"I meditate. I light candles. I drink green tea. Still I want to smack someone."
I read this on a post-it note some months ago and am still laughing about it. It's just too true. In my life, for example, I have many moments of peace and openness. I revel in the appreciation of both small miracles - like having a good hair day - and humongous displays of magic - like walking again after paralysis, which happened to me after a discectomy went haywire on an operating table in 1997. I study the lessons of my spiritual teachers like Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, and Abraham, and experience the joy and freedom that these teachings gift my spirit.
And yet I fear. Many things. I fear that I'm getting older and wrinklier in a society that values youth and immaculate beauty, and that I have 87 bills on my kitchen counter and exactly $87.00 in my bank account to pay them. I worry that Tinky's health is in decline and I'll not know how to go on living without her. I worry how I look in a pair of jeans, how I'll face an increasingly challenging body with no health insurance, and how Oprah will know which eye to look at when I'm on her show (I have a wandering eye that makes photography and television an almost impossible thing). And yes, when sitting in traffic on the freeway, bumper to bumper in the summer heat with my AC working overtime but not nearly pumping enough wattage to remove the sweat from my upper lip, the tide pool under each armpit and the Amazonian river running down my thighs, I want to smack someone. Hard. And for good measure I might just want to dole out a few atomic wedgies while I'm at it.
And then I hear the voices of my teachers in my head. They attempt to soothe the writhing, suffering creature living inside me. "Accept the present moment as if you had chosen it. Make this now your friend." And when I follow this advice I feel much better. Sometimes I even fly. Which makes me marvel: why do I so often get lost in anxiety? Why do I paint dire pictures in my head when I could be creating enchanting ones? Why am I driven to smack the snotty waiter who not only brings me the wrong food, but when I point this out to him, treats me with disdain as if I'd ordered incorrectly, as if I was inconveniencing his very life, as if I was single-handedly responsible for his bad haircut, his strained relations with his father and the incessant hair-ball hacking of his prize-winning Siamese cat? I just know he's spit in my chipotle chicken salad when he returns to set it on our table, so it sits pristine on my plate. I lose my appetite. And now the entire restaurant needs a smack.
What to do? I cannot turn my back on the teachers in my life. Their messages of love and consciousness are a life-line, creating a capacity for joy and hope I didn't know I had. Is this what consciousness does? Is this evolution? A series of lessons which make our old patterns and habits increasingly distasteful until we release them, allowing them to remain untouched like a spat-upon chipotle chicken salad?
Perhaps. But I don't think I'm up for sitting under the Bodhi tree or scrubbing floors in an East Indian ashram in order to attain enlightenment. So maybe this is my task. Maybe life is my dharma, in all its cellulite-inducing anxiety. And if so, how can I pass this test and move onto the next phase? Can I please just study hard, take an exam, and graduate? When does the struggling end and the consciousness begin?
When I was in college I didn't really care about learning. I cared about grades. Give me the syllabus, the books, the schedule and let me at those exams. I aced every single one and when the paper or test was turned in, I promptly forgot everything I'd studied. On paper? A model student. In reality? A short-cutter, a side-stepper, just lookin' for the grade. Not exactly what a University has in mind when it dreams up the competent, courageous students it will one day offer up to society at large. And yet, this is what I did with my college education, and what I'm dangerously close to doing now with my spiritual education. Just tell me what's expected of me, let me memorize it, regurgitate it back to you and then I'm outtie with my 4.0. Only one problem. Spirit doesn't care about test scores and GPAs. Spirit cares about learning, experience, growth.
I just hate that. But I admire it, too. (Maybe Spirit needs a smack?) And in the deepest recesses of my heart, I want to BE it. To live out the poetry in my veins, to touch the essence of the intangible within a life incarnate, to dwell in harmony with my own body, with my state of mind, with my world at large, these desires are bigger than my fears and more powerful than my need to smack.
And so I chafe. I chafe at the cellulite on my ass and my disparaging reaction to the cellulite on my ass. And then I remember that my ass is temporary, that my soul is not. And I wonder. Does my soul have cellulite? Does it care how it looks in a pair of jeans? Does it strive for a 4.0? Or is it possible that my soul is glorious and generous, that it loves me just as I am, no matter where or how I am, and that it draws to me the things, events and circumstances I need in order to become the very glory and generosity dwelling at my core?
But let's back up a moment. What is a soul, really? I've read various definitions, most of which leave me feeling like I'm playing with liquid mercury: touch it, and it shifts, splits, changes. It refuses to be pinned down. Take Webster's, for example. There are a total of fourteen definitions of soul. For the sake of this book, we're going with Webster's #1 which reads: soul - the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part. When I refer to soul, I am referring to the part of us that organizes and guides our life principle, an entity existing within and around us, the part of us immune to the need to smack.
I believe someday science and Spirit will meet. A day will come when researchers will discover proof of the soul, or at least physical evidence of something larger than our perceived reality, contained within us and around us. We'll then be able to chart and graph the various messages and meanings encoded within our being. Until then it's hunches, intuitions, guesswork. And in frustrating times, smack-work.
But life in motion begs the question: if soul is the grandest part of ourselves, yet the most subtle, how, then can we live according to its bounty?
Last week I notice lumps - quite a few of them - on Tinky's chest. A stab of fear pierces my heart. Tinky is the eight pound Chihuahua who single handedly saved my life in 1998. She brought light and hope into a very dark hour, helping restore a life devastated by paralysis, emotional bankruptcy and financial ruin. She asserted herself as my guardian, a winged sentinel determined to fly me to safety to the shores of healing. What will I do if she's sick? We have no money to cure her. What will I do if she's suffering? What will I do without her? She's not like other dogs. All that ball-throwing, stick-chasing, ear-tousling, lap-sitting, kissing, hugging, rolling around the floor together? We don't do that. I've done that with other dogs and I watch my friends do it with theirs. Tinky is more like an elemental. She's not into laps, doesn't like being held. She's not much into the games and pursuits of other dogs. She's a guide, watching over me, perched on her bed by my feet, guarding. But those lumps? They make her a dog, a very real flesh-and-blood Chihuahua. With a lifespan. With lumps. I of course was aware this moment would come. From the day we met I knew we'd have to part, and that the emotional price would be a blood-letting. But this right here? It's too much. Who will I be without her? I haven't a clue and I don't want to find out.
"Love what is" Byron Katie would tell me. But I don't love those lumps.
So last Wednesday, after noticing the lumps and needing to do something to distract myself (with nothing and no one on hand to smack), I'm trying to sort my art studio. I'm arranging and rearranging and nothing works. None of the items I need to pack up for storage fit the boxes I have on hand. Papers fall from my hands. Boxes topple, their innards strewn across the studio floor. I cut my finger on a pair of dull scissors. (Have I ever done that? Even running with scissors in kindergarten?) Those lumps on Tinky's chest have moved to the back of my throat and nothing's getting past them. I can't swallow food or tasks or hope. I can't stomach reality, have no appetite for optimism. I start with a fear that Tinky has tumors and then spiral into the fear that I'll be powerless to change her condition and then I just plunge right into the ugly pit of depression and loss.
For a day and a half, nothing can pull me out. I'm down there wailing and moaning, doing the Swing Low Sweet Chariot routine with my tin cup banging on the iron bars of an emotional jail cell. When Joseph and his Technicolor frock were thrown into a pit, a band of Ishmaelites dug him out. Me? I hear the voice of Abraham, their wisdom a hand held low, my very own sweet chariot offering rescue. "Look to your emotions. They will tell you how close - or far - you are from Source. Feelings of depression indicate distance from your true self, your source of power. Feelings of joy and enthusiasm herald alignment with that same source."
The message resonates with me. And while I cannot jump the chasm from feeling helpless and sad to feeling strong and joyful, I can grasp the hand of wisdom before me. I climb out of the pit and go to the one place where wise women have been going for eons to search out wisdom and enlightenment: the bathtub. In the warm, steamy waters I feel strong enough to face the facts: I love Tinky. She has lumps. Some day she will die, but not today. I don't know when, but I haven't even been to the vet to figure out what exactly is going on with her body. I'm not certain the lumps are malignant, but I'm moping and fretting and suffering while Tinky sits patiently beside the tub, staring up at me through twin, brown pools. Alive. I could be snuggling her, hugging her, relishing our time together. Instead I am tortured, and in the tub of reason I realize it's voluntary. I do not have to indulge the thoughts that create the suffering. I have options.
And that feels good. Well, better anyway. These options create a tiny space in me un-choked by fear and I crawl inside it. I think this is what Eckhart Tolle is talking about when he encourages us to live in the now. When embracing the now, and only the now, all the anxious ‘what ifs' settle down and take a nap. The brain gets a little quieter, even if life does not. In the quiet, I ponder. Can my teachers be believed? Is it possible that my very soul is creating these circumstances, orchestrating these events? Am I, on some soul level, calling to me what I need in order to manifest the glory and generosity residing at my soul's core? Are these lumps my doing?
And now I feel the need to smack myself. How could I do this to me? But wait. A voice inside my head. Is there not some gift in this situation? As ridiculous as it feels, I begin reviewing the potential benefits of being confronted by suffering.
#1 - I cannot think about the past, because it pains me to think Tinky and I won't have those moments again
#2 - I cannot think about the future, because I cannot bear the thought of Tinky not being in it
#3 - Number one and Number two lead me directly to...The Now. And haven't I been saying that I'd like more peacefulness in my life? Haven't I been asking for a deeper understanding of presence? Wasn't it me, just three weeks ago, spouting off to a friend that I intend to love more, even if it means loving the ugly and unlovable?
Humph. If there's ever been ugly, these lumps are it. And unlovable? I'd say that's me right about now, chock full of resistance. In this realization, I begin to soften. Toward the lumps. Toward myself. Compassion swells inside me for all that I reject, for the circumstances I deem unfavorable, for the people and events I judge as wrong or bad. I consider that maybe - just maybe - my intentions have been heard and I'm being offered the reality that will create what I've said I want.
I get out of the tub, dry myself off. I scoop Tinky in my arms and carry her upstairs to my bed. We lie for a time on the red duvet, human and dog. She stares at me, as is her habit. I swear she believes I am her charge, and is determined to provide me safe passage. As sleep begins to beckon, her liquid eyes blink more and more slowly, until her breath evens out long and low and I know she's drifted into some enchanted land for guardians, full of journeys-end dreams. I turn to look out the window: a tiny patch of blue looks back, its heart a thousand white pieces. And I am reminded of the quote I read by Yehuda Amichai: "Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding."
I think it's us.
