Time

My New Year’s Resolution is to be less busy. Those who know me are all too aware that my schedule is packed; any social invitation has probably less than a 50% chance of finding a place in my calendar unless I am given at least 6 weeks’ notice. Upon receiving an invitation, I find myself chanting as I open my calendar “please let this work, please let this work…” and quite often it doesn’t. Why? To start with, I volunteer – at the Institute of Modern Wisdom, at my daughter’s school and now at my Temple. That’s a lot right there – meetings, workshops, projects large and small - and a ton of associated social activities, all of which I feel privileged to participate with. And there is my daughter who each year becomes more intimate with the world, her schedule burgeoning in all directions and dimensions. And my friends, my loves, my woven web that feeds and must be fed. I have always had many different groups of friends – a finger in every pie so to speak. All delight in different ways and I don’t see any of them enough. And family. We are blessed to live within a few miles of my husband’s immediate family, with whom we gather weekly for dinner –a time held sacred, and cherished. And, most importantly, there is my time with myself – to meditate, pray, read, commune and listen to the trees. I say ‘most importantly’ because ultimately this is what holds it all together.

Travel also requires time – huge chunks of time and we do this as a family quite a lot. The urge to get on a plane is deeply engrained in each of us. We do it to step out of our busy lives – to experience somewhere completely foreign and new and for the benefit of coming home forever expanded and changed. We yearn to return to Park City again and again for the simplicity of life there. We are ‘at home’ in our little ski condo, without the busyness of home. No To Do lists, no appointments, no calendar. We have a few friends we see there and we have ample time for all of them. And we spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing, which feels exactly like Bliss.

At home, as I navigate my day, there is barely enough time to do anything. Just a few years ago, I felt more space in the time/space continuum. Yes, I did have extra-busy days where I felt I was doing triage– attending to only those things that were crucial because that was all I had time for on that particular day or stretch of days. Now it seems I am always in triage mode. And it doesn’t suit me. I like doing things well, thoroughly, which requires careful thought, and time to think.

 I simply need more time.

I feel the Internet is quite probably the main culprit, that baby-faced bandit of time. I know more about what’s available, what’s going on in the world, about events I want to participate in. I know more people and my circle is constantly expanding due to connections through social media like Facebook. I am exposed to more art, videos, Ted Talks, music and books that I want to consume. It is literally endless. I must grow a new filtering system before the system simply crashes. And how do I do that? How do I triage my interests and desires?

I have been consciously examining my day-to-day doings and cutting the fat. No more Huffington Post, Salon or Dooce every day. I check these now about twice a week. No more daily check-ins on Facebook, for it, hands down, wins as The Largest Time-Sucking Black Hole Ever. I delete many of my emails without ever opening them and only occasionally read the Daily Om, Abraham Hicks and Tut emails that come every single day. I miss these small injections of consciousness and yet it is a relief not to have so many emails vying for my attention. When putting something into my calendar now, I do it with absolute Intention. Is it really important to be there? Crucial even? I find I say No to things I would have automatically, without thought, said Yes to in the past.

So far I have not noticed any difference in my schedule; I am as busy as ever, triaging every day. And yet. I can feel it coming – the long, slow hush of time stretching out, of hours to spend at my leisure, to feel the direction the wind is blowing, to notice the shape of my husband’s face, to do a thing slowly with quiet attention.

 

 I can hardly wait...

Silence

I have been contemplating Silence. Me, a lover of words, the lover of my own voice, discovering inner volumes that are preserved only when I do not speak of them. I have grown up in a culture that values ‘talking it out,’ and ‘speaking your piece’. I have spent years using the spoken and written word to process much of what I experience, and certainly the vast majority of my spiritual growth has seen the light of day through conversation. And now I am learning the value of allowing those experiences to settle internally, on their own, in silence. This, it turns out, is big.  

I recently read ‘Of Water and the Spirit’ by Malidoma Somé, who writes of his initiation into the Dagara people of West Africa. The traditional indigenous life of the Dagara is quickly disappearing and he writes to preserve it. Their culture is chock full of everyday magic and yet their language has no word for the supernatural. “The closest we come to this concept is Yielbongura – the thing that knowledge can’t eat. This word suggests that the life and power of certain things depend on their resistance to the kind of categorizing knowledge that human beings apply to everything.” This struck me very deeply. So did the Dagara shaman’s custom of keeping his medicine private. He does not speak of it to anyone except when teaching his son.  To teach it otherwise would be to diminish it’s power.  So when I speak of my experiences – particularly the deep spiritual awakenings I have encountered over the past 5 years, I take them out of the realm they actually exist in and try to understand them through the vastly limited world of human language, which is ultimately a construct of the mind. I force the infinite into the finite and try to make sense of it there. I am learning to simply leave it be, where it is, in silence. And so, intact, it integrates into the silent part of me, the subtle body, where the breath presides, where words have no place.  

In Jewish tradition, the Divine/God really has no name, for it is that which is beyond naming. On another level, the Divine has a name but it cannot be spoken – this is YHVH or Yud Hey Vav Hey. There are no vowels so Rabbis throughout the ages have struggled with how it would be pronounced. The letters themselves are simply a rush of air, the sound of the breath - the place where man connects to the Divine – where words have no place. 

Malidoma Somé says, “Human words cannot encode meaning because human language has access only to the shadow of meaning.”  I am approaching a deep understanding of this. What I am learning now of myself, of the nature of reality, of the nature of the Divine can no longer be brought into casual or even purposeful conversation. It is too big; it doesn’t fit. So I expose myself to it, I feel into it, I know it…and then I put it down and walk away. Or I go to sleep, which seems to be my body’s preferred method of integration these days. In the realm of Spirit, I have given up the ideas of categorization and conclusion – tidy notions that allow me to work comfortably within the grid of pattern and safety. There is no growth for me there; after 48 years in this body, my external conversation around it has grown stale. It no longer serves. And where the words fall short, I enter a place of internal stillness, a vast cathedral of space where everything and nothing exist simultaneously, wordlessly. 

I find my new-found silence a great relief.  I experience myself as more calm and peaceful. Somé says it perfectly. “Peace is letting go – returning to the silence that cannot enter the realm of words because it is too pure to be contained in words. That is why the tree, the stone, the river, the mountain are silent.”

Baby

A few days ago I visited a friend who had her first (and likely only) baby 6 weeks ago. Seeing her in her small house, now transformed into Baby Land, her every moment taken and given to that baby created a deep clutching in my chest and I had to remind myself to breathe. I had forgotten what that small world was like. 

 I suspected my friend might struggle after giving birth, because I could recognize myself at her age. In the weeks after, she wouldn’t answer her phone and I heard she was having a difficult time. I left her messages assuring her that what she was feeling was normal, for which she later thanked me. For some women like myself, having a baby is crushing in many ways. The realization that your life has suddenly become entirely about this little being, who you love with an almost frightening ferocity – but that is absolutely all there is. Her every moment hooks into yours. It’s all on you. Your life becomes reduced to the singular thing, to caring for a seeming alien, to begging God for a good burp, because the quality of your life depends on it. Why is it that some women take it in stride and make it look so easy? Are they suffering in silence? Do they have different support systems than those of us who flail?

 In old Jewish tradition, after giving birth, women were sequestered for 33 or 66 days, depending on the sex of the child. Sequestered in ‘a state of blood purification’, alone, as her tribal sisters ministered to her, bringing her food, and the baby when it needed to be nursed. 66 days alone to align with this new reality; what a blessing that must have been. We in this modern age don’t get 6 hours to adjust. I was with my daughter literally from the moment she popped out, and I wanted it that way. My husband went back to work within a few days and I couldn’t wait for him to go; I wanted to be alone with my baby. And then. The loneliness, isolation and repetitiveness made my world smaller and smaller. Somehow I got through it although I can’t say how. I remember books and movies helped - and walking, for hours with my girl in a stroller, so small and bundled people would ask me if there was an actual baby in there. Yes, there was, a tiny, amazing, mostly unhappy bundle that hijacked my entire existence. 

 My friend said “It just doesn’t feel natural.” I know exactly what she means. After 11 years, it still doesn’t feel natural, although I notice I am quite motherly to my friends now. Somehow I can manage it with adults – perhaps because I can connect into their ways of being, their struggles, their frailties. My daughter remains somewhat of an alien to me. I cannot relate to her childish thoughts or behaviors. Perhaps because I was never allowed to be a child, I am forever cut off from that experience. I simply do not seem have the bandwidth to tap in. So, ‘natural’ – no, but I am doing it and doing a pretty decent job at this point. Never mind that it is the very hardest thing I have ever attempted. My daughter is happy, thriving, well-adjusted and yes, crazy a lot of the time. Just like her mama….

Begin

Herewith: my first tentative steps into the flow ~ of thought to pen (ish), of inspired idea to words made manifest. Who am I talking to? Myself, of course, always and foremost myself. Why am I writing? Because it has been my heart's desire since I can remember. Because I want to respect myself. Because I cannot get another day older without taking at least the tiniest step toward listening to my heart's deepest wish. Today my mentor said about inner listening: "What's it going to look like? I don't know, but I am following something that does know, and I trust it."


And so, with trust, I begin.