|
Prose When I Learned that Bullets are Frozen Tears
Her son Agim was a big man, strong, muscular, dark-haired, in his forties. He seemed paralyzed – unable to move or talk. Maybe it was our arriving at that moment and being witnesses, maybe it was his hearing I was from the United States, but for some reason he looked at me, threw his arms around my neck, and started weeping. No, it was more like wailing. I have never heard a sound like that. He would not let go. The wailing grew louder. I sat down in order to hold him better, and he buried himself in my arms. Then this weeping wailing began to build and release. It could not be controlled or stopped. It resounded through the neighborhood. People from the village began to gather around.
I held on to Agim, but inside, honestly, I wanted him to stop. All these years I had told myself I wanted men to be vulnerable, to have their feelings, to cry. All of a sudden it felt like a lie. I did not want this man to be so destroyed, so out of control. I wanted him to have answers and be tough and know the way and make everything work out. I understood how part of me was afraid of men being lost, how I needed them to be tough and sure. I understood how many years I had carried their invisible pain so I wouldn’t have to see them weak or ashamed. This weeping liquid man in my arms was my undoing, pulling me out to sea in the wild waves of his crying.
The wailing went on. His body shook and thrashed about. It was as if I were holding the secret story of men in my lap. Centuries of male sorrow and loss, centuries of unexpressed worry and doubt, centuries of pain. I suddenly understood violence and war. I understood retaliation and revenge. I understood how deep the agony is and how its suppression has made men into other things. I understood that these tears falling down Agim’s face would have become bullets in any other case, hardened drops of grief and rage directed toward a needed enemy. I saw how, in fighting to live up to the tyranny of masculinity, men become driven to do anything to prove they are neither tender, nor weak, nor insecure. They are forced to cage and kill the feminine within their own beings and consequently in the world.
~Eve Ensler
The Dharma Life
The Dharma life, that of following our instinct for freedom, requires involvement in everything. Every emotion, every mind state, every expression of being is valuable, important to know and learn from. Evolving a realistic Dharma attitude helps to keep these things in perspective.
At times the process is arduous and all-consuming, requiring heroic patience, courage, and determination. At other times, the way is silent, intuitive, and imperceptible. It can be a magical process, whereby we smile as we absorb life's delicious blend of beauty and intrigue. Then, without notice, a storm of torment, origin unknown, sweeps over us and takes us to our knees. Being alive and engaged with all dimensions of reality is an odyssey no one can prepare us for. No amount of training or spiritual practice makes direct experience any less daunting. By embracing freedom as our most treasured quality, we empower an uninhibited exploration of the mysterious realms of human consciousness; we integrate these discoveries, come what may, into all the domains of our life.
With discernment and intelligence as our guides we'll be required to enter the fiery mouth of many strange and terrifying circumstances. Life is simply too vast and unpredictable to assume that the unthinkable will not occur. As realists we stay alert and ready to enter sadness, loneliness, and even terror. We may expect to be thrust into the darkest abyss, where hopelessness and depression overwhelm our value of life and our motivation to continue the work of liberation. Sometimes it may bring us to the edge of madness.
Realistic spiritual discovery is an involvement in everything we hoped to avoid. I'm not suggesting that you defensively brace yourself for the crisis to come, or even anticipate torment and pain, but the heart will not genuinely open until all of life's realities are admitted. Loss and grieving are not only natural but divinely honorable. If you risk loving life and others, you will inevitably confront the truth that all things must pass.
Fostering realistic Dharma attitude helps to counter balance the forces of spiritual grandiosity, idealism, and false expectations. Each of us must learn the consequences of our actions. The allure of transformational insight, psychological harmony, and unbound freedom are compelling goals. Rather than thwart these beautiful impulses or temper our enthusiasm for these noble aims, we should appreciate them as points of light in a vision, and skillfully use goals to release ourselves into the open space of natural freedom.
We must be both relaxed and attentive, able to rest and play at the same time. We must strive to sustain a vital hope and an even peace in each moment. To name and strive for personal goals while keeping a mind free of conclusions is a stunning accomplishment, one that must be attempted over and over again.
Equally, it is important to disavow ourselves of unreasonable spiritual ideals and developmental expectations. The Dharma life is not free of conflict. To hope that your spiritual work will rid you of all unwanted problems or satiate internal disharmony is an alluring but erroneous goal. Rather than gliding smoothly along, you are likely to struggle, curse, and cry your way down the road of freedom along with the rest of us. No matter how sincere and profound, you will continue to experience periods of suffering until you die. No one is beyond it. No one has completely rid themselves of the inherent tensions and conflicts within the psyche. No one is abiding in an idealistic state of perfect psychological harmony. No one has removed the tormenting emotions of greed, anger, and delusion. The ocean of consciousness is simply too vast and too complex to fully explore and wisely understand during the brevity of a single lifetime.
Perhaps the full mapping of consciousness and the cosmos will never be achieved. Perhaps it's not even necessary. Living with existential uncertainty can be wonderful. With realistic Dharma attitude we are more concerned with declaring our willingness to face situations openly and learn what we can in the most basic, human ways.
Being human is a destiny fraught with every conceivable obstacle. We realize progressive liberation as we begin to allow ourselves to feel the terrible burden of our honest inner life. By acknowledging inner claustrophobia we act to expand our space. Realistic Dharma attitude is an ongoing vow to willfully align ourselves to freedom, refusing to be held in the safety of the familiar or the comfortable. It requires courage to challenge the bondage and addiction to frictionless lifestyles and narcissism. We must see the difference between the "ease of being" and the "struggle for excellence."
Following the instinct for freedom requires knowing that there is no wrong time to learn. At moments the Dharma life will feel like an exotic adjunct to our life. At other times it will seem that there is nothing separate from the process. It's a journey of experience that begins and ends right now - everywhere, always.
Fundamentally, the language of the Dharma is not found through the intellect; it's transconceptual. This requires feeling your way into reality. The Dharma is an intuitive opening and often clumsy and erratic. It is not precise or mathematical. We are called upon to walk the thin line of accepting our imperfect humanness without compromising our ideals and goals. It means always walking into the future knowing that birth and death are present. It is a journey inward and outward, simultaneously. Each moment contains the forwards and the backwards. We are called to live in the sacred space of being full and broken at the same time.
~Alan Clements
Letter To A Young Activist During Troubled Times
Mis estimados:
Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.
I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. It is true, one has to have strong cojones and ovarios to withstand much of what passes for "good" in our culture today. Abject disregard of what the soul finds most precious and irreplaceable and the corruption of principled ideals have become, in some large societal arenas, "the new normal," the grotesquerie of the week. It is hard to say which one of the current egregious matters has rocked people's worlds and beliefs more. Ours is a time of almost daily jaw-dropping astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.
...You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet ... I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is — we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. I cannot tell you often enough that we are definitely the leaders we have been waiting for, and that we have been raised since childhood for this time precisely.
...I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able crafts in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind. I would like to take your hands for a moment and assure you that you are built well for these times. Despite your stints of doubt, your frustrations in arighting all that needs change right now, or even feeling you have lost the map entirely, you are not without resource, you are not alone. Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. In your deepest bones, you have always known this is so. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
...We have been in training for a dark time such as this, since the day we assented to come to Earth. For many decades, worldwide, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead in so many ways over and over — brought down by naiveté, by lack of love, by suddenly realizing one deadly thing or another, by not realizing something else soon enough, by being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the extreme. We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially ... we have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection. Over and over again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or foundered — can be restored to life again. This is as true and sturdy a prognosis for the destroyed worlds around us as it was for our own once mortally wounded selves.
...Though we are not invulnerable, our risibility supports us to laugh in the face of cynics who say "fat chance," and "management before mercy," and other evidences of complete absence of soul sense. This, and our having been to Hell and back on at least one momentous occasion, makes us seasoned vessels for certain. Even if you do not feel that you are, you are. Even if your puny little ego wants to contest the enormity of your soul, that smaller self can never for long subordinate the larger Self. In matters of death and rebirth, you have surpassed the benchmarks many times. Believe the evidence of any one of your past testings and trials. Here it is: Are you still standing? The answer is, Yes! (And no adverbs like "barely" are allowed here). If you are still standing, ragged flags or no, you are able. Thus, you have passed the bar. And even raised it. You are seaworthy.
...In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. Do not make yourself ill with overwhelm. There is a tendency too to fall into being weakened by perseverating on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater? You have all the resource you need to ride any wave, to surface from any trough.
...In the language of aviators and sailors, ours is to sail forward now, all balls out. Understand the paradox: If you study the physics of a waterspout, you will see that the outer vortex whirls far more quickly than the inner one. To calm the storm means to quiet the outer layer, to cause it, by whatever countervailing means, to swirl much less, to more evenly match the velocity of the inner, far less volatile core — till whatever has been lifted into such a vicious funnel falls back to Earth, lays down, is peaceable again. One of the most important steps you can take to help calm the storm is to not allow yourself to be taken in a flurry of overwrought emotion or despair — thereby accidentally contributing to the swale and the swirl. Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts — adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take "everyone on Earth" to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
...One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires ... causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these — to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both — are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
...There will always be times in the midst of "success right around the corner, but as yet still unseen" when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But ... that is not what great ships are built for.
...This comes with much love and prayer that you remember who you came from, and why you came to this beautiful, needful Earth,
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Unconditional love means there are no conditions to diminish the constancy and quality of your love. It does not mean there are no requirements for relationship and no critical or discerning freedoms. Unconditional love includeds criticism, dissatisfaction, anger and disappointment, and can express them honestly without projecting blame. The Human understanding of uncondtional love often confuses discernement with making judgments and assigning blame. To expect yourself or others to love without discernment is unnatural.
~Elia Wise
Each generation presents to the universe a population of people who have just the right ingredients in them to make the world better for that epoch. Each person is an utterly crucial cell in this mystical body of humanity. Our work on ourselves makes us healthy enough to transcend our fears and attachments so that we can make our unique contribution to the world. There is synchronicity in the fact that here and now the world always has just the human resources it need to further its evolution as befits our era. Our work is to become fit for our part. ~David Richo |
|