Category Archives: mindfulness

The Adventure of Life

“Life is an adventure,” so they say. It is a commonplace that is almost banal, ranking right up there with “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” But, I find it really is an adventure which takes place when one begins to venture beyond the narrow confines of the way one was taught to see…and feel…the world. But the real challenge lies in the very difficult task of becoming aware of this narrow prism through which one views the world, how the tyranny of assumptions shapes our fundamental perceptions of the world. And to ask one to see these premises that shapes this world view is like asking a fish to see water.

It must be noted by those of us who swim in the aether of cerebral thought that most people in the world cannot ever make this meta-cognitive leap; and for them to do so would be catastrophic for human culture. The day-to-day grind of reality depends on people who “mindlessly” go through the motions of their daily life without questioning the “basic assumptions” that I am putting on the table here. And furthermore, for me to use the term “mindless” here merits caution as I do have a contempt gene which is too often near the surface!

We are tribal creatures and the tribal rituals are easily analyzed by people like myself who have lived their whole life “off the grid” in some fashion. (I think one term for people like me is “pointy-headed pseudo-intellectuals” or perhaps more accurately “alienated.”) But we are a tribe, a global tribe composed of smaller tribes who must somehow find a way to live together with a modicum of harmony. But each tribe has an innate tendency to not see beyond the safe confines of its basic assumptions and each member of that tribe learns to drink the same “kool-aid.” That is what makes it a tribe.

But the adventure of life starts when we realize that we have “drank the kool-aid” in some fashion and are shaped by basic assumptions given to us by our culture. Then we can begin to find a bit of freedom and can begin to play with reality. Yes, we can even begin to “play with our self” (wink, wink) and with the beautiful human and natural world that we find ourselves in, a beautiful “Garden of Eden” in some sense.

However, it is scary! We are hard-wired to live within those “safe confines” and to suddenly realize we are “off the reservation” can easily be a Pyrrhic victory. To take a quantum leap here, it will ultimately bring us to the Shakespearean issue of “to be, or not to be” and can even bring one to the point of suicide. For it is gut-wrenchingly painful to realize that one does not belong to the tribe, to be deprived of that “fig-leaf,” and to stand there on that heath like King Lear, pelted by that pitiless storm, naked as a jay-bird.

This is where faith comes in for me. But the temptation here is to take one’s tribal faith, make a fanatical investment or re-investment in it, and hold on “come hell or high water.” And all fanaticism (i.e., “addiction) has its roots with this deep-seated existential loneliness. The tribal religion that my culture offered me was the Judeo-Christian tradition and I have certainly allowed it to be in my life the “opiate” that Karl Marx described. But opiate does not work for me anymore…or at least that one does not! (I do drink too much!) I find that my “tribal religion” offers symbols, stories, traditions that are very valuable as I stand here on this heath with King Lear and others and find that there is hope and even purpose. This “adventure” I am discovering now beyond those aforementioned “confines” involves death, for pushing limits always involves a death-wish of some sort but the Christian tradition teaches that death and live are intertwined and that to “die” is to “live.” To put it succinctly, there is no “life” without “death.” Oh yes, there is existence but there is no experience of human-ness, being a live body and soul for this brief moment we have in this time-space continuum. This is what Jesus meant when he told his disciples who wanted to delay going with him for to help with a burial party, “Let the dead bury the dead.”

However, here is an important point that I’ve already touched on. It is easy to interpret that quip from Jesus to mean that everyone else in the world who did not follow him was “dead” and therefore would “burn in hell one day.” That is how I was taught! But I don’t think so. Jesus was playing with words, telling his disciples that they needed to follow him and let the burial party take care of its business, that it did not need them. Jesus was saying that the rest of the world was okay and “dead” was only a metaphor to say they were not amenable to his teachings, that their role in life was to see things differently and to live different lives within “safe confines.” Jesus realized that the “adventure” I’ve described here was not for everybody but that their life also was “ok”.

Thoughts About Robin Williams, Death, and Life

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What made Robin Williams so funny was that he could play with reality. He could step into an insane perspective on the world and speak from that skewed angle on the world to poke fun at the day-to-day grind of reality that we call “normal.”

But there is a price tag for playing with reality like that. To do so, one must live beyond the safe confines of “normal” and expose oneself to all the perils that “normal” was created to keep at bay in the first place. And one of these perils is to deal with the famous observation made by Hamlet,“To be, or not to be. That is the question.”

This tragic death gives me pause for I know that I too live beyond the safe confines of “normal.” That has always been the case; but only in recent years have I found the courage to give up the desperate desire to convince others that I “think” correctly. I don’t. Never have. And never will. And I am exposed to the aforementioned perils but none of them appears to be the temptation to take my own life….or the life of anyone else! And perhaps that will be a demon I will have to face at some point but I don’t think so. I guess I have accepted death already as an intrinsic part of life and so, in some fashion, believe that I’m dead already. And once one is “dead already” there is no need to worry about death but to merely focus on life and what it presents to you in the present moment.

I think it is Ken Wilbur who has made this very point, that life and death and inextricably interwoven. And each day of our life we are often called to death, to “climb the rugged cross of the moment and let our illusions die.” (W. H. Auden) Each day of our life there are moments when we can opt to not stubbornly obey the dictates of our ego and in that moment make room for another person and/or to be “present” in the physical world. And Wilbur’s teachings presents that moment as a paradigm of death, a discipline that can prepare us for the Big Death that comes to all.

I share in our collective sadness over this tragic death. I deeply admire men and women who can think…and live…outside of the box like Williams did. They are gifts to humankind. Their ability to share a “skewed” view of the world can give us “self” awareness for a moment, a brief glimpse into our precarious grasp on our world, a grasp that we think of as our personal “reality.”

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“This Spirituality Stuff is Nuts!

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“This stuff is nuts!” I would periodically make this observation with my Sunday School class when I returned to the Episcopalian church in the spring of 2011, doing so with feigned frustration Now, I did so only after they knew me well enough to know that I was not being serious, but was only reflecting the cognitive dissonance between the mature approach to spirituality the class afforded me and the very linear, legalistic spiritual mind-set that still lay in the depths of my heart.

This was not an ordinary Christian church as it permitted a Sunday School class of this sort, one which emphasized a non-dual approach to Holy Writ and the Christian tradition. Each week we would meditate for 20-30 minutes and then discuss the book we were reading at the time, each book reflecting the non-dual approach to reality/Reality. And our discussion was personal, not being a mere regurgitation of the “party-line” that the church or the Christian tradition suggested. This discussion was an open, honest exploration of spiritual teachings and the meaning they had in our day-to-day life. But, with this “non-dual” emphasis we usually waded deeply into the aether, into the nebulous dimensions of spiritual life, “wrestling with words and meanings” (T. S. Eliot) and finding that our faith in God, in the human enterprise, and with each others deepened in the process.

And, from time to time I would abruptly interject our discussion with, “This is nuts” and then share how dissonant our discussion was with my past but also how absurd it would be with most people in our community, not to mention the world. For our world is very linear and depends on our ability to mute the “non-dual” dimension of our heart and mind in our day-to-day functioning and fulfill our responsibilities in our personal and professional lives. And the people in this class were highly functional, highly educated and accomplished people who were very adept in making their way in the linear world. But their presence in this class, and their discussion of the subject matter in the class, revealed their awareness of another dimension of life that was very important to them and actually gave meaning to their day-to-day life.

This experience taught me that it is possible to live in two different worlds at once, the “common-sense” world that people take to be real as well as the spiritual world that I was facetiously describing as “nuts.” For, when we venture into the realm of the spirit, we are led beyond the pale in a certain sense, into a realm where words cannot capture the matter we purport to discuss. And this does not mean that these words are unimportant. They are. But they are a means to an end, not an end in themselves; or as the Buddhists teach, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

My Claim to “Fame”

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I really like anonymity, preferring to keep a low profile. From early grade school I recall the fear of standing out, recalling how in the first grade I “threw” a spelling bee deliberately when I was one of the last two standing lest I should win. Abraham Maslow wrote of the fear of standing out from the herd, the fear that the head standing taller than the rest is the one most likely to be chopped off. Of course, I know realize that this motif in my life is not as humble as I used to think it was, but merely a muted expression of an inordinate desire to be “king of the mountain.” Once again I acknowledge one of the many, many conflicts that rage within my heart and constitute the person I am, the persona of which you see here as “literarylew.”

But, I really like being “small-fry” and I increasingly realize just how important we “small-fry” are in the world. Not long before I left Arkansas in February, one of the men I in my church that I was very close to, casually commended me for the good job I did as part of the “infrastructure” of the church. Now this was a large church, full of successful and prominent people in the community, and you can’t imagine just how “small” I was in that infrastructure. But I recognized that he had described my role there and I was very pleased with it and am currently looking for some place in the infrastructure of my new community, be it in a church or elsewhere.

On this note, I wish to share a beautiful poem by Naomi Shihab Nye about the importance of what I am calling “small fry” people like myself:

FAMOUS
The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

—Naomi Shihab Nye

Belated Easter Thoughts

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Easter Sunday always brings back pleasant memories though always tinged with sadness for so often my dear momma had to work. And then, in retrospect, there was the “hell fire and damnation” emphasis of the sermon and the obsessive, self-indulgent emphasis of the passion of Christ….recently vividly illustrated in the Mel Gibson movie. Oh, I believe in the “death, burial, and resurrection of Christ” but I’m now mature enough to venture into the work of hermeneutics and interpret it for myself. I now see the obsessive emphasis of Jesus’ suffering on the cross….because of our complicit presence in the “eating of the apple”…does not have to be taken literally and in fact, should not be. I would never minimize the suffering of Jesus as he was certainly, like “moi”, a human being (at least) and torture hurt. I do not like pain and would not have the courage to endure what he did when, according to American hymnology, “He could have called ten thousand angels, to destroy the world, and set him free.” Jesus knew that life involved pain and offered to us “the way of Cross” in which, per W. H. Auden, we must climb the rugged cross of the moment and let our illusions die.”

But, while Jesus was being tortured and humiliated on the cross, he uttered the incredible words, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” My “guru”, Richard Rohr, in recent months explained that Jesus was saying, “Hey, they are not conscious. They do not know what they are doing. Forgive them.” Now I have been mistreated, misunderstood, and have “suffered” to some degree in my life. But my “sufferings” were always of the neurotic variety but I have yet to find the courage to offer the words to oblivion, “Father forgive them. For they know not what they did.” Why not? I certainly realize and understand that “they” were conscious and didn’t know what they were doing and their “mistreatment” of “moi” was so minimal, weighing so heavily on me only because I was a “highly sensitive person”, meaning
I was “thin-skinned” and vulnerable. So, why don’t I let the memories of “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” just fade into oblivion? Well, I think that Shakespeare had the answer to his own question, suggesting that we would “prefer to cling to our present ills than fly to others that we know not of.” In other words, our present misery…or “discomfort”…is preferable than letting it go and deigning to encounter the mystery of life part of which will be “pain” of some sorts.

Twenty years ago a psychiatrist, Scott Peck, offered incredible wisdom in his book, “The Road Less Traveled.” In the opening chapter of that book he noted, “Neureosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering.” Neurosis is a maladaptive response to the difficulties of life, some of which are very intense.. Likewise, psychosis…or worse…is an even less adaptive to these same circumstances or perhaps even trauma. Now psychotics are not really capable of forgiving their malefactors. But neurotics are very capable. So, why not? Why do they cling to their pain? Why do “I” cling to my pain? Well, I have to follow my own reasoning and admit that I just don’t have the courage to abandon the neurotic structure that has comforted me all these years and in the primordial Absence that follows, dare to make a choice that can be
“Redemptive”, not just for “moi” but for those that are nearest and dearest to me. In other words, do I dare to be “real” or, better yet, “Real.” As T.S. Eliot asked “Do I dare disturb the universe?” It comes down to “getting over ourselves” which for some of us is industrial strength neurosis. Do we dare to escape the safe cacoon of our anguish and engage the rest of the world?

Nah, nah! Personally, I prefer my lofty thoughts and the smug satisfaction that I am in control. But then I, again today, avoid the redemptive power of the Resurrection which is always available in any spiritual tradition though expressed in different imagery.

Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

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“Scare the world. be exactly what you say you are and tell the truth.” Someone posted this simple little admonishment on Facebook last week and it grabbed me, making me think of T. S. Eliot’s famous question, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” For, if I ever gain the courage to become authentic and act and speak out of that authenticity, I will “scare the world” and “disturb the universe.”

Now, the “world” and “universe” that I will startle will be very small for I am not a person of note; or, as I like to facetiously put it, I am merely a “small clod of cholesterol in the mainstream of life.” The first universe that I must disturb is the private one that I live in, that narrow prism through which I view the world which, if unexamined, is but a prison. And, if I can find the courage to experience the disturbance of “awareness” this cannot but have an impact on my thought, speech, behavior and consequently my little corner of the world. (W. H. Auden noted, “O blessed be bleak Exposure on whose sword we are pricked into coming alive.”)

The key is awareness. The key is realizing that we “have eyes to see but see not” and “ears to hear but hear not” and if we ever understand that…in the depths of our heart, and do so with feeling, it will give us pause. For then we will understand that we will never be able to do anything but “see through a glass darkly.” And to see, and feel, this “darkly” dimension of our perspective field is very humbling and even frightening. It has been, and is, for me for I was taught that I could see things objectively.

Authenticity is a dangerous phenomena for the world as it mechanically, relentlessly grinds on day to day under the collective dictate of “the way things are.” The unexamined life is always driven by unquestioned assumptions which are merely those which we have imbibed from the little corner of the world in which we were born and have not dared to question. And as Adrienne Rich once noted, “We cannot begin to know who we are until we question the assumptions in which we are drenched.”

Shakespeare’s Literary Grasp of Life

Space, Silence, No-thingness, and Spirit

Be Here Now!

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This admonishment used to make no sense to me and even used to perturb me for I knew it came from “one of them there damn hippies” though at that point in my life it was probably “dang” rather than “damn.” And, of course it is so meaningful to me now because it is not about “sense” (or reason run amok) but is about “presence” which is a more fundamental dimension of existence than reason. Most of my life has been spent in absence, in not “being here now”, but being immersed in my own little cognitive grasp of the world, a self-imposed prison like the one most people spend their whole lives in.

At present moment I think I “be here now.” I have just awakened and have taken my perch for “bird theater” with my cup of coffee, awaiting my three puppies to join me—two dachshunds and my wife. The darkness will lift shortly and I will again watch the birds engage in their ritual frenzy at the feeders and will be taken with the beauty of the moment. I will “be here now.” I often think of the words of Jesus at this moment, and apply a bit of literary license to his description of “the birds of the air,” noting that they do not fret and stew but merely go about each day of their life “birding” the world. And I also often recall a beautiful poem by Wendell Berry who described finding “peace in wild things” when beset by despair, wild things who do not “tax their lives with forethought of grief.”

Be here now.

Rumi Spoke to Me This Morning Again!

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I am in You and I am You…
No one can understand this
Until he has lost his mind !
~Rumi

Rumi continues to speak to me, having subscribed to “Rumi Quotes” on Facebook. This bit of wisdom reminds me of something that Fritz Perls said decades ago when he was in the vogue, “Let go of your mind and come to your senses.” And then one of my favorites expressions of this kernel of wisdom was from an ancient Eastern teacher whose names I can’t recall, “Sanity is a hair cloth sheathe with a jewel underneath.”

But, once again, this “wisdom” makes no sense at all. It is just “nuts”. Well, at least to that increasingly dormant “literallew” that will always be with me. When I get to heaven, I’m gonna chide God for not letting me learn about this wisdom sooner in my life though I will have to be careful as he could respond with a surly, “To hell with you!” Of course, He will mischieveously smile and wink approvingly of my audacity! He really does have a sense of humor.

literary lew

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