Rosh Hashanah, finding ground and rootedness

Not until after this sort of breakthrough did I realize it was Rosh Hashanah.

The overwhelm has not really gone away but I notice in it a sort of longing.  Suddenly early this evening I found myself inexplicably attracted to Judaism and thinking, I need to find a synagogue. I want to remember my roots — which to some extent are Jewish. I feel like Judaism is really the only way I can connect with my roots both culturally and spiritually. Catholicism of my French and Italian ancestors is not so much rooted — it doesn’t feel as deep or connected to heritage, or like something I could really celebrate.

But with Judaism, not only do I feel rooted, I feel grounded. At least that’s my sense of it so early on. Now, Judaism in some ways reminds me of the Native path of walking in beauty, and the Buddhist appreciating what is — my idealized image of Buddhism is slowly sipping tea out of a nice mug while sitting by the river. Really what I appreciate about so many traditions are simplicity and apprecitation of beauty and finding power in that simplicity. The notion that the simplst action can change the world. That attracts me to Buddhism and also to Judaism.

I have felt vaguely Christian all my life but have never been quite sure what that meant. I didn’t know what it meant to live it. I love the Gospels but I need more than just following Jesus’ model. I needed some kind of active, deliberate practice — actions beyond simply guidance about how I should live my life. I needed something I could feel, guidelines if not strict rules regarding observances that might help me connect with the divine.

I like meditation and sweat lodges because they are participatory and creative practices. I haven’t really been able to find that in Christianity. Communion is about the closest to that that I can think of, but Judaism somehow fits me in ways other traditions do not, if not necessarily in terms of belief, then in terms of attitude and approach. Washing one’s sins away in a river… so many sensual aspects of Jewish life and ritual.

I think the sacredness of the Christian sabbath has often been lost by many, but in Judaism, it still seems very much alive, and not something done for God to be pious, but for our own enjoyment. Shabbat is a treat. The power of words and actions in Judaism, as I said, is beautiful to me. A sense of our innate goodness as people which doesn’t necessarily find itself in Christian tradition is important to me. The importance of awe in my life is very Jewish; the importance of enjoying and celebrating what is here to be enjoyed and celebrated.

Buddhist practices are valuable to me, but something is missing there: to be a Buddhist wouldn’t necessarily help me live every day in awe and wonder. So much of it, when it gets down to the no-self and all of that, is a bit confusing to me. It isn’t my culture, either. i suppose what is missing there is a place for my longing and a psychological approach that at least in some way resonates with my Western psyche. I love Buddhist practice, but to make it my entire life, there are certain needs of the Western psyche — or at least mine — that Buddhism doesn’t seem to address. Particularly, Buddhism just doesn’t give me those cultural and hereditary roots.

I’ve thought lately about spiritual community — that, in many ways, a reason to get involved in a particular tradition, for me, would be that I resonate with a community of people. I thought about Christianity. People like Thomas Merton and Howard Thurman and Matthew Fox could inspire me to be Christian but where are the communities built on their visions?

For a long time I have had nothing to say about who I am spiritually — quite a few years – it used to just overwhelm me and remind me that I didn’t know anything. Every time I tried to write about it, it came to nothing. But now I think I may be getting somewhere. I’m able to talk about it — not precisely about what I believe about the nature of the divine, but about the nature of the relationship I seek to have with the divine.

The Digital Transcription Service

I haven’t posted lately as I’ve been working on getting a small transcription business off the ground. It’s the Digital Transcription Service and we specialize in the transcription of digital audio relating to sustainability, personal growth, and human rights. We’ll transcribe just about everything but we find this particular focus most rewarding. So far, our clients have been awesome. I love the opportunity to network with such interesting people. We’ll transcribe everything from focus groups about how to best bring bicycle infrastructure to a city, to radio interviews about therapeutic journaling, to podcasts about human rights. Our website is also going to host a sustainability blog, and it will be a resource on right livelihood: how to make a living and simultaneously do good in the world.

Our website is going to undergo a lot of changes in the next few weeks so stay tuned. I’d actually like the blog on my website to be this one — bringing a sacred dimension to business! – but I’m not sure yet how to do that.

On Hopelessness

I wrote this meditation on hope and hopelessness on 9/11/2007 and a friend suggested I post it anywhere that’s appropriate.

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

In some ways we obviously minimise the challenges that our planet faces, but I think some of us who are acutely aware of these challenges take an alarmist attitude that, while understandable, may be based on fear and conditioning as much as actual knowledge about the forces shaping the future. I’ve met people who are absolutely convinced that we’re screwed. It is obvious to me that humans are doing some insane and stupid things that seem capable of throwing the earth metaphorically (and actually) off its axis, and that it’s necessary that we take immediate action to reverse these trends, but our knowledge about how royally we’re screwing up doesn’t equate to knowledge about how complex dynamic forces will actually unfold and shape the future; how risilient nature is when put to the test; how resilient humans are when put to the test. The view that we’re doomed and that our problems are insurmountable is just that, a view — and others with the same information come to different conclusions. Some people in sustainability circles seem to look at the mainstream structures and bemoan, “If only you had the truth,” forgetting that, really, they don’t have the truth, either. No one posesses the full truth; and humility as to our not knowing is important. We may see the pain others are causing, but we must acknowledge that we don’t have the truth, either. Yes, we may be closer to it, in some sense, but we don’t have it. Jesus said on the cross “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” What did they not know? Perhaps they didn’t know what suffering they brought to themselves in the act of killing another. Perhaps they didn’t know they were crucifying the Son of God. But even those who cherished Jesus and saw the cruelty of the crucifixion did not really know what was done. They did not and couldn ot know that in this event lay the salvation of humanity. And the full meaning of that is a mystery; simply, we don’t know how spirit moves, and that’s a blessing.

This isn’t to say that we should dismiss theories such as global warming because we “just don’t know”; rather, we should take them very seriously, and accept the worst-case scenario as a precautionary principle of action. There’s a concept from engaged Buddhism: committed action, non-attachment to outcome, which is extremely powerful and incredibly difficult to put into practice. I think that the extent that one is able to put this into practice is the extent to which we’re truly living. There are so many examples in my own life where attachment to outcome prevents a fully engaged, present, committed action. I’m afraid of losing love so I’m unable to be fully present for it. I’m afraid of death so I’m unable to be fully present for life. It seems that truly committed action — action that comes from our core and deepest vitality — can help us achieve non-attachment to outcome; and non-attachment to outcome can help us learn committed action. I’m getting some chills at having just made this connection; but it’s just as Morrie Schwartz says in the wonderful book Tuesdays with Morrie: “Learn how to live, and you’ll know how to die; learn how to die, and you’ll learn how to live.” Learn to be a little less attached and we can be more present and committed. Learn to be more present and committed and we can be a little less attached. That is, we can truly live; and be free. This is a powerful exercise, from the Maverick Sutras, that I should probably make it a habit of practicing. I originally heard about it from Gil Fronsdal, and here it’s put so well. Simply, remind yourself every now and then, “I don’t know.” “Not-knowing is unlimited; knowledge is limited. Not-knowing is the ground of mystery, the land of wonder; a haven to be visited daily. It is the source of creativity, inventiveness, and tranquility all in one. Not-knowing is the only place from which freshness can emerge. Of all the knowledge which you consider ‘yours,’ how much is merely the leavings, the conditioning of others? What have you truly learned on your own, through observation, intuition, enquiry? Return to not-knowing! Rest there a while. Expect nothing. Then emerge gently to view the world with fresh eyes. Not-knowing. Go there daily! This is meditation, rejuvenation, the source of creativity, even therapy, all rolled into one.”

Those with a spirituality too focused on the earth may suffer from hopelessness; but for me bringing my awareness to the cosmic dimension of spirituality — gaze at the stars with wonder and maybe you’ll know what I mean — is an anodyne to this hopelessness. To quote once again that amazing poem by Patricia Lay-Dorsay, “But it’s OK if sometimes we’re out of balance because the Universe goes on whether we’re along for the ride or not.” She continues, “Nothing humanity can do will disrupt the perfect balance of the Universe. We are not that powerful. Even though our choices can throw certain elements like climate species survival land and water ecology out of whack nothing we can do will throw off the beauty of the Universe itself.” This to me is a perfect example of balancing our caring for the earth with a cosmic perspective that cannot possibly allow us to be stuck in hopelessness. The entire poem, which I think I will get into the habit of reading every day, or at least every week, in order to allow its wisdom to seep into the fibers of my being, can be found here. I think a person has to have a pretty developed cosmic spirituality in order to deal in a dignified way with the despair one encounters everywhere if one takes the time to look at world events and the consequences of our way of life; and I’m coming to the conclusion that I don’t want to unwittingly open for anyone a door into awareness of the challenges we face who lacked such a spirituality (or some mature — uninhibiting of actualisation — way of coping.) Of course, deep pain is often the yeast of an expanded spiritual sense; but I see people who are lifeless, because they’ve cared so much, and have given up hope because they think they know. It’s very uncomfortable to be around such people.

For a long time Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has been for me a model of this sort of cosmic spirituality. It’s a perfect allegory for modern times. As Gandalf says: “Despair, or folly? It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.” For Gandalf reminds us, “Even the wise cannot see all ends.” Some people delude themselves with the strength of their conviction that the future is hopeless. They see the end beyond all doubt, or they think they do. Perhaps they’re afraid to live in uncertainty and would rather choose hopelessness over that. In any case, I’m awed by Tolkien’s work, and its spiritual relevance for modernity. I think I’m going to ask a friend to read the Lord of the Rings with me; it brings me spiritual nourishment, and the idea of reading with someone makes me happy.

We talked about this on Saturday: our focus on the negative, our despair, may very well be a product of our cultural upbringing. To seek out the good that is happening, and to believe that such good things are possible, is a rebellious act. I wonder: how do other cultures deal with despair? What are the psychological processes that various cultures have used to come back into balance? How do existential issues manifest themselves cross-culturally? I haven’t begun to explore these questions, but I’m thinking about this possibility: even the despair that leads us to deny the possibility of a positive future may be culturally conditioned; and, perhaps moreso, the way we relate to our feelings of despair may be culturally conditioned. I’m aware that in certain situations and around certain people, I am more connected than despairing; and in other situations and around other people, it’s all but obvious that hope is dead. In both situations I’m exposed to the same information, so why is my attitude, and hence my orientation towards hope, so very diffent in these two sitautions? What this says to me is that hope and hopelessness don’t originate in facts. A person who is hopeless isn’t so because of the facts before her. Hopelessness does not derive from the intellect. It’s influenced by something more subtle: our orientation towards life; the orientations of those around us; our spirituality; what we focus on; our cultural conditioning; our general mood prior to being exposed to the information. Here’s my hunch: put me in a room of ten people discussing global warming, peak oil, or species extinction who look at the facts and determine the situation is hopeless, and I’ll feel pretty hopeless, too. But put me in a room of ten people discussing the same information, but who are hopeful and have a spiritual strength with a cosmic reach, and I’m likely to feel pretty hopeful (nay, a better word: reslient) as well. I may assume the reason I’m hopeless because of the facts themselves, but really, it has a lot less to do with the facts, and a lot more to do with the people around me (among other situational and existential factors) than I give credit; I don’t want to admit that I am so easily influenced, so I think it’s the facts that have made me hopeless. I can remind myself, when I feel despair and hopelessness, that these feelings are not me. What’s more, these feelings aren’t even in the facts themselves; they’re just interpretations. Our hopelessness is not a product of the facts but of the orientation we develop within ourselves; which is influenced in part by the people we surround ourselves with, the millieu of our entire culture, past experience, and maybe even the fact that it’s a cold and dreary day. In the end, we really don’t know. And that’s powerful.

There’s so much more I want to write, about a lot of things, but I think that’s the end of my ruminations on hopelessness. The world will never be without suffering and it’s not meant to be; we’ll always be disappointed if that’s what we’re expecting; but the universe is beautiful, and the source of our earth’s beauty is something we can never destroy. Somehow I’ve been able to write this in a way I haven’t been able to write in years. It feels pretty good. There are many more things I have to say — and hopefully I’ll be able to say them in a way that feels as good as this feels — but this is what I’ll share, for tonight.

The depth of prayer and grace: everyday life as casual banter with God

I haven’t written in months because I have been in the very midst of awe. I’ve been in the midst of some of the most astounding and baffling synchronicity I’ve ever known, a synchronicity that seems always to be guiding me in precisely the direction I need to be guided. I’m not quite sure how to begin describing it to someone who has never experienced this before, but I think I can offer some guidelines for someone who might sense that this is what they need: first ask for it, pray for it in earnest; then keep your eyes open and watch for anything that suggests something to you, anything that might be a sign; finally, follow your heart, trust, and surrender. I’ve learned about awe these past few months. I’ve learned about grace. I’ve been reading a lot of Paulo Coelho lately, because the magical way the universe functions in his books, is precisely how the universe now seems to function for me on an everyday basis. That famous quote from The Alchemist never felt so true: “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

My life has been so full of awe that I’ve written all about it in my personal journal but somehow neglected this one! What I’ve written there, and I say this in the humblest way I know how, seems to be divinely inspired. I believe we are all capable of writing that is divinely inspired, but lately, I feel it acutely: what I write seems to flow through me from something deeper and wiser than my conscious self. Perhaps I will share some of my entries from that journal here. I feel this writing needs a wider audience…

I’ve learned a lot about the patterns we find in our lives. Often life’s transformative power is greatest when on the surface it feels the most stagnant. Life had been stagnant for me. I wondered whether anything new might emerge for me, but all the while, something was indeed moving beneath the surface. I was struggling with an existential loneliness. And yet, the universe seemed to be communicating with me in deep and casual ways, and I couldn’t help but attach meaning to this. The synchronicities were so incredible that I couldn’t help but feel connected. I couldn’t help but cry at such frequent and beautiful manifestations of grace.

I’m not sure when it started. Over the summer I attended an alternative education conference in Troy New York that helped me transform and discover so much about myself. Part of what I needed to learn there is that oppression is not inevitable; that there is always the possibility of living with hope and dignity. That weekend unfolded almost magically, and at the end of it, I sat on a dock on the Hudson River. I poured the waters of that river over my head, and over my heart, in gratitude. I simply meditated on the coolness of the river, this bearer of life, and gave thanks. I prayed. It was not until this year, perhaps, that I discovered how transformative prayer could actually be. I prayed that I might continue to find that which “reflects me, helps me feel my life, protects me, cradles me and connects me to everything” (from, one of my favourite songs, The Hudson, by Dar Williams). I couldn’t have imagined a better weekend, but just then, I looked out onto the water and saw the most beautiful rainbow. There were no rain clouds in sight, but I saw a rainbow. It lasted a few minutes, and I stood there incredulous. This was grace…

The weekend was so transformative but it took me quite a while to integrate everything. I became quite sensitive to everything. One night I felt particularly lonely — existentially lonely — and a friend suggested I look up at the stars and ask the universe a simple question: “What’s up?” Beware the power of such words. He told me that, when he asked this simple but powerful question, his life became simultaneously easier and more difficult, but it aligned him with exactly where he needed to be. So, at first fearful, I got up the courage to ask this powerful question of the universe. Right away the universe seemed to respond to me in a new way. It was bizarre: I’m not sure whether I actually expected anything to happen. Life started moving so fast. Synchronicity became “synchronicity on steroids” as I termed it. Life propelled me in the most unexpected directions.

A few days later, I took a late night walk, and hoped that I might encounter a shooting star. Already on this particular night, everything seemed to come together, to connect me — so many synchronicities I can’t begin to remember them all — but I especially remember walking through a brightly lit parking lot, not even looking directly at the sky, when I saw a bright shooting star dash across the horizon. I couldn’t have missed it. I cried that night. I felt a divine embrace. I knew I wasn’t alone. That night, during the walk, I listened to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High for the first time: “You can talk to God, hear the casual reply.” The synchronicity around that wouldn’t be complete until weeks later when I discovered, while sharing this story with my new love, that the previous line was: “I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky.”

Grace. It happens all the time. It is most glorious when it happens in nature with rainbows and shooting stars and waterfalls and wind and rain and lightning. When we lose nature we lose such a significant source of grace. What I have shared here are just some of the bare essentials of my experience over the last few months that have put me on a new path forever. If you were to look closer, you’d see a fractal: divine guidance and synchronicity at every level of detail, from the most trivial, to the most cosmic. We are all capax Dei; capable of God.

I had kept a journal for over seven years. I hardly ever read back through older entries, reflecting on my past, but now I felt so connected to mystery and to cosmic patterns in my life, that I felt compelled to explore my past in order to understand my present circumstances. So, I undertook a project of reading and reflecting on my journals from the very beginning. And an incredible project it turned out to be.

On the morning of November 5th I wrote:

“My hope had always been that when I found a girl to share life with we would on some special day sit side by side and read through my old journals together. This was not a narcissistic wish — I would with as much delight sit through her journal — but rather, it was a desire to offer the gift of my past to a special person, so that we might relive together what we had experienced apart. Over the last few weeks I’ve felt an inner imperative to begin exploring my journals, even though I happen to have no one to share them with, and when I did, I discovered that I’ve forgotten so many of the details, and that the story of my life has been beautiful. I realised I had been neglecting my past. Disowning it. But my past is to be loved! To disown my past is to disown myself, because my past is here — the entire journey converges in this very moment. Without it I would not be me. Learning where I came from tells me so much about who I am.”

It was simply the right time to confront my past — with or without a love by my side. The process amazed me. My past was not a random collection of events but a beautifully-woven tapestry that had pattern and meaning behind it. Again, November 5th: “I see in so many ways that my life has a trajectory, a purpose, and I feel so… ecstatic… when I see so clearly in my own life what Billy Jonas sang: “you do what you do what you do and the light comes through.” It does. And I’m seeing meaning in the most “insignificant” events in the past that were symbols of my journey, clues to who I was to become. I’m seeing my life with a mythic consciousness. Everything has meaning!!! …. It feels like I’m going through years of therapy all at once. I’ve forgotten so many of the influences that shaped me. Reading through my journal, I actually love myself more. It’s blowing my mind. I read my past entries and suddenly who I am makes sense! What I value in life makes so much sense — I see myself becoming myself — and I see the experiences in which these values originated …. Rereading my journal, I have more self-esteem. Maybe it’s temporary. I realise that some of my self-esteem and confidence issues are carried over from various times in the past when I was a very different person! It doesn’t make sense to feel this way about myself because of something that’s no longer part of my identity!”

It was that very day — November 5th — that I stumbled upon the girl that I would be able to read through my journals with, a girl that I knew I loved, from the very first sense of presence, and she knew she loved me. Those intuitions have been confirmed, in the following weeks, beyond my wildest expectations, and I never knew such a connection was possible.

When I told my friend — the one who suggested I ask the universe what’s up — that all this synchronicity had culminated in literally stumbling upon the love of my life one day, he responded: “ask and ye shall recieve, well, at least sometimes……prayer is VERY surreally powerful when it works. it can seem as if creator guides us, especially those who are doing its work. ask to be put in the right place, and you often are put there. and the road can be rocky and transformative, but always growth producing.”

I have much to share, but a bit at a time…

For now, here are the lyrics to the song which helps me connect with the meaning and depth in life every time I listen to it:

The Hudson
by Dar Williams

If we’re lucky we feel our lives
know when the next scene arrives
so often we start in the middle and work our way out

we go to some grey sky diner for eggs and toast
New York Times or the New York Post
then we take a ride through the valley of the shadow of death
but even for us New Yorkers, there’s a time in every day
the river takes our breath away

And the Hudson, it holds the life
we thought we did it on our own

The river roads collect the tolls
for the passage of our souls
through silent silver woods and flowers and snow,
and past the George Washington Bridge,
down from the trails of Breakneck Ridge,
the river’s ancient path is sacred and slow

And as it swings through Harlem,
it’s every shade of blue
into the city of the new brand new

And the Hudson, it holds the life
we thought we did it on our own
I thought I had no sense of place or past
time was too slow, but then too fast
the river takes us home at last

Where and when does the memory take hold,
mountain range in the Autumn cold
and I thought West Point was Camelot in the spring.
If you’re lucky you’ll find something that reflects you,
helps you feel your life protects you,
cradles you and connects you to everything.
This whole life I remember as they begged them to itself
never turn me into someone else

And the Hudson, it holds the life
we thought we did it on our own

And the Hudson, holds the life
we thought we did it on our own

Buddhist Psychology: a different way of thinking about ourselves

Western psychology tends to speak of the unconscious. There are notable exceptions — even James Hillman, whose work is with imagination and archetype, never mentions the unconscious — but since Freud, the unconscious has played a major role in the way we think about and understand ourselves. I tend to think of the unconscious as a vast inner storage space that contains all my memories, my pain, my desires, my habits, and everything else I’m not explicitly aware of at the moment, and perhaps will never be. I’m sure I’m not alone in forgetting that the unconscious is merely a model, just one metaphor describing how we seem to function. We speak of the unconscious as a realm, a place deep within us, and Freud spoke of dreams as the “royal road to the unconscious.” The unconscious is a place, an aspect of ourselves, and we have a tendency to identify with it.

If the unconscious is a place, it makes sense to say, “There is so much anger in me.” It makes sense to say “There is so much sadness in me, how can I ever be happy? I need to get rid of that sadness somehow before I can ever be happy…” We have a tendency to think of the unconscious as a storage space, as containing things, whereas Andrew Olendzki suggests that “the foundation of Buddhist psychology is a process view of personhood.” In the Buddhist view, anger simply arises and disappears, arises and disappears. Sadness arises and goes away. Phenomena come and phenomena go; the sadness and anger are not “always there.” That perception probably causes a lot of suffering. We may even feel happy, but as soon as we remember how “messed up” we are, how much pain we have “in there,” we convince ourselves that actually we’re not happy, and the happiness we were experiencing just a moment ago is nowhere to be found. We tell ourselves, “This isn’t the way I really am. This won’t last. I’m not a happy person. I’m an anxious person,” and so we fail to appreciate the moment of happiness. The happiness goes away! Buddhism tells us that one of the main causes of suffering is the attempt to cling to identity. We’re always reminding ourselves of the reasons we shouldn’t be happy. We think we can’t be happy because we identify with all the crap we assume is down there in the unconscious. As long as we have that story, how can we be happy?

While Western psychology speaks of the unconscious, of this “realm” that one can encounter by traveling down the “royal road,” Buddhist psychology takes a process view and speaks of seeds. Seeds are potentials. We each have within us the seed of anger, of joy, of love, of appreciation, and we can choose whether to cultivate these seeds or not. If we cultivate them, they’re more likely to arise, but the wonderful thing about Buddhist psychology is that, until they arise, they are merely potentials! What matters is the present moment and our experience here and now. Rather than saying “I have so much anger inside of me,” and identifying with that, a Buddhist approach might suggest that, yes, I have great potential for anger, it arises easily within me, but it’s not true that it’s there all the time; or that I am “full” of anger; it arises when it arises, and when it’s not arising, it’s merely a potential. I was sitting in meditation a few days ago and it occurred to me how wonderful this was! At moments when I am not feeling anger, it’s simply not there! The potential for it is there, as it is in everyone, but that’s all. It’s a seed. When I’m experiencing happiness, I’m really experiencing happiness! When I’m experiencing calm, I’m really experiencing calm! The Western mind, trained to think in terms of the unconscious, might think: “Yes, I feel happy now, but deep down, I’m miserable.” A person is likely to water the seeds of misery this way. Too often the stories we tell ourselves, even in the name of psychological healing, water the seeds of misery. We tell ourselves we are a certain way. That we are depressed, that we are angry, that our hearts have been irreparably wounded, that there’s something wrong with us. It can be so valuable to pay attention to moments in our day when we are not depressed or angry. We may want to tell a story about ourselves based on the unconscious, but the Buddhist perspective reminds us, “No, this is happiness. This is the moment. Anger isn’t here right now. Sadness isn’t here right now. Depression isn’t here right now. Enjoy.” Every moment matters. Every moment is an opportunity to choose to water healthy seeds and not water unhealthy ones. Olendzki writes, “[The doctrine of independent origination] elucidates how the present mind moment is influenced by preceding mental states, and how present states condition succeeding moments of experience.” That is, in every moment, we have the opportunity to condition the experience of the next. The seeds we water in this moment affect the next one.

Our experiences of depression or grief or fear might be pretty manageable if it weren’t for the looming possibility that somehow they consume our identity. “I feel depressed now, and I’ll always feel depressed!” We even say “I *am* depressed.” We identify with it and can’t imagine feeling any other way. In meditation we see that one session is so very different from the next, that the constant thoughts coursing through one’s mind are gone just a few hours later and replaced by, say, a sadness, or an excitement, or a calmness, and we come to the realisation that life is always changing. We will never “always be this way.” It may not be that we are depressed, but rather, that an experience of depression is happening to us. I am sitting in meditation with great anxiety, believing I will never again be calm, and the very next day, I’m sitting in meditation, and I’m experiencing a considerable calmness. Conditions change. We don’t think they will, but they do. Eventually we may become aware of our thought — “it will always be this way” — and see it for what it is — a thought. Not certainty. Not identity. A thought. Simply one aspect of our experience in the moment. We have deeper faith (from experience) that despite this thought conditions will change. We learn about impermanence by paying attention to the moment as it arises for us. Each moment is new if we look deeply.

There’s a common misconception about what it means to be “in the moment.” We often think that being in the moment means we can’t have thoughts about the past or longings about the future. In reality, we can’t escape from being in the moment, but we forget that we’re there, and we get entangled in our stories: that’s the problem. The moment is so full and so rich, it contains both the past and the future. When we remember something from our childhood, this is something occurring in the present moment. If we forget this, it can be easy to get wrapped up in that memory; but if we remember that the memory itself is occurring in the present moment, this awareness is enough. More important in Buddhism than the stories we tell about our past or our future or our identity is our experience in the present moment (which, as I’ve said, contains everything.) This very moment, we may be experiencing happiness. We may be experiencing happiness regardless of our awful experiences in the past. There is no need to taint our experience of happiness with stories about how we are not good enough, or how much pain is there, because the fact is, happiness is there now. We can appreciate it, and we can cultivate it. Buddhist psychology is in many ways about not complicating things. There’s a saying that suffering = pain x resistance. One could also say in more general terms that suffering = (pain or pleasure) x (clinging or resistance). We can cling to our happiness, or we can resist it, but either way we create suffering

Buddhist psychology helps us become aware of the subtle and not so subtle ways in which we complicate our experience through resistance or clinging. Rarely do we experience pain as it is: we get annoyed by our pain; we complicate it in myriad ways. Think of the annoyance a fly can cause, crawling on the leg, or buzzing in the ear, and think of how much of that annoyance is of our own creation, is due to the stories we tell about those innocent sensations: a simple tickling on the leg, or a buzzing in the ear! Meditating on insects is a great and challenging way to become aware of the ways in which we resist (or cling to) and thus complicate our experience. “Insects are annoying! How dare they buzz in my ear like that!” The pain we feel isn’t about the experience itself but the story we tell about it: if it were a lover tickling us with a feather (which can feel much the same) the experience might actually be pleasant.

Shoma Morita, founder of the Zen-influenced Morita Therapy, has said: “Trying to control the emotional self willfully by manipulative attempts is like trying to choose a number on a thrown die or to push back the water of the Kamo River upstream. Certainly, they end up aggravating their agony and feeling unbearable pain because of their failure in manipulating the emotions.” Once, when asked what a shy person should do, he gave a one-word response: “Sweat.” This is the simplest, least complicated approach to shyness! Don’t make yourself feel bad about being shy, or tell yourself all sorts of stories about why it shouldn’t be that way; just sweat. This is the Buddhist way: if you’re going to sweat, sweat, and don’t sweat it!

The seventh of the Eightfold Path is right mindfulness. Mindfulness practice is about, first, being aware of our experience without judgement, and second, being compassionate towards whatever we experience. The Buddha has an excellent sermon, on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, which describes “the direct path for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow & lamentation, for the disappearance of pain & distress, for the attainment of the right method, & for the realization of Unbinding…” He speaks of mindfulness as “the direct path!” Indeed I’d be amiss to talk about Buddhist psychology without writing in a little more detail about the psychology of mindfulness. One incredible thing about mindfulness is that being mindful of states of suffering tends to have the effect of decreasing such states, while being mindful of states of joy and happiness and peace tend to increase such states! Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of holding one’s anger like a mother holds a baby. If we can do this, over time, we will slowly weaken the seed of anger within us. We have stories that we are not okay, but we can look deeply, and recognise it as a story. And we can have compassion for this story. As Thich Nhat Hanh might say, “Hello, story. I know you, my friend.” What is this story, really? It is something that’s happening in the present moment. It’s composed of thoughts and emotions and sensations. When we bring such awareness to it, it no longer has such power over us. According to Andrew Olendski, who puts it in more technical Buddhist terms, “The foundation of Buddhist psychology is a process view of personhood. One expression of such a view is the dynamic model of interdependent phenomena—the five-fold classification of subjective experience into material form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness. When we attend to our experience from this perspective it undermines our tendency to construct misleading theories of self, illuminates the changeability and impersonality of phenomena, and points towards the importance of our relationship to our experience. The discourses of the Elephant’s Footprint (MN 28) and of the Full Moon Night (MN 109) from the Majjhima Nikàya help clarify these five important categories of experience.”

We can be mindful of everything we experience. In the Four Foundations of Mindfulness the Buddha speaks of being mindful of urine and feces and puss! It can be really joyful to pay close attention to aspects of our experience that we’ve never paid attention to before. What it feels like to stand up. What it feels like to breathe. What it feels like to breathe when you’re afraid. What it feels like to breathe when you’ve just eaten a big meal. The experience of really and fully tasting your food. What it feels like to have skin. As we cultivate mindfulness (which is another seed within us that can be watered), we may come to the conclusion that, no matter how much we hurt, our awareness itself can never be touched. We are aware of our suffering but our awareness never suffers. This can be a great refuge. I can be aware of a pain in the stomach but my awareness is not in pain. I may find myself bothered by this pain, and wish that it would go away. I may begin to feel anxious and then become even more annoyed at this pain because I want to eat in order to suppress all these feelings! But I can be aware of all of this: I can be aware of feeling bothered, I can be aware of the anxiety, I can be aware of wanting to eat, and the awareness itself is never affected! What if I began to identify, not with the pain or annoyance or wanting to eat but with awareness itself, with that which can never be touched?

Mindfulness purifies whatever it touches. Gil Fronsdal talks of mindfulness practice as soap and water gently washing through the mind, and in this article from The Humanistic Psychologist, Shinzen Young describes how mindfulness has the capacity to purify:

Whenever one brings mindfulness and equanimity to ordinary experience, an evolutionary process takes place, consisting of two aspects. One aspect is insight and the other is purification. Let’s talk first about what we mean by purification. We all have within us sources of unhappiness. You notice that very quickly when you sit down to meditate. You’ll feel just fine and then there will be something that will make your world less than perfect. You get sleepy, or your mind wanders, or this or that emotion comes up, negative tapes start to come up, traumatic memories appear, you feel angry, you want to jump out of your skin, you’re running all sorts of fantasies, doing things to divert yourself, you’re aware of inner conflicts. We are chock full of sources of unhappiness which are completely foreign to our being. It is not in the nature of consciousness to suffer. However, we have acquired certain limiting forces: cravings and aversions, painful memories, inappropriate yet habitual behavior patterns, and so forth.When we sit down and do this practice that’s all going to come up. So you don’t always feel good while doing Vipassana meditation. In fact you might feel lousy. I know, having heard that, some of you may want to leave right now. You say, “I thought meditation is supposed to make a person feel great.” Yes, in the long run, but an important aspect of meditation is to sit down and start working through the sources of not feeling great, whatever they may be. You literally eat your way through them, one after another, after another, after another. How? By just being mindful and having equanimity, that’s all. Whatever comes up, you’ll observe it and you’ll do nothing. You’ll be very aware and that’s all.Now that may seem trivial at best, stupid at worst. But it is actually quite powerful. Let’s say that one of these blockages to happiness comes up as we meditate—a negative tape, a craving, an aversion, an inner conflict, a congealing. If we reject it and say “I don’t want you,” we’re pushing it away. But in order to reject it we have to “touch” it, by pushing on it. If on the other hand we identify with it, buy into it and let it pull us away, then again we’ve “touched” it. As soon as one touches it, one recharges the energy supply of that negativity. If you try to push it away or you let it pull you, you are identifying with it, touching it. Any touch whatsoever means that this particular negativity is able to ‘recharge its individual battery’ as it were, from your general pool of your energy. But if we don’t touch it then it has to play itself out on its own power source which is quite finite and if we continue to be alert and simply observe, eventually the intrinsic energy source of that negativity dissipates and it goes away forever. It gets worked through.

This process of “watching negativity to death” is called purification. As we work through the blockages to happiness, our intrinsic happiness—the nature of our consciousness which is effortless effulgent joy—becomes evident. If the dirt is cleaned away from the window, the sun that was always there is able to shine through. The spiritual reality which is the nature of ordinary experience is able to shine forth.He describes the essence of the process:

So the essence of this practice can be stated as a simple formula:

ordinary experience plus mindfulness plus equanimity yields insight and purification. In this formula, each term is defined very precisely. Ordinary experience is defined as hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, the feeling body and the thinking mind. Mindfulness is defined as specificity in awareness, clarity in awareness, continuity in awareness, richness in awareness, precision in awareness. Equanimity is defined as not interfering with the flow of the senses at any level, including the level of preconscious processing.

This is Buddhist psychology as I’ve experienced it in a nutshell. My intention here is merely to suggest that Buddhist psychology offers a valuable perspective that can help us think about ourselves and our experiences in a more healthy way. I’m certain I’ve forgotten something important. I’m certain this description of Buddhist psychology is painfully incomplete, oversimplified, and misinformed. I’m certain that even if what I’ve said here were clear, accurate, and complete, words cannot replace the experience of practicing mindfulness for oneself.I recommend these articles on Buddhist psychology and especially Andrew Olendzki’s Overview: Basic Themes, which also suggests Buddhist texts which address these themes. I recommend a Discussion of Buddhism and Mindfulness Among Psychologists which elucidates how the principles of mindfulness are relevant in a therapeutic setting. Most of all I recommend the talks by mindfulness teacher Gil Fronsdal which are available online for anyone to download and enjoy. His five-week Introduction to Meditation course is a joy to experience.

Generation Y and the Reinvention of Work

I came across another article about Generation Y at entrepreneur.com which takes a more positive view of this generation. It looks at several myths about Generation Y. The argument is, much as the one I made in my previous post, that young people are adapting to changing social contexts: “What we discovered is that some of the ‘negative’ behaviors these young employees exhibit are actually intuitive responses to a changing economy. And if employers want to keep up, they better change, too.”

It’s not that younger people are more “lazy” or “narcissistic” or don’t possess qualities such as loyalty. These qualities simply manifest themselves in different ways in different generations, different cultures, even different individuals. As Bruce Tulgan says, “They’re very loyal. It’s just not the kind of blind loyalty you get to a kingdom — blind loyalty to the hierarchy.” Perhaps we could learn from Non-Violent Communication which suggests that we separate our observations from our interpretations. Rather than making blanket statements such as “you’re not loyal,” we criticise specific observations, such as “you quit your job three times in the last three months.” Of course, this is harder to do when we’re dealing with a generalised group like a generation, but we can still separate some of our specific observations about members of that generation, from our interpretations of that behaviour. If we do this, misunderstanding is less likely, and constructive dialogue is more likely to happen.

At the end of the article is a quote from Neil Howe: “And before these managers and employers start gloating about how much these kids are going to have to change, I think these employers should start asking the question: How much are we going to have to change?” This is exactly it. Younger people are questioning long-held assumptions about work. We are asking: is this work meaningful? What do I get out of it? What does society get out of it? Why does it matter? These are extremely valid questions to ask. These questions will rejuvinate work. Work needs to change, and it seems, my generation may be most equipped to change it.

Generation Y: Narcissistic and Self-Absorbed?

Over the last few months I’ve read many articles on “Generation Y,” and being one of that generation myself, I’m always curious when I come across such articles. Generational differences fascinate me, and I think some great anthropological studies could be done on these differences, but in the articles I read, I get a sense that the authors are often oblivious to where younger people are actually coming from, and are sometimes outright prejudiced. Of course, older generations have been lamenting the shortcomings of the younger generation for thousands of years: this is nothing new. I think we could do better, though. I’m wary of inferring that one generation is more “selfish” or “narcissistic” or “lazy” or “naive” than another. Generations express themselves in different ways. These expressions reveal nothing, in themselves, about the laziness or selfishness of a generation. “Selfish” and “lazy” are interpretations, based on the way the interpreter understands norms of social behaviour. Culture evolves, social norms change over time, situational contexts change. (Context. It’s a word I’ve used a lot lately!) Behaviour can be seen as different depending on context: many generations of people living together in Latin America, for example, where social norms are different, is often interpreted very differently than the phenomenon of young Americans living with their parents well into their 20’s. There is always a conservative strand in society that resists changing contexts, but context does inevitably change, and one’s old judgement of, say, what “immaturity” looks like can’t always be applied to new contexts.

I try to be transparent about this: I have my own agenda. I have my own vision of the world I would like to see (which hopefully includes yours since the world I want to see is diverse and inclusive of many ways of being). So, when it comes to young Americans living with their parents well into adulthood, I’m actually quite happy with this trend. There are many reasons for this. I think individualism in many ways has gone too far and that the fend-for-yourself mentality is unhealthy. This phenomenon of young adults living with their parents, as I see it, is a correction of this ultra-individualism; the possibility that we might actually be, in some ways, dependent on each other, given this ultra-individualism, is a very comforting thought to me. Also given the energy crisis and the concept of ecological footprint, perhaps we need to reconsider this idea that young people, when they reach a certain age, need to go off and live on their own. As one perceptive “boomer” of 60 said to me, there are people who have infrastructure and there are those who don’t. What’s going to need to happen increasingly, as the energy and resource crisis comes to a head, is the sharing of infrastructure.  Sharing of resources. In terms of energy and resource use it’s much more efficient for young adults and their parents (and grandparents, who may be in nursing homes?!) to live in the same household. Another reason I see this as a hopeful trend: I would agree with conservatives, there may be a crisis of family in this country, but the compartmentalising of families into such small units is now contributing to this crisis. I see this trend as potentially strengthening family ties. This generation has close bonds with our parents that our parents never had with theirs! I think the perception of many young people is: “my parents have the infrastructure already. Why can’t I use it? Why do I have to spend all this time and energy to get my own place and then waste resources when I can just live at my parents’ place?” Hopefully that perception also comes with a sense of responsibility.

I do think this attitude is sincere, as though, as I’ve said, young people who stay with their parents may do so out of immaturity, the rise of this phenomenon doesn’t mean young people are becoming less mature. (Again I think of the fundamental attribution error.) I have a sense about my generation, and I haven’t confirmed it — (it may just be the type of older people I’m familiar with) — that when people of my generation do have their own place, they’re exceedingly generous with it. They tend to be much more open about sharing their place with friends and loved ones. Compared to older generations, who I sense as putting up boundaries and declaring a sense of ownership, I see younger generations as giving up ownership for a sense of community. Just as they want to feel welcome in their parents’ house, they want family and friends to feel welcome in their own. They’re less concerned with ownership and more concerned with how the place can be shared. This, to me, is very encouraging. Immaturity and inability to take responsibility for oneself or others may be the shadow side of this, though I don’t think it applies to everybody.

There’s always a shadow. A couple months ago in the Utne Reader, there was an article about Generation Y and our self-absorbtion, especially when it comes to our presence on the Internet. It’s MySpace, my everything! Some people are clearly stereotypes of this self-absorption, and I agree, there’s no shortage of evidence for it if you spend a little time browsing MySpace. However, it’s paradoxical that many have perceived this generation as more community-oriented than past generations, but also more self-absorbed! The author of this article seemed to generalise, and I don’t think she fully grasped the relationship between young people and Internet technologies. As I recall (and I can’t find the issue to refer to it) she said we spend a lot of time talking about ourselves and bearing ourselves to the world with our hearts on our sleeves. She called that self-absorption. Self-absorption is the shadow-side of this, but the other side, I believe, is that we’re intimately in touch with ourselves. We have a lot of what Howard Gardner calls intrapersonal intelligence. We use writing and the Internet as a tool for self-growth. We understand the therapeutic importance of sharing and being heard (unlike some of older generations who seem to prefer the method of bottling it up.) I write about myself. I enjoy it, and if that makes me a narcissist, so be it. I also enjoy listening to others write about themselves. I value self-awareness and I value honesty about ourselves because that’s my understanding of how relationships are formed.

Of the articles I read, especially interesting to me was “Hey, Under-30s Crowd, Have you Overdosed on Narcissism?“, not for the article itself, but for the hundreds of interesting comments readers posted in response to it on AlterNet. For example:

nc green wrote: “Why doesn’t some enterprising researcher find out why it’s always the oldest generation, the one doing research into the evils of Generation {n+2}, that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people for money, power and ideology? Better yet, why not study how the oldest generation always manages to guilt-trip Generation {n + 2}, into fighting their useless wars for them?”

justaperson wrote: “Happiness and good health are found in the medians not in the extremes. This generation may have been too bolstered and pampered, but the generations before them were often brought up too harshly. Too many children were beaten, emotionally and verbally abused, and taught to believe only in a bleak future.”

There’s prejudice from young people against older generations: “[Boomers] screwed this country up: politically, economically, and especially environmentally. So why should they still be allowed to vote? It’s like letting a defendant with a proven criminal record sit on the jury to their own trial.”

And there’s prejudice from older people against younger ones. Take this exchange, for example:

timebomb734 posted a comment titled “young people need to be narcissists”: “The pressure to obsessively define oneself is not limited to the realm of myspace, facebook, and youtube. Have you applied to college recently? In an effort to admit ‘people,’ not transcripts has forced prospective students to be able to sell themselves as a package. Its been my experience as a 21 year old that from an early point in education (usually middle school) children are forced to take inventory of themselves in order to be better able to define their personality in 100 word essays. This is article was ok, but most definitely overlooks the noble intentions behind the need to narcissitize.”

aislinnluv responded with a comment entitled “hello failure of the educational system”: “proofread, use grammarcheck, think. if you are applying to college, the people who read your essay will be impressed if you can construct a logical, grammatically correct sentence or two. the thought expressed was valid; however, to excel among your peers you need to work on your english skills – and PLEASE don’t invent words.”

This is an example of what social psychologists would call confirmation bias. There’s no reason to believe that aislinnluv would have thought twice about grammar or the making up of words or insinuated that timebomb734 was a “failure of the educational system” if he didn’t have preconceived notions about the younger generation, or if he thought the comment had been written by an older person. (Certainly, comments were written by older people with comparable grammar, but thanks to the confirmation bias, this poor young person was singled out.)

The thread continues, with timebomb734 replying (righteously so, I believe, with the title “hello asshole”): “Sorry my post was unintelligible. It was 2am; it’s now 7am and I still haven’t been to bed. Unfortunately, I was up all night working on a paper because I attend a prestigious college. The lack of sleep, six straight hours of utter concentration, and use of analytical thinking skills must have caused a lapse in my English ability while I took a break to check out alternet. So, that’s my excuse. Do you have an excuse for being a complete and total assumptive moron?”

Now, I can completely understand why timebomb734 would be upset, but some others, responding to this post, used it as evidence that timebomb734 *is* narcissistic! (Two other concepts in social psychology come to mind here: first, the self-fulfilling prophecy, in which one person {in this case aislinnluv} acts in such a way as to provoke the behaviour in another that s/he suspected all along. And secondly, the fundamental attribution error, which is the tendency to assume that a person’s behaviour says something about who they are, in terms of personality (“this person is a narcissist”) as opposed to the result of some situational context (in this case, being unfairly criticised.) If these people knew something about social psychology, perhaps they wouldn’t be so quick to make these assumptions. Or, perhaps, they’re banking on other people being unfamiliar with the concepts of social psychology, and not calling them on it!

I couldn’t read this without weighing in myself, and I wrote in defense of timebomb734:

Aislinnluv’s comment was unexpected and quite sad. Who’s not thinking? I don’t think you have anything to apologise for. (Oops! British spelling and dangling participle! I guess I need to learn a thing or two to “excel among my peers.”) Calling the poster an asshole may have been a bit much, and I don’t think {aislinnluv’s post} is worthy of that kind of recognition, but hey. Such expression of indignation is considered an appropriate response to racism. Why not ageism?

That someone should have to resort to that kind of ad hominem attack is more a reflection on them than you. Your comment was intelligible to me, and anyone who wastes their time complaining about it probably doesn’t have anything better to do. I could easily criticise aislinnluv for failure to use any capital letters whatsoever, and misuse of punctuation (a single “-” is technically not a hyphen at all), and wonder how THAT poster ranks among his/her peers but what would be the point?

If you said you were 40 would anyone think to question your grammar or the word “narcissitize”? Would the content or syntax of your comment even be an issue? Sadly, I think not.

What’s wrong with inventing words? It happens all the time. That’s how words enter the lexicon and how our language stays vibrant. So what if our generation does it more often than others? If people with a grudge against our generation have to harrumph about our propensity to invent words (in an informal online discussion group, of all places) something is very wrong. Please stop stereotyping…

And people have very different takes on this generation.

Take case one: “Although there are some wonderful “under-thirties” out there- and I am pleased to know and work with some, there is a pervasive level of self-absorbtion present in this age group. Teaching this generation at a college has not been always enjoyable. While I have had students who were hardworking, caring and committed, the majority are otherwise. The prevailing trend has been one of a sense of entitlement; to good grades(A’s of course), minimal work required and constant pats on the back. Many of my students believe that they possess superior intellect; after all, they’ve ben told how wonderful they are since day one. They are shocked at receiving a bad grade, and are angry and abusive when they do. I don’t think that self-esteem can be given- it should be earned. This generation has been dosed with it regularly and we are seeing the effects of this parenting style. I am also appalled at how unaware and unconcerned most of my students are with the world. They are concerned with their own friends, cell phones, You-Tube, facebook/myspace, etc and not with critical environmental, social or political issues… There are as I noted earlier, some wonderful twenty-somethings out there who are committed to making a difference, but it seems that most of their peers are only committed to getting totally wasted as many nights as they can.”

And case two: “I am almost 65 years old and have worked with kids most of my life. I am a court certified expert on child developement and parenting issues, having worked for over ten years with parents in danger of having their parental rights terminated… My experience and observation is that this is a wonderful generation. They are thoughtful, kind, empathetic, and funny. I would like to remind you that a recent study showed that the majority of people dying of drug overdoses are aging baby boomers — not Millenials. Of course this generation has some narcacistic members, every generation does. And, to some degree, all teens are self-centered. The major task of the teen is to give over childhood and develop an adult self. You can’t do this without being more self-centered than either children or adults. However, in my rather long career, I have never seen a less narciscistic generation than the current one. I have never seen a generation that was more attached to parents and respectful of values.”

A few comments about case one in particular: 1.) what if this need for getting A’s has to do with the immense pressure that’s placed on us? What if doing the minimal acceptible work has to do with this work being minimally relevant? What if we’re interested in MEANING and we’re not getting it? 2.) We don’t care about social/political issues? My parents’ generation is more likely to read the newspaper, yes, but I don’t see that they’re getting anything out of it. It doesn’t challenge their predetermined beliefs. And I don’t see them going out and acting on this understanding of the world, gleaned from newspapers, and attempting to make a positive difference in the world. 3.) Concern for one’s own friends is a GOOD thing. 4.) Young people I know are surprisingly aware of environmental issues. People I knew in high school, who at the time I would have least expected to come to such an awareness, are now thinking about sustainability. On the other hand, many of us are cynical, and feel powerless; this can come off as apathy and ignorance. 5.) “committed to getting totally wasted as many nights as they can.” Remind you of any other generations you know?

According to an article on CNN Money: “They’re ambitious, they’re demanding and they question everything, so if there isn’t a good reason for that long commute or late night, don’t expect them to do it. When it comes to loyalty, the companies they work for are last on their list – behind their families, their friends, their communities, their co-workers and, of course, themselves.”

Bruce Tulgan, quoted in that article, says: “”This is the most high-maintenance workforce in the history of the world. The good news is they’re also going to be the most high-performing workforce in the history of the world. They walk in with more information in their heads, more information at their fingertips – and, sure, they have high expectations, but they have the highest expectations first and foremost for themselves.”

You may know from reading this blog that I’m interested in the REINVENTION of work. I believe that all true work is about bringing health and wholeness in some form to people and the planet. If a company displaces thousands of locals, pollutes local watersheds, takes advantage of employess, uses massive resources, and produces a product that is overconsumed and doesn’t serve to bring health and wholeness into the world, I’d say, it’s not genuine work. Practically, some people in this world must work at jobs that aren’t intrinsically meaningful, but I believe we can reinvent work so that it BECOMES meaningful. It’s hypocrisy to demand that work become meaningful if we continue to demand in our personal lives that which is superfluous: if we continue to overconsume and aren’t able to delay gratification when we want something. I hope my generation can learn to do that. However this trend of young people questioning everything in the workplace is very hopeful to me. I hope we never stop questioning, but I also hope we learn to cooperate. I hope we keep asking why we’re doing what we’re asked to do, but I hope that when it’s relevant and meaningful, we work with an unfettered passion. I hope we keep demanding meaning and relevance in what we do. I hope we don’t blindly accept the baby boomer mentality that economic growth is good for its own sake. (I believe it’s good only to the extent that it fulfills genuine human needs.)

If Generation Y doesn’t back down, we will transform work; and it’s bound to be much more meaningful… and interesting! … in the future.

The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human

Matthew Fox’s newest book, which up till now I’ve been paying all too little attention to (probably because I’m a little put off by an acronym in the title of a book), is called The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human. His Reinvention of Work: A Vision of a New Livelihood for Our Time was a life-changing book for me, and Fox’s new book, which connects awe and education, is incredibly relevant to the project of this blog. I’ve often had the thought that Fox’s work can be a lens through which to explore a renewal of education, and that if someday I wrote a book, I could make that connection, but here is a book that makes that connection explicit! Though there will be those who agree wholeheartedly, and those who disagree passionately, I see Fox’s ideas for reinventing culture, which have at their core spirituality and honouring the childlike nature of ourselves (both of which are altogether ignored in most liberal and even radical critiques of culture) as essential. In this new book (which came out in the Fall of 2006) Fox introduces 10 C’s that are at the core of his renewed philosophy of education:

1.) Cosmology and Ecology
2.) Contemplation, Meditation
3.) Creativity
4.) Chaos and Darkness
5.) Compassion
6.) Courage
7.) Critical Consciousness and Judgement
8.) Community
9.) Ceremony, Celebration and Ritual
10.) Character

I haven’t yet picked up the book (which I’ll try to find through inter-library loan at the library or through an online bookseller) but I think I may eventually explore each of these 10 C’s one at a time in my blog. (Or at least, I think I’ll do some kind of methodical approach to Matthew Fox’s work.) If there’s a single writer that I think readers of this blog should be acquainted with it’s Matthew Fox. A minor caveat I have in introducing him is that, as an Episcopalian priest originally coming out of the Catholic tradition, his writing is quite enmeshed in theology. If you’re open enough not to be immediately put off by Christian theology, I think you’ll find value in Matthew Fox’s approach, and learn something new about the Christian tradition as well. His theology is not your grandfather’s theology: it’s a very spiritual theology, that can be appreciated by a secular audience, and his spirituality vision of cultural renewal are very relevant to my project with this blog. I must emphasise that you don’t have to be interested in theology to appreciate his work.

He’s been the subject of a lot of criticism from conservative Catholics, and according to some blogs I’ve read, is considered by many of these Catholic bloggers as one of the “most dangerous theologians.” On the other hand, I know many more progressive Catholic priests and nuns who appreciate his work, and I would add that, all of the ten C’s mentioned above can be seen as categories in Catholic theology, albeit often neglected ones. My hope is that those who read this blog can understand the importance of at least some of the ten C’s above, whether we’re Christian or not, whether we consider ourselves spiritual or not. Reading Matthew Fox, I have a new appreciation of the Christian tradition, as he challenges so many of the assumptions I previously had about it. Fox provides a language for communicating my own worldview with Christians. I used to be scared to share my worldview with some Christians, as I thought we had very different visions, and perhaps we do, but now I’m confident that what I’m interested in is usually there, somewhere in the Christian tradition, perhaps hidden or neglected, but there. I hope that translating between worldviews, finding ways to cooperate and get along with people with very different ones, can be a focus of this blog.

Thomas Berry said: “Matthew Fox might well be the most creative, the most comprehensive, surely the most challenging religious-spiritual teacher in America. He has the skill to fill this role at a time when the more official Christian theological traditions are having difficulty in establishing any vital contact with either the spiritual possibilities of the present or with their own most creative spiritual traditions of the past.”

So, I hope if any of this piqued your interest, you will look into Matthew Fox’s work. Or perhaps if you continue to read this blog we can explore some of Matthew Fox’s ideas together.

And especially, if you’re under 30, and are a fan of Matthew Fox, I’d love to hear from you. It’s strange, but I don’t know any younger people who are interested in his work, and I’d really like to find some!

Education, society, and trauma

Jean-Claude Morand wrote, in response to my post on the Politics of Experience: “Schooling can certainly be traumatic…but any other education model will also be traumatic. I followed 2 seminars with Marshall Rosenberg few year ago… and when you master non-violent communication it can also be traumatic. But all schooling systems around the Planet are adjusting themselves to their social environment and, don’t forget, are the fruits our ourselves. So I suggest that it’s the consequence of our acts not the reverse.”

An assumption I’m working under here is that, yes, we have the power to create the culture in which we live, and to some extent culture reflections of us, but at the same time, the culture in which we live has the power to create us. If our systems of education were not to some extent the results of our actions, there would be no point in my criticism, because I would be admitting that my actions are merely the results of my education, and that I have no creative capacity. However, at the same time, it’s clear that the education we receive does have an effect on our personalities (we are shaped by ALL our experiences in the world), and thus, our education shapes the way we act in the world. Thus I think positing that either culture affects people, or that people affect culture (“our social environment is the fruit of ourselves”), is a simplistic approach to understanding these dynamics. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. I find these dynamics both extremely interesting and extremely complicated, and it’s a question philosophers (Hegel, et al) have struggled with for centuries: to what extent does culture create us, and to what extent do we create culture? This is by no means a question to be taken lightly.

Another assumption I’m working under is that, since our experiences help shape us, children will to some extent grow up to become different adults according to the experiences they have in the world (and thus, according to their educational experience.) The same child, given the opportunity to grow up in Canada, or the opportunity to grow up in Korea, will to some extent become a different person depending on their circumstances. So it doesn’t make sense to me that our educational systems are simply the “fruits of ourselves.” We are also the fruits of it. The same could be said about any social institution: Nazi Germany being the “fruits of the German people,” for example. German citizens were clearly affected by what happened in the Nazi era — they were created by it as much as they created it — and later generations continue to be affected today. These younger Germans did not create the circumstances in which they live, and neither did most of the Germans who lived during the Nazi era. If one speaks of the social environment as the “fruits of ourselves” in this sense then I don’t see how this can be anything but a tautology: yes, humans create culture, and in some ways it reflects us; but so what? Sometimes we create healthy culture, sometimes we don’t. How to create healthy culture is to me a more important question.

A third assumption is that we do not all create culture equally; some are given more power to do so than others. Thus culture is the fruit of some of us moreso than it’s the fruit of others of us (and here I’m referring more to social/cultural institutions than culture in a broader sense). It is the result of my parents’ and grandparents’ generation moreso than it’s the result of my own. It’s the result of mainstream groups moreso than it’s the result of marginalised groups. It is, and I understand that some may disagree, the result of corporate and elite government power more-so than it’s the result of ordinary people. Though most people do not know this, the American public education system (the “common schools” as they were called) were very unpopular with the people, and ultimately had to be forced upon some of us via military force. Of course, times have changed; now that we’re used to it, now that we’ve had time to become shaped by it, public education is much more popular, but initially, it was no democratic movement. Early in its history it was used as a tool to subdue Catholic immigrants who were seen as a threat to the American way of life. Was the education system at this time the “fruit” of these immigrants who were subjected to it, or rather, the fruit of someone else, and imposed? My sense is that a critical approach to power is essential and is not present when we simply accept that these institutions are the fruits of ourselves.

Now, it’s clear to me that any educational model can be traumatic, and it’s clear to me that learning Non-Violent Communication, or even reading a good book, can be traumatic. Some of my most valuable learning experiences were traumatic because they threw my conception of the world upside down and forced me to reconsider everything I thought I knew. However, what I am most concerned about here is coercion, people being forced against their will, against their inclination, against their passion, to relegate their learning to external authorities who tell them when to learn, when to learn, and how to learn it, and as I’ve said, deny their experience. I believe this denial of experience is a deeper and more insidious trauma than that which results in freely choosing one’s experience. Trauma like that which I described in reading a good book, and likely that you experienced in learning Non-Violent Communication, were entered into of our own volition, and thus while trauma may be present, it is not accompanied by this giving up of personal power, this relegating of oneself to another who’s supposed to “know better.” Trauma accompanied by powerlessness is not the same as trauma in which we retain a degree of agency over our situation. A situation over which we have more power, and in which our experience is valued, will likely be less traumatic than one in which we have no power at all.

You say that “all schooling systems around the Planet are adjusting themselves to their social environment.” I think this is true to a degree but I find these systems to be remarkably resistant to change. They adjust themselves, certainly, but how long does it take? Furthermore, a more important question to me, do they adjust themselves to diversity? Do they adjust themselves to the different styles of thinking and learning and being that individuals have? Do they adjust themselves to people of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds? Ron Miller’s take is that education has been about preserving the status quo. Public schools in America have been exposed to strong cultural influences but have been very unresponsive to these influences. John Dewey’s ideas were very influential but the public schools co-opted them and watered them down to the point where the public schools hardly embody Dewey’s philosophy at all. And, argues Miller, despite lip service to individuality, American culture is actually supportive of a notion of individuality which is “almost exclusively economic, competitive, and superficial,” and is unaccepting of broader understandings of human experience and potential. This, I believe, is what we need. There is no point in an educational system adjusting the social environment if it merely compromises to an “ideal status quo” that suits no one rather than also adjusting itself to accommodate to diverse ways of being.

Thanks for your comments and thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify my ideas.

Depression

“I want to read these wonderful words [from T.H. White's A Once and Future King] which created a spark of light for me in the midst of that death-dealing episode of my life. Speaking to the young Arthur, Merlin says,

The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies. You may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins. You may miss your only love. You may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it, then: To learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.

“‘Learning is the thing for you.’ I read those words, and I began to understand that in the midst of death, there is life in learning. I could not do much in the darkness of my depression. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t connect with other people. But I could start to learn what was in there. I could grope around in the darkness and learn what and who was there. And, of course, those of you who have been on that journey know that part of what I found and learned about there was what Thomas Merton calls true self.”

— Parker Palmer

The last few months have been really difficult for me. I broke up with my girlfriend and sometimes I’ve felt like one of the most pessimistic people on earth. I’m sure the negative attitude towards my love life was pulling down a few notches my contentment with other areas of life. I started holding everything to higher standards: if my friends and family and material security weren’t making me happy in spite of this, then I was unsatisfied with them as well. If the warm breeze and the sunshine and the experience of watching ice melt and float down the river couldn’t bring me joy than they just weren’t enough. So it’s easy to carry resentments over into other areas of life, and it’s hard to be grateful, but it helps to at least recognise that my perception isn’t entirely accurate: the same warm breeze and sunshine and ice floating down the river could be heaven, given a different state of mind. Still, that’s not where I am, and I should accept that.

So, what could a person who feels like his life is a mess, and has sometimes wondered over the past few months whether life is worth living, have to contribute to a blog called Sacred Awe? In my worst states of mind, probably not very much. The perspective and the energy required to muster a post like this can be hard to come by sometimes. If only I had such a healthy perspective on depression in the midst of it! If, as Merlin says, the best thing for being sad is to learn something (this should have inspired a song in Camelot), then we may find that awe may change form, but we can access it even in our worst despair. We can still find it in us to be curious about something in the world, even if that be our own psychology, as is often the case with me. Depression can be an opportunity to give up old patterns and try something new. Opportunity? Easy to say, hard to accept. I keep a dream journal, and in my happiest dream for the month of February, I find myself sitting in a pile of crap.

It’s a beautiful natural area and I’m just outside a wooded part of it. There are gorgeous purple or lavender flowers as well as purple birds flying around. I try to be still in hopes that a bird will come fly onto one of my arms or shoulders. I find a place where I can sit down, in the middle of these beautiful flowers and birds, and I see a sign there, that says I’m sitting in “Cow Dung.”

There is so much wisdom (and often humour) in dreams. In perspective, the cow dung provides the nutrients for these beautiful flowers to grow, and I have it to thank for the abundance around me. So I don’t seem to mind sitting in cow dung.

I try to practice mindfulness, but in the process, I become aware of how resistent I am to mindfulness. When I eat, though I want to eat mindfully, I stuff my mouth, an anodyne to the pain. It’s as though eating slowly and mindfully could be so frustrating as to actually bring on tears. Sometimes I feel this way when I’m alone with myself in the woods. “I have to do something,” I tell myself. “If I just sit here, alone with myself, it could overwhelm me.” When I walk, there’s an urgency in my steps, as though I don’t have time to walk slowly or enjoy the present moment. Even a step can reveal so much about one’s inner state, and the energy of mindfulness, as Thich Nhat Hanh frequently says, can bring about great healing and transformation. Of course, getting myself to want to practice mindfulness is a huge difficulty, but it’s a good practice. I know it’s a good practice because when I’m successful I feel peaceful and calm and happiness is abundant. I know it’s a good practice because there’s something I admire in those who practice mindfulness, a sense of peace and acceptance, and I want to be like them. I know it’s a good practice because many of my problems stem from not being mindful.

I’m a Type Four according to the Enneagram. I once read that Fours have a tendency to get self-absorbed because of some inner emergency that seems to require our attention. When something essential is lacking, or I’m going through a crisis, I have a hard time being patient, accepting of current circumstances, staying inwardly composed. Mindfulness is not easy for me, but it is good for me.

It may be true that those of us who are more attuned to qualities such as awe and joy and interconnection tend also to be likely, at times, to feel ennui, depression, alienation. Those who find life imbued with meaning may at times cease to find any meaning at all. Perhaps it’s openness to experience that allows us to sense so intensely both meaning and meaninglessness. Perhaps it’s a manifestation of the Jungian shadow. I don’t have an explanation for it. It’s the paradox of creative genius; the paradox of all of us who allow ourselves to feel deeply. I wish I had answers to make the path through darkness a bit easier. I wish I had answers for people who live with depression for so much of their lives and can’t seem to find a way out; and here I am, the idealist, thinking, there must be a way. Depression is too often dismissed as a chronic medical problem. What if the solution in many cases is not medication, but something else, and we just don’t see it? It’s what got me interested in healing arts: I want to give people hope, and nourishment, and help them climb out of the depths of despair. Sometimes, of course, I wonder how I can expect to help others overcome their despair when I haven’t necessarily found a way out of it myself.

It’s hard to maintain the perspective that this pain, this despair, this depression, won’t last forever. There’s a story I love. There are different versions of it. In the version I know, a king holds a contest, asking his subjects to find a magical object that will bring him happiness when he’s sad, and sadness when he’s happy. In the end the king is given a ring. When he sees the inscription he weeps with joy. It says: “This too shall pass.”

I’m reminded of Paul Hawken’s incredible speech from the 2006 Bioneers (which you can watch free here in quicktime or on your iPod.) Hawken said that, after Rosa Parks famously got on the bus, Martin Luther King gave a speech which began: “There comes a time.” He suggested that if King were alive today, in the midst of contemporary environmental and social crises, he would repeat these words: “There comes a time.” He paused for effect. “There comes a time… for all that is harmful to go away.” And a tear fell from my eyes. It hit me at such a deep level. We all need to hear such words, don’t we? Upon hearing these words, I became aware of the immense pressure I’m under, the pain and despair beneath the surface of consciousness, the pressure we’re all under, from so many directions, often without truly recognising it or realising its effect on us. “There comes a time.” It was a moment of embrace, a moment of recognising that these pressures are not permanent, but only here for a visit. The other day, I was listening to a recording of Thich Nhat Hanh (who is such a wonderful person to listen to, if you’ve never had the opportunity) and he reiterated: impermanence doesn’t have to be a sad thing. It can be a happy thing. A healing thing. Injustice, pollution, abuse, alienation, suffering. There comes a time when they, too, shall pass.

Sometimes life is so painful that none of this makes any sense: it’s where I am now that matters, and I’m in pain! It’s such deep pain. Words often aren’t enough to penetrate it. A few years ago, while in the midst of a painful breakup, I went to a professor of mine, and asked him, “Have you ever felt like just living through the next second is too painful?” He told me he had — for him it was a divorce — and he shared stories with me. He helped me feel grateful that this should be happening at a time of the abundant healing energy of springtime, and he suggested, “Hug a tree.” He also gave me this good advice from personal experience. Be aware, he told me, of when you’re living second to second, waiting for the next eternal minute to pass. You’ll notice that sometimes you’re actually living minute to minute waiting for the next eternal hour to pass. Sometimes you may even find yourself living hour to hour, trying to get through the next eternal day. You’ll notice the scale on which you’re living changes frequently throughout the day, so when you’re living second to second, you know it won’t last. You have a real sense of impermanence. Soon you’ll be living minute to minute, and that will give you some relief. Eventually you’ll be able to live day to day, week to week. Soon you may even start looking forward to your days again, so that you’re not living anything to anything, but just living.

There comes a time.

I’ll leave you with an episode of the Public Radio International show Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett: The Soul of Depression. Wonderful support and inspiration for people suffering from depression from Andrew Solomon (author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlast of Depression), psychologist and poet Anita Barrows, Quaker teacher and activist Parker Palmer, and some poems from Rilke. I hope you enjoy.