When the Whole Universe Feels Like It’s Slipping Away: It Can Take a Long Time for Truths to Reach Us

The election of DT first scared the hell out of me. His inauguration makes this even worse, more real. I feel the world, including the natural world, my life, personal and collective slipping away from my grasp. Becoming a gigantic unknown. And it’s forcing me to re-evaluate so much of what I want, so much of what I’m used to and who I think I am.

 

Throughout human history, people have faced such feelings, that a gigantic change or feared cataclysm⎼ or hopeful revolution⎼ was coming. Bob Dylan sang in the 1960s that “The Times They Are A-Changing.” Religions of different places and times expressed their hopes and directed their fears.

 

In Christianity, for example, there was talk of the “end times,” through different stages including the time of the Anti-Christ, or Satanic man, and finally the New Creation, when Christ remakes heaven and Earth, and ends death, pain, suffering. In Judaism, there’s the prediction of a time of a coming messiah, a liberator who will bring the end of days, the Kingdom of God or an ideal state. Islam speaks of the day of judgement.

 

Times of natural disasters, droughts and fires, floods and hurricanes, created fear and sorrow, a sense that the greater world was turning against us. Wars, rebellions, and injustices, times when leaders spread hate and violence created a sense of our own humanness turning against us. People felt powerless, that their nation, human society was collapsing. Instead of focusing on the light within, people turned to the dark. Instead of looking clearly at the world, the society, or themselves, they searched for someone or something to blame.

 

We know this happens. We turn ordinary humans like ourselves into devils; instead of self-inquiry and studying history, science, thinking critically, we see Satan.

 

In such times, it is never more important for people to do what many of us are trying to do now: to get creative. To look for understanding and ways to join with others, ways of acting.

 

In 1882, philosopher Frederick Nietzsche wrote: “Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern and ran to the marketplace, and cried incessantly, “I seek God!” “Whither is God.” He cried out. “We have killed him- you and I.” And later, “Whither are we moving now? …Is there an up or down left? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? …. There has never been a greater deed. And whoever will be born after us… will be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.”

 

Social Media, Information Establishments,But then, Nietzsche’s madman fell silent. No one responded to him. “[T]his event is still on its way… The light of the stars requires time, deeds require time…  before they can be seen or heard.” The events and movements of today share characteristics with the insight and emotion behind the madman’s cries. If we can face our fears and gigantic cultural shifts, a higher history can follow.

 

Almost 100 years after Nietzsche wrote this, in 1966 it became an iconic news headline. An article about it in Time Magazine led to angry pulpit speeches and pinpointed the decreasing influence of established religion in the rapidly changing cultural landscape of the US. It asked us: if we eliminate a central focus for belief and for guiding behavior from the past, from understanding ourselves, whatever that focus is, what will take its place?

 

Charles Kupchan, in a recent article in the Atlantic, wrote, “Trump is Right that Pax Romana is Over’.”…

 

 

*To read the whole post, please go to this link to The Good Men Project.

Fear-Wall Gorge: The Poetry and Joy that Can Arise in Mindful Awareness and Self-Compassion

In 8th century China, the classical Chinese poet Tu Fu, as translated by David Hinton, described his journey down a river through Fear-Wall Gorge. It was a war-ravaged time. At first, I didn’t see or feel the poetry of the poem, the artistry; it seemed simply a list of natural and personal elements. Then I slowed down enough to re-read it a second or third time. And I was there, feeling an old man in a boat, on a river rushing through a gorge.

 

…mossy rock slipping past my unused cane,

kingfisher-green sky empty buffeting skin.

 

Cliffs parade layers of frost-edged sword,

streams cascading pearls of falling water…

 

The scene intense at times, fearful; at others, filled with delight and maybe grief.

“Indifferent to this sparse thing I am, I rest

At ease…” Later, he’s “lit with joy.”

 

I’ve been trying to figure out why this poem stayed in my mind so clearly after reading it, besides literary appreciation. And it must be because, in a sense, we’re all in the boat with Tu Fu. We might not be facing such a bloody and destructive war. But we are, always, hopefully, going on with our lives, facing the familiar and the unknowable, the light and the intense, the beautiful and the fearful, sailing rivers, passing steep cliffs, noticing mossy rocks beyond our unused or used canes, wounds, pains.

 

And maybe we notice the details as clearly as Tu Fu does, feeling them directly. Sensing the shared life, shared feeling, the percipient, knowing, awareness within it all⎼ the silence in the sounds, the unity linking the sights. And the joys possible in such sensing⎼ when we’re quiet enough. We feel nothing is missing because nothing is excluded; all that is possible to touch is touched.

 

Resting at ease⎼ not so easy. Letting my mind flow where it will⎼ not so easy.

 

In a workshop on mindfulness, meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg talked about “the golden moment.” This is when we’re practicing meditation, or when we’re working on a task or focusing on an activity, and we drift away and forget what we’re doing; we notice nothing except the words, memories, anxieties or plans in our head.

 

And then, suddenly, we realize what we’re doing. We notice we’ve drifted. We take in what’s not easy for us. What do we do then? If we yell at ourselves, about how bad a meditator or worker we are, we then run off again into thoughts and recriminations. Our mind becomes so small. We become recrimination. Instead, when we do our best, whatever that is for us, to simply notice we’re lost; and we just observe, then we find ourselves anew. Our awareness and mind expand. We take in more.

 

And maybe this is why this poem spoke to me. There it was, so much of life⎼ what feels right, what feels wrong, the joy and fear.

 

How do we get free from the cage of thoughts endlessly recreating themselves in our mind?…

 

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.