Levels of Experience

    One summer night when we were around 14, my best friend Kazimir and I were walking through a park in Montreal near where we lived. We noticed 20 or more people near us all looking upwards. We stopped, looked up, and saw this extraordinary, large, bright white, stationary object overhead. We all stared at it for several minutes. We had no idea what it was, but decided that nobody would believe our description, so we went home and never discussed it.

     Roughly fifty years ago, while a university student working for the summer as an orderly in a large hospital, I was called to help clean up a mess. I arrived to find a tragicomedy unfolding. An elderly, apparently famous gentleman, dressed only in an untied, soiled Johnny shirt, was experiencing explosive diarrhea all over his private hospital room's bathroom. Several hospital staff were helplessly standing around, trying to keep him from slipping & falling into the mess. Only one person was quite beside herself - the gentleman's elderly wife. She was impeccably dressed in black, evening-at-the-opera attire, complete with all the jewellery, black gloves etc. The gentleman himself was impressively peaceful, gently trying to calm his completely distraught wife.

    During that summer in the same hospital, I chatted with a young man who was about to have heart surgery the next day. He was friendly, cheerfully looking forward to enjoying the rest of his life post-op. I wished him well. The next day, I came by to visit, and found his bed made and empty. I asked about him, and was told he had died during surgery.

    "Shit happens," no matter how obsessively we try to control ourselves, others & life in general. If we live long enough, we realize it's just a question of when. And yet we do have freedom, which depends on our perspective, which determines our response. 

    We can, and I fear many of us do, see each individual unwelcome event in our life as if it were some random or even intentional cruelty of chance, Nature or the Divine. We can keep count of these, and rationalize holding a grudge against the meaningless of life, cruelty of Nature, or malevolence of God. This is our noisy ego's last desperate, failed attempt to hang onto its own relevance. It is the ego / false self / separate self that goes through Kübler-Ross' 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression & acceptance. 

    While our wiser 'part' / Self is aware of the bigger picture and our intimate connection with everyone & everything, our Oneness.
    "There’s a crucial 6th stage to the grieving process: meaning. ... we acknowledge that although for most of us grief will lessen in intensity over time, it will never end. But if we allow ourselves to move fully into this crucial & profound sixth stage – meaning – it will allow us to transform grief into something else, something rich & fulfilling." David Kessler. “Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief.” Scribner, 2019. 

    But the ego does not give up pretending to be in complete control easily! One ploy is taking on the persona of "the liminoid ... when you start to take pride in the breakdowns, trouble & commotion of your life, because you think ... ‘it makes you windswept and interesting.’" Martin Shaw  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpi06B0mvSI&list=PLb7eXq8MJBchKf73SDzbcMyD3i-mhjJsn&index=2
    When all else fails, the ego's last act is to PROUDLY cling to anything: Charlton Heston, spokesperson for the National Rifle Association (NRA), "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" and Dylan Thomas' call to the dying, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." 

    Our Self knows better, and we can hear our own wisdom when the ego isn't yelling.

    But we require a lifetime of intentional training to recognize how thoroughly we have been conditioned by our stunningly shallow society to abandon our true nature and instead adopt a robotic level of self-centered left-hemisphere dominance.

    The training, the practice we need is one by which we progressively remember our true nature, who we truly are, and integrate this more & more consistently, into daily life. 
    "Growing pains" are inevitable on any learning journey, especially a spiritual one which requires us to release compulsive self-centeredness. It's probably easier for an obese life-long 'couch potato' to become an elite athlete, than for the average person who considers him/herself open-minded and 'good' to become moderately spiritual. 
    These 2 very recent interviews shed useful light on this process :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkX-Dc6WRcs

https://batgap.com/jurgen-ziewe-2/

 

The Jeff Healey Band - "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

Having Lost a Lot, We Grieve

     Covid 19 has shocked many of us out of our comfortable, trance-like, self-absorbed complacency. We hoped that we could float through life comfortably, without being overly bothered by the ridiculously miserable life circumstances of so many in the world, the escalating extinction of species & meltdown of our environment. But now suddenly, we're (almost) in the same boat as our fellow human beings around the globe. Almost, because we are able to comfortably remain in our homes to minimize exposure. Almost, because even if we do become infected, we're rested & well nourished to better fight the infection & have ready access to proper health care. Not so for the millions trapped in sprawling refugee camps and slums around the world.
     Nevertheless, we are now grieving for our lost innocence (naivete), our lost illusion of safety, our lost illusion of control over life. 
     It's very useful & beneficial to deeply understand our grieving process:


     “The five stages of grief are: 

Denial: shock and disbelief that the loss has occurred
Anger: that someone we love is no longer here
Bargaining: all the what-ifs and regrets
Depression: sadness from the loss
Acceptance: acknowledging the reality of the loss

     (These) describe only a general process. Each person grieves in his or her own unique way. …
     The fifth of Kubler-Ross’s five stages is acceptance. At this stage, we acknowledge the reality of loss. We take some time to stop and breathe into the undeniable fact that our loved ones [or other important relationships or possessions etc] are gone. There’s nothing easy about this stage. It can be extremely painful, and acceptance doesn’t mean that we are okay with the loss, or that the grieving process is now officially over. However, there’s been an assumed finality about this fifth stage that Elizabeth and I never intended. Over the years I came to realize that there’s a crucial sixth stage to the healing process: meaning. This isn’t some arbitrary or mandatory step, but one that many people intuitively know to take and others will find helpful.
     In this sixth stage we acknowledge that although for most of us grief will lessen in intensity over time, it will never end. But if we allow ourselves to move fully into this crucial and profound sixth stage – meaning – it will allow us to transform grief into something else, something rich and fulfilling.
     Through meaning, we can find more than pain. When a loved one dies, or when we experience any kind of serious loss – the end of a marriage, the closing of the company where we work, the destruction of our home in a natural disaster – we want more than the hard fact of that loss. We want to find meaning. Loss can wound and paralyze. It can hang over us for years. But finding meaning in loss empowers us to find a path forward. Meaning helps us make sense of grief …
     What does meaning look like? It can take many shapes, such as finding gratitude for the time they had with loved ones, or finding ways to commemorate and honor loved ones, or realizing the brevity and value of life and making that the springboard into some kind of major shift or change.
     Those who are able to find meaning tend to have a much easier time grieving that those who don’t. They’re less likely to remain stuck in one of the five stages. For those who do get stuck, this can manifest in many different ways, including sudden weight gain (or loss), drug or alcohol addiction, unresolved anger, or an inability to form or commit to a new relationship out of fear of experiencing yet another loss. If they remain stuck in loss, then they may become consumed by it, making it the focus of their life to the point where they lose all other sense of purpose and direction. Although you can’t pin all of your troubles or vices on getting stuck after a loss, there is almost always a connection.
     Grief is extremely powerful. It’s easy to get stuck in your pain and remain bitter, angry, or depressed. Grief grabs your heart and doesn’t seem to let go.
     But if you can manage to find meaning in even the most senseless loss, you can do more than get unstuck. When circumstances are at their worst, you can find your best. You can keep growing and finding ways to live a good and someday even a joyous life, one enriched by the lessons and love of the person who died [or memory of other serious loss].” 

      David Kessler. “Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief.” Scribner, 2019.

      David Kessler's recent (15min) television interview: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/grief-expert-we-are-grieving-world-we-have-now-lost-hpbtkk/
      A recent magazine interview: https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief?fbclid=IwAR1QHDM0Q8ROEgqFdvv7lNl9p1NDxReunkDjYjceMQ98MJi6-AOBXdKfzls

www.etsy.com/ca/listing/265479760/what-if-i-fall-quote-print-erin-hansons?ref=related-2