I’m becoming suspicious that my second-born son is a little mini-me. I’ve taken to calling him Preacher, because he is fascinated with anything related to God, as I was at the same age. He is definitely latching on to the evangelical Christian story, and feels the need to defend God at every turn. At Christmas he was offended when the local drive-through Christmas light event only paid homage to Jesus through one small display.
Part of me is thrilled that he has a spiritual side to him, a side that sees and is enthralled with more than can just be seen with the naked eye. But part of me is afraid for him. I fear the unlearning that he may have to endure as I did in my twenties and early thirties. I want to control the growth and evolving of his understanding of God and the divine: to protect him, to keep him from latching onto unhelpful dogma, to keep him from being the me of my own youth.
Inevitable in discussions with my son are conversations about the beginning of life. Just this week were visiting the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, one of our favorite places. In one exhibit, overhead were posted these words by Carl Sagan: “If we must worship a power greater than ourselves, does it not make sense to revere the sun and the stars?”
Preacher was quite upset by this, and told me that we shouldn’t be worshipping the sun or stars, but only God. This led into a discussion about the Big Bang, and I told him that when we are awestruck by what exists and has been created, we are worshipping God. Besides, I told him, we are all stardust. We should honor that from whence we came. This further vexed him, as he is still more well read in Genesis than he is astronomy.
My conversations with Preacher brought me back to questions I have been grappling with in my own spiritual introspection. The primary one I have dealt with of late is the struggle to accept reality as it is and then try to reconcile that with the understanding of a good Creator. I’m more of an atheist these days…I believe in a force that is holding all things together and is the essence of life, but I can’t swallow a truly theistic notion of God anymore. But despite this, something in me insists that this Ground of Being has to ultimately be good. I really have no clear, succinct arguments or empirical evidence for this…I just believe it in my bones.
Which brings the age old dilemma that millions before me have faced….how can bad things and evil be part of or come from something that is good? I don’t know. But I think maybe the Big Bang idea speaks of the goodness of this Ground of Being. I’m calling it the Great Allowing. My very limited understanding is that before the Big Bang, all the stuff that would soon explode outward was compressed into an immensely dense state….a state of extreme potential energy. And then boom…the universe burst forth and began its outward expansion and fusion created new elements and somehow over billions of years the right elements joined up at the right place in the right environment and life began. Freaking amazing when you think about it.
And then, it seems to me, God, the Ground of Being, let the universe take its course. Seemingly limitless possibilities were allowed. Maybe this galaxy would form over here. Maybe this would form over there. Maybe in this tiny corner of the galaxy the right circumstances would line up for a place called Earth to grow people. And those people will be subject to countless factors that will influence their lives and interactions with each other. And they will do horrible things to each other and the places they live, but they will also love dangerously and beautifully and sacrifice themselves for the good of others and those same places that they live.
What I’m trying to say is that it seemed like God sure took a huge chance when he decided to open Pandora’s Box of Big Bangs. The outcomes could be wonderful, or they could be disastrous. But he was willing that it happened. The Great Allowing commenced.
We all tend to think that we are dancers dancing life. But I like the way I recently heard Byron Katie put it, that we are the dance and Life is dancing us. Life is the dancer. Or what if, life is the Ground of Being, God, and he (sorry, English is lacking in good neutral pronouns) is dancing us.
I tend to be afraid to allow alot of things in my life. Control has been a great hallmark of all that is Julie, I just never recognized it until a couple of years ago. But….2017 was the most courageous year of my life. Some days I look back and am like, “Damn, girl! You ALLOWED a whole lot of stuff over the last year!” I allowed myself to face some of my biggest fears. I allowed myself to try hard things and dream big dreams. I allowed myself to love quickly, wildly, with abandon, when in the past I would have shrunk back into the shadows, afraid of being hurt. I allowed myself to say no, and I allowed myself to say yes. I allowed myself to dig deep inside myself to uncover more of who I really am…the things that I love about myself and the things I despise. I allowed myself to sit long with hard emotions, and I allowed myself to “Fuck it all!” on some of my really dark days. I opened my hands and allowed many things to land, and many to freely fly away.
This is what I learned from my own year of Great Allowing: I felt more alive than I’ve ever felt in my entire 37 years. I felt real, authentic, genuine…even if I didn’t always like certain aspects of myself. Everything seemed more meaningful, even though I had fewer answers about everything than ever. There were days I felt like a really great human, and days I felt like I probably sucked worse than any human that has ever lived, but at the same time, I felt like I could accept it because this is what being human is like, and this is what the dance looks like when life is dancing in a temporarily crummy person.
I do revere the stars, and the sun, because they remind me that whatever is behind life, Ground of Being or God or some clockmaker in the sky…it is not scared of letting go of all control, is not afraid of allowing whatever will happen to happen. If that same dancer, who wound up the tune of the universe and danced as the music box opened with delight, then somehow I believe I can trust life to dance me well, this tiny, insignificant little waltz in the corner of a spiral galaxy.
I have ADD. More specifically, I have the subtypes of inattentive ADD, anxious ADD, and overfocused ADD. And, I have the brain scans to prove it, courtesy of the Amen Clinic, my former upper-middle class status with fantastic insurance, and my white privilege enabling me to cross the country just to spend the weekend inside a SPECT machine. Nevertheless, I’m grateful to have been able to see what all is going on in the mess between my ears.
This is my brain without any stress or concentration. The white and red indicate activity. So, here my brain is functioning pretty well.This scan shows the activity in my brain when under stress or having to really concentrate. Much of the activity decreased in most areas of my brain.
Basically what these two particular scans are showing is that when I have to think really hard or am put into stressful situations, my head short circuits. At other times, I get hyper-focused and obsessive about certain thought patterns. Most of the time I’m able to compensate for this fairly well, and now that I understand what is going on, I can plan ahead for some of my brain farts. But sometimes, especially if I’m put on the spot with a question or task when I’m already nervous, I am left paralyzed and clueless.
Here’s an example. Last semester during one clinical, the nurse I was working with asked me what the classic signs of a heart attack are. We were taking care of a patient who was experiencing chest pains, and we were deciding whether or not she was really exhibiting heart issues or if she was just having anxiety.
When the nurse asked this question, I just went completely blank. I could not think and could not produce any kind of intelligent answer. It was so frustrating because the question was not a difficult one. This kind of scenario leaves me in a panic, frantically searching the databases of my mind and coming up empty. The result is that I feel completely incompetent, and it only increases my anxiety level, which makes everything worse. A second side effect of having these types of ADD is that I can be completely blind to things at time. If I’m nervous or stressed and am looking for something, I can literally not see it even if it is right in front of me. This phenomenon drives me crazy, to say the list, especially when it makes me look entirely stupid.
Over the last several years, I’ve been trying to incorporate practices into my life that will help calm my brain. ADD drugs have never been helpful for me…they make me hyper for a week and then stop doing anything. So, I needed alternative methods to help soothe my nerves, literally. I’ve found that doing yoga and sitting meditation have helped tremendously in this area, because they force me to be where I am at that moment, and only focus on what is right in front of me. I have also learned that if I get less than eight hours of sleep at night, the next day will include multiple episodes of brain freeze.
There is a word play off an old adage that goes “Don’t just do something! Sit there!” This mindset totally goes against most of our natures. We believe that to solve problems or change things, we must do, do do. I totally fall prey to the mindset that I will find my answers externally, and if I just work harder or find the right book or talk to the right person, or, or, or…I will discover the solution to my problem. The same happens when I’m having one of my ADD attacks. Instead of leaning into the discomfort of my brain momentarily shutting down and letting it calm itself, I internally panic and start grasping for anything to help me feel right again. This never fixes anything, and only exacerbates my anxiety, which then lengthens the time my brain is out of service.
What I’m gradually learning over time, but still regularly forget, is that when things blow up in our faces, the best thing to do initially is to not react. We need to just sit there and look that situation or person head on without judgment. Because when we jump into action straightaway without letting it be, we are acting out of our beliefs and thoughts about that situation or person, and our thoughts may or may not be true. Or, as in my case with ADD and I literally have NO thoughts that will come, I’m just reacting out of habit and knee-jerk reflexes, which have never been helpful in these circumstances.
It is better to sit and watch and understand before we try to do anything. Then, with time, out of a calm and relaxed mind, we can make balanced decisions about how to proceed, without being motivated by fear, or for me, blind panic.
“To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you. “
I just started my third semester of an accelerated nursing program. (Woo hoo! Only 32 LONG weeks to go…) During our orientation for Community Nursing, a local social worker came and did a short presentation on domestic violence, and the cycles that cause people to stay in or return to bad relationships.
It is an insidious cycle, that gains more momentum with each turn. Some type of abuse occurs, followed by a honeymoon stage, where the perpetrator tries to draw the victim back into a false sense of safety and acceptance with loving gestures, flowers, gifts… Then, tension begins to build as the abuser’s dark side again begins to manifest itself, finally resulting in another abusive event. This cycle continues and continues until the victim feels completely incapable of leaving the situation because of fear, manipulation, and sometimes the belief that they are at fault or must “save” their abuser.
During the orientation, the social worker offered us a short role role play, where an “abused” mother was handed heavy books representing all the difficult things she would face if she tried to leave the abusive relationship she was in. Delayed court dates, struggle to find childcare, manipulation and intimidation by the abuser, lack of good community resources, lack of family support, potential for getting fired at work….the list went on and on until the role play volunteer was holding a hefty stack of heavy books in her arms, looking defeated herself.
I compared this role play to my own life. I didn’t leave my marriage because of blatant abuse, but so many of the outcomes of the role play still rang very true with me. It got me to thinking about how people in our culture view those who get divorced, why so many of us stay in bad marriages, and maybe how we should start reframing the whole divorce narrative.
First of all, I want to point out some things I’ve noticed about marriage and divorce, especially related to the “Christian” culture that still pervades much of our society and influences dynamics that occur within churches. I must preface by saying I’m throwing out some big generalizations, but I think there is truth in all of them, especially after the countless conversations I’ve shared about them with other people.
In many circles, marriage offers a step up in citizenship. I noticed this shift personally both within my family and within churches that I attended. Singles are given lip service, but the “sacrament” of marriage still carries so much weight that people are treated as though they are even just a bit more worthy, more capable of offering something to the outside world, if they are in a legally bound partnership. I can recall all the dumb books I read growing up that circulated among so many people I knew. I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Lady in Waiting, and countless other dating and courtship treatises weighing down Christian bookstore shelves that taught us how to prepare ourselves for the ultimate initiation rite of marriage. Looking back at them, it’s all quite nauseating to me. We believed if we could just get to marriage, we would arrive…and in some cases, like mine, we did arrive. My status definitely improved in many ways.
In the same way that marriage offers us a leg up, even in our modern culture, divorce causes us to take a step backwards. Actually, I would venture to say even several steps backwards….even below where we were as virgin singles. Those who have been through a divorce get it, but so many who haven’t exude skepticism about our marriage commitment in the first place, or one’s connection to God, or one’s effort to make the marriage partner happy, or etc, etc. I suspect this is partly why so many people rush back into marriage…partly out of loneliness, and partly because we want to be treated like whole, complete people again.
I’ve gone to so many conferences, retreats, and Christian counseling sessions where a another hefty pile, this time guilt, is handed to people struggling in their marriages. You made a vow before God, you need to honor it. You decided to marry this person, now it’s for life. Women, you need to respect your husbands. Women, it really only takes a few minutes…will it really kill you to give your husband what he wants? You’re just being selfish. Men, you were placed as the head of your household by Christ, you need to lead it properly. And on, and on. (And don’t even get me started on how the definition of rape needs to be broadly expanded within the institution of marriage….and the definition of nagging and hen-pecking for that matter.) The bulk of these platitudes thrust on me, even by well-intended people, never helped me at all
All of this is to say: I think the main reason that good people stay in bad marriages is not because they are more committed people, or more God-fearing, or more sacrificial. I think it’s because they are freaking scared of the alternative: a fall from status and alot of really hard things to sort out for an indefinite period of time.
I was chatting with a friend recently and told her, “This is the kind of day that makes people stay in bad marriages.”
You know, the kind of day when you can’t find a last minute babysitter, and you have a $2,000 leaky roof bill, and you can’t figure out how you’ll save for college on your own, and your kid is throwing up at school but you can’t leave what you’re doing to get him, and you have to board your dog for the day because otherwise you’ll come home to an accident on your already gross carpet, and you can’t go to the doctor for anything less than an antibiotic-resistant flesh-eating bacteria because you have a ridiculous deductible, and you can’t remember the last time you were hugged by an adult much less kissed or held by one, and you’re afraid you’re going to freaking go out of your mind trying to coparent with someone you don’t even recognize anymore, and you’re praying that your kids aren’t ingesting too many endocrine disruptors because of the crap you’re feeding them lately, and you want to go out with your friends but based on your current schedule you can see that maybe happening next month…and..and..and…
This, friends, is why people stay in bad marriages. Because we aren’t taught that we can make it on our own, or that we have inside us what we need to survive.
Now, I should clarify, there are some marriages that really should be fought for. But let’s just call a spade a spade and recognize that some broken marriages are necessary endings. Necessary not always because of abuse or infidelity, but because the people in the marriages are suffocating and living out of motivations based in fear. Which is not how ANYONE should be living.
This is how I lived for years. Oh, I’d tell myself I was doing it for Jesus, but that was only superficially true. I stayed because I was scared of regressing to my pre-marriage status, of pissing off God, of being judged by my family and the people around me, and of screwing my kids lives up forever. And I know I’m not alone in this…I know alot of people who have lovely looking marriages on the outside, who appear to be thriving in this “staying together under God’s umbrella of blessing” idea, but in reality, at least one of them is dying inside.
So, to reframe…
Christian culture shames the heck out of divorced people, and places so much emphasis on the traditional nuclear family. But I say that in a good number of cases, the people who chose divorce were actually the bravest people of all. I know what some of you are thinking…Julie, don’t you think commitment is important? Julie, what about the kids in these situations? Julie, don’t you believe in keeping promises and the importance of family? I get it……but…
Sometimes staying in an unhappy marriage is the safe thing to do. And for a time, this may serve us well, just like it did me. In fact, I think it was a growing field for me – a place for me to grow brave in other areas of my life first. But to finally break free into a world of uncertainties and unknowns takes a whole freaking lot of courage – it doesn’t matter if you’re the primary breadwinner and make a crap ton of money or if you’re having to build a new career over from the ground up. Leaving the familiarity and safeness and status that comes with marriage is so hard.
So going back to the people who have been abused in relationships. I TOTALLY get now why many return to the situation again and again – if it took me so many years to leave something that wasn’t abusive -and the rest of us have absolutely no business shaming them. So many of us stay in bad marriages for far fewer reasons than people caught in the cycle of domestic abuse with everything, including survival, on the line.
Staying in any situation in life just because of fear is a horrible way to live. I fervently believe that while we may not always agree with a person’s reasons to leave a relationship, we should absolutely ALWAYS applaud them when they are breaking free from the tyranny of fear, “you should”s, and shame-based beliefs that have held them there.
“The sacred sense of beyond, of timelessness, of a world which had an eternal value and the substance of which was divine had been given back to me today by this friend of mine who taught me dancing.”
― Hermann Hesse
I woke up in the middle of the night last night with a serious panic attack. I was thinking I can’t make it and everything I’ve worked so hard for over the last year and a half is going to crumble. It’s tough co-parenting with an ex, and scheduling school and work is an exercise in trying every permutation possible with a limited number of hours and days available to me. Will my money hold out? Am I making good decisions? And I sure hope I still like nursing at the end of all of this.
Of course, my panic attack might have been precipitated by having a little too much Fireball when I was already tired and stressed. Anyway…
After my hyperventilation and near-crying episode, I fell back into a dream where I was ballroom dancing on a stage with a man I’d never met. We were performing before an audience that I couldn’t see because of the bright stage lights, and while dancing I was thinking to myself…what the hell am I doing here? I don’t know how to dance! But somehow I trusted his lead, and we danced and twirled and dipped. The dancing in my dream wasn’t imagined. I vividly recall a full five minutes of being part of an actual dance. I was charmed and laughing and allowed myself to be spun around the floor with little concern for what the audience thought. My partner was laughing as well, and whispering throughout the dance about how great we were doing. I don’t remember getting tired or feeling uncertain. It was kind of magical, as dreams can often be. The guy in my dream also resembled Rob Thomas wearing trendy glasses, so that imagery didn’t hurt either.
I woke up this morning thinking about that dream, and wondering if it was a metaphor about life. Maybe my subconscious was reaching out to me with encouragement? Maybe it was the Fireball? Either way, I thought about the possible meaning of this sleep experience all day. If I had fought against the partner in my dream, insisting that I didn’t know what I was doing and was going to make a fool of myself, the dance would have been ruined. But instead, I moved into his arms and let him guide me where we needed to go, and the result was effortless and pure joy.
Life is hard as shit sometimes, there’s no doubt about it and it doesn’t always feel like elegant, graceful choreography. There are so many things I wish I didn’t have to go through, and so many times when I fight and scream and absolutely make a fool of myself trying to avoid pain and hard things. But if I’m honest with myself, life has been good to me. I have changed so dramatically over the last ten years in ways that I once thought were impossible. I’m braver, more authentic, and have a greater capacity for love, even if I’m still learning what that really means. So, I will keep trusting and trying to lean into this partner of mine that is life, who is patiently teaching me the steps to an enchanted dance.
When I went off to college, I felt pretty certain that I understood the way life works. You ask Jesus into your heart, live as morally pure a life as possible and ask forgiveness for all the rest of the crap you do, memorize copious amounts of Scripture, pray as much as possible, and trust God for everything else. This is a pretty simplified version, but you get the gist.
Now, almost twenty years later, there is basically nothing that I am certain about, for absolute certain. All the rules to the game I once played no longer make any sense. In fact, I think I’m playing a different game with rules that feel impossible to completely grasp.
I’ve been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again today, and one idea really stood out to me.
What is the truth, and how do you know it when you have it? p. 126
Because I’m finding, as Pirsig suggests in the book, that questions beget questions. As you find answers you are really no further along in your journey because an infinite number of other questions arise at the same time. He describes it this way through his fictionalized character’s exploration into the scientific method :
“He [Phaedrus] had noticed again and again in his lab work that what might seem to be the hardest part of scientific work, thinking up the hypotheses, was invariably the easiest. The act of formally writing everything down precisely and clearly seemed to suggest them. As he was testing hypothesis number one by experimental method a flood of other hypotheses would come to mind, and as he was testing these, some more came to mind, and as he was testing these, still more came to mind until it became painfully evident that as he continued testing hypotheses and eliminating them or confirming them their number did not decrease. It actually increased as he went along.” p. 112
And…
“In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions. The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one’s way out.” p. 125
I don’t claim to be operating out of the high country of the mind like brilliant people such as Pirisg, but I have definitely felt the getting lost-ness in the ever expanding stream of questions in my mind. My spiritual explorations definitely have a Phaedrean quality. It also seems like my striving to answer all of these questions is a race that is getting faster and faster. I feel manic at times and completely clueless about where this trip is taking me.
“Phaedrus wandered through this high country, aimlessly at first, following every path, every trail where someone had been before, seeing occasionally with small hindsights that he was apparently making some progress, but seeing nothing ahead of him that told him which way to go.” p. 127 (If you haven’t read the book, Google Phaedrus…or just insert my name in his place, because I see myself in this passage.)
My racing down every path trying to discover truth first really began when I finally concluded that I categorically do not believe in hell or Satan. Since I no longer had a tidy solution for all of life’s problems, I frantically began a search for meaning in life. I started slow…OK, so if there is no hell, does everyone go to heaven or are evil people annihilated and cease to exist? Then I moved on to whether or not atonement theory and our modern understanding of Jesus and the resurrection story made any sense. Next, I questioned whether or not stories in the Gospels were actually literally true. Then, a critical look at the Old Testament. Then on to readings in Buddhism, Taoism, Native American spirituality, Christian mysticism,, Sufism, Cabbalism, and a tad bit of pagan thought. Throughout all of this exploration down various spiritual avenues, I have tried and am still trying to see how science, psychology, and the natural world fit in. The questions keep coming from every direction and I chase answers down one path, and then down another, and then down yet another.
“And so he (or Julie) wanders blindly along one trail after another gathering one [puzzle] piece after another and wondering what to do with them…” p. 127
Are there any ultimate answers? Do these puzzle pieces we get in life actually fit together somehow? Is there a destination to reach at some point?
In physics, there is a concept referred to as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I’m not a physics expert, but basically the idea is that you can’t precisely know the exact position and momentum of an object at the same time because things in the universe have qualities of waves and also of particles. If you want have a good understanding of an object’s exact location, you’ll have to be OK with being less certain about it’s speed and momentum. On the flip side, if you want to get more detailed information about an object’s momentum, you’ll have to content yourself with being less certain about where exactly in space the object lies.
I feel like maybe this is the way truth is, and consequently, all the answers for our questions. We want to pin truth down and say, “Aha! Here it is, I’ve found it! And it’s just like this in all situations for everyone at all times.” We may find a preliminary answer, a puzzle piece, but the truth squirms away from our pointed fingers and we discover that other variables aren’t so clear anymore. A hypothesis: the uncertainty principle of truth:-we cannot simultaneously know something to be true for everyone in all situations at all times.
I don’t completely believe this either, because I think that LOVE is absolute truth. But this just brings up more questions….is LOVE real? Or just a by-product projection from neurotransmitters in our brains and a function of the survival of the fittest and evolutionary adaptation? I’m leaning towards the former, that LOVE is real and transcends everything, but I’m not entirely certain. Besides, the idea of LOVE is a squishy notion that can be about as hard to pin down as an atomic particle. For example, something may look like love on the outside and may benefit someone or something, but be created out of selfish motivations or means. Vice versa, something may not look loving by outward appearance but come from very good motives and means. Uncertainty, indeed.
Sometimes people wonder why I even bother to go to church anymore. I mean, I’m clearly not in the Christian mainstream. For that matter, why do I go to a Zen Buddhist meditation group when I’m not hardcore Buddhist either? I’m a little bit atheist, too, when it comes down to it.
I think I believe that all of the puzzle pieces I’m picking up day by day have a little bit of ultimate truth in them; I just have to be careful not to insist I understand everything about them at one particular point in time. I can’t get all the pieces to fit together yet, and I can’t see the big picture on the puzzle box, which would be helpful. But I need people to do life with, people who are also searching and feeling uncertainty and who know that they don’t understand it all. Every group that I’ve ever encountered that is asking hard questions about life had a mix of great insights and big blindspots. So, you do your best to find the people that help you stumble down the path you are on until you reach the next path, and there will be a new group of people to lead you down that one-people that help carry you through your uncertainties.
And now, I propose the Uncertainty Principle of Julie: I will inevitably squirm out of labels that are put on me and show up where you least expected it. I’m Christian, but I”m not. I’m Buddhist, but I’m not. I’m a humanist, but I’m not. I’m just a strange bundle of uncertainties that is me.
It was a rough year, but I had made it. Things were on a positive trajectory and I was feeling hopeful. But then, right when I thought I was on the homestretch…..
(Yes, I know I’m splicing together random metaphors).
It was like that scene from Million Dollar Baby. You know, where Hillary Swank’s character dominates in the boxing match, and as she goes to the side of the ring to soak up her glory, her opponent throws an ugly illegal punch that pretty much ruins everything. Oh what the heck, watch it here and you’ll get the idea.
I’m obviously not the only one that has been thrown what feels like a totally unfair and uncalled-for blow, but no matter how intellectually we approach these things, they can still hurt like freaking hell. And sometimes the hardest thing to do is to force yourself to get back up again and to keep breathing in and out, and to believe that life is benevolent and good.
I’m halfway through nursing school, and in that time I have gained an even greater appreciation for the way our bodies work. The intricate balancing system of chemicals, blood gases, and pH to maintain optimal functioning is fascinating. Even when we are diseased or injured or offer them crappy energy supplies, our bodies fight valiantly to keep us moving. It’s quite an elegant set-up, really.
One idea that is really pushed on us in school and clinicals is the importance of open airways and proper breathing. When in doubt, the best action is always to check a person’s airway to make sure nothing is obstructing their breathing. And second, when someone has had surgery, even if it’s just a C-section, or a lung illness, the patient needs to perform incentive spirometry.
Incentive spirometry is slow, forced breathing to help fully open the air sacs deep within the lungs and help a person regain as much lung capacity as possible. The problem is, when you’re in pain, you don’t want to breathe deeply. You want to take short, shallow breaths and use as few muscles in the process as possible. When you’re in intense pain, you also likely feel completely bone-tired.
Can’t everyone just leave me alone, God dammit? Breathing hurts and my body hurts and I’m exhausted – I just want to lie here in my misery and not move!
Forcing yourself to breathe in these medical situations is exactly what needs to be done for the body to restore itself. It may hurt like hell to use that stupid incentive spirometer (and I know from experience, having had three C-sections and my gall-bladder removed), but pushing through that pain to help your lungs open up and allow for optimal gas exchange is paramount. Without going into too much detail, gas exchange (oxygen and carbon dioxide) is crucial…for proper cell metabolism, for maintaining a narrow-bounded blood pH, for minimizing anxiety and confusion…the list goes on.
Emotional pain can cause the same kinds of breathing problems as physical pain. I doubt I’m unique in this-when my heart is broken or I’m panicking or I’m descending into the depths of despair (thank you for that sentiment, Anne of Green Gables), my chest physically hurts and I find myself taking those short, shallow breaths. When I realize it and attempt to breathe deeply out of my diaphragm, the emotional pain seems to intensify rather than abate, and it takes all the courage I have to let my lungs expand.
Failure to breathe deeply from emotional pain can lead to some of the same negative side effects caused by physical pain. But what is worse than just failing to breathe deeply is when we stop breathing and hold our breath. This, however, is our tendency.
Because breathing deeply or breathing at all during these times feels like you’re endorsing or condoning what is being done to you or the situation you find yourself in. Breathing is necessary to bring in oxygen and let out carbon dioxide, and those gases are necessary for life, and life doesn’t feel like a good thing right now because it is what brought you this pain in the first place. Our natural reflex is to want to close ourselves off from breathing, pain, and all that life brings because we want to protect ourselves. How could a rational human being sanely accept and embrace the hard things that come our way, uninvited?
We unconsciously think that if we hold perfectly still, the pain will go away. But this isn’t the way it works. When we hold still, the pain remains trapped within us. It can’t lessen because it has nowhere to go. And then, the lack of life movement within us accompanied by this body of pain, creates bitterness and resentment and scar tissue on our hearts. We become small, immovable, hard, unchangeable.
Breath creates space inside of us for new things to happen. It provides a vehicle for the pain to start moving, within us and then eventually, out of us. To ruin the moment here, I’m thinking of patients who have tracheostomies. Their trachs and lungs get all bound up with phlegm and mucus, but if they can get a good, long, deep breath in and cough hard, all the gunk in their lungs is loosened up (or potentially flies across the room at you and you’d better duck fast) and they feel better.
This is where spirituality beat science and modern healthcare to the table. Mystics and contemplatives have known for ages that to heal and to get through pain, we have to keep moving and we have to keep breathing deeply. There is no other way to convalesce if we want to live.
So many spiritual practices focus on the breath. Watch your in-breath, watch your out-breath. Count to five on your inhalation, count to eight on your exhalation. Place your hand on your abdomen and feel your diaphragm expand. On your exhale, push back into downward dog. On your inhale, press up into cobra pose.
Practices like yoga teach us how to sync our breathing with our movements. It’s not just about exercise; it is about learning to live and be with the pain that is within us, how to hold it long enough to transform it, and then how to let it pass through us without destroying us.
So…I know and believe all that I’ve just written at a head level, and to some extent at my heart level. When I breathe my chest still hurts and I just want to go crawl under the covers and not move. But I choose to believe that life is good and what comes to me is what I need. I choose to feel the pain and not run away from it. I choose to transform it and let it transform me. I’ve run away from hard things too many times in the past because I was afraid of the pain. But I’m not afraid of pain anymore, and I will breathe deeply into life, and I will get up again and again and again. So bring it, 2018.
A friend of mine gave me a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for Christmas. I had picked the book up by accident way back in college when I mistook it for a required text for a particular class. Instead of returning the book, I tried to slog my way through it. Needless to say, at the time I had absolutely no idea what Robert Pirsig was trying to say. After a valiant attempt to decipher his thoughts, I gave up and toted the book off to Goodwill.
But this time around, almost two decades later, the book came alive to me within the first few pages. I even hauled it to work with me to read during my break. Pirsig is giving verbiage to nebulous ideas I had circulating in my brain but could never pin down, never sink my teeth into. I suspect many of my future posts will be referencing this book, which is destined to become one of my favorites.
I’m about a quarter of the way through the text right now, and came across a passage that brought with it a wave of “Aha! This!”. To explain why, let me give a little back story. Until I was in my early 30s, I was a devoted Christian, fitting well into mainstream evangelical culture. I believed in the virgin birth, the literal resurrection of Jesus, and was convinced that in some form or fashion, Jesus would return and transform all that is ugly and broken. I did have a few nagging doubts during those years, concerns that could never quite be reconciled. But, hey, if my mother, who was a physicist and professor, could hold the enormous paradox between a literal understanding of the Bible and what she knew to be true of the cosmos, who was I to interject my uncertainties?
I ran into problems when I discovered that many of the “Christian” precepts that had ushered me into adulthood through a safe, and albeit, naive childhood, were no longing serving me well. In fact, I was wondering if some of them had ever served me well at all. I began to ask hard questions that I apparently had hidden in my subconscious-cautiously at first, and then headlong with abandon. The result: I killed Jesus. At least, I killed the projection of Jesus that I had carried with me for so many years. The Jesus I had prayed to, the Jesus I had worshipped, the Jesus I hoped would save me from some eternal damnation.
In the pages of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I stumbled across this:
“When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.” p. 81
In my case, the analytic thought was the science and logic that I know to be true from my education and continual learning. This knife broke down my theological scaffolding, and the Jesus I believed in who was teetering, precariously, came crashing down with it. I grieved this dead Jesus, because he had been my everything for thirty-some-odd years. All that I did and all that I believed myself to be centered on this story of him. But Pirsig also describes what I began to discover over time:
“And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, it just is.” p. 81
The fact is, I could have gotten stuck at the death of Jesus in my mind. I could have gotten angry and cynical and believed that since there is no Jesus anymore, life is pointless and haphazard and completely impersonal. But with the help of writings from Marcus Borg and Joseph Campbell, I began to see that me killing Jesus was necessary to rebirth him in my mind as something bigger and beyond all the petty little questions I had been asking in the first half of life. So many of those questions stopped being questions I really cared to ask.
Campbell said if you’re going to fall, you might as well make it a voluntary act. So, I went with it and found that the abyss I thought I was falling into was actually a wide spaciousness that caught me. And that expanse birthed a new Jesus for me.
No longer is Jesus the only saving resurrection story. Rather, he is the archetypal human that revealed to us how we must die to enter into real life. As Richard Rohr has remarked, the death and resurrection story of Jesus shows us the growth and change pattern for all of life.
The new Jesus story I cling to is so much richer than the one I used to recite to myself. Jesus is now to me someone who worked to overthrow the domination system with a non-violent ethic. He was someone who died repeatedly to his ego and lived out of his true self, leaving us an example of how to do the same. He was someone who lived in such union with the divine within himself, that one couldn’t tell where his humanity ended and divinity began.
The primary reason that this resurrected Jesus means so much more to me is that I am no longer enmeshed in a belief that I am inherently a horrid creature in need of saving by some external being. This new Jesus has shown me I only have to go inside of myself to find all that I need, and that at my core, I am light. And at the same time, I no longer have to be afraid of the darkness. It all belongs. Death and crisis and tragedy are transforming agents that let the light in, and grace is the vehicle that carries them all.
I now happily wield my analytic thought knife, and allow others in my life to slash away at beliefs I am clinging to with their own knives. The person who gave me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been stabbing away at me, and I welcome it. I’m not so afraid any more of dying things, or of dying myself, because I know that life is ever on the other side.
“The secret of life is to die before you die – and find that there is no death.” -Eckart Tolle
This might seem an unusual choice for me, because I certainly orbit on the outer fringes of mainstream Christianity. I first stumbled across Mennonites when I lived in Upstate New York. I drove past a little Mennonite USA fellowship for two years before I got the courage to try it out. All I knew at the time was that Mennonites are cousins of the Amish, and that they are staunch pacifists. I wasn’t sure what to expect the first time I entered the church; would I be out of place not wearing a head covering or plain clothes? Would I be way too progressive for them?
As it turned out, I fit into that church quite nicely, and they helped continue me on my journey of exploration into pacifism, non-violence, and how we as humans should approach pain and suffering in life.
Fast forward a few years – I am now back in Indianapolis. Once again I found myself hovering around the edges of Christianity, unsure if I wanted to be in or out. And once again, I stumbled across a Mennonite church, and again, it is the right fit for me. It’s a community that asks the hard questions and wants to listen to all the answers given in response, even the ones that might sit uncomfortably or require change.
As of late, we have been discussing what it means to be Mennonite andof Anabaptist heritage in today’s world. At one time, Anabaptists were a group that were being persecuted for their faith and ideals, and they felt the need to retreat and seclude themselves in safety away from mainstream culture. But, from what I’ve learned, since WWII, many Mennonites have realized that they have a great deal to offer the world, especially in living out the non-violence teachings of Jesus.
In our Sunday classes, we have had vigorous conversations on the requirements for real, long-lasting peace, as well as the myth of redemptive violence. At one point, someone suggested that instead of fighting back against violence only in overt, active, aggressive ways, we as followers of Jesus need to absorb violence from the worldto keep it from being perpetuated.
So, my mind making the weird connections it does, I immediately thought of : Apollo 13 – you know, that amazing movie with Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton (RIP), and Lieutenant Dan. There is one period in the movie where a crisis evolved over the high levels of carbon dioxide building up in the module the astronauts were in, the result of them exhaling gaseous wastes from their bodies without a working air filtration system. The scientists on the ground in Houston saw that the required oxygen levels were fine, but CO2 was gradually increasing and would reach toxic levels if not dealt with quickly. NASA engineers frantically went to work, using materials available to the flight crew, to create scrubbers that would draw the excess CO2 out of the air and safely contain it.
I picture in my mind non-violent followers of Jesus or Buddha or name-your-guru who act as violence scrubbers in the world. People who can handle bad, hard things and pull away the violent spirit of those things from humanity. But what does that look like? And how to people who scrub the world free of violence not be hardened and broken from the horrors and injustice that occur everyday?
Richard Rohr, that great Franciscan contemplative who I love to quote, frequently remarks that if we don’t transform our pain, we will transmit it. And the problem is, most people have no clue how to transform their pain. We do everything possible to distract ourselves from it, cover it up, blame it on everything outside of ourselves – but we continue to suffer and remain imprisoned and burdened by suffering.
This is what Rohr says true spirituality is about: learning what to do with our pain and suffering. And when we learn how to deal with our own personal suffering, we carve out space to be able to hold the suffering of others. Not in a neurotic, codependent way, but in such a way that transforms it, changes it fundamentally. My mind is now going to the idea of catalytic converters….I will refrain from jumping onto that metaphor here.
One of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Pema Chodron, teaches a practicethat reminds me of violence scrubbing and pain transformation. It is called Tonglen meditation, and if I understand correctly, is part of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. According to Pema, we each have a soft spot inside of us, where we are vulnerable and have the capacity for compassion towards ourselves and others. We often close this space up because of fear and involuntarily harden ourselves against our pain and the pain of others. Tonglen is a breathing practice that is about learning to be willing to take in the pain and suffering of others, and then sending back happiness to everyone. She writes that if we can learn to tolerate and sit with pain and hard things within ourselves, we learn not to fear them, and “we increase our capacity for fear and equanimity.”
“We breathe in what is painful and unwanted with the sincere wish that we and others could be free of suffering. As we do so, we drop the story line that goes along with the pain and feel the underlying energy. We completely open our hearts and minds to whatever arises. Exhaling, we sent out relief from the pain with the intention that we and others be happy.” ((The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times).
Every so often a great person rises that embodies violence scrubbing. Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, Desmund Tutu…just to name a few of the more well-known ones. Somehow, they have taken on the corporate pain of thousands of people without having it break them, and we have all benefited as a result.
It seems like the last year has seen ever-rising levels of toxicity in our world, with countless varieties of violence threatening the achievement of a lasting peace. At the same time, so many people are turning their backs on religion, with good reason, especially when religious institutions align themselves with the propagation and endorsement of violence. But we can’t rely on a few greats like those I mentioned above to save us. We must find in ourselves the courage to face our pain so that we don’t keep passing it on to our children. Like the astronauts of Apollo 13, we don’t have the choice to sit back and hope we’ll arrive at our destination before we breach a toxicity threshold. We need to grasp on to mature spirituality, use the tools we have at our disposal, and “be the change we want to see in the world.” (Ghandi)
A few years ago, after just moving to the Boston area, I discovered that the Dalai Lama was going to speak downtown at TD Garden. I wasn’t very familiar with the city yet or how to get around, but I hopped on a train anyway and made my way up to see him. Until that time, I had read bits and pieces of his writings and listened to a few short YouTube videos that featured him being interviewed or teaching.
The stadium was packed when I arrived, drawing in crowds from all different backgrounds. The funny thing is, I hardly remember a thing about what he actually said. But what I do remember is that he basically made the throngs of people melt. We sat still and quiet, hanging on to every word that he said, and giggling every time he laughed or made a joke. We didn’t just hear a talk by an amazing religious and political leader; we felt the presence of someone who was joyful, and compassionate and seemed to know something that most of the rest of us didn’t.
I fell in love with the Dalai Lama that day. He’s very high on my “People I desperately want to meet but there is very little chance of that happening in this life, gosh darn it!” bucket list.
I own several books written by the Dalai Lama, and was very excited to read The Book Of Joy, which records conversations between the Dalai Lama and his good friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, about what it means to live a joyful life.
In one particular chapter, the Dalai Lama and Tutu discussed death and how we need to learn to face our own mortality, and the fact that things in life constantly change and cease to exist. Here’s a short excerpt that caught my attention:
“In fact, as the Buddha reminds us, the very causes that have given rise to something, such as our life, have created the mechanism, or the seed, for that thing’s eventual end. Recognizing this truth is an important part of the contemplation on impermanence.” (p.165)
When I read this sentence, my mind immediately flew to cellular activity and little bits of DNA sequences called telomeres. When I think of telomeres, I envision health status or life remaining gauges that are common in video games. Telomeres are short nucleotide sequences that “cap” the end of chromosomes in our cells to help keep them from effectively fraying or fusing with nearby chromosomes. Another analogy here would be to think of those little plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces that hold the threads together to prevent splaying.
Chromosome highlighting telomere sequence
Telomeres can be lengthened with a special enzyme called telomerase, which is present during development in fetal tissue or in adult germ cells (think sperm and egg cells), or cancer cells. It is an important component of the “life-giving” cells, the ones that will reproduce and differentiate into new tissues. In other normal adult cells, telomerase activity is diminished, meaning that telomeres will inevitably erode every time cells divide. Ultimately then, each time a cell divides, it ages just a bit more.
Eventually, as a telomere shortens after repeated rounds of cell division, it reaches a critical length. This critical length affects a cell’s ability to divide and reproduce. Certain tissues in our bodies “age” more quickly because of lots of cell division, like our skin and hair.
While telomere length is negatively correlated to aging (as length decreases, aging factors show increased appearance), shortened telomeres are not necessarily the primary cause of aging. However, studies have shown that individuals with shortened telomeres have increased risk of things like heart disease or infectious disease. If you’re interested in reading a review of the subject, click here.
What I find intriguing about telomeres is how an old Buddhist saying reflects some biological truth. A telomere is a seed or mechanism that is crucially involved in both life, and death. Something that is needed for our development and growth (life processes) also inherently seems to program our length of life to some degree. Sure, we may be able to alter the timeframe a bit with lifestyle choices and staying away from copious amounts of radiation and things like that, but as of right now, we get what we get in regard to telomere length. In other words, our death isn’t something that just “happens” to us because of external causes. Death is inextricably part of the same processes that bring us life.
This all brings us back to the Dalai Lama and his reminder that all things that come into existence will end, and this is because everything is interdependent. Nothing exists independently.
We, as Westerners, are often terrified by our mortality, and we do whatever we can to avoid it. But I think we can learn much about what it means to be human by understanding that nothing stays the same forever, and that the dying process is just as natural as living. The key then, I think, is to learn how to go through both processes with meaning and joy.
This is a mosaic essay I wrote a couple of years ago to try to flesh out my own fledgling understanding of how space and what appears to be nothingness play into reality. It offers, I think, a good introduction for this blog and represents many of the questions swirling around in my head.
The Surreptitious Subtleties of Space
To find true understanding, says renowned Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, one must look deeply into the nature of things. Science, religion, art, and music all attempt this with unique methods, and each reveals insights gleaned from the depths of reality. These fields offer us glimpses of the universe, perspectives from various vantage points. Their relationships could be likened to overlapping circles, influencing each other as they reveal different angles on truth, yet each still remaining autonomous.
***
It is 1987. I am seven years old, standing outside on a warm summer evening, watching the twinkling lights in the black night sky. As I watch, something begins to rise up within me. It starts as a small tendril of fear, winding its way up through my chest. But quickly it becomes full blown terror, snaked round me, suffocating and paralyzing. In my childish mind, already steeped in fundamental Christian teachings, I somehow equate the expanse of outer space with the limitless, endless nature of eternity. Cold, dark, lonely, unknown. My panic drives me back into the safe, well-lit confines of my parents’ house.
***
Scientists and mathematicians often wonder if we humans invented mathematics, or merely discovered it. Is God the original mathematician, creating the universe based on laws and formulas that he dreamed up? Is mathematics an autonomous entity unto itself? We have no hard answer for this, but advances in so many fields, including genetics, neurobiology, and even anthropology, were possible because of pathways mathematics has laid out for us.
Mathematics is essentially the exploration of different types of dimensional spaces, each prefaced by one of a myriad of adjectives. Topographical space, noncommutative space, two dimensional space, linear space, and so on. In this field, space is understood both concretely and abstractly. When we study geometry, it is easy to identify spaces created by vectors, various points that create a structure, and graphical representations of objects that may or may not be real. But each of these spaces can be described through algebraic equations and formulas, which allude to the important relational nature of all that constitutes space. Most of us learned Euclidian geometry in school; it best describes flat spaces, those that are one and two dimensional. This type of math remained unchallenged until the late 1800s with the development of Riemannian and hyperbolic geometries, which apply to curved and saddle shaped spaces.
Mathematicians also love to work with numbers that don’t exist, that are basically formless and non-existent, a type of empty space in themselves. The introduction of zero in antiquity transformed mathematics, and later, the introduction of imaginary numbers propelled complex math to a new level. Imaginary numbers are found by taking the square root of a negative number, denoted as i, for imaginary. Originally, no one knew if there would be a real world use for these fantastical numbers, but they have proven very useful for fields like quantum mechanics, fluid dynamics, and electrical circuit theories.
***
The God of my youth had a violent temper until he was apparently placated by the horrific death of Jesus. Afterward, he became safe when approached through contracts and formulas. I was taught very clearly what God likes and does not like, and as long as I adhered to his laws and principles, I would be shown mercy. Within specific boundaries, God was warm and loving, but cross the wrong line, and he would be sure to put me on the bullet train to hell.
Geometry class came easily to me in school. I liked the boundaries it imposed on space, probably because of my understanding of God. Triangles, rectangles, and circles…all bounded in with limits. They were measurable, tangible, and for most of the work I encountered, finite. In my mind, the absence of boundaries threatens safety. It invites in the unknown and the opportunity for unwelcomed change.
In college calculus class, we dealt regularly with infinity (∞) and negative infinity (-∞). I approached these numbers with the same disdain and fear as the cosmos. How could numbers grow forever in a positive or negative direction? My mind, that held fast to the belief in a theistic God, could not fathom how something, even an abstract mathematical idea, could seem to carry on without limits, as though it was a god.
***
The space beyond the confines of our atmosphere seem like inky-black nothingness, spotted here and there with galaxies, but it carries countless secrets that puzzle its admirers. The galaxies are not simply floating along in a great cosmic dance, but are rushing away from each other with increasing speed. Stars on the edges of these galaxies travel much faster than astrophysicists would expect, according to traditional physics models.
Galactic rotational curves have provided evidence for this baffling enigma. These curves help describe the speed at which stars travel around the center of a galaxy. Models that predict these velocities consider the relationship between distance with gravitational forces and suggest that stars in outer orbits should move slower than those in inner orbits. In reality, the change in velocity is flat. Stars that are on the outer edges of galaxies move just as fast as those in the center.
Scientists believe there must be some sort of scaffolding supporting this cosmic machine, but what is it? Perhaps dark matter. There must also be some phantom energy pushing the universe apart to explain the increasing distance between us and faraway stars. Dark energy? Both are speculative but increasingly accepted theories, and both seem to have qualities that surpass anything that visible matter and detectable energy possess. Scientists postulate that dark energy and dark matter make up 95% of the known universe that we perceive as empty space. That means the earth, stars, and matter and energy that humans can detect only make up a measly 5% of all that falls within the boundaries of what we can currently comprehend.
***
Humans take up an infinitesimally small amount of space in all that exists. We believe ourselves to be grand, but we are simply stardust, appearing as a clustered blip in the history of time. As an adult, I stumble over the theories of dark matter and dark energy. I try in vain to reconcile how this God I think I believe in would spend so much time crafting the cosmos, simply to focus on a small heaven or hell morality game with a tiny sample size of what he made.
My faith is beginning to waiver, but a tiny flicker of hope rises up within me: maybe life is bigger than what I once thought, maybe the reality of God goes much further than the reductionistic ‘accept or deny Jesus’ decision I felt forced to make. Maybe we’ve got it wrong and the only reason we thought God was angry was because we didn’t always know how wonderful the cosmos is? Maybe the life of Jesus was just a strike-through of all the anger we thought was harbored against us?
***
As they peer more closely at subatomic particles, scientists have discovered in the last century just how spacious an atom really is. A hydrogen atom, for instance, is a little over 99.9% space, leaving ample room for electrons to dance and spin, disappear and reappear, all around the atom’s nucleus.
But in reality, all that seemingly empty space in the atom isn’t really empty. Quantum field theorists suggest that the “space” varies in energy levels, and even at its lowest energy level, can generate elementary particles. As it turns out, to create a true vacuum of nothingness, if it were possible, would itself require an immense amount of energy and ultimately be very unstable.
***
The near impossibility of creating a true vacuum of nothingness, at least in this universe, is very encouraging to me. Nothing is truly dead, or lost. Oblivion and nihilism are fanciful ideas. From emptiness, stars explode into being. From stardust, life bursts forth. Because there is hope in the universe, there is also hope for me.
***
The spaces in which we live and work, and how we fill those spaces, play an important role in our lives. If our rooms, buildings, and living areas did not somehow impact our sense of emotional well being and aliveness, then we would expect them to simply serve us in a utilitarian fashion. We would construct buildings and fill spaces with materials that are simply functional, with little concern for aesthetics. But we as humans, when unconstrained by external factors, are not content with mere functionality. We want to fill the places that we spend our time with beautiful things that engage us spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.
The Chinese philosophy surrounding Feng Shui is built on the foundational premise that spatial arrangement is important. Modern Westernized Feng Shui involves maximizing optimal arrangement of items in interior spaces to improve the flow of qi, or life force energy. Several more traditional branches of the philosophy approach the flow of qi in a scientific manner, using complex mathematical calculations, numerology and polarity to ascertain the most favorable or unfavorable ways to frame and fill spaces.
***
There is a verse in the Bible that describes God as the one in which “we live and move and have our being.” When I consider the cosmic racing of the stars, the inner creative worlds of atoms, and our own innate need for aesthetics, I can’t help but read this verse differently. What if God is mostly about process, relationship, and interconnectedness? What if God is the energy moving in all the spaces in and around us?
***
Artists understand that their craft is not only knowing what elements to include in their work, but which elements to leave out. Frequently, what is absent offers our imaginations room to flourish, license to go deeper and move beyond the superficial. Space plays a crucial role in art composition. In this context, it can be described as positive or negative. Positive space in a piece of art refers to the shapes of interest, the subject at hand. Negative space, meanwhile, is the space around the subject of interest that provides an artistic effect and offers breathing room from clutter in the composition. When utilized well, the negative space in a painting or photograph is capable of bringing the piece to life, generating a compelling attraction for viewers.
The Japanese also speak of the possibilities that can arise from negative or empty space through a concept they call “ma.” Ma is a pause or gap between two elements, but it is not limited to a tangible, dimensional sort of space. Rather, it extends to the level of experience and imagination. It is not oblivion, but a formless origin that is pregnant with possibilities. A poem from the ancient Tao Te Ching describes the idea of ma well:
“Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel;
yet it is its center that makes it useful.
You can mould clay into a vessel;
yet, it is its emptiness that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows from the walls of a house;
but the ultimate use of the house
will depend on that part where nothing exists.
Therefore, something is shaped into what is;
but its usefulness comes from what is not.”
***
I’m learning to meditate, to focus on the breath. There is a saying: “Don’t just do something! Sit there!” It is hard to just ‘be’ and make space within myself. The fury within me prods me to get up and ‘do’, and stop wasting time. Prove yourself! it nags. But again and again I force myself to sit, and breathe, and try to trust that what I am not doing is as useful as what I do.
***
Music is one of humanity’s universal languages. It touches us, moves us, stirs up memories from the past and passions for the future. Claude Debussy defined music to be the space between the notes, not the notes themselves. Philosopher Alan Watts echoed these sentiment decades later when he said that we only hear melodies because of those spaces. It is the combinations and patterns of notes with silent gaps between them that result in melodies, harmonies, and rhythms that can be distinguished from each other. The length that each note or space is allowed to continue influences the mood and tone of a piece.
However, it doesn’t seem to just be the random pauses between notes in pretty melodies that affect us. Many alternative medicine practitioners are convinced that music has healing capabilities. The energy from each note or combination of notes travels through physical space as sound waves, and these vibrational waves can affect a person’s emotions. For instance, a minor second chord creates feelings of tension or unease, while a major third produces feelings of hope and sweetness. Some ‘healers’ are convinced that the vibrations sent out by music can even help align one’s bodily energy fields, resulting in greater physical well-being.
***
I’m beginning to accept that space is not simply empty nothingness. In both the metaphysical and tangible senses, space is the creative potential from which life, form, and all that is meaningful spring forth. I remember that the late theologian Paul Tillich once described God as the Ground of Being: not personal, but not less than personal. Could it be the that space in all forms is this Ground of Being?
***
The Western spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has said that our essential nature as beings is not content, not form, not the things we do or what we achieve. Our identity can be known, but not conceptually, because concepts again bring us back to names and forms. Instead, identity, our true self, can be known in the space of stillness. “The best description through words is to say what it is not, and then you are left with what it is. It cannot be named, but it can be known. But not known conceptually, because again, every concept is a name, a form. It can be known simply, easily, in the silent space of stillness,” says Tolle. These spaces, stillnesses, between words and thoughts, are the canvas upon which existence is painted. They are vibrant with life.
Tolle’s words, and those of countless other spiritual masters who resonate with him, sound remarkably similar to what physicists tell us happens on the quantum level. Existence and matter rise from what seems to be void.
***
It is 2015, and I can now gaze into the night sky with wonder and appreciation, instead of dread and panic. I no longer see it as a great empty expanse, but instead, a magnificent fullness.
I’m discovering that my old belief systems are no longer serving me well. The theological scaffolding that has stood in place for the first three decades of my life is crumbling, but I no longer fear my foundations being knocked out from under me.
I’m freefalling through space. Or, perhaps, I’m being caught by space.
Scientuality 