Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 106

Lately I’ve been saying yes to everything and its feels so good.

I don’t know how long it’s been but for a while now I’ve been coursing in the intention of bringing my practice and teaching of the dharma more in line with my deep heart wish to contribute meaningfully to greater justice in our world.

As I write that sentence I remember something I’ve been wanting to write about. It’s about remembering who I am and what I think I’m doing.

A couple of years ago I was leading a retreat with a good friend of mine. We were in a team mtg discussing what kind of ritual we would like to have that evening. We turned to our cooks and organizer and asked them what kind of energy they felt the retreat needed.

One of them piped up saying that she was feeling the presence of White Tara quite strongly and would appreciate a ritual dedicated to her. I agreed to do some research and pull something together.

I headed to the retreat centre library and looked her up. I wanted to remember all the details of her imagery and what she symbolizes. As I was reading about her connection to time I thought I saw a radiant light flash at me out of the corner of my eye.

At the same moment I remembered something from my childhood. I remembered that whenever an adult asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would answer, “I don’t know, but what I do know is that whatever feels like the best use of my energy is what I should be doing so the place to start is to try and find what’s going to be the best use of this energy right here.”

Within the same moment, if that’s even possible, I also remembered something I had felt and said out loud many times since my mother’s death. A sort of curse to myself. It was this idea that I wanted, actually preferred, to die young, at the height of my beauty and fame, so that I would always be remembered like that and wouldn’t have to experience the indignity of growing old.

I think I formed this story as a protection against what felt inevitable. My mother had died at the age of 43. Somehow, I thought I was probably going to as well. By creating this story about my own death, romanticizing it, almost wishing an early death on myself, I could somehow circumvent the possibility that I may die young, fool it by asking for it.

When one prays to White Tara one prays for a long life. Not so that we can enjoy life to the fullest, although there is nothing wrong with that, but so that we can use the time we have to get on with waking up and help other people get on with it too.

In that one moment when I saw that flash of radiant light I became aware of a level at which I was still deeply unintegrated. I had dedicated my life to practicing and teaching the dharma while at the same time cursing myself.

That evening in the ritual I confessed my lack of integration and set a new intention. Stop cursing myself and ground in the intention to awaken as fully as possible.

A few months later I was on retreat again. I was reflecting on this question of finding the best possible use of my energy. I had been relating to the question as a koan. How could one possibly find the best use of one’s energy without spending their entire life giving every possible use of their energy a try to see which one was best? And how would one know? With what metrics do you measure the best use of your energy?

Then I realized what I was missing. An energy like a bolt of lightning moved through the centre of my body, rising from the pelvic floor and entering my heart centre. In the heart centre I felt a clarity I had never felt before.

What was clear in that moment was the absence of time. That time was a social construct and that I could not find it in my direct experience. This was not an idea, as I had contemplated this foundational Buddhist concept many times before. Instead, it was a direct knowing and seeing clearly.

In that exact moment of waking up to the illusion of time I also saw that the question, held in the space of this clear knowing, didn’t make sense anymore. There was no “finding” the best use of my energy. There was no process by which, through trial and error, there would be some magical discovery and then that would be it, I’d be on my way, going about my business doing the thing that used me up best.

The next feeling to emerge was an expansion from the heart centre, warmth and light radiating in all directions. With this feeling came the realization that there is only ever the present moment and how I am showing up in the present moment.

There is no future where I am going to arrive ready to be best utilized.

There is only what’s happening now and how I am with that. And what’s happening now always includes me and “my” experience and often includes other people. And how I am with that either leads to more suffering for me and others or less.

That’s it.

This feeling was quickly followed by a dropping down, a weightiness which also had a lightness to it, like the weights on a hot air balloon that are both on the journey with the rest of the balloon and keeping the whole thing from floating off into infinite space. Keeping it tethered to gravity.

I usually associate this feeling with humility. In that moment I felt humbled and ashamed of all the times I’ve held to my lofty ideals while enacting violence against myself and others.

By violence I don’t mean physical or verbal or even psychological, I just mean all the subtle ways that I cut off from aspects of my experience or parts of myself I don’t want to be in relationship with. And the ways I cut off from those same aspects in others.

By violence I also mean all the times I’ve acted out of unconscious biases, beliefs and views so that even with the best of intentions, my thoughts, words and actions still ended up creating suffering for myself and others.

This is where I landed that day. That the best possible use of my energy was only and ever realized in the moment and that because I can never know what the moment will bring, I can not carefully plan that use. I can only plant the seeds that will hopefully come to fruition in each moment.

And the fruition I’m after is the capacity to respond to what’s happening to and around me with awareness and love and any other qualities that are called for in that moment. Courage, conviction, clarity, wisdom, stillness, spaciousness, acceptance, curiosity, the list goes on and on.

And then there is the alchemy of placing my heart on this intention and watching the universe realign itself around me so that I can now cleanly and clearly step into my life and fully feel the pleasure of it.

It feels so good to say yes.