Critical Devotion: A Second Letter from Miriam on Shambhala

Dear reader,

I have wondered if there was another letter in me. The first letter, and the following piece came out like a birth and afterbirth - I wrote them quickly, while still in the full pain feeling strength of the beginning of the situation. Since then, I have noticed my feelings dulling a bit, not because the situation has gotten less intense, but because my need to feel so deeply has modulated itself. Not to mention the fact that more complex emotions and thoughts are layering on top of each other now.

But then a student told me how helpful the first letter was - in fact, she and other remote Shambhalians (those without centers near them) had used it as basis for a conversation about what is happening, and others wrote their own letters after reading mine. I realized I do have some things to say, but mostly I have confusion to report.

Why should I report confusion? Because if I do it clearly, others will possibly see their own confusion mixed in mine. And, even more likely, others - or even I - will see the wisdom mixed in the confusion, because that is how wisdom and confusion roll. So here is a mix of experience, emotion, and thought, offered to you in order to help you find some resonance and consolation, clarity, and direction. Please take what you can and leave what you can't; it's not offered as debate, really, more as a sense of what a leader/teacher in Shambhala is thinking and feeling about all of this.

In a conversation with a meditation student this morning, she offered that this situation is like a muddy river - which is an analogy we use a lot in meditation instruction in Shambhala. Our minds often seem more like muddy rivers, but when we sit, the true nature of the water begins to reveal itself: clear, so long as we let the mud not disappear but settle into place. This situation won't settle for awhile - we are going to be in a muddy river a long time it seems, but that doesn't mean we can't work with our minds. In some ways, that's the main thing we can do now.

If you haven't read the first letter, please do. Respect the time and effort I put into writing these and see the context. May they all be of benefit.

1. War Zone/Apocalypse
A couple of weeks ago, a senior teacher told me I am now living in a sort of war zone. I blinked. What on earth could he mean? He explained how it was for him, when he lived through CTR's death and also the awful incidents around the death of VROT. The situation was constantly changing, with very little predictability. Important people would suddenly drop power or be put out of power, and news hit like bombs, blowing apart communities. Infighting, confusion, mass chaos. Ergo, war zone.

A few days later, without my repeating that line, an Acharya I was speaking to repeated the same thing. Clearly there was some resonance here, as these two teachers don't even know each other.

Learning As Love

From the viewpoint of Earth, outer space seems so vast but full - especially in New Mexico or Colorado - the stars touching each other, crowded in the cool night air. My mind knows when we do go out into space, closer to said stars, there's actually a lot of space, further space, outer space, between the stars.

Is my mind like this? Seemingly crammed to the brim with content, commitments, inspiration. Endlessly full - a contradiction. But when I slow down enough, I see there's space between thoughts, enough room for entire breaths to come and go, and be freely witnessed without interruption. Same mind - different scope - from tele to micro and back out again. And the thoughts are not so separate from the spaces between them, though when my mind is agitated, my thoughts seem completely unconnected to a quiet background of existing and peace.

***

This week has been filled to overflow with IBS. This chronic condition - which I've had for over 28 years, and only really known how to work with in the the last ten years or so - is all-consuming when it sets in. I lose a lot of perspective - my focus shifts to the so-called "large" intestine, which suddenly seems too narrow for what needs to pass through it. In the last couple of years, I've found if I can recognize the IBS ASAP and begin the protocols I know work - hypnosis, restricted diet, supplements, massage, heat - it usually passes in 24 hours or so. Usually. But this last week has been tight - time and energy crammed with classes, returns from travels, etc - and I didn't really give it enough space. It all backed up to a critical point last Saturday, when it became apparent I had to cancel everything and begin again.

But by last Sunday, after a day and night of careful eating, no work, napping, and overall resting my nervous system, it wasn't gone. I had to keep adjusting - keep flattening open field of expectations, irritation, space, and time - so things could move along in their own time. I found some new massage points and they helped. I took a new supplement - which helped too much at first, and eventually, after 48 hours of intense stuckness (this after a few days of discomfort), my intestines were re-calibrated again, more or less. Until yesterday, when it started all over again.

***

I have been making my own semi-abstract drawings lately to color, as I haven't found coloring books that fill my needs, and I am getting more patient with my own drawing (lack of skill) level. Yesterday, I got the idea to draw my small and large intestines from a medical rendering. It felt good, healing, to look closely at this mystery zone that has caused me so much pain in the last few decades. In some ways, I have numbed myself to my digestive system - dissociation out of irritation, struggle, fear of pain - and it feels as foreign to me as outer space. Drawing my intestines helped me better map - literally - where my pain tends to arise and see it with my mind's eye. It created the paradoxical experience of both getting more distance from my illness - seeing the whole system as if watching the Milky Way from an unclouded clear camp site - and also an intimate proximity - a contour map of convoluted pathways I have actually felt quite closely.

A perfect balance - a place to rest my mind that seems connected but spacious.

***

Over time, as I age and certain conditions don't go away, or get worse, or new ones appear, I increase my curiosity about this wildly singular and somewhat unknowable body. I find it a combination of uncategorizable felt sense experiences - simply feeling sensations as sensations, whether painful or pleasurable - and cracking open anatomy books, watching videos, learning about how all the systems in the body work,  or change their working. This curiosity has been mainly satisfied by non-western, non-allopathic approaches – Traditional Chinese Medicine, somatic experiencing, and the like. But good old-fashioned anatomy satisfies the intellectual, detail-oriented mind, like mannequins with their stomachs cut open, revealing color-coded livers and kidneys. I stay connected to my own expanse by exploring the vast unknowableness of my body– the electrical currents it creates and runs on, the automatic and autonomic systems–as well as the intellectual desire to learn the names of parts I can literally put my fingers on.

***

I have always held such curiosity about the psyche – which is even more invisible – but it feels like the psyche is not separate from the body. Just as how these words aren't separate from the page, and stars are not separate from space. What if the intimacy of learning could help more of us to feel deeply connected, to express and experience care towards our ailing bodies, which are bound to be in pain at one time or another?

And what if being curious in this way could help us learn to love learning about race, about gender, about all the other socially-constructed-but-really-experienced aspects of our individual lives? This, too, I remain curious about - how to cultivate curiosity where before I have mainly contracted in fear - whether its exploring my own chronic illness, or witnessing someone else describe being the receiver of a bias I know nothing about. The patience and kindness of staying present as much as possible, then the dedication to study and explore on our own, when we can, so we can express our love of our bodies and each other through forms of curiosity and learning that don't exasperate the suffering more.