On Being Cracked Open
There’s a quote that I like, so much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if I have used it elsewhere on my blog. It comes from the book Danziger’s Travels. The quote comes from the closing pages of the book. The author, Nick Danziger, has just returned from an extraordinary 18 month journey across Asia, following the Silk Road. He is sitting in his parents' home in Southern England, writing his book and reflecting on his trip. He writes (emphasis mine),
However I found my return home was as unsettling as travelling, as the apparent security of the English countryside contrasted vividly with the ‘flood’ of memories of the journey which pass before my eyes as I write. Although my convictions remain intact, I find myself caught between two worlds: I have become a stranger to my previous world but at the same time remain an outsider in those countries which I journeyed through.
Such was my experience when I returned from my travels in the late 1980s. It took me a while to find my feet and to recalibrate myself. To find out who the person was who had returned and where I fitted in.
Now over 30 years later I am beginning to feel the emergence of a similar experience. I am starting to question where I am and what I am doing? I am beginning to feel a stranger to the world in which I live, but I am not clear at the moment as to what the world looks like where I belong.
With the benefit of hindsight I am clearer on what sparked the sense of loss and confusion thirty years ago. However this time, though pieces are beginning to emerge I don’t have enough to be clear what is going on or to where it will lead. While I feel comfort in recognizing an experience that I have been through before, it does not lessen the disorientation that it leaves me with.
Our modern world knows many things. Rational, logical things that the eye can see and the mind can understand. It produced the technology on which I am writing this and on which you are reading. Then I believe that there are some things that are beyond such logic. We might try and reach for logic to get an explanation out of a desperation for certainty, to find an answer, but the more that we do so the more evasive that answer becomes. We are trying to find some ground to stand on, only to find it does not exist. If we deny the ground’s non existence, we just make the situation worse for ourselves, pretending or hoping that something is there that isn’t.
From my experience groundlessness is not a comfortable place to be, but you can become familiar with it, make friends with it. Meditation allows one to do that. I can sit with an experience of groundlessness. I can taste it, feel it, allow it to be, become acquainted with it. As the Indian Buddhist Master, Shantideva said,
There is nothing whatsoever
That is not made easier through acquaintance.1
Fear and dislike can arise due to lack of familiarity. From that fear I scramble to try and change the situation, to try and make it go away. With that not working, I’ll do what I can to save face or not have to look at what is really there. The results might not look pretty and won’t solve the problem.
Staying with the experience of not knowing, of not being able to find the answer in that moment, just simply being with will with time bring familiarity and comfort. Then in our daily life when groundlessness arises we can just notice it, “oh, I have that feeling again. I recognize that. I know what it is. I might not know the cause of it, but I know what it is. It will change. It will pass.” …And you still don’t have to like it that much!
Back to the Beginning
So what has caused this rocking of my world right now? I can’t put a definite answer to that, but I see pieces coming together. Opening myself to new and different experiences can unexpectedly open a crack in my awareness that let’s light in from an unexpected source. Relationships changing, communication opening, difficulties arising. Books that fall across my lap, the contents of them…the right books at the right time.
I like clear answers, but they are not always available.
So I remain present, trying to stand my ground to remain with the shakes and undulations beneath my feet. Trying to remain present to that which I’d prefer would go away.