Monthly Archives: October 2011

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strands

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I attended a talk the other day, given by a hospital Chaplain who spoke about weaving the threads of body and spirit together.  This, he said, is the role of the Chaplain.  It struck me that when we do this we are joining together what “man tore asunder.”  Descartes, Spinoza, and all those heavy hitters of mind-body dualities are well beyond my capacity to weave together in this thread of thought but it is giving me a hint of the challenges about to face me in writing the next section of my thesis.

As I plod through the sections on burnout and spiritual well being, I feel very much like that spider in the picture.  Strands of knotted thoughts secrete out the tips of my fingers sometimes gluing them to the computer keyboard as I frantically try to keep the unrelenting winds of work and other demands from tearing it all apart.  Practice is helping.  Just this one word, just this one sentence.  It helps too that the old habits of academic writing are still lurking around the edges of my awareness.  One day, one hour, one word, one moment – and slowly I’ve come to the end of the dreaded, mind-parching “literature review.”

However, I’ve actually learned some things, acquired some insights to the nature of burnout and the corrosive action of being in organizations that cannot live their mission statements or manifest their values.  That, it turns out, is the realization that precipitates the exhaustion and cynicism we associate with burnout.  Interesting, isn’t it?  An incongruence in values that leads to a physical depletion and the arising of the judgmental mind. And yet, for so long we’ve focused on the physical nature of “work-related” depletion, missing the crucial role of the heart/mind which says, “This, this is not right.”

Is this what faced Siddhartha?  Raised in a life sheltered from the reality of poverty, illness, and death, a royal corporation that enjoyed an ease not available to those outside the palace walls, how did he meet the incongruence between his unquestioned values and what he witnessed on that fateful ride outside?  Was his disillusion and release from the trance of privilege a manifestation of this clash of values?  Did he Occupy Kapilavastu?  Methinks he did – and more!

The mythology of his intense emotional reaction after seeing illness, aging, and death suggests he felt the weariness of unrelenting hedonism and the cynicism of the worth of the path he tread.  I think he felt the rift in a place beyond the simple mind/body fracture point but it would be years before he would experience it.  It was only after determined rejection of the body which brought him to the brink of death that he wove together the threads of body and spirit, heart and mind.  It would take years and many teachers before he would know deep in his being that the most dangerous gap is between his wisdom and his choices.

If the Buddha’s life is an exemplar of ours, there are questions raised from his direct experience of incongruence that are worth asking.  Is this where you are – this place where the threads have been torn from your fingers, spun but not anchored?  Is this where you see most vividly the vastness of the canyon between what you believe in and what you are living?   Is this where you can feel the futility of continuing to feed the delusion that your victimhood is your privilege?

What now?

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blind spot & a pilgrimage

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The tricky thing about a blind spot is that we’re blind to it.  Tautology perhaps but true nevertheless.  In fact, there’s no way to actually see our own blind spot.  And – sometimes dangerously so – we need to rely on other people who have the privilege of a different vantage to point them out to us.  It occurred to me the other day that this raises all kind of questions about trust.  Not just trust in myself to believe there is a blind spot but also trust in the person I’m asking to point out my blind spot.  Goodness knows, we all have our agenda and that includes my Blind Spot Spotter.

The other thing that occurred to me is that we often ask for a sketch of the blind spot when in fact we really want confirmation that we don’t have a blind spot.

That’s what I mean about trust.  In myself and in my BSS.  No BS has to be the rule and that takes work.  It takes what William Blake calls a firm persuasion that can remove mountains.

I’ve been diving into a book by David Whyte.  If Rilke gets ladies to take off their bras, Whyte can well have us pole dancing.  But I digress.  The book, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a pilgrimage of identity, was recommended as a source of inspiration for those of us who never relent in our seeking to bring that firm persuasion into our work – life, spiritual, career.  Whyte writes:

There is no hiding from work in one form or another.  Under the great sky of our endeavors we live our lives, growing we hope, through its seasons toward some kind of greater perspective.  Any perspective is dearly won.  Maturity and energy in our work is not granted freely to human beings but must be adventured and discovered, cultivated and earned.  It is … a never-ending courageous conversation with ourselves, those with whom we work, and those whom we serve….  It is achieved through a lifelong pilgrimage.

Further on:

It is very hard to say no to work.  We may courageously resign, take a sabbatical, or retire to a simpler, more rustic existence, but then we are engaged in inner work, or working on ourselves, or just chopping wood.  Work means application, explication, expectation.  There is almost no life a human being can construct for themselves where they are not wrestling with something difficult, something that takes a modicum of work.  The only possibility seems to be the ability of human beings to choose good work.

And finally,

To view work as pilgrimage is to put our hearts’ desire to hazard, because by merely setting out, we have told ourselves that there is something bigger and better, or even smaller and better – above all, something more life giving – that awaits us in our work, and we are going to seek it.

So, we set out on that pilgrimage with firm persuasion that we have all we need and that, even if lacking in courage, our feet know exactly how to navigate the journey.  And our practice is that little dustless mirror in the corner showing us the blind spots.