Poetry 115: Just This

Just This

(aka Thank You Letter to Garrison and the Meditation Retreat Teachers; aka A Love Letter to Now)

The low clouds moving across the Hudson Valley hills.
The ancient North American river lazily flowing south.
The West Point helicopters and gunshots in the distance.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The sound of the impossibly long train rolling by.
The Seeker who is waking up right beside me.
The aspiration for freedom.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The social mask.
The noble silence.
The guilty feeling for having left my husband and children behind for 5 whole days.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The granite steps.
The ceramic tile.
The wooden door knob that does not allow me to do what I know how to do best:
lock people out.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The castle-like monastery that housed our Brothers and Sisters for the better part of a century.
The aching of my heart.
The awareness that this retreat will come to an end.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The unanticipated benches found throughout the 93 acres of land that come upon you as grace.
The wet dewy grass that cleanses my feet each morning as I move in walking meditation.
The discreet stone Buddha who sits just quietly right outside the main entrance.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The sweet fragrance of honeysuckle on this mid-summer morning.
The steal-cut oats topped with blueberries that fill my belly.
The smile on my lips each time I glimpse another audacious rabbit that lives and roams amongst us.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The slender Pacific sage who drinks her water and folds her shawl as graciously as Thich Nhat Hanh sips his 3 hour tea.
The irreverent, neurotic, tattooed New Yorker who walks quickly into the hall heel-toe, rather than toe-heel.
The mother of all "managers" who oh-so-gently wakes my sleepy body for morning sit before 7 a.m.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The dense humidity of the air that makes every breath a miracle.
The swarms of hungry mosquitos that find my blood most nourishing.
The unrelenting headache  and middle-of-the-night insomnia that is more than I can take.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The rain, turned mist, turned rain that makes our earth greener by the minute.
The moss and raspberries that line the railroad track.
The inch worm sliding across my left hand.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The divine words of David Whyte, Danna Faulds, Alice Miller, & Antonio Damasio.
The respected reverence for the Sutta explained through the modern-day east coast-west coast dynamic duo's universal translator.
The deep desire for my own internal "fire fighter" to not let go a little, but a lot.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The 3rd floor lounge at dawn with its instant Folders coffee and library of books to help us to understand our deepest nature.
The mysterious roommate-stranger who is walking her own spiritual path in silence.
The knowing half-smile of the Dalai Lama who keeps me company as I engage in how-slow-can-you-go.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The salty taste of the cheddar fennel scone.
The echo of the gong at 5:30 to remind us that The Fresh Company has provided yet another nourishing meal.
The understanding that this experience is pure and true while remembering my own dear far-off space and time as well.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The immense golden Buddha with her red lips shining.
The stained glass windows that encircle our sacred space.
The sunlight finally breaking through.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The completely unexpected beauty of bamboo on the northern Atlantic coast.
The butterflies and dragonflies that weave in and out of each mindful step I take.
The siren call of the forest that draws me in every single afternoon and out each evening to watch the fireflies light up my own darkness.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The wild turkey who herds her 8 downy babies away from danger.
The deer who carefully watches our every move from the shadows and safety of the wood.
The frogs who converse in the trees under the night sky.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The day and schedule  neatly laid out before me.
The 2 o'clock movement, awareness and energy in and through our bodies.
The respectful nod to the Zen tradition in our procession of steps that keeps our sangha in geese formation.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The ritual of heart practice to endure self-blessing.
The Brahma-Viharas set to rhythmic chant.
The intuition that the path of Metta is calling me. 

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The left hemisphere.
The right hemisphere.
And the mystical synthesis that manifests as kindness.

This is enough.
I am enough.
Nothing extra.

The moment I press my palms together in front of my heart space to bow in deep gratitude.
The sensation of my forehead kissing the floor in sincere devotion.
The posture. The breath. The radiant stillness of my truest nature.

This is more than enough.
I am more than enough.
Nothing extra.

Just this.

Re-learning Lovliness from Our Children

My 3 year-old daughter kisses me and tells me she loves me probably 30-40 times a day.

And when she's not showing affection with kisses and words, she's bringing me home flowers hand-picked fresh from her grandmother's garden including these that sit just beside my laptop as I write this morning.

Being  so fortunate to have these daily experiences with my daughter has often left me thinking about this poem by Pulitzer Prize winning American poet Galway Kinnell (1927-2014).

Saint Francis and the Sow

                                           

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;   

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch   

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow   

began remembering all down her thick length,   

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,   

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine   

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering   

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Gorgeous.

You see, I am one of those people who is still awakening from "the trance of unworthiness," a concept developed by Buddhist teacher, author and psychologist Tara Brach.

And paradoxically, motherhood has been the rich fertile ground that I have most directly confronted this delusion and where the universe has equally most directly confronted me.

This confrontation came to a head when I was 7 months pregnant with my daughter, and just before delivery (because she decided to make her entrance into the world just 4 weeks later!) I had a flood of insecurities about my own worthiness to parent a child.

In fact, the flood was so great, that I asked to speak with the minister of my Unitarian Universalist Church to get some help with these overwhelming feelings of inadequacy.

Now, I did already have my son at the time, and for certain those feelings of unworthiness were present when I was pregnant with him as well nearly 5 years before.

But what was different was, with my son, I was still too deep in the trance (or delusion) of unworthiness to even begin to notice it.  I had not yet woken up enough to even begin to talk about it.

I see that now. 

Which is why I like what Tara Brach has to say in her book Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, about the process of awakening to our own "loveliness."

Although the trance of feeling separate and unworthy is an inherent part of our conditioning as humans, so too is our capacity to awaken.  We free ourselves from the prison of trance as we stop the war against ourselves and, instead, learn to related to our lives with a wise and compassionate heart...Like waking up from a bad dream, when we can see our prison, we also see our potential.

I also like to think of this religious parable each time my daughter slaps another juice-box-kiss on my cheek, or hands me another dandelion from the yard with the words "I love you" immediately to follow.

A very religious man was once caught in rising floodwaters.

He climbed onto the roof of his house and trusted God to rescue him.

A neighbor came by in a canoe and said, “The waters will soon be above your house. Hop in and we’ll paddle to safety.”

“No thanks” replied the religious man. “I’ve prayed to God and I’m sure he will save me”

A short time later the police came by in a boat. “The waters will soon be above your house. Hop in and we’ll take you to safety.”

“No thanks” replied the religious man. “I’ve prayed to God and I’m sure he will save me”

A little time later a rescue services helicopter hovered overhead, let down a rope ladder and said.

“The waters will soon be above your house. Climb the ladder and we’ll fly you to safety.”

“No thanks” replied the religious man. “I’ve prayed to God and I’m sure he will save me”

All this time the floodwaters continued to rise, until soon they reached above the roof and the religious man drowned. When he arrived at heaven he demanded an audience with God. Ushered into God’s throne room he said, “God, why am I here in heaven? I prayed for you to save me, I trusted you to save me from that flood.”

“Yes you did my child” replied God. “And I sent you a canoe, a boat and a helicopter. But you never got in.”

I have always liked this parable.

However now, unlike the man in the parable, I can see that the "canoe, boat and helicopter" (aka my daughter) are right in front of me to help me re-learn my own loveliness, and now I plan to step in.

May it be so.

Meditation Retreats & Other Deep Dives

Yesterday I was 150 feet underground in a cave.

That's right, an underground cave.

Actually, it was a cave I visited 25 years ago as a teenager in 1993.

And after all these years, it was the same dark, cold (52 degrees fahrenheit), mysterious, scary, beautiful place I remembered it to be.

Here are a few photographs of the cave walls, ceiling and the river that flows through it...

A funny thing happened though while I was walking the underground paths through the darkness and shadows of the caverns, I began to think of the experience of walking in an underground cave as a metaphor for a meditation retreat.

To me, meditation retreats where you spend one or more full days (early morning until late at night) in back-to-back periods of silent meditation, have begun to feel like a deep dive under. 

Where periods of intensive, uninterrupted meditation sessions give the sensation of going underground to an underworld which allows you to penetrate a surface that most of the time is as invisible and unknown as those caves I visited.

Saki Santorelli, Director of The Center for Mindfulness at UMASS, writes of this very experience in his book: Heal Thyself when he discusses the metaphorical (or archetypal) implications for mindfulness meditation and healing from a myth called The Devil's Sooty Brother about a soldier who spends some time in hell after making a deal with the devil.

He writes:

The story is clear about this: to find our way home we must go down. We are asked to move underground, to examine in fine detail the unwanted aspects of ourselves...

Each of us is asked to go down into this underworld, into the darkness, to face our fears, to acknowledge and 'own' all aspects of self, and in this way to be renewed...

Our reckoning with these forces cannot be put off forever, and our willingness to go down-to take 'a good look around hell'- is necessary if we are to regain the fullness of our lives. This is a part of our universal quest, our destiny..

In doing so, we might discover radiance pouring into and emanating from all of our flaws and fissures, illuminating and transforming into 'gold' what has been dark and most feared.

If we refuse this journey, we may never play the music of our own lives. We might never sing the song that is only ours to sing. What a tragedy this would be. For the world needs your tune, remains incomplete without it, and waits, endlessly patient, for your voicing of your song.

Well Mr. Santorelli, I will be "going down into this underworld" tomorrow as I am scheduled to leave for another silent 5-day meditation retreat, and I must admit I'm a little nervous for this deep dive.

It's a different kind of nervous from the first retreat though, because the first time I was nervous about what I didn't know.

What I didn't know about: the place, the people, the protocols, the meals, the schedule, and what I didn't know about myself including: my own meditation stamina, how I'd feel away from my children with very little communication, and whether or not I'd even like a meditation retreat enough to ever want to do it again.

Well, after a few one-day silent meditation retreats and my first 5-day, I now know a lot more about the place, the people, the protocols, etc.  I also know more about my own meditation stamina (not too bad) and the fact that I do like retreats enough to do more.

But that's not all.

I also now know that when I engage in extended periods of meditation my physical body begins to tell her stories of the last 40 years--the good, the bad and the ugly--in the form of body sensations, long forgotten memories and intense waves of emotion.

It is a time when, as Mr. Santorelli states, I get to "take a good look around hell."

I know this is not a bad thing, and I absolutely do not judge my meditation experience in a negative light when these stories begin to unfold in what may be the 6th hour of the 3rd day of retreat.

I actually trust them completely.

Probably because I have been very heavily influenced by the work of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist who has extensively treated, written about and researched on trauma with a specific attention to the potential role of yoga and mindfulness in the healing and recovery process.

I first read Dr. van der Kolk in 2003 while in school for clinical social work and immediately felt a deep resonance and kindred spirit in his work.

He had not yet published his now very famous book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma yet, but he had published an article in 1994 called "The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and the Evolving Psychobiology of Past Traumatic Stress."

For those of you who have not yet read anything by Dr. van der Kolk (or heard him speak, which is also amazing), here is a little sampling of his writing from his book The Body Keeps the Score:

We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present.

If Darwin was right, the solution requires finding ways to help people alter the inner sensory landscape of their bodies. Until recently, this bidirectional communication between body and mind was largely ignored by Western science, even as it had long been central to traditional healing practices in many other parts of the world, notably in India and China. Today it is transforming our understanding of trauma and recovery.

In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.

As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.

Mindfulness not only makes it possible to survey our internal landscape with compassion and curiosity but can also actively steer us in the right direction for self-care.

In our studies we keep seeing how difficult it is for traumatized people to feel completely relaxed and physically safe in their bodies...A major challenge in recovering from trauma remains being able to achieve a state of total relaxation and safe surrender.

Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.

Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard.

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.

Though thankfully by no means as extensive or egregious as the folks I work with at the hospital,
in my life I have had several experiences that have made an "imprint" (to borrow one of Dr. van der Kolk's words) on my body. An "imprint" that, I now know, will only reveal itself after prolonged periods of exquisite silence and stillness.

An "imprint" that in the broad daylight (above the ground) can feel as shy and harmless as a deer alone in the woods- one loud noise, one sudden movement, and right quick she will run out of sight, possibly with the person standing just beside me never even noticing.

But then, in the darkness of the underground, this "imprint" can feel like a starved wild grizzly bear who hasn't eaten in days.

(There's a dialectical set of archetypes for you!)

Preparing to go into this 5-day tomorrow, I'm thinking about that wild grizzly bear...

Is she still hibernating? Has she gotten enough to eat yet?  How can I begin to befriend her and help her to feel safe again?

Recently I re-read the 7 attitudes that constitute the major pillars of mindfulness practice as taught in Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. They include:

1.) non-judging,
2.) patience,
3.) a beginner's mind,
4.) trust,
5.) non-striving,
6.) acceptance, &
7.) letting go.

I feel a need to carry these 7 attitudes with me into this next 5 days as strategies for skillfully and compassionately walking through the underground caverns of my heart-mind.

Wish me luck!