A Siesta for the Ego

My body has been delivering a few truths to me lately, and since I do NOT want to contemplate the circus of the political right wing, the desecration of Planned Parenthood, the tragic journey of migrants across Europe, or my deep seated ambivalence about Hilary Clinton, I thought I'd take a look at what I've been seeing lately and how it has made me feel.

I wrote last time about letting go, definitely a recurring theme in my blogs posts, but I have a feeling now that I haven't quite mastered it.  I seem to be doing this only intermittently, when my ankle hurts and asks for compassion, or my granddaughter writes me a letter that opens a previously closed door so we both can begin again, or when I let go of a work relationship that has ceased to nurture me.  New challenges now lurk....  I have been exhausted lately, way more than normal, and have had a couple of health practitioners tell me that my 70 year old adrenal system is depleted and needs for me to find new and different ways to rest.  I have in fact been fleeing disaster and seeking safety since I was a lonely little girl in an adult world...  At the same time, I have been having a terrible time not being able to sleep.  So, fatigue and wakefulness present themselves side by side.  An odd, irrational couple, I must say.  Insomnia is new to me, and I am experiencing serious resistance to this unwelcome sleeplessness in the quiet and the dark of night.  It all feels too abnormal ... after all, night is the time your body is naturally inclined to sleep, right?  What happens when you get only four hours a night, as any insomniac will tell you, is that your brain starts to feel impaired, and you move in slow, repetitive motion as though carrying your exhausted body through dense fog.  You often feel unsafe, and even just a bit demented.  And as soon as I think of dementia, the brain takes me to death and dying.  And the unpleasant dark cycle is perpetuated...

None of the above is in the end cause for worry, really.  There is no mortal illness in the picture.   There are plenty of people out there suffering much worse physical and emotional conditions -- you have only to read the newspaper or click into Facebook to find this out.   There is simply a dysfunction in my body's efforts to carry on that is crying out for attention.  And this doesn't mean to planning my next distraction, like a trip to Mexico or New York city, or a lovely dinner out at some special restaurant.  No, the answer would seem to be much simpler, really.  But it is as well a new challenge.  It involves stopping.  Resting.  Giving up on the obsessive striving.  This last becomes such a familiar pattern for us humans, I think, this nagging message that we are here on earth to accomplish great things, perform well, get ahead, be recognized.  It is part of today's climate where so much is valued in terms of how quickly it will get you the desired results...  As we get older, we begin to sense significant limitations to our energy and the shortening of our journey, and so an urgency creeps in, reminding us that we never know how much time there is, and we'd better get cracking if we want our lives to mean something.  But, but ... this is mind chatter, really.  This is the hard working super ego that insists it tells the truth.

I doubt very much whether human beings like the Dalai Lama or Pope Francis swim ceaselessly in their thoughts about doing and not doing, or the unkind admonitions about performing perfectly ... they are too busy leading their purposeful lives, speaking their truths and opening their hearts to those they encounter.  These gentlemen - and it is true they are infinitely gentle beings - are driven by love and compassion to remind their fellow humans of the possibility of freedom.  They are thoughtful teachers much like Jesus who saw no divisions amongst humans but rather their goodness, potential, and ability to find the way out of suffering.  I believe it is a fact that teachers must teach, just the way we all must breathe, and eat, and sleep, in order to live.  This work is always needed in the world, this opening of doors and minds, and it requires a surrendering of oneself and an absence of doubt and self-judgment.

I have spent about 15 years teaching young people to write creative works and good expository papers, and as I look back on that now I don't recall a lot of time spent spinning in my mind about the how of it all.  I just showed up and did the work and felt more alive and present for myself than ever before.   And the more I showed up, the closer I became to my students, and the better I got.  It was never about following a game plan, really, but more about just being present for the work.  I have an opportunity now to return to the teaching world as a volunteer tutor, and the prospect of this new relationship makes me happy inside.  I must trust this.  And I must take my rest deliberately and creatively when I can so I have the energy to make a difference in the days ahead.   That is what is true:  just these days ahead, day by day.

Letting Go and Moving On ...

I have taken to being out in the world more these days, feeling the almost soporific effects of hanging out in my beautiful cave-like little house on White Street, and wanting to find a change.  This journey into being seventy this year feels fraught with self-reflection, hunkering down alone with my cats and my books and my addiction to NPR, and pondering, always pondering, the slowing down of my routine.  A weird and claustrophobic life, I've been thinking.  And so I sit now in one of my favorite lunch joints, at the bar looking out the open windows onto bustling Chestnut street where San Franciscans march through the 85 degree heat with apparent ease.  I don't enjoy the heat, especially in this city known for the cool sea air, the fog, the eternally unchanging temperate climate.  Yesterday I felt the city gasping under this heat, and the baking warmth coming off all the stone buildings and the sidewalk, and it seemed I was walking in a surreal universe.  I prefer this sitting iindoors at the pretty wooden bar with my IPad and recording my reflections, and finding amazing focus in all the hubbub.

About a week ago I quit a job I had been doing for over ten years, and my system - that is my mind AND my heart - is still getting used to it.  I have been a volunteer caregiver for the dying here in San Francisco at a remarkable organization called Zen Hospice Project, and it has been a journey of learning, expansion of heart, tears and laughter, more learning, and the giving and receiving of love.  Working amongst about 60 other volunteers, I have become witness to the greatest mystery of our human lives, watching people traverse the border between the living and the dead, and breathing with them as they go.  It was hard at first as I got used to the strange sounds of death rattles and sights of strange fluids and the chilling reality of the shutting down of a person's body.  And pretty soon the world of the dying became a natural and normal one, and there was no more pulling back, and I saw I was being given an incalculable gift:  intimacy with other human beings at the most momentous, and most undefinable moment of their life.  And so I showed up every Thursday to spend 5 hours in mindfulness and service.  It colored the rest of my life, for sure, and I believe helped me become a better listener, a better witness to life's strangeness, and it gave me a community that felt like home, a place where clear speaking and authentic listening prevailed, and where we were (are) guided by our understanding that we are not in control in this life.

Relationships emerged and then faded as fellow volunteers came and went, as we continued to watch the dance of impermanence.  I worked at Laguna Honda hospital, a somewhat bedraggled skilled nursing facility that a local writer has called "God's Hotel," and then moved on to serving at our small facility in an elegant old Victorian house on Page Street where we welcome only six patients at a time, and are able to help them create new homes in their rooms, and prepared homemade organic meals for them.  A rarified world this  was/is.  Our days were always punctuated by 10 minute meditations followed by thoughtful sharing of personal and hospice experiences.  Needless to say, we all got to know each other very well over time, which you can't always say for our relationships to the residents who came and went with an ephemral rhythm, some staying for a few months, some for only a few days...

Somewhere along the journey of this work of mine, I began to feel overwhelmed, or just worn out, by this living with the finiteness of mortality and impermanence at every turn, and as I saw the organization begin to define itself in a new way, I thought that my part as a player was coming to an end.  Change was coming, and I saw that I couldn't allow myself to feel a part of that.  AND, my personal life was shrinking and narrowing, which made me feel less sanguine in some ways.  Everything seemed to be pointing to the importance of a change of routine.  A little voice was murmuring at me:  get out in the world more, move away from the cave of contemplatioin and reflection...  which translates to leave the introspective world of hospice care and get out of the meditative nest of your home, and see what it's like to be a seventy year old lady in the city, complete with bum ankle and creaky joints.

So here I am on a very hot San Francisco afternoon sitting on a barstool and beginning to look outward just a bit ... consider the intoxicating world of men and women and cats and dogs and streets and rolling hills and goldfinches and hummingbirds, and ...........There is a lot to this being alive thing, I've found, and as I exit the womblike enclosure of house and hospice service, I am inspired and hopeful.  The gifts of contemplative pratice and mindful service will always be with me no matter where I land, and I will forever treasure the voices and spirits of those I helped get to the end of their lives....   We (I am) are a part of all that we have experienced, and there  something beautiful in the aging process ... sort of like the deep, velvety bouquet of an old wine.

With deep gratitude to Zen Hospice Project ...