symbolism. No botanical  explanation for how color  is formed in a flower petal. Just awe. And not because we can't make meaning or explain how things work. And not because there is not value in doing so at times. But embracing mystery, for me, would be choosing to enter that brief moment of wonder as you inhale the scent of the lilac, and just leaving it there. No symbolism. No definition. Just, "Ahhhhhh..."

So maybe there is another way to approach mystery? Something that falls in between the two extreme ends of the spectrum? Or, to borrow from Buddhist philosophy, A Middle Way.

Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, poet, writer, activist Thich Nhat Hahn suggests a meditation on flowers that helps us with this. He says to imagine or hold a flower such as an orchid.  He then tells us to consider all of the elements that make up this flower, such as: seed, dirt, minerals, rain, and sun.  He then says to consider such aspects as the energy of the gardener who is tending to the flower and the process of growth and evolution itself.  Thich Nhat Hahn reminds us that there is so much more than meets the eye in the formation of the flower, and yet, what meets the eye is such extraordinary beauty. So much beauty in fact, that we put it in the center of tables, in the center of our rooms, to admire fondly- standing as silent witnesses to mystery.

I think the first time I was ever aware of my encounter with mystery actually in the moment it was happening was immediately after the birth of my daughter. She was a perfectly healthy baby girl at birth despite her early arrival, but I had had a rough go. One medical issue, of many actually, was sky rocketing blood pressure that was treated with a 24 hour course of IV magnesium treatment to prevent seizure and stroke. During that time my team of doctors recommended I let me daughter stay in the hospital nursery so that I could focus on resting. But I decided to have her come in every couple of hours to lay on my chest, skin to skin, and continue to try nursing. Of course during the 24 hour treatment my blood pressure continued to be monitored, and it was usually one of the Resident doctors who would give me updates.

About 12-15 hours into the treatment one of the hospital Residents came in to check on me. After asking me how I was holding up with the treatment, she told me a pattern she had been observing on the blood pressure monitors. She said each time my daughter was brought in to me from the nursery and laid on my bear chest to nurse, my blood pressure would come down on its own. And when my daughter would leave again, my blood pressure would go back up. Now when I say "come down," it is not to say my blood pressure was not still high. But given that my starting place was a peak of 185/115, any down at all was exactly what I needed, and it was my daughter's mere presence, in part, that was healing my body.

The Resident's response after telling me her scientific observation was: "wouldn't that be an interesting study?!" And I responded, "yes it would," and I meant it. I think scientific studies like those on increasing wisdom by measuring gray matter in the brain in people who meditate, or studies looking at hope in relationship to cancer survival, as they did in the book "The Anatomy of Hope," is absolutely fascinating.  One of the most famous examples of this type of investigations for me is The Butterfly Effect.

For those of you who don't know, a man named Edward Lorenz worked on something called Chaos Theory and coined the term "the butterfly effect" to help explain what I'm sure is a very complicated scientific formula to us laymen. Wikipedia, the queen site for laymen, says this theory "is the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large changes in a later state." And to demonstrate this, the example is given of the energy created from a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa impacting the conditions necessary for a hurricane to form halfway across the world. Now that is cool right? Completely amazing. As Albert Einstein would say, the "optical delusion" that we human beings carry around with us of separateness is just plain scientifically wrong.

And yet, to take this a step further, I think the people who develop scientific theories like Chaos Theory, or propose studies like my Resident doctor at the hospital suggested, miss out a little too; just as the It's-all-part-of-the-plan-people do.  I think there is something in between scientific explanation and a trite "everything happens for a reason." Something that is only contained in the very moment you are in. In my case, the actual moment of my skin to skin contact with my daughter when I was receiving the magnesium treatment. A moment that you dissolve into.  Neither clinging nor pushing away. Mindfulness.

Sometimes we just have to stand back and say quietly to ourselves, "wow!"  Something takes our breath away directly in front of us, and we just let ourselves be swept away by awe. No drawing meaning or looking for symbolism. No quantifying and theorizing the explanation. As my new Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher Kate says, just "bare, raw experience."

I think sometimes we are drawn to this “bare, raw experience” of mystery without even knowing it. Even in the words we use. Have you noticed how drawn people are nowadays to words that are ancient, or sound foreign? Words that we are told originate from languages that are “holy.” Sanskrit words. Greek words. Latin words. Hebrew words. Native words. Sometimes we don’t even need or ask for the definition to the word which has been given to us. I listen to Gregorian Chanting (Latin), Yogic Chanting (Sanskrit), and Native Flute Music (which sometimes has accompanying singing originating from the languages of one Native American tribe or another). By encountering mystery in this way, through music with words which I do not understand, it forces my thinking mind to take a pause.  In that way I can enter into a sacred space which is less defined.

I had recently shared in this blog that two people in my life recently died. One had her funeral on Friday and my close encounter with the hawk I had told my colleague about happened less than two hours beforehand. In this experience I stood within 5 feet of this majestic feathered creature as it devoured a dinner of fresh squirrel on the grounds of the hospital where I work. Now I could tell you that this hawk was embodying its predator-nature just as, unfortunately, the person who recently died whose funeral I was attending that evening.  I could tell you that less than two months before this event I had cancelled my first ever scheduled close-encounter-hawk-experience just because money had gotten tight at that time, and it was to take place at my local nature center as a birthday present to me. And both statements would be true.

But instead, in that moment, which lasted about 20 minutes, I just stood beside the hawk and decided to try to let all of the words to the stories about the experience go, and just be there. And when I did, I began to tear up. I was moved by pure being.

For me, the hawk encounter brought me back to embracing mystery through the practice of basic mindfulness.  Choosing not to swing the pendulum toward one end of the fact-versus-meaning spectrum or the other. Choosing not to call a close encounter with a hawk a simple coincidence nor a sign of something distilled with meaning.  Maybe god wants us to simply notice. Notice when one thing closely follows another, but not draw any meaning or conclusion to it. Just let it lie.  Would that not truly be the definition of mystery?  To allow ourselves to tolerate bewilderment and awe and wonder.  To not try to always create boxes and formulas to categorize and compartmentalize- whether that be in the scientific method or the astrological signs. To just allow.

I recently received one of my favorite catalogs in the mail that reminded me of a mindfulness practice that helps us with just such a thing. The catalog was the Kripalu Yoga Center Winter Program catalog. I have never actually been to one of their programs but I like to look at the catalog. It is like a R&R Retreat in my mind. I also like the couple of articles  that they sprinkle in there. This one had an article by Stephen Cope. I have written about him before in this blog with reference to his book "Yoga and the Quest for the True Self." In the article he wrote about a suggested Kripalu technique for intentionally entering the moment with a nonjudgmental stance. The acronym is BRFWA. It stands for breathe, relax, feel, watch, allow. He suggests this practice, in this order, to help us practice being present , moment by moment.

Wouldn't this BRFWA practice help us to embrace mystery? It is like taking your hands off the steering wheel and saying I will notice and participate in whatever is presented to me. I will not try to name it or control it or understand it. I will just let it drop in and watch it fade out.  And afterward, I will practice gratitude for whatever showed up that day.

Having said all of this, I certainly do not want to diminish the contributions of folks like Thomas Moore, Joseph Campbell and Marion Woodman who help us to understand symbolism and guide us through the process of meaning-making which is absolutely essential  for human beings, especially in the process of loss and grief.  And we also need people like Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan to help us contextualize our meaning-making within our own historical reality of life, as we know it and see it, in this cosmos. 

So maybe we need a fusion of the two? Not because one is true and the other is not, but purely because a full rich life is infused with symbolic meaning and concrete explanation.  Maybe that fusion is mindful awareness- the synthesis that creates a sum greater than its parts, a middle path. 

I will try to hold this synthesis; though it is difficult in my oh-so-automatic-nature to want a clear-cut black and white answer to things.  But maybe, I will set the intention to do so.  And when  I am camping in the marshes of the shoreline, and I view the splendid beauty of a tall white egret, I will allow my heart to swell with love because I associate the egret with my love for my husband and children.  And at the same time, I will try to not to get caught in the why and how of the timing of the experience, nor dismiss it away as purely the migrating patterns and ecosystem of New England shorelines. I will just stop in my tracks. Breathe. Relax. Watch. Feel. Allow.  I will open to mystery, I will embrace it.  And later, in my private moments, I will reflect on the experience.  With the help of the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Oliver and  Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, and possibly my own. Thinkers and poets and writers who for millennia have contemplated the synthesis of the natural and divine worlds as one.

Going forward I want to allow more space for mystery in this way.  I will embrace it today.

How about you?