Colors of Space

My intention this year was to work with space. Actually, my intention was just the word “space” - no "work with," no "feel more of," no "find more," etc. No direction at all, which is, after all, a bit antithetical to space - direction, that is.

The word arose naturally, intuitively, and would not go away, as my intention word for the year usually does. I was not surprised - I was in the middle of a  teacher training for what is called Maitri Space Awareness. MSA is a program that focuses on using colors and postures to help understand the natural energies that flow through all of us. These parallel the elements - air, earth, fire, wind - and also space. Space, in this case, referred to as Buddha*, is both an element (though not one we commonly think of in modern western society) and also the ground for all the other elements to arise from. Early on, I noticed how pure space, all by itself (symbolized by the color white in this tradition), is quite rare. It is usually colored with something - green, red, blue, yellow - eg one of the other families. And then, as I got closer to Space as an element itself and began to feel out its characteristics, I noticed there’s an uncanny closeness to Space and Whiteness. 

Relentless Gentleness

It may seem funny to pair the word "relentless" with the word "gentleness", but this is what I am working with more and more. I can be a somewhat relentless person - relentless in business (note I did not say ruthless), in personal relationships, in working on/with myself. However, that relentlessness can be quite tiring, has been exhausting, in fact. And so I am learning that my gentleness needs to be as relentless as the more common things associated with relentlessness:
ambition
appetite
striving.

What does relentless gentleness look like?
For me it looks like

1. Holding space in my schedule for resting, protecting time with cats, meditation, exercise.
2. Standing my ground against my own self-hating tendencies, the ones that push me too hard to work.
3. Leveraging the same pushy bits of myself that force me to work, to criticize and instead use those forces to force myself to rest, relax, just hang out.

It's a ground teaching in Vajrayana Buddhism that the place from where our confusion arises is also from where our wisdom is born. This relentlessness in myself is not inherently bad - it's strength, resilience and dedication. How I apply it, on the other hand, changes everything. Learning to direct the need to be committed and clear towards kindness is key; changing the tack of the sail of "get it done" to "make sure I sleep a full nine hours" is tricky but rewarding. And slowly but surely, the strengthened gentleness takes over more easily when the seemingly more powerful self-critic tries to take the reins.

Last Minute Emotions

Yesterday, I had an intense Hakomi therapy session. By the time I reached the evening, and I was getting ready to go out to socialize, I was frozen. I felt "ok" most of the day, and didn't see this freezing up coming. It was clear I had some processing to do, and couldn't go out. But why then? Why at the last minute?

Reference Pointlessness

Ultimately, Buddhist teachings tell us there are no reference points. This is actually what the teaching on Emptiness means, if I may be so bold as to give it reference points - not that nothing has meaning or heart (quite the opposite) but that in order to experience ourselves and the world fully, we need to drop/empty out our cache of reference points - like/dislike, me/not me. I find this especially salient in communication, and, of course, there are formal training programs in Compassionate Communication,  Non-Violent Communication and Green Light Conversations. I have talked about this before in my previous posts on listening (recently re-published in the journal Medical Encounters) and speaking, but today I was struck especially by how deep these misunderstandings go.

Absolute v. Relative

Japanese Gardens, Portland, OR

"Sure, I understand that on an Absolute level, all is space. We are empty of concept and things only exist as a part of a larger whole. But what about on the Relative level?"*

This is a question from a student at a Miksang Contemplative Photography weekend. It's not an uncommon question - in fact, since we talk about perception pretty much constantly during Miksang talks, in comes up a lot. But this time, we are pretty far along in the program - in a cumulative program called Absolute Eye - and he wants to know how we can experience the Absolute, if we can, on a Relative level.

If this seems to high faultin' to you, hang on and keep reading.

Dis/connect

I went into a Post Office this afternoon, and waited in line, watching a solo woman clerk interact with numerous international students, most of whom had a limited grasp of English and couldn't understand her directions quite clearly. 2 or 3 had to come back a third time, only to be corrected and start again. Key words were missing, key ideas, and I felt the loss, felt for the international students, wondered at how privileged I am to "get it" - especially reading Other People's Children, recommended to me by Birdfarm, as of last night.

Then it was my turn. I took up a few packages - copies of my new chapbook destined to friends, a mix cd (comment on the last blog entry and you can get one, too!). One package I hadn't gotten the address for yet, and I sheepishly grabbed that one without making eye contact - Oops!, I uttered, and slipped it into my bag.

"This is wrong" she stated, and sighed, looking over her glasses at me. I felt a deep gulp arise, just from her stare. "It's written on here wrong." She paused and looked at me, and it took until she asked me if I knew how to correctly address an envelope, which I had just seen her do - for the third time - to a young Taiwanese woman - to realize she thought I wasn't from the US. I blushed, felt angry, how much mail have I sent in my life?! - then chilled down a bit - sure, I did do it wrong, turned the wrong way, only good for parcel post, not for an envelope. She carefully explained how to do it, and I asked if we couldn't just send them parcel post? Yes, but we had to move the return address around, etc. This whole time I was burning shame, burning away a feeling of having done wrong, and not because I did wrong, but because of the way she had addressed me; like a child.

In getting some space, some curiosity about the situation, which usually helps, I took a deep breath and looked around as she scanned the items and added up my total. It was then I saw a sign directly in front of me, almost impossible to miss, now that I was looking, that told me my clerk is very hard of hearing, and reads lips, so make sure to face her straight on. It also said, with a small smiley face, that sign language is spoken there.

Wow. Did I ever miss that. The power of the situation suddenly shifted, and I looked back at the clerk, re-considering our whole conversation, the way she had repeated everything very carefully to all the folks who'd come before me, always using the same phrasing.
"Will that be all for today?" she asked me, and suddenly I heard her voice another way- vulnerable, unsure, and slightly dampened, as speech from folks with hearing impediments can sometimes be - soft on the consonants.
"No, thank you," I said, sure to make eye contact with her, enunciate clearly without overexaggerating, and shaking my head. She smiled - actually smiled! - I don't think I'd looked at her face once the whole transaction, so absorbed in my own experience.

---------

I had another blog post planned before this happened. It turns out it's still relevant. I left my psychiatrist's office with renewed prescription for meds, and a conversation she and I had had buzzing in my head. She had talked about Temple Grandin, and her latest book, which includes a concept "that I believe is as fitting for humans as animals" as she said. Grandin talks about how the "seek" part of an animal's mind - the sniffer, the explorer - manages to suppress anxiety as it is in action. So animals use it for not just the purpose of sussing out the situation, but also to alleviate anxiety about the situation. But it works the other way, too, I think. I think that sometimes we seek in order to stave off anxiety - compulsive shopping, anyone? myself included! - and that seeking can actually become drug-like - always wanting something new, for instance, instead of the "same old same old."

And yet, when we attune ourselves and become curious about the moment - like I did at the post office, like meditation trains us to do, or Miksang, or writing, or just deciding to pay attention (go Reem!), we do realize that the world is always different, always changing.

Meditation teachers say it all the time - hell, *I* say it all the time - "get curious, it'll help, help the panic, help the sadness, open things up." But now I have another understanding of this.
That the story is just that - a story - and as it turns out, the story I had in my head at the post office was just that, a story, missing a ton of the nuance in favor of a familiar situation, as gross as it was. The anxiety I had in interacting with this woman was old business, old news. It wasn't relevant - it was triggered. When I made the choice to seek out, not anything in particular, but just to sniff around a bit, I found better data, more relevant, that could help alleviate my anxiety and give perspective. For humans, I think, the "seek tampers anxiety" could be true, but of course, we can even take it a step further, have cognition about that new information. From disconnect to connect in a few short seconds.

Magic at Marquette

Last night I met with my Marquette University students again. I had to miss last week, because of a nasty head cold, and this week I am still sniffling and hacking out phlegm. But I didn't want to miss this week - germless as I am - because we were talking about Magic.

It's clear from their response papers that some of them read the chapter on Magic from Shambhala, Sacred Path of the Warrior, with skepticism, and some read it with joy. That's natural. All semester I have been toying with the edges of the believable with them - giving them somewhat concrete assignments like "Color" or even "People" and when they come back, insisting that they experienced more than just a moment of "getting the assignment right" - in fact, that that wasn't what they were doing at all, rather, experiencing direct perception, which is, ultimately, experiencing reality directly. At first they were confounded - even the joyful ones - but after a semester of reading John Daido Loori (RIP) and Freeman Patterson and Chogyam Trungpa, and putting up with my weird chalkboard renditions of reality, they are becoming a bit more malleable.

And all of those things would mean nothing if it weren't for the practice. The practice of photographing, this tiny (most of them have little low-power point and shoots) miracle that allows them to share what they see with all of us in a dark room and discuss it. They have become "processed" as Chogyam Trungpa puts it, and like in cooking, you wait until the food softens, then add the spices. Now's when they are ready to absorb the most radical, and also simplest, teachings of them all.

In the chapter, Chogyam Trungpa says that not only is the space we can experience (if we allow ourselves - of course it is always there) spacious, relaxing and nifty, it is also charged with energy. Potential. Spontenaity. In the reading, he actually names it - Drala (above aggression or beyond the enemy in Tibetan) and then goes on to say that in fact there are, in a manner of speaking, Dralas - entities which exist in this space, of this space, which are this space. Even the wildly awake, in love students who accept most of what I or the readings say, took this one with a hard swallow. What? Is this guy talking about faeries here?! He sort of plunks this on at the end of the chapter, and doesn't leave much explanation.

So that's mostly what we talked about last night. After talking about what was mysterious in their lives (The Future, one woman said - these are college sophomores - another mentioned The Origins of Everything - Both Cosmic and Personal - and another, Relationships With Other Humans) I asked them if the cosmic - how the universe began - is really so different from how, say, they arrived in this class. There's an answer for the class - "I signed up for it" - or is there?

"In my Poli Sci class, we talk about this a lot," one student said, very excited. "How can you separate the origin of the universe from your own life?" We reference the Carl Sagan quote Loori used in our readings a few weeks ago - that you can't truly make an apple pie from scratch unless you go back to the beginning of the Universe. Another mentions in German class how they are reading a text which says we don't truly know anything at all, that science is actually less informed or answered than, say, religion.

Ok. Good. We've established space. They've learned a lot in the last 12 weeks - and certainly not just from me or the class or their experiences from this class. So then I drop the bomb.

"What does this idea of Drala entities mean, then? Are they faeries?" All the students shrug, one then shakes his head and raises his hand. "It's more like - well, we can't see it, but we experience it, right? Like the tuning fork example you gave, that we make contact with something, we know it, we have all felt it here, right?" and the rest of the students nod "So it's worth naming, but it sort of doesn't exist. I dunno. Something like that."

This from the student who's an RA in a dorm where a freshman just committed suicide over the last weekend, throwing the whole campus into shock.

"Thank you," I say to him. He's delivered it - or maybe the student's death delivered it - right to our doors. Naming the unnameable, the unknowable. I don't say it's a bit like naming God - these are Catholic, Christian or Atheist students still questioning a lot in religion - but they all toy with this as I wait a bit to speak.

"What about this idea of "beyond the enemy" though? What if we call it "beyond aggression?" They all look at me, dumbfounded. That's understandable. I bring it down to earth.

"See this table?" I sit on the same table every week. I like it - just the right height, swinging my long-skirted legs. I can see all of them, all their heads, and the whole chalkboard from here.
"I like this table. What if I were to go to the department head and say 'I really like this table. Please let me take it home,' and he says to me 'You know we are having a shortfall this year, Miriam, we really can't give up any table,' and we fight about it. Is the aggression only between me and the head of the department, or somewhere else?"

They squint at me, some giggle a bit. Really? Man she's a weirdo. What weird examples.
"What are some things like this in your life?"
"Grades," one pipes in.
"Getting good grades is good, right?"
They are Honors students. They all nod vigorously.
"But sometimes do you hurt others or yourself to get them?"
They keep nodding, some smirk, some look sad.
"Where's the aggression?"
"We're too attached to getting the good grades, just like you are too attached to getting the table."
I nod.
"And in that same German text," the student who mentioned it earlier rushes forward without raising her hand, eager, "it says that if things are too tight, there's no room to move."
"Right. Does hurting yourself over getting good grades mean you will get them?"
They frown, some look sadder. "No," one student answers.
"Why?"
"Because we miss out on the world, we miss out on joy, spontenaity, trying too hard. And we hurt ourselves, and sometimes others." You can feel the loss in the room. It's palpable.
"So if we let some space in, some not knowing, some doubt even, what happens?"
"There's room for change, for joy, even for pain, but also for --- (she gulps) Magic."
Ah. Yes.

The silence in the room is deep. This is not ordinary, is class over yet silence. The students are struck dumb, literally. Which is a good thing. Beginner's mind penetrates the darkened room.
"So when I am fighting with the department head, and I have aggression with him, where else is there aggression?"
"With the table. You're being aggressive toward the table."
"Is the table aggressive toward me?"
They laugh and shake their heads no.
"Ok. So you know how I told you to watch your energy photographing people? How that was really hard because - as he said - relationships are hard and mysterious?"
They nod.
"Guess what. You have had relationships this whole time. With color, with light, with a chair or table or oak leaf."
They nod.
"You have a relationship with everything, and everything relates to you. There is always energy there, and that energy - when it is open, without aggression and totally aware? That's beyond aggression. That's Drala. That's what we are naming."
"And when it's not Drala?" someone asks, frowning.
The German student answers her "There's no room for anything."
Right.

There are no class bells at Marquette. The class ends when we end it. I am remiss to do the normal closing up stuff - remind them of our show coming up, wish them a good Thanksgiving break.
"When you are shooting the next couple of weeks, don't forget about this. Heck, try to remember it even as you eat cafeteria food. (some groan) It's up to you. You are the gateway."

They get the hint. It's the end. Three out of the seven smile as they stand up, looking right at me. The rest don't chat like usual, deep in thought. I catch them up on what's due and wish them a good holiday. When they leave, I cry for a moment, spontaneous tears, totally unexpected, and completely without aggression.