Tag: Spirit

Letting Go of the Reins

One day I will be taken. I don’t know how or when, of course. All I know is that leaving Earth – the only home I am familiar with – is inevitable.

It is a mildly discomfiting feeling but doesn’t consume my daily thoughts. Except some days, it does.

Does death scare me? I suppose so, yes, on some level. In the same way going on a trip to any unknown destination scares me. More nervousness than fear. Traveling is a hassle. There are bound to be nerves. Any trip causes internal and external upheaval. What do I pack for starters?

I have lived long enough and traveled often enough to know that wherever I go, there I am. Exotic destinations and white sandy beaches stretching off into the distance are alluring. I appreciate them in direct correlation to the vantage point of the mood and headspace I am in. Over my lifetime, positive and negative internal states have been many and various. My internal state always mattered in my recollection of the experience more than any external situation I was in. I could appreciate or adapt myself to the degree that I was capable of reacting to or appreciating it.

One stunning travel memory was the beach at Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka. Local boys brought us freshly cut spears of pineapple that dripped with juice and had the mouth feel of biting into heavy whipped cream. I snorkeled in shallow waters off the beaches there. I nearly inhaled water amazed and distracted by the orderly kaleidoscope of colors among fish wending their way through equally colorful coral reefs.

When I think of travel experiences that stayed with me, I think about the synchronicity between my inner self and what was going on outside me. Often nothing. Standing at a rock cairn in the Himalayas, I watched clouds gambol across the peak of Mt. Everest in the distance. No hurry, no drama. Just mountains and clouds being mountains and clouds. Just being.

I often try to reconcile the disparity between growth and stagnation. It is said life on Earth is largely for spiritual education. Damned if I know exactly how that works. Damned if I have ever been able to fully recognize and internalize graduation markers from one “grade” to the next.

I only know by comparison that my values, hopes, and ambitions are radically different than those of a younger me. Younger me was largely consumed by the drive for survival. Older me wonders more often what survival’s end will be like. I often reflect on the enduring shame and distress certain actions or situations created in me as a youth. Those situations would never happen now and the memories cause me pain and pause. Maybe that is the point. That feels like learning.

I have often said, however, that many life lessons I learned I would rather have read in a book. Were the lessons of devastation of loss, humiliation, upheaval and searing emotional pain really necessary for the ultimate good of my eternal soul? That seems doubtful. I spent a lot of time wondering if those crushing lessons were simply a case of me being the a—hole. The uncomfortable answer was often yes.

Life for me has been like some talented, untrained filly full of spirit and energy and bumping into its mother and the paddock rails out of sheer, unbridled enthusiasm. The filly needed to grow up, become trained, focus that energy and spirit in a controlled way to be of any value to the herd or its owner. And protect its mother’s ribs. Otherwise it would simply grow bigger and continue to be an unruly, undisciplined horsehole that outgrew its cute phase and was eventually labeled delinquent and dangerous. At which point, it would become isolated and avoided. I’ve been there.

As a child in Pony Club being trained myself, I would often let go of the reins. It signaled the end of the lesson. It was the moment where riders relaxed and the horse relaxed, too. We often caught flak from instructors if we let the reins go in a field where the first thing the horse did was start grazing. That seemed to bother the instructors terribly but I never really got that. I always thought it was a nice treat and reward for a horse that has just worked hard and put up with your childish incompetence for the preceding hour.

On a horse trek across the Andes, I relaxed the reins at certain points when I couldn’t possibly imagine what my instructions to the horse could constructively add to the situation. The group of fellow riders edged along narrow mountain trails within way too close proximity and clear sight of cliffs plunging thousands of feet down the mountain. If the horse took any misstep whatsoever, we would both free fall to our deaths.

It finally occurred to me that the horse did not want to die either. It had crossed these pathways many more times than I had, after all. It needed to be sure – and was likely very sure – of its own footing. Self-preservation is not confined to the human species. I had utterly no control over this animal in that moment. I loosened the reins and gave over my trust to this steady, wordless equine. It worked out, of course, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog post!

Facing death with an attitude of peace would seem to mean arriving at that portal having come to terms with most of the problems and relationships life threw at you. Combined with surrender for what you could not and cannot control any longer, which is a form of grace. I have lately been learning that lesson in real time.

When facing a situation where you have explored every option, you have given a project or person your all, you have asked all the questions, done all the readings, shaken the curtains for every last remaining bit of insight until, one day, for no discernible reason, you let go of any control over the outcome. Where the illusion of control was deployed as a survival strategy, it becomes obvious you have little to no control whatsoever. Control over getting the dishes done, yes, of course. But not for the ultimate outcome of life’s trajectory.

In the vernacular and wisdom of the 12 step groups, one ultimately decides to “Let go and let god.” I assume and hope that will be my conclusion on my deathbed, or death sidewalk, or death seashore or airplane wherever I happen to be at the time I cross “the great divide.”

While it causes anxiety to let go of control, it also comes with a certain sense of relief. There are burdens worth setting down along the journey of life. To surrender to forces greater than you are. Surrender undoubtedly comes at no more important or impactful time than at the end of that journey.

Sounds like relief to me. At the end of the ride, let the damn horse eat all the fresh grass he wants, say I. He’s earned it.

Why I’ll Never Write My Memoir

Life can evolve much differently than we expect.

I often fall back on the old adage to explain life’s twists and turns: “(Wo)Man proposes. God disposes.”

I started writing this blog over a year ago to grease my writing wheels. One day – I told myself – I would write the “great North American memoir.” Admittedly a grandiose ambition, but if you are dreaming anyway, dream big say I.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to learn by writing a daily blog for a year. What I eventually learned surprised me. In terms of writing my own memoir, my lust and ambition had subsided.

I realized I had already written a memoir, in fact, but not in a conventional way. My memoir was written down in a thousand daily journal entries in dozens of journals.

In plaintive emails to friends and supporters. In counseling sessions. Family not so much. Family was more often the subject of painful emails than the recipients.

When the time came for me to set out on a blog writing journey, my intention was certain. I would eventually gather all the words I wrote after that pivotal year and compile those musings in a book that was sure to become a New York Times bestseller.

That bestseller would put me on par with revered writers Mitch Albom and Anne Lamott and dozens of other insightful spiritual and psychological authors whose wisdom I’d ingested over the years.

As you can tell, writers must have considerable hubris and ego to believe sharing their words and insight might have any universal appeal.

I had an unstable and violence-riddled childhood. My parents were unstable and troubled. So they passed on what they knew to me and my two sisters. In logical order, those qualities carried on in me through adolescence and young adulthood and beyond.

Underneath all of the emotional muck that had built up inside me over years, I held onto a single belief: I was worth something and would one day make a contribution to the world that would justify all the pain and upheaval I had lived through and caused.

That once seemed like a noble, if presumptuous, ambition. I now realize that it was an acquired survival strategy. A decades long “Hang in there” mantra that kept me moving forward when I all I wanted on many days was for the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

For the life of me, I could not figure out how a seemingly bright and well-meaning sort, such as myself, could go through daily life and repeatedly make so many dumb and incomprehensible life choices.

I couldn’t figure any of it out until I learned about the impact trauma and neglect can have on a child’s delicate and emerging psyche. I couldn’t figure any of it out until I learned there such a thing as “personal boundaries.”

More pointedly was the learning that it was up to me to set those boundaries for myself and my life and that those boundaries were supposed to be inviolable. And if they were to be preserved and strengthened, it would be my job to do so.

Duh.

How odd these revelations must seem to “normal” readers. Those who grew up with “good enough” parents who provided the necessaries of life and a safe home environment without fanfare or expectation of laud.

Only much later in life did I come to realize my narcissistic mother had an addictive and almost pathological need to hear what a great job she was doing and had done for her children. It was her survival strategy and often tenuous attachment to sanity.

My life today is 180 degrees from the life I lived as a child. I have everything I need and much of what I want. I have a strong and loving relationship with an equally flawed and delightful human being in my husband.

I chuckle a little when I realize my assertion about enjoying a happy marriage would have had as much currency in my family as claiming the moon is made of green cheese. Incredulous and ridiculous my mother would surely say. Yet, here we are.

I am not old enough to have arrived at the rigorous stock-taking phase in old age about what my life was, the part I played in it and how I feel about it all. In truth, some chapters and paragraphs are too painful to revisit. But not all by a long shot.

I had an interesting balance of experiences, adventures and learning opportunities that balanced out the tragedies. There are many stories from those positive experiences that are worth sharing.

Trips to Europe, Egypt, India, Nepal in my youth. Argentina, the Arctic, China, Korea and Hong Kong in mid-life. And now the biggest trip of my life by marrying, pulling up stakes in my home and native land and immigrating South. Who knew it could be even more educational (if by times utterly perplexing) than any of my earlier travel adventures?

Writing and publishing “the” memoir has receded in importance. I have internalized the lessons learned by wrestling with the myriad of issues my childhood forced me to confront and deal with.

That I did more or less successfully is infinitely more gratifying than seeing my name and image plastered on a book cover in bookstores across North America. (Remind me, by the way. Are there still bookstores out there? I’ve been out of touch.)

I now know that all published works are a compilation of applied intellect, imagination and creativity. Even and perhaps especially, memoir. I now write when Spirit moves me to write. Like today.

As for my childish dreams of fame, fortune and global admiration by millions of strangers? That ambition has been traded for the hundred daily satisfactions and frustrations of a happy and peaceful daily life filled with loving friends and family of choice.

For me, that is a more than satisfactory trade-off for the bright lights and big city.

Been there, done that.

Sacred Space and Place

The word “sacred” is done to death. The word is bandied about with what seems like very little spiritual ballast to help us access it these days.

As I have come to understand sacred space, it is a place we carve out to commune with ourselves and with Spirit. Or more accurately perhaps, the Spirit within ourselves. Or, as in some traditions, a Higher Power.

Now there’s a lot of assumption going on right there. “Communing with Spirit” is off-putting to many. You can’t taste it, hear it or see it. Not with our physical senses at any rate. But open yourself up and you can surely feel it.

There are two reasons why a call to sacred communion is off-putting, I believe. Connecting with “Spirit” assumes you believe there is “One.” You must also believe that “Spirit” is available to you and willing to spend time with you. (Who am I, we may ask, for Spirit to talk to lowly me?)

The second reason it is often off-putting is that notions of Spirit are fragmented and compartmentalized in our lives today. Where do we even go to connect with “Spirit” if we believe in one? Church? Or a synagogue or a mosque? Somewhere where someone in fancy clothes with elevated connections to “Spirit” grants us access?

Here’s the thing. What I believe is that Spirit is an inherent part of “who we are.” It is universal and inborn in every one of us and is included with membership in the human race. That other stuff – the fancy garments and learned sermons – is a form of religious theater.

It is vitally important to some people. The dogma of church and religious teachings grounds many people in their lives and guides their actions. I have no quarrel with that. But I will say it is likely a little narrow in terms of what Spirit actually is and does.

I don’t care how much one studies or learns or how old and wise they get, the fundamental mysteries of life remain fundamentally mysterious. No one to my knowledge has cracked the code of how Earth came to be in the form it is and what it does.

There are no answers to devolving the “miracle of birth,” except from a strictly scientific and biological perspective. And let’s admit it. That comes up a little short in the “explanation” department.

So today I was touched once again by the teachings of my dear old friend Joseph Campbell (in my mind’s eye only; I never met the man.) He talked about the crucial need to create a sacred space in our lives. His prescription was to carve out a space or even maybe an hour a day to do nothing.

No chores. No phone calls. No conversations. Nada. Just focused me time. To play your favorite music (no matter how bad it is in the opinion of others.) To go inward. To write perhaps. To just be. And see what comes up.

Hah. Nice try with a quasi-OCD, Type A, get ‘er done kinda gal. But I am working on it. And I have experienced sacred spaces and places before. Sustaining them seems to be an issue.

Joe Campbell says it is important to carve out sacred space for ourselves now because our capitalist system focusses almost exclusively on social and economic activities. When First Nations roamed North America, they inherently understood that everything about them was sacred. The land, the skies, all of nature.

They acted accordingly. No wonder they were such a threat to the invading white Europeans. Europeans “triumphed,” in fact, because, they had little to no sense of spiritual relationship to the land and nature. What a high price we have all paid for that disconnect.

Spirit lives in all of us. It may be dormant or temporarily absent or out dealing with some other poor schmuck who has appealed to it for succour. We can disconnect from “Spirit” through our deeds and words. But it is never dead, dead.

I believe Spirit supports and encourages life and loving. Our worldly pursuits may cause us to lose track of that fact. In my healing journey, I often said, I abandoned myself, but god (as I choose to call Spirit) never did. When I was acting contrary to the laws of love and connection, the disconnect was painfully evident.

It is how I understand clinical depression. A disconnect with the essence and vitality of who we really are. Sure, part of it may be brain chemistry. (Who devised that in the first place is the obvious question?) But Spirit heals from within.

Great spiritual leaders have always know that and preach about it. Religious leaders? Well, it depends on how spiritually driven their beliefs and actions are. Among the best I ever knew was Rev. John Hogman. John was half of the ministerial tag team at Fairfield United Church in Victoria, BC with his wife, Rev. Michelle.

John’s sermons were consistently marked by his ability to connect the relationship between the scripture Jesus Christ proselytized and our everyday life. A song that was popular when Rev. John was on the planet was Joan Osborne’s One of Us: “What if God was one of us … just a slob like one of us … just a stranger on the bus … tryin’ to make his way home.”

So it would appear I need to tune up my Spirit communion skills. To carve out serious “me time.” To move more into the camp of human “being” instead of human “doing.” To reacquaint myself with a sense of awe, joy and wonder.

Because after all the money has been earned, the lectures have been delivered, the books written or read, what else is there??

Spirit and the Great Mystery. Even if I don’t “know” what the heck it is.