A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough (8 page)

Second, regardless whether we believe we have all the necessary data, arguments, or justifications for our choices, there is a point at which we must simply choose. We may not always be able to explain, prove, or defend it, we can only claim our own intrinsic value and wisdom, trust who we are and what we know, follow the thread and make our choice, listening for the next right thing. And know that in this moment, this is enough.

Love’s Unconditional Bow

For the past three years I have led the same meditation practice every week, and Mark is my favorite attendee. He is a big man, over six feet tall, and he’s not graceful, but lumbering, heavy, and loud. After all of us have been seated quietly, perfectly straight-backed and still as only conscientious meditators can be, he arrives. We’re usually already a third of the way into the meditation when he bangs his way into the gompa, kicking a chair and loudly dropping his bag on the floor, cutting through our silence with his presence
.

Many of the meditators, if this is their first experience with him, open one eye to see what all the ruckus is about and usually give him a stern glance. After all, he’s disturbing their serious endeavor. I must confess that I love this part: I love seeing these very serious, very still people get rattled when he slams into a seat in the corner and jerks erratically from side to side. It’s unexpected, distracting, and good practice for all of us
.

Usually I quicken the pace of the meditation just for him, since I know he will only stay for a half hour or so. He can’t bear much more, and he leaves in the same way he enters, with lots of loud and messy movements
.

This time, when he pushed his chair back and it hit the wall, my heart melted. I thought about how he is probably the
most courageous person in the room; he lets what he can do be enough. He arrives when he can and he stays as long as possible, and then he gives himself permission to leave. He doesn’t feel compelled to sit perfectly still, in silence for the entire session, but instead does what he can
.

When he got up to leave, I felt compelled to put my palms together and prostrate to him, to the teaching he gives every time he comes to meditation practice. I didn’t know he saw me until I looked up and found him staring directly at me, beaming. With a huge smile he put his palms together and bowed toward me, and then he clambered down the stairs, into the night
.

Charmaine Hughes

A Hidden Wholeness

T
homas Merton, the gifted Trappist monk, wrote in
A Book of Hours
:

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a hidden wholeness.

Merton repeatedly insisted that all beings carry within them this undeniable hidden wholeness, a deep and luminous “fount of inexhaustible sweetness and purity.” Most importantly, this inner perfection, or, as Merton sees it, this divine nature, is a quality so deeply embedded in us, so fundamentally strong, that it cannot be tarnished by our suffering, diminished by our fears, or fractured by our tragedies. In short, it is a part of our soul that, unlike our bodies or our hearts, does not break.

Jesus also said, You are the light of the world. When he spoke these words to a large group gathered at the top of a hill, he was not speaking to the holiest of followers. These were not the most faithful, church-going folk, they were the general public, largely uneducated, with little or no theological training or spiritual practice—the same class of people from whom he chose his disciples. So for him to declare this to a group of common people, Jesus was making a bold, unheard-of statement:
Simply
because you are alive on the earth, a vital child of creation, born of dust and spirit, you are the light of the world
.

During this very same talk, Jesus insisted that his followers judge not, that they may not be judged. He was asking, how can any of us, who are not God the Creator of all life, possibly know, comprehend, or appreciate the innermost depth of heart, soul, or intent of another being anywhere, at any time? Take care of the sin in your own heart, he said, and let God take care of the sin, real or imagined, known or unknown, in your sister or brother’s heart.

All of us, religious or not, have a capacity to judge ourselves often, and without mercy. This kind of thinking has, over time, deeply penetrated the soft, tender chambers of our psyche. As a therapist and clergyman, I have sat with people who are held hostage by the hollow, relentless ache of self-judgment that defines us as broken, defective, unworthy, a failure, useless, without any real value.

For people who were misheld, abused, or violated as children, it is especially common to believe that they are somehow responsible for this pain. They believe on some level that the emotional or physical hurt came to them precisely because they harbor a deep, dark toxin or possess a despicable soul; their punishment—the abuse—was deserved, and their current worth is without real merit. These people can often feel, even when successful in their life, work, or family, that they are impostors. If the world ever really knew the whole, inner, ugly truth about who they truly are, all their success, safety, and security would be instantly taken from them.

Yet Jesus’ teaching did not come with any fine print. There were no disclaimers or exclusions; nowhere did he add, “But
only if you went to church and saved lives and cured cancer and never sinned and solved world hunger and ended global warming.” Jesus was (as was his habit) clear, unambiguous, to the point. As a child of Spirit, you are simply this: the light of the world. You carry within you a spark of divine fire.

The Buddha also taught that we have within us this very same wholeness, what he called an innate, natural perfection. The God of the Hebrews declared that the most essential truths of life and spirit were inscribed on their very hearts; and the prophet Elijah demonstrated that we carry an intuitive inner knowing, a still, small voice of the divine in the quiet recesses of our soul. Many Native Americans speak of some manifestation of the Great Spirit, who infuses all beings with this same vitally sacred life force. For Hindus, the
Atman
, or soul of the world, is everywhere in all things, all beings.

But for all this universally gifted teaching, showered upon us from all directions for millennia, how many of us, when we awake and rise from our bed in the morning, truly experience any intimate, familiar sensation of some divine light or hidden wholeness? How many of us, as we quit our bed and place our feet on the earth to go about our good and necessary work, drink deep from some authentic feeling, beneath language, some cellular knowing, that we are, this moment, more than sufficient—that we are the light of the world?

Many of us, when we read words like these, easily dismiss them as spiritual platitudes. We have heard all this holy talk before, and however inspirational it may sound, it just doesn’t ring true for us. It doesn’t feel accurate and cannot possibly apply to the person I know myself to be.

We may wish to believe that one day perhaps these things
may
be true about us—after we have fixed our defects and healed our emotional scars, when we eliminate any inner confusion or destructive habits and clear up any lingering uncertainty in our heart’s ability to love or be loved. Yet all these “bad” qualities are so thoroughly human, so desperately ordinary, things all of us carry and share as members of the human family. These parts of ourselves that we insist as naming as shortcomings are, in fact, not defects at all, but rather essential conditions for being honestly present, with ourselves and others, in all our flawed abundance.

There is a geological term, isostasy, which is defined as the tendency of something to rise, once whatever has been pushing it down is removed. While it is intended to describe the way the earth, rocks, and mountains remain in balance across the planet, it is useful to know that even the earth itself rises when any pressure or obstacle is removed or worn away.

What if we, too, are governed by these same laws? When we finally allow a space of stillness in which the relentless noises, pressures, and responsibilities of our days can gradually fall away, something ancient, wise, and true within us actually begins to rise; we awaken, we grow larger, we claim our full stature. We are liberated from those relentless downward forces, and our undeniable, inner hidden wholeness, sensing the promise of freedom, sun, and sky, breaks ground and bears us upward.

What if we actually believed that this hidden wholeness were really true? What if, as an experiment, if only for one day, we lived as if we believed that there lived in us some reliable strength, wisdom, and wholeness? What if we were to pretend that, regardless our health or mood, our fortunes or
circumstance, we would remain quietly wise, accurate, and trustworthy in our judgments and actions? Even more, what if we could actually feel, sense, and
know
, with unshakable certainty, that wherever we went, into whatever company or situation we were called, we would carry with us always this capacity to move with confidence and trust into any situation? How would we think, act, choose? How would we respond differently to the world during such a day?

The Worrying of Days

H
ow many of us feel burdened with worry?

We endlessly fret about how we are doing at work, about the state of our homes, finances, and health, about our families. We spend our days accomplishing what we can, striving to do more, and also, on our good days, hoping to make a difference, trying to make a meaningful contribution that will bring benefit, improvement, or beauty to our families, our communities, and our world. Yet we often finish our workday convinced we should have done more, we have never quite done enough, so we push to make more time, get more support, and mobilize more resources in order to get more done.

In our deepest hearts, we hope to be good and useful at what we do, perhaps feel some pride in our accomplishments, and find satisfaction at the end of the day. But more likely our to-do list requires so many more hours than we will ever have in any day, we frequently feel defeated and discouraged by the time we surrender to day’s end, no matter how much progress we might have made, no matter what we may have done, created, built, healed, or made better.

And by the time we arrive home, we are met with a host of new and different worries, challenges, and concerns. We worry about our relationships, our savings, our retirement, whether
we will make the best use of our gifts and talents. We worry about our health: Have we done enough exercise, lost enough weight, changed this or that habit, made enough time to work out or meditate? We worry we are not doing enough for others; we worry we are not doing enough for ourselves.

How many well-intentioned parents are always worrying they can never adequately provide for their children? Will their school be the right fit, caring for their spirits as well as their minds? Will their teachers be able to recognize them for who they really are or force them to conform to some ill-fitting box? At the same time, what if they are so unique they don’t fit in or won’t make friends or be popular? What if they become too popular and neglect their studies? Will their particular gifts and talents be supported and encouraged, without compromising the core educational basics they need to succeed in life?

In the end, we can worry about anything. Whatever we choose, we worry we made the wrong choice. There are always too many things—even too many good things—all clamoring for our attention at precisely the same moment, and we are confused about which to do first. We keeping adding this and that to our endless to-do list, pushing things deeper and deeper down into the pile, until whatever gets pushed to the bottom of the list eventually explodes. Whenever something actually does explode, it seems to make our job easier; at least we can stop worrying which to work on first.

There is just too much to do well, too much to care for, too many people to love well. We feel perpetually guilty and judge ourselves harshly, which pushes us to take on even more projects to justify our worth. So we, and everything in and around us, just keep going faster and faster. But we can never go fast
enough. When we do go faster, things break. Then we spend precious time cleaning up messes we made because we were going too fast and couldn’t pay enough attention to what we were already doing.

When we move in jagged and hurried ways, it becomes impossible to see, recognize, or drink deeply from any beauty, wonder, or grace in anything or anyone in our path. Without ever wanting to, or ever dreaming our lives would end up feeling like this, we do good badly, people and things we love get hurt, requiring even more of our heart’s best care and attention. If we are honest, we might confess we are secretly worried we have no such care or attention left to give.

Worry comes with an implicit promise that abiding in its company will ensure that our problem will be solved—that we can somehow actually worry it away, fix it before anything bad happens. But worry is a false promise, a Trojan horse, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. While neither healing nor repairing anything at all, it saturates us with stress and uses all our attention to project fear and weakness into every possible future disaster. We manufacture catastrophic expectations, which cause our biological and nervous systems to remain forever on full, exhausting alert.

More importantly, worry steers us away from trusting in our own essential wholeness, wisdom, and strength to be able to handle, in the moment, whatever we are given. It denies any capacity to identify or recognize, when the time comes, the next right thing to do.

Getting Caught Up

A
s we feel ourselves going under, drowning in the impossible multiplication of activities, responsibilities, relationships, and requirements, we end up all but abandoning the pursuit of happiness. Our new goal isn’t so much gentle, authentic happiness, nor are we apparently seeking joy, ease, pleasure, or delight. Instead, when I ask people how they are, what they are doing or creating with their life, how they are using their precious time, their heart’s best attention, their response is invariably the same:
I am just trying to get caught up
.