After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

I have been reading a book by Jack Kornfield called "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry". Jack was the author of another book called "A Path with Heart" that was a huge influence on my spiritual path many years ago, and I'm finding this other book to be equally profound. He speaks to my early experiences with spiritual awakening, helping me better understand some of what I experienced in the past as well as my current spiritual path. After we have a profound, blissful, ecstatic spiritual experience, what next? His answer - do the laundry. The mundane affairs of life become our spiritual practice.

If we have felt the bliss of awakening to the way things really are, our next task is not to live in that state of bliss. It is to take the magic we have experienced and bring it into our lives. Having climbed the mountain and seen the view, we then need to come down the mountain to live our lives. But we can also share a bit of the light we've been given. That doesn't mean we have to preach it (though we can); it means we simply live and let that light shine through us. We embrace the mundane and live our lives with the fresh perspective we have been given.

There is so much I love about the book, but I'll just share a couple of pieces. In speaking about flexibility of mind and heart, Jack relates an experience he had with one of his early spiritual teachers:

The dogmatic and rigid qualities of religious fervor give way to the middle path, with a wise presence that is neither indulgent nor fearful.

My teacher Ajahn Chah demonstrated this flexibility when he was most inconsistent, contradicting things he had previously said, reversing teachings he had earlier emphasized. When this was pointed out to him by a frustrated student (me), Ajahn Chah laughed. "It's like this," he said. "There is a road I know well, but it can be foggy or dark. When I see someone traveling this road about to fall in a ditch or get lost in a sidetrack on the right-hand side, I call out, 'Go to the left.' Similarly, if I see someone about to fall in a ditch or get lost in a sidetrack on the left-hand side, I call out, 'Go to the right.' That's all I do when I teach. Whenever you get caught, I say, 'Let go of that too.' "

For years before I left the church of my childhood, I felt that church leaders painted with too broad a brush. At the time, I thought it was a necessary aspect of trying to teach so many people at once, but I think it also comes from a codified creed that begins to feel rigid as soon as it has been written down. Having the flexibility to change your teachings to suit the circumstances of your hearer(s) feels so liberating to me. I love how one yoga teacher handled that - from another part of the book:

Religious traditions often warn us about the dangers of entanglement with the senses, and it is true that we can become overly attached and identified with this body and its pleasures. Our culture has exploited this to an extreme. But in spiritual circles the opposite danger of aversion, fear, and unconsciousness is perhaps even more common. There is, as the Buddha suggests, a middle path to be found in each of our lives. One yoga teacher paused in the midst of teaching a difficult stretch to caution her students, "You strivers here, relax. And you sensualists, straighten up."

Speaking to an entire class, this woman recognized the diversity of personalities among her hearers and tailored her message to the specific tendencies of students. In my early religion, we often heard encouragements to do more, to be of greater service, to strive to be better, etc. Those of us who were already trying hard, sometimes at the edge of exhaustion, would hear these messages and feel burdened. But we kept trying. No doubt there are many who need to hear those messages, but I wasn't one of them. Or maybe I was when I was very young, but I reached a point where I didn't need those messages anymore. But they just kept coming. It would have been nice if we had had more flexibility to call out, "go left" or "go right" instead of "work harder".

Here's another gem from the book:

Zen teacher Edward Espe Brown is the author of many Zen-inspired cookbooks, beginning with The Tassajara Bread Book. Through describing his kitchen practice, he writes of the truths of the heart.

When I first started cooking at Tassajara, I had a problem. I couldn't get my biscuits to come out the way they were supposed to. I'd follow a recipe and try variations, but nothing worked. These biscuits just didn't measure up.

Growing up I had made two kinds of biscuits. One was from Bisquick and other from Pillsbury. For the Bisquick you added milk in the mix and then blobbed the dough in spoonfuls onto the pan - you didn't even need to roll them out. The biscuits from Pillsbury came in kind of a cardboard can. You rapped the can on the corner of the counter and it popped open. Then you twisted the can open more, put the premade biscuits on a pan, and baked them. I really liked those Pillsbury biscuits. Isn't that what biscuits should taste like? Mine weren't coming out right.

It's wonderful and amazing the ideas we get about what biscuits should taste like, or what a life should look like. Compared to what? Canned biscuits from Pillsbury? Leave It to Beaver? People who ate my biscuits would extoll their virtues, eating one after another, but to me these perfectly good biscuits just weren't right.

Finally one day came a shifting-into-place, an awakening. "Not right" compared to what? Oh, my word, I'd been trying to make canned Pillsbury biscuits! Then came an exquisite moment of actually tasting my biscuits without comparing them to some previously hidden standard. They were wheaty, flaky, buttery, sunny, earthy, real. They were incomparably alive - in fact, much more satisfying than any memory. 

These occasions can be so stunning, so liberating, these moments when you realize your life is just fine as it is, thank you. Only the insidious comparison to a beautifully prepared, beautifully packaged product made it seem insufficient. Trying to produce a biscuit - a life - with no dirty bowls, no messy feelings, no depression, no anger, was so frustrating. Then savoring, actually tasting the present moment of experience - how much more complex and multifaceted. How unfathomable.

As Zen students we spent years trying to make it look right, trying to cover the faults, conceal the messes. We knew what the Bisquick Zen student looked like: calm, buoyant, cheerful, energetic, deep, profound. Our motto, as one of my friends said, was, "looking good." We've all done it, trying to look good as a husband, a wife or parent. Trying to attain perfection. Trying to make Pillsbury biscuits.

Well, to heck with it, I say. Wake up and smell the coffee. How about some good old home cooking, the biscuits of today.

When we accept our place in the mandala of the whole, we come back to just where we are. And in this is found joy, ease, simplicity, and courage, and what T.S. Eliot calls the freedom "to care and not to care." 

Pretty cool, huh? That's just a small sample. This book is going to be another of my spiritual staples. I love Jack's perspective on life and his ability to convey its essence with simplicity and love.

If you get a chance to read the book, let me know what you think. If it doesn't work for you, that's ok. I think it's beautiful, the work of a beautiful soul. Thanks, Jack, for casting a bit of light along my path.

Educated

I just finished reading "Educated: A Memoir" by Tara Westover. It's a story of the author's experiences as a girl raised in the mountains of Idaho by survivalist Mormon parents. It's a fascinating and psychologically penetrating account of some of her formative experiences, both beautiful and abusive, and her long journey to move beyond the confines of the subculture in which she was raised. It was difficult to read for many reasons, and I found myself crying multiple times, both for Tara and for myself.

Tara was raised by a father who sounds like he was mentally ill and a mother who supported and enabled his extreme views. They are not bad people. They are products of their biology and of the culture in which they were raised. Tara doesn't appear to blame them; in fact, she seems more open than I felt in allowing for some of the unhealthy behaviors they and others in her family exhibited. In reading her account, I found myself wondering how I could have a more forgiving attitude like her. And I found myself identifying with her experiences, both as a child who experienced less than ideal circumstances and was subjected to some extreme views, and also as the parent who inherited and/or learned some extreme views and passed them on to his children.

If you have read the book, you know that Tara's situation was pretty bad. There are people who suffer abuse much worse, and many who suffer much less. I suppose it's possible there are some children who do not feel they were abused at all. But I'm in the camp of those who suffered less than her. I'm not a martyr. My experiences were far less extreme than hers in almost every way. My parents were good people. They had their challenges, but they did the best they could with what they were given. But I still felt a connection to Tara as she described concepts and principles drilled into her by well-meaning parents and physical abuse suffered at the hand of someone who should have been (and sometimes was) her protector. I feared for her every time she went home, and by the end of the book, I wanted to scream at her NOT to go home. Those parts were hard to read.

But the hardest part for me was seeing myself in her parents. Being raised in a conservative religion pushed me to some pretty extreme views years ago, and I still don't really know what kind of damage I have done to my wife and children as a result. I bought into some conspiracy theories to explain discrepancies between what I saw in society and what I believed a "good" society should look like. My upbringing had taught me to avoid (and sometimes fear) the sinful ways of the world, which set up an us-vs-them mindset that cast me in the role of hero, armed with truth and right, fighting the evils in the world to make the world a better place. The black and white thinking that I inherited along with reverence for authority didn't mesh well with the critical thinking skills I learned later in college. Not that religion and open-mindedness are fundamentally incompatible, but eventually, my search for truth led me to another extreme view - of skepticism of our ability to know anything, which ultimately led me to question and dismantle the rest of my extreme views. And this letting go dissolved the boundaries, connecting me with a world that was more beautiful and loving than the one I had been taught to fear.

I can't comment on the truth of various conspiracy theories. Some are probably true. Most feel false. I can only definitively talk about how they affected me. I was not happy when I explored and embraced them. I was motivated by fear. Those ideas helped me find a mechanism for explaining the degradation of society that would ultimately lead to the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. This was driven in part by teachings from the Bible and church leaders and partly by my own experiences. From a young age, my relationships with people outside of my church had somewhat inoculated me against the us-vs-them mentality, but I couldn't reconcile a growing sense of the goodness of people with what the Bible said about society's future state leading to Armageddon. Conspiracies filled the gaps. But they left me with a feeling of us-vs-them in a different way. Fear and suspicion tended to crowd out love and acceptance, and my life was pretty dark. My final reconciliation came by letting go of the idea of the end of the world, among other things. Not that the world won't end someday - it will because everything does. It's just that my concept of the world's end is no longer colored by religious teachings. And there is no more division in my mind. We're all just people.

Some of what Tara talks about in her journey is a transition from a black/white mindset to an open and inquiring mindset. I started life the same way. Certainty, dogma, black/white, truth/lies, good/bad, right/wrong, in/out, us/them - these were fundamental to my world view. I can't say how much of this came from my religion, how much from my family, and how much from the larger society, but I'm pretty sure all three of them were instrumental for me. It was a long, slow process of maturing for me to move beyond this fundamental paradigm. To dissolve the boundaries that separate us. To step into the dark and realize the world is so much brighter than I had imagined.

And the process is ongoing. I realized recently that I am still driven by some psychological baggage that was buried at a very early age. Two ideas stand out to me: 1) There is never enough and 2) I am not enough. I think Tara's book helped me uncover those. My scarcity mindset has been challenging for me and my family, and I am getting better at letting those impulses go. I'm hopeful I can transcend that idea completely one day - hopefully soon. But the idea that I am somehow not worthy or good enough is deeply seated and bleeds into so many aspects of my life in subtle ways. I think that I may struggle with that one for quite some time - possibly the rest of my life.

Growing up is hard - whether on an individual level or as a society. I think segments of our society are on the verge of social adulthood and some are firmly stuck in the teenage years, or maybe even the toddler years. Hardline thinking and dogma are powerful forces in our society right now. It's hard to hear one another because we make enemies of anyone who disagrees with us. But what if we dissolved the boundaries? Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world with fewer (or no) boundaries? What if we could tear down the walls that separate us long enough to listen to one another without feeling the need to judge them or prove them wrong if they disagree with us? What if we sought out sources of information that challenged our world view? What if we let go of the need to be right, or even the need for certainty, and allowed the other view to be heard and validated? We don't have to agree with each other. We just need to listen with respect.

We don't see things the same, but we are all trying to do our best with what we have. Maybe we can open our minds, drop our judgment, and through kindness, respect, and compassion build a better world. Together.

The Kids are Home

Our kids are home for the summer. Two weeks ago, I was traveling for work and three of our kids were gone. Our oldest was still in Georgia after finishing his spring semester; our second was on a trip to Germany and had stopped in Georgia for a week to visit some friends; and our youngest was on a cruise with one of her friends. All of this travel is really unusual for us, so it was a little weird that it all happened at the same time. Two weeks ago, my wife and third child were the only ones home, and the house was really quiet. Then I came home on Friday (May 27). Our youngest came home on Sunday (May 29), and our oldest two came home on Monday (May 30). Now all six of us are home for the first time since Christmas, and it has been a lot louder ... and a lot of fun.

Our dinner conversations this last week have been a little crazy. For example, a couple of nights ago our youngest randomly said, "On a scale of one to ten, what's your favorite color of the alphabet?" Without missing a beat, our second child said, "Honestly, yes." We all started laughing. My kids are nuts.

Last night, our two oldest made cupcakes. They made the cake rainbow-colored, and they made rainbow-colored frosting. And my daughter made GLBTQ flags to stick in them. Then we watched a movie while eating PRIDE-themed cupcakes in honor of PRIDE month. For the most part, our kids are supportive of people who make alternative lifestyle choices, and I'm grateful for that.

My kids are crazy, but it has been nice having them all home. Sometimes it's a struggle working through their problems with them. Sometimes it's emotionally heavy. Sometimes the challenges make me sad, sometimes angry. And sometimes it's amazing to step back and see how they've grown and matured.

My oldest is almost done with college, and it is really cool to see him excited about what he's doing in school. My second is developing confidence as she slowly steps into adulthood, learning to travel on her own and figuring out what she wants to do with her life. My third child is becoming more kind as he grows in his awareness of others and our interconnectedness. And my youngest is learning about the transitory nature of life as she works through the social challenges of high school. As difficult as it is being a parent, I really am grateful to have those four kids in my life. And I'm looking forward to spending the rest of the summer listening to their insane dinner conversations.

Epic Grand Canyon Trip

We went camping at the Grand Canyon with our two daughters and a friend of our youngest. We were invited by my sister and her family who were visiting the area from Seattle. We left Thursday and planned to come back Saturday. Today is Sunday.

View of the Grand Canyon at sunset

Here's a little bit of what happened on the trip. It was pretty epic, so I thought I'd better document it for posterity (and for your amusement). I've color-coded the positive and negative aspects of the trip for your reading pleasure.

• Our cooler broke on the drive to the canyon
• We saw a ton of elk near the campsite the first night - they were beautiful
• We later saw more elk, wild horses, and crows (one of which tried to eat our Cheerios box)
• We had a campfire Thursday night with extended family, s'mores, jokes, and songs accompanied by a ukulele
• The stars at night were incredible
• I haven't seen that many stars in the sky in years
• The first night, we went to find a bathroom after dark. We knew there was one near the registration area, so we hiked there only to find it was locked. On our way back, we got lost, thankfully stumbled on an open bathroom, and eventually found our way back to camp.
• There was wind and rain overnight
• Multiple bathroom breaks in the middle of the night were more fun with a little rain
• The car battery was dead in the morning - we still don't know why
• Friday was COLD and very windy
• The forecasted high for Friday was 67, but it probably didn't get above 47
• It's usually mid- to high-80s this time of year
• Nobody was prepared for how cold it was
• Most people ended up wearing their pajamas on Friday for warmth
• My youngest daughter forgot to bring a sweatshirt and blanket and ended up borrowing one of my layers (and the picnic blanket) for the rest of the trip
• Our lighter ran out of fuel partway through the day
• We went to see the canyon, which was breathtaking
• We did some hiking, saw some amazing views, bought a beautiful print of the canyon at sunset, and soaked in the wonder of the place
• Along the way, my daughter's friend found multiple opportunities to flirt with death in order to capture stupid photos (which turned out pretty cool)
• A hot chocolate stop midday made the cold more bearable
• We came back to camp for lunch to find the wind thrashing our tents, tearing out the stakes (one of the tents was completely blown over), and threatening to carry them to some other part of the park
• We fixed the tents, had lunch, and started seriously contemplating leaving a day early because it was so freaking cold
• We went driving in the afternoon and saw a lot of other views of the canyon. Each one was pretty mind-blowing.
• We headed back to camp with most of us feeling like it was time to go home because the cold and wind were so uncomfortable. We finally decided to cut the trip short (it was supposed to be a two-night trip, but ...), and as we were breaking camp, it started snowing and hailing pretty heavily. Not crazy heavy, but enough to make things uncomfortable.
• Frozen fingers trying to zip up bags
• Mud everywhere
• Hail in the bags, which would mean later drying out at home
• Keep in mind, this is Arizona ...
• We finally shoved all of the luggage in the car and in a roof rack carrier we had borrowed from a friend
• As we drove off, we discovered that the straps of the roof carrier weren't tight enough and were making noise in the wind. The noise was a bit like having a bunch of angry wasps in the car with us.
• As we're thinking about how to handle this new development on our way out of the park, someone rear-ended us. No one was hurt (except for a bit of a banged-up knee), but we had to get out and take care of that. Thankfully, the guy who hit us was very apologetic and really nice.
• We saw a dead elk on the side of the road on our way out
• We ended up stopping about 4-5 times trying to fix the stupid roof carrier. Somehow, we had made it work on the drive up, but we couldn't get it to work on the drive back.
• Finally, we pulled it off and stuffed everything in the car because we felt like spatial comfort wasn't as important as stopping the noise.
• We stopped for dinner (where the lines were long and the restrooms had no toilet paper), and my daughter's friend lost her phone, which set off a scramble. Thankfully, we found it in an obscure place in the now-slightly-cramped car.
• According to my youngest, the most traumatic experience of the entire trip was that her fortune cookie from dinner didn't have a fortune in it.
• As you can see, it was a rough trip ... :)

We ended up getting home around midnight on Friday. I think the negative events outnumbered the positive events by at least 2:1. But the positives were awesome. And the negatives were funny (we laughed a lot on the way home as we talked about how crazy the trip was). It turns out, there's no such thing as negative. Maybe Shakespeare was right when he wrote, "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

Overall, the trip was awesome. We will definitely be going back sometime for more views, more hiking, and the incredibly starry skies.

Starry skies at the Grand Canyon

Life Changes

Life has taken some unexpected turns in the last couple of years. It has kept me busy enough that I haven't had the presence of mind to write in this blog for a LONG time. In just over 2 years, I have gone through three job changes, and we moved our family from Georgia (where we had lived for 18 years) to Arizona.

The changes have been good, and we're enjoying our new home. We have all made new friends, and the kids are doing really well with the transition. We left our oldest in Georgia where he's going to college, and our second child is living at home while attending college nearby. The younger two are in high school and stay incredibly busy with friends, school, and extracurricular stuff.

Each job has taught me a lot, and I'm grateful I've had each opportunity. I never intended to change jobs so quickly, but for different reasons, each change seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I started my current job about a month ago, and I'm really excited about the opportunity. It's a startup, and the company is poised for growth, so things are getting exciting there.

I'm really glad I learned to meditate several years ago. My practice has been really grounding for me and has helped me to meet these changes with stability of mind. I've realized more and more how little control I have over my life's course. I think my meditation practice has also helped me to let go of the illusion of control and the need to control.

Life is funny. It's unexpected. It's always surprising me and teaching me. And it's a really fun ride.

Death at 31

I recently read an article by a young man who had been diagnosed with cancer. He had weeks to live when he wrote the article. He shares some lessons he has learned along the way, and I think those lessons are worth sharing further.

1. "Gratitude" - in the midst of a challenging time with mental and physical ups and downs, he found solace in remembering his friends and family, the good times he shared with them, and the privileges he has had in life.

2. "A life, if lived well, is long enough" - this man knew he was close to death, but he wasn't bemoaning the fact that his life was being cut short. He was at peace knowing he had made the most of the time he had.

3. "Be vulnerable and connect with others" - vulnerability seems like a weakness, but it's probably the opposite. It's the best way to authentically connect with others, something that brings us some of the greatest joys we can experience in life.

4. "Do something for others" - another way we experience deep joy.

5. "Protect the planet" - this guy had done a lot of traveling and had seen some amazing places. He was inspired by the natural beauty of the world, but felt we need to do a better job of protecting our natural home. This seems like a subset of #4, but it's an important one.

The man's name was Elliot Dallen, and he died on September 7, 2020, the day after his article was published. The article is worth reading. Life becomes more precious when we realize how little life we have left. Elliot sensed that, and his writing brought out life's beauty while squarely facing the difficulties of his situation. If you have about 5 or 10 minutes to spare, please take a look. I think you'll be happy you did.

Honest, Wise Men

In LDS scripture, a revelation is recorded as received by Joseph Smith, the Church's founder. In speaking of government leaders, the revelation states (D&C 98:10):

honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold

I don't normally talk about politics, but I'm interested in hearing peoples' opinions on something.

I have been wondering at the support I have seen for President Trump among LDS friends. In light of the scripture above, I would think that for faithful LDS people, a person's character would be a critical factor in deciding who to support. And from what I can see, many people supporting Trump seem to be holding their noses while voting for him because they know he's not a good man. They admit his character is poor but believe he will support certain principles and policies they favor.

I wonder if I'm reading this right. I know I don't typically get feedback on my blog, and it's ok if I don't get a response here, but I'd like to hear from you on this. Are you LDS? Do you support Trump? If so, how do you reconcile that support with the scripture above?

Or perhaps you're LDS and you don't support Trump. I'd like to hear your thoughts on how your faith plays a factor in that decision, if at all. Does the scripture above play a role, or are there other more important factors?

And if you're not LDS, but you resonate with any of the above, please share your thoughts. For myself, though I don't agree with all LDS teachings, the scripture above still resonates with me. I believe character is critical in making decisions of who to support in leadership positions.

What do you think? What role does/should character play in electing officials?

Please state your opinions respectfully. We're in a very polarized political climate right now, and I would like to promote a kinder, gentler environment for the exchange of ideas. 😊 So ... safe space. Please share. Thanks.

A Simpler Teleology

Teleology is the philosophical study of purpose. Telos is Greek for 'end', 'purpose', or 'goal'. Teleology has a long history, going as far back as Aristotle (maybe farther), and serves as a goal- or purpose-oriented explanation for why things are the way they are.

Aristotle talks about four types of explanations: the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. The material cause deals with the matter of which the thing is composed. The formal cause deals with the form or design of the thing. The efficient cause deals with the agent by which the thing is made. The final cause is the telos of the thing, the purpose for which it was made.

I often think of these in terms of how we understand the question of why. If, for example, I ask, "why is the sun hot?", I might understand the question in various ways, leading me to give very different answers. Note the answers below are illustrative only and are not intended to be statements of absolute truth.

1. Material: the sun is largely made of hydrogen
2. Formal: the sun was designed to be hot
3. Efficient: heat is generated by fusion, primarily by fusing hydrogen into helium
4. Final: the sun is hot in order to warm the earth and make life possible here

My answer for the material cause above is meaningless unless paired with the efficient cause, as the presence of hydrogen by itself (the primary material contributing to the heat) is not a sufficient explanation for the heat. An alternative answer might be to say that the sun is made of heat, though that wouldn't make much sense in our modern world.

The formal cause here isn't very useful either. I could have said the sun is a sphere, but that has nothing to do with its heat.

An alternative answer of the efficient cause might be to say that God designed the sun to be hot. But I have chosen the more scientific answer to illustrate something.

In our modern world, we tend to favor the material and efficient causes as explanations when approaching a subject logically and rationally. Science favors the combination of these causes to explain various phenomena. In scientific explanations and modern philosophical discussions, we tend to de-emphasize the formal and final causes. But as human beings, we connect well with the narrative implied by the final cause. The final cause connects things to their purpose.

If we focus on the telos, or final cause, we may feel we need to explain everything that occurs by some ultimate, grand purpose of life. If we pursue the teleological chain to its logical end, it may lead us to God as the prime mover or something similar. With such a focus, we may become inclined to offer mystical or supernatural explanations for the efficient cause rather than the purely rational, naturalistic explanations typically offered by science. I'm not suggesting this is a bad thing; it's just an observation.

Teleological explanations can be satisfying to the soul, giving us a feeling of purpose in our lives. That can have a big psychological benefit up to a point. But the need to offer a teleological explanation to everything can also be a huge psychological burden. It's exhausting and can become crippling. Life is a complex web of interconnected beings, objects, and forces whose actions all affect one another in unknown ways. To seek an answer to the question 'why' for anything and everything that might happen in our lives may seem pious to the devout religionist - it's a natural response to a belief in an omnipotent God. If God can control everything, then surely there is a reason that this particular thing is happening to me right now. But that obsession with explaining everything can leave us mentally whirling in endless circles with no real benefit.

Sometimes things just are. There's no why. There's no because. They just are.

Why does the wind blow? Because it does. It didn't blow in order to make you cold. It didn't blow to break your umbrella so you would get wet in the rain. It didn't blow to make you feel good on a hot day. It just blew. It's what it does.

I'm reminded of the song "Roll the Bones" by Rush. To roll the bones means to toss the dice. Lyrics from the song: "Why does it happen? Because it happens. Roll the bones." Toss the dice. Play the game. Live your life. Don't worry about the why. It happened. It's your turn. Roll the bones.

There's a lot of wisdom in that. It's not an attitude of 'I don't care.' It's a purposeful move beyond telos to a life that is lived fully, in the present moment. Getting caught up in the teleology of everything only pulls us out of our lives and gets us stuck in our heads.

So don't worry about the purpose of everything. Let it go. And live your life fully. Joyfully. Every moment.

But that's hard. Teleology, or purpose, is important to us psychologically. What if we can't just let go? How do we handle the question of why? Maybe one answer is that the purpose of this moment is simply to have the experience you're having. Perhaps experience is its own purpose. Each new experience, whether we label it good or bad, helps us grow. Maybe that can be the answer to our soul's longing. Maybe teleology doesn't have to connect everything in one massive logical chain. Maybe the telos, or purpose, of this moment is simply ... this moment.

It's a simpler teleology. No causal chain to invent and maintain. This moment is the purpose. Just this.

Connecting With Our Source

 I think I'm finally beginning to understand what meditation is all about.

When I was a kid, I learned to meditate in a karate class. We were taught a very simple method, and I took it as the goal of meditation for many years. We were taught to empty our minds of all thought. That's a useful, if impossible, exercise. It can give you a bit more control of your mind as you develop some mental discipline through the effort. But as it's ultimately impossible, emptying the mind can't be the true objective.

Many years later, I found unbelievable peace through meditation. It healed me like no other practice had done before. And for a while, I thought that peace was the objective. Peace is a wonderful product of meditation - sometimes. But there's no guarantee you'll feel peace. And if we can't guarantee the result, perhaps peace isn't the real purpose of meditation either.

At other times in meditation, I have experienced intense bliss. This seems like a great outcome, but like peace, I can't make it stay around. So bliss probably isn't the real objective either.

I now believe that the objective of meditation is simply bringing our awareness to the source of our awareness. When I do that, I plug into that Source, which seems to be both me and much larger than me. And that practice of connecting with this Source is liberating and empowering.

It reminds me that I am not this limited body in which I find myself. It reminds me that I am connected to a much wider reality than what I experience every day. And it infuses me with a love, a joy, and a peace that is beyond anything I can describe. While this practice gives me the power to distance myself from my thoughts and emotions, I am also enabled to live more fully present, accepting every moment as it comes without judgment. Life becomes easier somehow. And the states of bliss and peace I described earlier start to become a more common occurrence. Though they are not the objective of meditation, they are its natural fruits.

Questions like "who am I?" can be extremely powerful in directing our attention during meditation. Such questions may seem obvious to the mind, which will spit back any number of answers without any trouble. But if we move beyond the mind's easy answers, recognizing how transient those answers are, we begin to see how impossible it is to actually answer the question. If we persevere, allowing the uncertainty and wonder of our nature and existence to work upon us, we begin to come toward the seat of consciousness itself. We begin to approach our Source.

As we get used to it, we can learn to touch the Source by simply turning our attention inward. It becomes easier to do. And we start to see how we are like branches on a tree. Most of the time, our attention is focused outward. But if we look back, we recognize how connected we are to everything else. We see that by harming our fellow branches, we're ultimately harming ourselves ... because we're all one tree. And we can more easily take in the life-giving sap that's always flowing into us, but which we're usually too distracted to notice, process, and appreciate. We soak in the love that's all around us, and we naturally become better, more patient, more kind, more compassionate. Life becomes our friend instead of our enemy. And we rest in the present moment.

This is the peace that transcends all understanding that Jesus (John 14:27) and Paul (Philipians 4:7) talked about. But it doesn't come by focusing on peace or by actively seeking it. It comes through awareness, insight, and surrender. It comes by understanding who and what we truly are as we connect with our Source.

Letting Go of our Garbage

There is a man in Alachua, Florida named Mickey Singer. I found him through one of his books called "The Surrender Experiment", and I really resonated with him. I was so drawn to his experiences that I decided to visit him at his "Temple of the Universe" a few months ago. I enjoyed hearing him speak, and then spoke to him briefly in private. He's a fascinating guy. Since the pandemic started, he has been posting his talks on his website. I listened to one of his recent talks, and it inspired me to write the following. To be fair, most of what follows came from Mickey. I am paraphrasing some of what he said and summarizing the main ideas that spoke to me. Hopefully they'll be useful to someone else too.

Temple of the Universe in Alachua, Florida 

Every single thing that happens to us is for our benefit if we are willing to let go and enjoy the ride. It's only when we 1) cling to what we want or 2) resist what we don't want that our lives become a living hell.

By letting go, we allow ourselves to live in the moment. Each action we take becomes an end unto itself. We cease to work for money - we work for the sake of the work we're doing. We cease to interact with loved ones for what we can get out of the relationship - we interact with them for the sake of the interaction. We cease to look for ends and results other than the experience we are having at the moment.

And this can be fulfilling when we recognize that every experience we have makes us a better person. If it's a pleasant experience, we enjoy the pleasantness. If it's an unpleasant experience, we open to it and grow from the challenge it presents.

No more struggle. Life becomes peaceful. The world becomes friendly. There are no more enemies. Every one and every thing that touches our lives works for our good (Romans 8:28) because we use every experience to become a greater being. Everything in the world becomes God to us, lifting us up and helping us reach our full potential.

So it really comes down to letting go and living in the moment. But how do we let go? We have to learn to relax in the midst of trouble. And meditation is a great tool for helping us do that. It can train us to become more conscious and aware of everything that's going on regardless of circumstance.

With this combination of focus and relaxation, a kind of intense state of rest, we can begin to see clearly as garbage we have stored in our psyches begins to come up. As it arises, we can become conscious enough to look at it without getting mixed up in it. We watch it do its thing, and by not investing it with our energy, we begin to let it go.

The practice of focusing our attention on something other than our minds gives us the ability to distance ourselves from the mental chatter when our emotions start to go crazy because something happens that triggers the garbage we have stored inside. Meditation is training for the real spiritual/psychological work that happens when life gets hard. It give us the tools to let go. It enables us to become comfortable being uncomfortable. We recognize when we're not ok - and we're ok with that.

It might take many experiences with a single piece of garbage, whatever it is, before we're able to release it. It could be a traumatic experience in our past or a fear of something that might happen in the future. But whatever it is, if we keep at it, it will eventually disappear. And piece by piece, we will gradually remove the sewage in our psyches, and having cleansed our souls, we'll begin to live more deeply and authentically. Our entire lives can become free, and we simply live life instead of doing battle with it.

Beginner's Mind

We have a tendency to become accustomed to our reality so that what is familiar to us becomes trite and boring. What we are familiar with is easier to ignore than something new and exotic. New surroundings grab our attention and draw us in. It's one of the things I enjoy about travel.

But every thing has beauty, regardless of whether we have seen it before. Our acclimatization to our reality does not have to lead to a devaluation. When we become used to something, we think we know it. And we see it through the lens of the mental model we have constructed. But actually, we cease to see it for what it is and only perceive the model of it that we have created in our minds.

We think we understand it, but we only know it at a snapshot in time and probably only at a surface level. We close ourselves off to the depth and dynamic nature of the thing, and it loses some of its magic.

We do this with relationships too. We think we know someone so we stop paying attention to who they really are. Instead, when we interact with them, we're really interacting with the reflection of them that we hold in our minds. I have often wondered why it is harder to treat the people who are close to us with the patience and kindness that we often show to strangers. I think this is part of the answer. Familiarity leads us to devalue the thing and abstract it away from reality. This phenomenon has led to aphorisms like "familiarity breeds contempt" (we devalue the familiar) and "absence makes the heart grow fonder" (spending time apart can make things less familiar, and the reunion feels more fresh).

There is a concept in Buddhism called Beginner's Mind. The idea is to let go of preconceptions and bring to every moment the simple curiosity of a child. Everything is new. Everything has something to teach us. We accept our inability to truly know anything, so we drop all preconceptions, and we enter into each moment afresh, letting it fill us and teach us. When we do that, we begin to see through the facades and illusions we have created (our static mental models), and we begin to touch the depth of reality in every moment.

Not all mental models are bad. Some are quite useful. They can help us make sense of things and make decisions based on limited information. The problem comes when we take those models too seriously. If we mistake them for reality, we're living an illusory life. We can use them as tools while always being willing to question them. And we can drop them whenever possible so we can see reality fresh.

Some mental models are less useful. My pride, fueled by fear and a feeling of insignificance, generates mental models of my world with me at the center. These models are a powerful mix of truth and lies that keep me from experiencing the fullness of reality. Pride is a tightening and a closing off. Humility is a release and an opening to what is. To be humble, I've learned I just need to stay open. When I do, I can drop the ego-generated mental models and, like a child, view my world with eyes of wonder. I think maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said, "Except ye ... become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Matt 18:3). Maybe we just need to stay open, living every moment like a child with eyes wide open.

Falling Awake

Waking up spiritually is a falling awake. It's not about effort. It's more about easing into it. Like you're falling asleep - except you're waking up. Waking to life as it is, without wishing it to be other than it is.

We're all so lost in our own stories. Stories about how life should be. Waking up is a radical kind of acceptance, a submission to life just as it is, and a dropping of all the stories and the story-making.

Acceptance and surrender are at the root of freedom from suffering. But acceptance of what is doesn't mean we can't act to make things better. It just means we start with a clear view of what is, and we accept whatever comes, whether we succeed in our efforts or not. We let go of the results.

True happiness and freedom come from choosing what we have, loving our life, regardless of our circumstances. Being happy with what we have instead of wanting what we don't have.

Daryl Davis

I have had a feeling recently that I need to better understand the racism in our world today. I have been reading a lot about what it's like to be a black person in the US, and I have been amazed at my ignorance of the challenges that black people face. I know I am not alone. There are a lot of non-black people on a quest to better understand the problems of race from the perspective of black people.

But I have also had a feeling that I need to better understand racism from the opposite perspective. I want to know why some people think that skin color is a sufficient criterion to judge someone as inferior. I truly don't understand white supremacy - or any concept of racial superiority or inferiority. But I want to understand it. I want to know what makes people think this way. And I don't think that desire has been as common.

Last week, I stumbled on a TED talk given by a man named Daryl Davis. His story is beautiful and inspiring. As a black man, he befriended members of the Ku Klux Klan over many years in order to understand them. He engaged in respectful dialog, listening to their views, and sharing his own. As a result of these friendships and discussions, some of the men have left the KKK, though that was not Daryl's original intention. The video below is part of his story, focused on one particular member of the KKK.

Near the end of the video, Daryl says:

Take the time to sit down and talk with your adversaries. You will learn something, and they will learn something from you. When two enemies are talking, they're not fighting; they're talking. It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. So keep the conversation going.

I learned years ago that my greatest growth often came by paying attention to what was uncomfortable within me. Listening to my negative emotions helped me unravel them and make friends with them. Ignoring them only ensured they would stick around, grow in strength, and influence my behavior in negative ways. The application of that lesson to interpersonal relations is probably what has led me to this desire to understand white supremacy. It makes me uncomfortable, but ignoring it won't make it go away. With patience, kindness, and respect, perhaps I can understand it and help resolve it. As Daryl says of his conversation with one KKK leader:

I wasn't there to fight him. I was there to learn from him. Where does this ideology come from? Because once you learn where it comes from, you can then try to figure out how to address it and see where it's going.

Daryl Davis has done what I have only thought about. He has become my new hero. His story has inspired me to learn more. I don't think I'm ready to reach out to the KKK, but I do want to pursue the kind of insight into human nature that Daryl discovered. The goal isn't to convert anyone. The goal is to understand. And with that deeper understanding, perhaps I can bring a bit more wisdom to this problem and be a more effective agent for positive change.

A New Normal for Racism

So far, the year 2020 has been a crazy one. We have faced a global health crisis, which precipitated an economic crisis, which has contributed to an escalation of a long-standing moral crisis of racial conflict. In talking about the pandemic, people have used the phrase "a new normal" to discuss the long-lasting impact of the virus on our society. Perhaps we can extend that concept to the issue of race. Maybe it's time for a new normal.

While racism is global, it is particularly problematic in the US. Since I live in the US, and I'm more familiar with my country's history of racism than elsewhere, I'll focus on that.

In 1861, the United States began to fight a war over slavery and/or states rights, depending on who you ask. The abolitionists, primarily in the north, framed the conflict in terms of slavery. The south, believing their states' rights were being infringed by the federal government, framed the conflict in terms of states rights. Those differing points of view persist today, though most people see the conflict today the way the north framed it. In war, after all, the victor tends to write the history books. But both views are valid.

I was taught to view the conflict in terms of slavery. And considering the moral bankruptcy of such an institution, I prefer that view. It reminds us of the darkness of our past and forces us to come face to face with our collective demons. While the issue of states rights is a valid one, I find that view tends to reinforce and justify the ongoing racism that is still a plague on our culture. In my mind, the war was about slavery.

The US Civil War ended in 1865, but the conflict between races continued. This was especially true in the southern states, where many people viewed the recently liberated slaves as less capable, less intelligent, and less deserving of the rights and privileges bestowed upon them by US citizenship. This led to local persecutions, which sometimes led to violence. It also led to laws in many states that enforced a "separate, but equal" concept upon black people that turned out to be horribly unequal in most cases. And while it sometimes amazes me that it took as long as it did to come to a head, all of this eventually led to a social uprising in the 1950s and 1960s (almost 100 years after the war) known as the Civil Rights Movement, which ultimately led to the abolition of segregation and the repeal of many laws that enforced it.

Millions of people died in the Civil War. Millions more suffered in the aftermath, with persecution leading to the deaths of many more in the ensuing years. Almost a century later found us still fighting the same battles with fewer guns and fewer deaths, but with palpable pain and suffering nonetheless. And now, about 60 years after the Civil Rights Movement, in the wake of multiple incidents of black deaths at the hands of police over many years culminating in the horrific death of George Floyd in May 2020, the issue of race is gaining national (and global) attention with a force we haven't seen since the 1960s. George was not the first black person to die at the hands of police in what appears to have been a flagrant display of unnecessary force. But the details of his death at the hands of a police officer were sufficiently heinous to spark a flurry of protests that have gained momentum and are bringing this racial war to the forefront.

George Floyd, pinned to the ground by a police officer kneeling on his neck

My heart goes out to black people who are subjected to racism throughout their lives. I can't really fathom the difficulties that I have been hearing about recently. The way black people have to teach their children to behave when confronted by police is appalling. As a child, I was taught to behave respectfully toward law enforcement too, but with a LOT less fear that we would be randomly questioned or detained by police officers. And with no fear that we would be perceived as a threat just because of the way we looked. I know I have only the beginnings of an understanding of what it is like to be a black person in the US. I would like to better understand the challenges they face. At the moment, I confess that I struggle to understand their situation.

I also struggle to understand the philosophy behind white supremacy groups. I struggle to understand racism. I struggle to understand why I should treat anyone differently because of the color of their skin. I would like to understand why white supremacists think the way they do. I have heard people say that racism has no place in our public discourse, but I disagree. While I see racism as a social cancer, I don't think the cancer will go away if we ignore it or if we fight to suppress it. It will simply go into hiding, continue to fester, and explode in our faces at some difficult time in the future. I want to understand it. And perhaps, with that understanding, I can be a more effective agent of change.

During the Civil Rights Movement, we were fortunate in this country to have a man like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There are a few people throughout history who have used love to bring about social or political change, and Dr. King was one of them. Agree or disagree with his political views, but it's difficult to find fault with a philosophy that leads a man to write something like:

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

And from my limited study of the man's life, he tried hard to live that philosophy. Inspired by his love of Christianity, the Bible, and the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and inspired by Gandhi and his application of ahimsa (non-violence) to combat social injustice, Dr. King was a light to a society struggling to come to terms with its racially diverse population. Where racial tensions often led to hatred and violence, Dr. King preached a message of love and non-violence.

Hatred is the fundamental problem here. Love is the antidote. These intangibles reside in the heart. Ultimately, racism won't go away until we change our hearts, and that's a tall order. Religions and philosophies have been working on that for thousands of years with limited success. If I can change only one heart during my lifetime, the effort will have been worth it. But the only heart I can really change is my own. Though that sounds limiting, I have also found that as I purify my heart, making it more a source of love than hate, that love tends to radiate and inspire others to find a little more love in their own hearts. I know that's not very comforting for those who are currently victims of racism because a collective change of heart will probably take a LONG time to come about. But I think it is the ultimate answer to the problem.

In the short term, we need to continue the national dialog to better understand one another. We need to discuss the systemic issues that lead to racial profiling and unfair treatment. We need to explore ways to correct those systemic issues through positive change. I don't know what the answers are, but I am ready to listen. And I hope I can contribute to the solution in some way.

Let's build a new normal for racial relations. A new normal based on love. And perhaps, by working together, we can finally begin to realize Dr. King's dream.

The Indwelling Presence

I recently rediscovered some of the magic I found a few years ago when I first began meditating. A couple of months ago, I started re-reading Eckhart Tolle's book "The Power of Now". That book was an early inspiration for me, so I thought I'd go back to it and see if it could help me again. Early on in the book, Eckhart talks about a feeling of presence. Somehow, the words he used invited me to open a gate inside myself that I didn't realize was closed. As I focused on this 'presence', I felt something well up in me - a powerful sense of being, of aliveness. In its early stages, it often feels like tingling in my fingers and toes that slowly spreads to the rest of my body. But sometimes it rushes in quickly, like it did a few weeks ago. Focusing on the idea of a deep, indwelling 'presence' seems to be what did it for me that time.

In that state, everything starts to make more sense. Everything feels more connected and joyful. And everything seems more beautiful and radiant. I think maybe everything is always radiating, but I'm usually too distracted to notice. But somehow, by tapping into this presence inside of me, I was able to tear aside a curtain that was obscuring the depth of beauty in the reality all around me. And everything just glowed.

For about a week after my initial experience with it a couple months ago, I was able to tap into that presence in ordinary moments throughout the day. I didn't have to have my eyes closed. I didn't have to focus on my breathing. I didn't have to be meditating in any conventional sense - in fact, I think meditation, as I usually understand it, would be a distraction. I just opened to it, and I became intensely aware, intensely present, and intensely alive.

Meditation isn't what opened this experience to me. Not exactly. Meditation was more like a practice, or exercise of a muscle, that paved the way for the experience. In meditation, I focus on the breath, and I begin to distance my conscious awareness from the mental chatter in my mind. I begin to see clearly that I am not my thoughts or my emotions. I am deeper than them. They only feel like me when I allow them to sweep me up and make me feel lost inside of them. Meditation allows me to practice stepping outside of them and seeing them for what they are - ephemeral experiences that arise and fall like waves in the ocean. None of them stay for long unless I empower them. When I just watch them, they come and go like anything else in life.

When I meditate, I often use some object (typically the breath, but it could be something else) as a point of focus. But unless I let go of that object, I'm still stuck in a mental choke hold. The experience I'm describing requires an openness that goes beyond mental conceptions. Meditation by itself didn't unlock the experience for me. But armed with the practice of meditation, somehow all it took was a trigger for me to open up and fall out of myself. That's what it feels like happened, and yet, I think the 'self' I fell out of was just another ephemeral illusion. I fell into an ocean that is both my true self and larger than myself. I came home.

I think this is true meditation. I might start with an object, but when I let go of all mental constructs, I can fully wake up. And then my entire life becomes meditation. I meditate as I sit quietly, but I also meditate as I engage in conversations and activities. I start to live every aspect of my life fully awake.

For about a week, I could enter that state whenever I wanted. Then it faded. Kind of like it did a few years ago. I guess that makes me a spiritual yo-yo. Maybe that's ok. Ups and downs are part of life, right? Last week, I found the magic again with the help of Jack Kornfield, another one of my early inspirations. His book "A Path With Heart" was hugely transformational for me. In the last couple of weeks, I have been listening to some of his audio recordings, inspired by a sense that he has something I need. It's not so much what he says, but his presence, his love, his generosity of heart that I soak up while I listen to him. A few days ago, inspired by one of his podcasts, I had an incredible experience that felt every bit as powerful as my early magical experiences years ago. In some ways, it was more profound than the experiences I describe above from a couple of months ago. My wife noticed how happy I was that morning and most of the day. It lifted her up too. And by dinner time that day, I was depressed. 😊

It's funny now, but at the time, it was pretty frustrating. I experienced a massive emotional or spiritual swing in a 12-hour period, and there was nothing I could do about it. Thankfully, the next day was up again. I can't avoid the down times, so I try to accept them. And they are often wonderful catalysts for growth. While they're not pleasant, I believe it's possible to maintain a deep peace and equanimity in the midst of them that allows us to face our darkness with gentle curiosity and loving kindness.

I've had a concept growing in my mind recently, inspired by the ever-changing nature of reality, that maybe I have often used my spiritual experiences throughout life to fix what I perceive to be wrong in my life so that I can get back to living my life the way I want. But what I usually perceive to be my 'life' is not a static thing to come back to. Nor is my desired lifestyle necessarily a happy one. My perspective is somehow backwards. I sense a shift may be possible in which I begin to live from my spiritual nature and treat my physical life as a place I'm only visiting for a few years. I think I can begin to view the magical state as my true home, and my indwelling presence as my true life, while my physical body is just something I rent once in a while.

Perhaps with practice, the magical state I have described can become my 'normal' state. And my previously normal state of mental obscurity will become a thing of the past, remembered as something like a dream from which I have awoken.

Uncertainty in a Pandemic

Not long ago, I started a new job. This job was supposed to involve a significant amount of travel. Then the coronavirus happened.

My four kids, in four different schools, had been staying busy with friends and activities. Then the coronavirus happened.

Last fall, my wife and I booked a trip to Europe for our family. We have been planning this trip for years. We were supposed to fly near the end of May. Then the coronavirus happened.

Now all six of us are home, including our oldest who was at college until the pandemic forced his school to shut down. For the past couple of months, I have been faced with a lot of questions and relatively few answers. Questions like:

• When will our kids get to go back to school?
• How will I adapt to this new job without the ability to travel to see colleagues and customers?
• Will we be able to take our long-awaited family trip to Europe?

I'm sure there were other questions too, but you get the idea. I was working with a lot of uncertainty associated with the unknown nature of this global pandemic we've been facing. I'm sure I'm not alone.

In my desire for answers, I found myself turning increasingly to the news. I scanned headlines and read news articles, jumping from one to the next in search of information that would enable me to predict the future and answer some of these questions. Of course, it didn't really help. No one knows how this will play out. While I found some of the articles informative, and much of my search was useful, it didn't give me the answers I was seeking. Unfortunately, I also found myself increasingly unhappy as I bought into the negative tone of many of the articles. And, stuck on the idea that my search would help me answer my questions (which, of course, it can't), I became addicted to my search without realizing it.

There were a few days when I got sick of what my search was doing to me, and I swore off my phone, including the news. Taking a day off now and then proved very insightful. I was amazed at how tightly the addiction had woven its tentacles around me in such a short time. Multiple times within the space of an hour's meditation, I found myself watching the urge to reach for my phone arise and slowly fall away as I gave it my attention without allowing it to take over. At the beginning, the urge came up repeatedly, maybe five times in as many minutes, then gradually died down.

A minor addiction like this isn't the end of the world, but it was beautifully liberating to allow my awareness of it to grow and watch it dissolve.

Without any help from me, time has begun to give me answers to my questions.

• My kids won't be going back to school this year. Perhaps they will in the fall. Hopefully.
• I am adapting to my new job in unexpected ways, but the transition is going well. I expect I will be able to travel in a few months, and that will make me even more effective.
• It looks incredibly unlikely that we'll be able to take our trip to Europe as planned. We haven't canceled yet, but we almost certainly will. We hope we can take our trip next summer.

These are first-world problems, of course, not life threatening problems. But my desire for certainty in these areas has driven me to seek certainty in ways that led to a decrease in my happiness. While my certainty is slowly growing, there is still a large amount of uncertainty in our situation.

And that's ok. It gives me a chance to practice being at peace with that uncertainty.

Many people deal with serious uncertainties on a much more regular basis. How many people in the world are uncertain when they will have their next meal? How many are uncertain when they will see a loved one again? How many are uncertain whether they will live to see another day?

Uncertainty is a part of life. And a wonderful way to let go of our ego, release our need to control, and surrender to the flow of life. Becoming comfortable with uncertainty is a spiritual practice. And one that we are all becoming a bit more familiar with during this global pandemic.

It's natural to be uncomfortable when we don't know the answers. But maybe see what happens if you try embracing the uncertainty rather than fighting it. See if it doesn't feel a bit liberating to let go of the need to know.

My Response to the Coronavirus

It was Friday, March 13, and I was getting ready for a business trip to Los Angeles. I was scheduled to fly out Sunday and was looking forward to some great vegan food at a restaurant I found there a couple of weeks before. Then I got an email from my employer cancelling all non-essential travel.

Bummer.

I may have been a bit too confident in my immune system's ability to handle illness. And I definitely underestimated how contagious the coronavirus was. I certainly didn't have the foresight to see where this virus was taking us. I had been feeling cautious about the trip and was planning how to keep myself and surrounding surfaces sanitary to avoid exposure as much as possible. But I wasn't nervous about the trip.

I probably should have been.

Watching the spread of the virus in the United States has been sobering. Because of the virus' incubation period, our current understanding of the spread is, at best, like looking in the rear view mirror, giving us information about the true contagion from a week or two ago. But we're also underestimating the extent of the spread in the past because of the lack of ubiquitous testing today. So it's almost certainly worse than we know. Seeing where things likely were a couple of weeks ago when I would have been in LA makes me grateful that my employer was feeling more cautious about the situation than I was feeling. Friday the 13th turned out to be my lucky day.

Picture of a coronavirus from National Foundation for Infectious Diseases website

Who knows whether the travel would have exposed me to the virus. It certainly would have increased the probability. Instead of traveling, though, I have spent the last two weeks isolated in my home with my family. This is both awesome and frustrating. Cabin fever is tough. I'm finding it harder to exercise, which makes me physically weaker and puts a strain on my mental health. And the isolation takes a toll on me psychologically. It has been a challenge to adapt.

But being forced to share the same space, with little variety in our routine, has led to some awesome times together as a family. Earlier this week, we had a family music night where people played piano, guitar, ukulele, requested and sang songs, and laughed together as we made music. We have had family dinners together every night, talking, joking, annoying one another, and getting to know each other better. We have had family game nights and solved puzzles together. We have had family movie nights, with last night being the culmination of stupidity when we stayed up playing video games and decided to start a movie at 2am. It was so much fun.

I feel like this virus is forcing us to slow down, forcing us to reconnect with loved ones, and giving us space to dig inside ourselves and discover who we are and what we're made of. It is a gift. Packaged in horrific wrapping.

I feel so much sadness for people in Italy and New York who are struggling, suffering, and facing difficult choices of who to treat and who to abandon to their suffering and possible death. I feel such a heavy weight when I contemplate the spread of the virus across the world, and increasingly in the U.S. We may all soon be where New York is now if we're not careful. Or maybe it's too late, and we'll get there no matter what we do. I feel so sad when I think about the economy and its impact on poor people, who were living paycheck to paycheck and have now lost their jobs.

Coronavirus spread from Johns Hopkins interactive map (3/28/20)

I have no solutions to these problems. But in spite of the heaviness and sadness, when I quiet my mind and look inside, I find a place in me that is beyond the chaos. A place of peace. A place of quiet joy and delight in the miraculous complexity of life in this world. I like to visit that place regularly to remind myself that we will be ok. We will struggle. We will suffer. Many have died and many more will die before it's all over. But we will be ok.

Every challenge is an opportunity. A chance to look inside and decide whether we want to grow or shrink as a result of the challenge. A chance to decide what's important and to focus our attention and energy on the things that bring us joy and fulfillment. A chance to move beyond the masks and the fake veneer that sometimes cover the deep authenticity of being - and to decide to live more fully, more authentically, "and not, when [we come] to die, discover that [we have] not lived" (Thoreau).

Most of us will survive this challenge. Most of us will be forever marked by the experiences we're having right now. Most of us will forever remember the coronavirus and how it changed our world. We have an opportunity now and in the coming months to decide what that world will look like. I hope, whatever we choose, that our world may bring a little more light, love, and compassion into our lives and the lives of those we love.

May you all be well. Here's to us.

Etty Hillesum

I recently discovered the life of a Dutch Jewish woman, Etty Hillesum, who was killed at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 29. Her life seems to have been one of self-discovery and spiritual awakening at a time when the dark side of human nature seemed as if it might completely blanket the world in its shadow. I'm reading her diary and although I'm only about 1/3 the way through, I've already come across a wealth of spiritual and psychological insights, and I'm excited to read the rest.

Etty Hillesum in 1939

This morning, I read a snippet from her diary that I'd like to share. It's beautiful in its simplicity and humility. I'm in awe of people who, living through such darkness, can shine a light inside themselves and sidestep the urge to hate. The text below came directly from her diary as part of a single paragraph. I have added paragraph breaks to enhance readability, but the text is otherwise unchanged.

"What is it in human beings that makes them want to destroy others?" Jan asked bitterly. 

I said, "Human beings, you say, but remember that you're one yourself." And strangely enough he seemed to acquiesce, grumpy, gruff old Jan. "The rottenness of others is in us, too," I continued to preach at him. "I see no other solution, I really see no other solution than to turn inward and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned from this war. That we must look into ourselves and nowhere else." 

And Jan, who so unexpectedly agreed with everything I said, was approachable and interested and no longer proffered any of his hard-boiled social theories. Instead he said, "Yes, it's too easy to turn your hatred loose on the outside, to live for nothing but the moment of revenge. We must try to do without that." 

We stood there in the cold waiting for the tram, Jan with his great purple chilblained hands and his toothache. Our professors are in prison, another of Jan's friends has been killed, and there are so many other sorrows, but all we said to each other was, "It is too easy to feel vindictive." 

That really was the bright spot of today.

From "An Interrupted Life" by Etty Hillesum

Matthieu Ricard

I heard the following quote recently:

In clinging to the cramped universe of the ego, we have a tendency to be concerned exclusively with ourselves. The least setback upsets and discourages us. We are obsessed with our success, our failure, our hopes, and our anxieties, and thereby give happiness every opportunity to elude us. The narrow world of the self is like a glass of water into which a handful of salt is thrown - the water becomes undrinkable. If, on the other hand, we breach the barriers of the self and the mind becomes a vast lake, that same handful of salt will have no effect on its taste. ... If the ego were really our deepest essence, it would be easy to understand our apprehension about dropping it. But if it is merely an illusion, ridding ourselves of it is not ripping the heart out of our being, but simply opening our eyes.

- Matthieu Ricard