Experiencing Stillness

I wrote the following thoughts below just before going on the retreat described in the essay enclosed, and see them now as an expression of the place of "doing", of content expressing its desire to connect with stillness. Of my desire to eradicate my own belief systems and realize that it is so clearly my attachment to these forms in content, ideology and thinking that were actively disavowing the silence available at any moment. I now can appreciate these musings as a description of the edge of the precipice that allowed me to leap into non-movement. This is, i believe, the path that leads to the cessation of suffering: in essence: I've spent a large portion of my life battling various aspects of depression. From early childhood, and a sense of displaced anxiety, to my early 40's, and a sense of complete cultural dissociation. As an artist, and a thinking human being, I find there is a great deal of detail and almost a sense of poetry in the darkroom of depression. I use the word a "darkroom", to describe my sense/projection of depression, as it seems to evoke an image in my mind of the enclosed invisible space that depression creates, at least in my experience of it. For a long time this image/projection seemed to be somewhat claustrophobic, I now realize that it was an artificial construct of my imagination/karmic conditioning, that varied in size and dimension with the scope and depth of the depression that I was currently battling. I also realize that it was my attachment to the position of, not only observation, but willingness to participate in the projection, that caused me to suffer. This is not an attempt at rhetoric so much as a insight into what I perceived of as a dilemna in my relationship with life. The most current image that comes to mind for me, regarding the space i inhabited in long-term depression, is of an ancient Greek building, like the pantheon. I picture a large circular enclosure with Greek columns supporting a large overhead circular cover. This cover blocks out the light and creates a very dark interior dimension to this enclosure, and yet not a contained space. The columns I envision, as various aspects and dimensions of the depression itself. The columns to me represent the various aspects which color and determined the texture and shape of the overhead enclosure. These columns support the entire structure, and yet are in and of themselves quite insubstantial. That seems to be a contradiction, or paradox, but the very nature depression is in and of itself a contradiction, a contradiction to life. One can have a great deal of information, through books, through meditation, through teachers, through life experience, through all the myriad potential ways one can learn about life, and still be completely defenseless in the face of deep and abiding depression. Depression can take a life of its own. One could almost anthropomorphize the very nature of the process. By that I mean one could assume or actually assign a conscious existence to this black beast, this unnatural engine that seeks to smother the light of imagination and the gift of life itself. My experience with depression has many pillars, many columns that I think are fairly commonplace within the arena of depression. I am also profoundly grateful to this beast and the path it lead me on because each moment that I saw as an assault or an injury, was in fact a great teacher showing me, leading me to my best opportunities for liberation. The essay below more fully explores the experience of transformative stillness and surrender, that I experienced and that I am pointing to, and that thoroughly and completely changed my life for the better. At the point when I left to go on this retreat I was quite literally at the end of my rope. I had lost most of my family to illness, orphaned late in life and living in LA as a single parent. I was feeling a sense that I was somehow distinctly separate from life, and that in fact that Life had it in for me and was determined to make me more and more isolated and miserable, despite my best efforts to resolve or change that experience. Reading hundreds of self help books on spirituality, psychology, meditation, etc... nothing was helping because I was firmly entrenched in a belief system that was not only self-sustaining but self -fulfilling, as long as I stayed true to my beliefs about life and depression. In fact, i now believe that depression for me, was essentially that strong identification with an aspect of my soul that firmly believed that the state of darkness surrounding me at the time of depression was a permanent condition, and from an experiential point of view that condition is not a liveable situation. I believe that if someone like myself, (a layperson living in the world between the polarizing tensions of the existential dilemna we all face, and the transcendent calling a lot of us are seeking), can achieve some measure of solace, of release from the vicious cycle of depression and immobility, through meditation and surrender, then the truth that the possibility is imminently available to anyone and everyone. in other words, if a guy like me can find some freedom, anyone can do it! lol I would hope in sharing stories like this we can all support each other not "as human beings trying to lead a spiritual life, but as spiritual beings trying to live a human life." Experiencing Stillness A personal essay, May 2004 Having just returned from an 8 day silent retreat at a Zen monastery I am struck so powerfully for the true need for stillness and silence in our culture. In these challenging times we all face, and in a culture where words like compassion and transformation have become new age buzzwords, I can so clearly see the healing attributes and true need to transform the cultural imagination in positive ways. To be honest I am somewhat at a loss for words. Which may seem contradictory or paradoxical considering the long essay I am about to write, but...I have just returned from a silent retreat, and am overwhelmed with something inexplicable, some glimpse of the ineffable, that I cannot entirely describe. Yet there is something call out in dialog, in voice, that requires I write this experience out. I have been practicing and studying Buddhism and meditation for over 30 years now. I had a strong insight that a lot of the struggles and frustration that i had been experiencing on the cushion were in regards to a misunderstanding that i had been holding with regards to the 3rd Noble Truth. Specifically attached to the idea that "there is a PATH that Leads to the cessation of suffering." My mind had decided early on that there was "somehwere to go". Some goal to be achieved by sitting in meditation that would somehow miraculously save me from the ongoing depression and anxiety that formed the basis of how i perceived life and my place in it. This misinterpretation was a cause of great suffering, and to be honest caused a lot of struggling within my practice and resistance to it. I simply believed I must be a bad meditator or doing it wrong, and beat myself up on the cushion for over 30 years based on that misunderstanding. I went to a retreat at the Zen center Monastery and something happened in the stillness, and also in hearing the voices of suffering and the commonality shared in those dialogs of sangha. All the language, all the dialog started to sound like the same thing to me, both a question and a statement at the same time: regardless of the content, the statement was "I do not want to suffer this way", and the question I heard over and over was paradoxically, "How can I prolong this suffering?" My heart broke. And in some moment of utter surrender something in me shifted into stillness that is still moving through me. I know that is a strange image of stillness moving, but some floodgate has opened, I am laughing and crying and tremendous energies are moving through me, and I recognize that even this amazing and beautiful thing of relief and of release requires that I let go and not attach, to relax and just let it happen. I drove home for 6 or 7 hours in silence and when I arrived home there was my son waiting. and just when I thought it could not get any more beautiful something else happened. I arrived home a bit tired and extremely sensitive and quiet. Talking was actually somewhat difficult. My son saw this. He told me that he had missed me and would not stop hugging me. We are quite close as father and son, and I simply stood there quietly hugging him. Then he said that he had missed me terribly and so had spontaneously decided that week that since his dad was at the monastery "doing Zen", that he would not watch tv or cartoons or video games so he could see what stillness and quiet felt like, quite a commitment for a little guy. I was very quiet listening as he told me all this, told me all of his projections about Zen and what the monastery was like in his imagination. I was still in a very quiet place and so I listened appreciatively and when he was done all I could do was quietly tell him how amazing that was and how proud of him I was. Now we are very close he and I, but then he came over and cuddled in my arms on the couch and it got very quiet and still and he said I love you daddy, and I said I loved him, and then he said it again, and all I could do was say reassurances, and he kept saying it over and over, so I kept quietly responding with reassurances, and I quite literally watched this amazing child melt in my arms. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. After leaving the monastery I was inspired to read Durckheim and found so much resonance in his words as to be amazed that this individual could so clearly outline and describe my experience: "Durckheim begins his teaching by focusing on our rare moments of higher consciousness, those numinous experiences which he names "privileged moments" and "life's starry hours." These are unforgettable times when something greater than our usual awareness breaks through and floods us with unaccountable serenity, joy, or certainty. Such experiences call us toward a new way of living and initiate us into a different view of reality. Mystics, philosophers, saints, and esotericists of all times have pointed to these radiant moments as proof that we are meant to be more than we seem to be. These events have opened our eyes to the higher influences present in our world. " Something shattered in me in surrender, and simultaneously moved into stillness. or rather somehow got out of the way, and allowed stillness to arise. Whatever happened, I am seeing the world around me in an entirely different light. Upon arriving home I was in a state of stillness and quiet that my son saw and immediately responded to. It became so obvious to me, the ripple effect that stillness has. When i arrived home, and for several days after, speech was not easy, in fact my voice has actually physically changed in tone and character as well as the tempo and meter. I realized that as time was passing, almost like putting on a suit of clothes, the busy-ness around me, which I was required to once again engage with, was actually seeming to separate me from that precious stillness that had created a tremendous energetic release in my being. Tears and laughter, subtle sensitivities to movement and sound, sight perception. A picture of myself as a young boy that I had always disliked now seen so clearly as a sweet loving boy with bright eyes... But the requirements of the world called me back. Having a very eager and beautiful 11 year old son was very intense, and his needs to engage, even though the silence and stillness were profoundly moving him, were still calling me back, but now the relationship to that busy-ness had changed profoundly. Over time I felt my body and spirit responding with irritation and a sadness about letting go of the still space. Then I let go again, the relationship to those assumptions and beliefs had changed, and realized that the still space was not going anywhere, rather I was putting back on the mantle of doing, the aspects of movement and content that obscure the still moment. The next day out and about I was still quite still, (funny to write that.) But I could again see so clearly the ripple effect on others as i changed my relationship to my projections and allowed my silence to be relaxed and at ease. People and things responded. At one point we arrived at a large fountain in a beautiful modern courtyard. One of those tall open fountains with timed water ballet apertures. My son remarked that he wondered what it would be like to walk through, and without hesitation I said " let's find out" and so we did, laughing and getting soaked and in the fountain. It felt great to see his wonder at the possibility and openness. I feel that the turning point for me, in retreat, was hearing all the suffering in speech, in questions, in the constant ongoing dialog about the details of doing, and the contrast of having had some glimpse of the clarity of not-doing, My heart burst, and for the first time in my adult life I felt joy. It was not just the sangha and the voices communally suffering, but also the echo in my own experience of the repetition of the content obscuring the opportunity to actually surrender and experience for myself the stillness of not-doing. I look at my path in life again, and rather then complaint for the challenges and suffering I have endured, I find Gratitude for the pummeling, as it allowed me to reach a place of surrender that perhaps otherwise I never would have seen. " A conscious being is one through whom the divine life radiates. The personality has been made entirely permeable and obedient to essence, the subconscious has been cleansed and liberated, and the way is cleared for our higher centers to express themselves through our state of openness, receptivity, and presence in the moment. To be released from our misconceptions and buffers is not merely a mental effort but requires dissolving the physical knots and distorted postures which express these attitudes. Clenched jaws, cramped stomachs, raised shoulders all keep us outside of the realm of essence which is the only threshold to our true becoming. Letting go also means "forsaking the brilliance of the rational mind and entering the semi-darkness of another form of consciousness" (8). The tyranny of the intellectual center and of a cultural worldview reduced to the surface of the five senses can be a powerful barrier to the reception of divine inspiration. "By letting go in the right way, we learn to 'let in' and 'let happen' that which, in spite of all our ideas, projections, desires and prejudices, meets us directly in the shape of the world and comes from the constantly stirring essential being within." (9) " My experience of this description of physicality, especially related to tension in the body, and my jaw in particular, so resonates with Durckheim's description I was in shock. Again Durckheim: "This work on oneself is not centered on self for the sake of self. Durckheim has a much wider panorama in view. Our efforts are meant to prepare us to reach a state where life in the service of transcendent Being becomes second nature. In discovering our own essential self, we participate in the manifestation of what can only be described as divine, the source of mercy, compassion, and conscious love. Such a possibility requires work on all parts of our nature. But Durckheim is especially insistent on the body as a key to breaking through to a greater consciousness. "Whenever a wrong posture has become deeply ingrained it blocks the redeeming, renewing and preserving forces that arise from the depths of Being." (2) Durckheim respects it as an expression of transcendent Being in a particular form and calls upon us to seek our right center of gravity within it. This requires work on posture, tension, and breathing. The primary practice to achieve such centering is meditation. This fundamental exercise, however, is not to be confused with the various methods used in our New Age culture. Durckheim tells us that "the purpose of correct practice is not to bring man to a state of tranquility but to keep him in a condition of constant watchfulness and prevent him from coming to a standstill on the Way." (3) " "Durckheim identifies this center as a state wherein a person moves continuously toward his innermost nature. It is not a place but our driving force calling us home. From this center we are able to acquire a clear sense of inner direction, and above all, a "self-confidence that is independent of the world's praise or blame." (5) Without this center, we are the plaything of inner and outer forces. "Practice on ourselves, in the physical and spiritual sense, is always of two kinds. It involves both the pulling-down of everything that stands in the way of our contact with Divine Being, and the building-up of a 'form' which, by remaining accessible to its inner life, preserves this contact and affirms it in every activity in the world." (6) Durckheim insists that if we have become conscious of our essence, we have become conscious of our union with transcendence. But to achieve this, we need to have the courage to meet the unknown, and to "endure the mystery that cannot be conceptually comprehended--in short, to pause and inwardly dwell in that to which we are all too unaccustomed, the radiance of Divine Being." (7). Durckheim calls upon us to risk over and over again all that we think we have understood, all that we hold onto as security. " I know now that this retreat allowed me to experience the truth of those words, and my life path is moved to so clearly embrace that possibility, that I can serve from a place of stillness. What I see so clearly now is the unspoken communal yearning for the still place, the place of rest, the center of the still lake before the ripples of intention move out. I believe that in experiencing stillness we so clearly see our own innate quality, our organic penchant for compassion and release, and the beauty and joy that that state evokes in, not only the being who is still, but also those who are experiencing that stillness in action. Again a paradox in language but not in experience. (Commentary on Durckheim in quotes are from an internet article by Theodore J. Nottingham, an author and translator who works in a variety of genres, including Historical and Metaphysical Fiction, Screenplays, Teleplays, Children's Books, and Non-Fiction. He is also a television and video producer. He is the author and producer of numerous documentaries and has regularly published articles in national and regional magazines.) article can be found here; http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=821&id=3290