Being Human

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I’ve always felt a particular sort of profoundly satisfying, melancholy delight in those spaces where light becomes dark, and chill becomes warmth. I would stand out in the cold winter night, barefoot, until my feet were numb and I could submerge myself in a hot bath the heat and cold crisscrossing my body in waves of blissful chill as I came back to life. Standing riveted as the sun sets, the colors darken, and the shadows rise, I’m unsure if what I feel is terror or ecstasy. The dying light calls me home to a depth of Mystery I know better than this world, but I hesitate as though sensing an unbearable heartache akin to reuniting one last time with a distant lover before they are lost forever. I am like a baby sperm whale diving as deeply as he can with his mother until the need for breath drives him to surface, and she disappears beyond the light. I simply cannot follow that call as deeply as it goes, but I sense that one day I too will find sustenance in the inky, crushing darkness.

These interplays between light and temperature, and the visceral sentiments they coax through my body, strike me as an essential truth beyond words of being human: longing for our home with the divine and being tied to earthly existence. Reconciling these dual realities we straddle seems to be a core purpose of human life. Can any other animal reflect as fully as we can on the vastly intricate manifestations of creation? Is any other being as free as we are to utterly deny who we are and turn away so stubbornly from our place in the web of life? Or, by this very act of denying and desecration, are we actually, in some way, fulfilling our purpose of pushing the edge of consciousness to its very limit? All I know is that there is something uniquely painful and profound about how we humans seem, despite the time and place in which we were born, to be constantly losing our connection to spirit, constantly seeking it in all the wrong places, and most soothed and gratified when we finally feel ourselves in its presence, usually in completely unexpected ways.

When I reflect on the things I gnash my teeth against, the things I find intolerable, the things that break my heart, they are all things I see as barriers between me and what I fumble inarticulately to describe as Mystery. I am always seeking ways to get close, hang-on, embody, somehow impress and lure that presence into staying with me, and raging against the things that separate us: my own fears and distractions, as well as the job that trains my brain to minutea, the conversations focused on the mundane, the imbalance in my body that dulls my receptivity. And yet this very tension is the vibration of an ancient human story, one that every world religion and mythology touches on. This story isn’t about how to walk hand-in-hand with the divine. It’s about all the ways we get lost and find our way back. This struggle I resent my circumstances and short-comings for creating, in reality, as vital to being human as the drive to eat, build shelter, and bond with tribe.

A few years ago, when I had first moved to the bay area and was caught in a particularly vulnerable and nascient period of rebuilding my life, I met a man who brought me nose-to-nose with this human struggle in a profoundly uprooting way. He was a poet, a nature guide, and lived in a solitary, illegal camp in the Oakland hills. His delight at toes in the stream and fingers on mossy tree trunks made my heart leap out of my body. He invited me to build with him and he enfolded my essential nature into the lyrical lines of his poetry. He called the intrusion of airplanes the greatest assault on his mental health, and then he disappeared with my heart into the wilds of Yosemite, leaving my body behind entombed in a lifeless existence. He returned to the city a week or so later, but he wasn’t the same man. He was no longer the solution to my lifelong ache to live tucked up against the gently dreaming chest of Gaia. He was a goofy-grinned, broken-shoed, overly verbose and deluded middle-aged homeless guy with an eviction notice on his tent. I couldn’t bear the sound of his voice, the naivety of his worldview. And I felt so completely desolate in the absence of his poetry, his hope, and his delight that I gave up on life.

How is it that the things that feel so much like the very essence of life itself, the things that we simply cannot bear the idea of living without, can also be the things that hold the biggest literal threat to life itself? It’s the irresistible temptation of prosperity that drives a gambler to ruin. The uninhibited sense of power, desirability, brilliance that drives a drunk to physical collapse. The alluring promise of enduring union that draws the love addict away from loved ones and a sense of agency into the arms of the fascinating soulmate artist, activist, mentor. Even if we see the lie, we are often willing to risk careers, marriages, homes, health for just one taste, telling ourselves life just isn’t worth living without it. The reason I believe 12-step programs are so successful for so many people is that they recognize these dynamic as an issue of mistaken identity: a very powerful, very human misguided longing for god, and a very deluded, very human mistaken notion of why we are really here and what we are truly capable of.

The cruel twist of this dynamic is that it leads us to believe that the intensity of our longing will logically culminate in an intensity of reunion. But that isn’t the case. In my experience, encounters with Mystery can be ecstatic, but those fade like all other moments of heightened feeling, and if we only recognize Mystery in the transcendent, we will inevitably feel abandoned and outcast most of the time. What I am coming to embrace through faith, in order to restore sanity to my life, is the idea that to fulfill my human calling of integrating the earthly and the divine, I must reorient towards a simple, sober, committed process of small, daily invitations and gestures. No grandiosity, no histrionics, no high. This is the way I can build a more sustainable relationship with the often timid and subtle movements of Soul. And this is a way I can for my body in the world without quitting my job and draining my savings chasing some homeless guy into the woods.

This is one of the profound gifts I see in the current “shelter in place” mandates spread across the globe. Many of us who are already committed to a spiritual path have long lived with not knowing what life will be like next month, with sensing the world crumbling around us, with being thrust into befriending solitude by virtue of our often brooding and anti-social inner landscape. But now that this is the collective reality, the burden of psychic isolation has been lifted even as the physical threats to health and livelihood become more real. I see now that my tendency to imagine worst case scenarios, to daydream myself into paralysis, to cling to comforting routines, and to be moody and cynical are luxuries. I can no longer afford to be lazy with my attention, combative at my job, or neglect my relationships. I must be diligent in each moment with the direction of my attention, my energy, and my actions so I can stay light-footed and light-hearted in face of whatever comes.

The blessing of this shift in attitude is a sense of sobriety I haven’t experienced before – the ability to transition more smoothly from difficulty to reverence, the discipline of committing as much time as I can to what I love, the urgency of finding something today, in this moment, to enjoy, and the necessity of meeting life on life’s terms. The part of me that always believed I could make my life be whatever I wanted is dwindling. And as my acceptance grows, so does my ability to find myself, and my sense of purpose, in more diverse circumstances.

Last night, I facilitated my first group session in years. The days leading up to it were filled with anxious anticipation. I have loved teaching for years. It’s a way of giving, connecting, and expressing of my gifts of intuition and awe. I wanted to do it right. I needed it to be amazing. I suspected it would fall short in many ways and I braced myself for feeling embarrassed or misunderstood. When it was over, what I felt was a surprising mix of gentle warmth and sadness. It was neither nerve-wracking nor earth-shattering. People stayed, listened, and shared. They heard some of what I said, and they each took a little something away. When I ended the call, I was feeling subtley disoriented, and a story came to mind from the Autobiography of a Yogi. After Yogananda returned from his first experience of samadhi, his guru simply handed him a broom and said, “Sweep the floor”.

So I sent a follow-up email, cleaned up my work station, made some dinner, and sorted my clothes. The divine can be so intoxicating that earthly life feels like impossible drudgery. But being in the world is also grounding. Any work of true love, any successful creative venture, is a long string of thousands of simple gestures, repeated day in and day out in faith and reverence for what we know matters most to us. I love sharing the vibrant depths of my inner world with others. I have to in order to feel alive. I used to think that you have to go all in for what you love, that if you have a gift for something, you go big or go home. I don’t believe that anymore.

I acknowledge that others may only ever grasp a teeny bit of my experience. That’s just how we humans are – so attuned our own reflections on our path of self-discovery. And I’m okay with that. What I give, and the way I navigate my life, is woven of simple statements of solidarity with the animal body that carries me and the soul of Mystery that moves through me. Being in relationship with them, feeling the tension between them as a holy vibration in my belly, is enough for me to feel a sense of meaning. What matters most to me that they see me, and that they know I am listening as best I can. However else my movement touch the world – the hearts and minds of others – is in their hands.

Nancy