America the Broken

“Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.  True power is within you, and it is available to you now.”

-- Eckhart Tolle

This past week was a difficult week in the news.  There has been murder, cold-hearted indifference to human life, death by a silent and airborne killer, and death that could have been prevented.  People are angry and restless. People are in pain.  And we all want someone, or a group of someones, to blame.  I know I do. I don’t love admitting that, but the thinking part of me believes that having someone to blame would make me feel better -- or at least make it hurt less.

It probably sounds like I am trying to make this a politicized post, but I promise you that is not my intention.  I have been reflecting this past week on how my inside feelings of hurt, righteous anger, emotional overwhelm, and frankly, confusion, are being reflected in how people are reacting around the country.  We are not all making the same choices obviously, but we may be feeling many of the same emotions.  These collective emotions appear to have reached a critical mass; Accumulated and pent up, they are ready to blow.  Meanwhile, we have all spent weeks at home, physically shut in as a way to fight an invisible enemy.  The thing is, we don’t like invisible enemies: we prefer them to be flesh and blood.   This divides us, and as the polarization increases, we increasingly look for a place to belong.  How do we define who we are, and with whom we identify?  Whether conscious or unconscious, this question has become increasingly important to many of us in this dark time.  

Traumatic events often come with significant personal loss.  If that loss is connected to how we perceive our personal identity, then we can be left in a position of questioning who we are without the thing we lost -- effectively, an existential crisis.  Many of us have lost loved ones, jobs, income, and at times what feels like our freedom.  Personally, I consider myself exceedingly blessed for not yet experiencing the loss of a loved one to this virus, nor have I lost my job.  However, as a performing artist it is very strange to continue work in music with no real sense of when I might be able to perform again.  Yes, many of us have been making videos and making a sincere effort to put music out in the world, but I doubt there is one of us out there that would equate this in any way to our previous lives as performers.  Pulling at this thread has caused me to honestly examine my relationship to my job and my instrument, and ultimately all the roles I identify with.  Are these relationships healthy?  What does healthy look like?  

All this questioning drew me to two of my husband’s favorite authors that specialize in what we Americans generally call ‘mindfulness.’  I had begun a timid meditation practice, and that small taste opened my eyes to another dimension of existence.  I sense that my ability to describe these things in words from this point forward will be difficult for me, but I deeply want to share this with you because I believe that the seeds of peace, reconciliation, healing, love, and joy all lie in this dimension of Being.  I began with Anthony De Mello’s book Awareness, which is a loosely organized collection of his teachings across his lifetime.  The book uses many metaphors and parables to clarify one main idea in a myriad of different ways; De Mello’s  philosophy distinguishes between each individual's sense of the “I” and the “me”.  The “me” (fueled by our chattering critical mind) clings to all of our identities as defined by the external world.  In my case that would be “wife”, “mother”, “friend”, “musician”, “Christian”, “caucasian”, “American”, etcetera.  The “I” on the other hand, is our true essence of Being, untethered to any of these external identities.  Like many of us, I seldom stop to consider who I am if I am not playing one of these roles, but at the same time my heart knows that I must be something more than that --- that my value cannot be tied to my success, failure, or identification with these labels.  

In Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, he seeks to unpack a similar idea.  His unique terminology points to the challenge of describing something in words that is essentially beyond the power of words to express.  He labels the “me” as “ego”, and the rational mind as the instrument that holds us prisoner to our experience of Time.  The ego clings to our identities and oscillates between revisiting our past, and projecting the possible experiences of our future selves.  Therefore the ego never allows us to truly live in the present.  It can’t:  

“Since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to identify with external things. It needs to be both defended and fed constantly.  The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.”  (p. 46)

And that leads us to -- you guessed it -- The power of the present.  The purpose of meditation is often to find that present moment and to be still and silent in it.  To let thoughts drift by without clinging to them or following them.  Achieving this during a pre-appointed time for meditation or contemplative prayer is challenging enough, but for me the real challenge is taking this with me into the rest of my day -- to be truly present in every activity, every moment.  Both Tolle and De Mello claim this is possible; De Mello describes the transition as “awakening”, and Tolle as moving from unconsciousness to consciousness. I will pause for a moment here to issue a disclaimer as to my own non-expertise here.  I am truly a beginner in this discovery process, and will direct you to these two books if you have a desire to dig deeper.  The first step is shockingly simple however: it is just to notice your thinking mind, and become aware that we all in fact have these two separate selves -- the “I” and the “me.”  The moment you witness the activity of your thinking mind you become aware.  The next step is to examine the identities you cling to and name them as separate to your essential self.  De Mello claims that dropping these labels is the true path to freedom and contentment.  

Conversely, both make the case that all suffering comes at the hands of the “me” or the ego.  Tolle uses the phrase “pain-body” to describe the accumulation of past and present suffering in the psyche.  However dropping our identification with this pain-body is not so easy -- the ego fears death so it will resist this.  How does all this relate to our collective pain and suffering, and the increasing tensions between our collective identities?  Again, from Tolle:

“To the ego, death is always just around the corner.  In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. . . If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation.  So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong.  To be wrong is to die.  Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.” (p. 44)

I am not sure that this is where I intended to go when I started this essay, but it occurs to me now after writing all of this that we all have a deep desire to be seen.  Definitely not in the sense of all of our external identities, but for who we truly are.  How can we “see” others if we haven’t truly witnessed ourselves?  I think this one small act could be a wonderful place for us to move individually towards collective healing and reconciliation.  In that deep and quiet place we sense not just our own wonderful uniqueness, but also the beauty of true life that we share in common.  I did some meditation in preparation to write this post, and I had the most incredible experience.  I almost hesitate to put it into words for fear of diminishing its true impact, but it felt like God was giving me a hug.  So today I have both gratitude and hope.  As always, I would love to connect over these issues, so if you have feedback, thoughts, criticisms, or any of the above, please send them my way -- I am open to all of it.