[Poclad] Catastrophe as spiritual practice - more wisdom from Sally Erickson

[Raging Grannie (Wanda B)]

http://carolynbaker.org/archives/catastrophe-as-spiritual-practice-by-sally-erickson

CATASTROPHE AS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE, By Sally Erickson
May 14, 2007

Sally Erickson says that "...if we let ourselves have the catastrophe that 
is already happening, we will find new courage to do things we never 
thought possible."

It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to 
step out of the bureaucracy of the ego.

~Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism,

That is one of my favorite book titles ever. I love that title because it 
distills the essence of the book’s message into four words. That makes the 
book, while being a fairly challenging read, possible to grok. It is 100 
proof Tibetan Buddhism. A little shot goes a long way. Trungpa lays it on 
the line. Most of what parades as spirituality is not that at all, it is 
spiritual materialism. It is the trappings of spirituality, while missing 
the guts.

Recently I told Tim he’s spiritually “ahead” of many of the authors he 
reads. Now Tim is not overly modest. In fact, we joke about his arrogance. 
But he rankled a little at the description. He didn’t get what I meant. He 
was not actually flattered by my comment. He has ideas like belief and 
faith and the image of a grandfatherly figure with tyrannical tendencies 
associated with the term “spiritual.” The word “God” puts him right over 
the edge.

And yet, to me, he is a deeply spiritual person.

What does that mean?

The other morning I told Tim I felt like I needed some kind of spiritual 
nurturing or sustenance, an experience of the presence of someone or 
something “out there,” offering support, guidance, and affirmation that I’m 
on the right path through these very dark times.

This was the morning Tim had shared James Lovelock’s most recent comments 
that the equator will look like Mars mid-century, with the surviving 20% of 
humans now alive living near the north and south poles. When I hear or read 
that kind of stuff I get very sad, sick and scared inside. This particular 
morning I told Tim about how deeply I want to feel that there is something 
greater than me and my little scared ego available to help.

People who pay attention, who allow themselves to feel, and not just think 
about the situation, recognize that these are the most emotionally 
challenging of times to be alive.

In the face of this challenge, some people retreat emotionally, some go on 
the offensive and run about trying to fix the situation, some people 
experience profound outrage. Others just go numb. In the face of emotional 
challenge I’ve always looked for connection and affirmation outside of 
myself. This hasn’t always been healthy or helpful. I don’t know if it is 
my birth order (third and the baby), my astrological sign (Pisces), my 
Myers Briggs type,( INFP), or my Enneagram type (6), but I’ve had a deep 
and lifelong pattern of neediness for affirmation from “out there.”

So when the shit hits I start looking for help. And shit of this magnitude 
looks to me to require something more than seems available in the human 
realm. I want something BIG to help. So I look to the spiritual realm.

Tim can be really good at listening and his observation skills are acute. 
He pushes me to get clear about what I am talking about, what it is that I 
really want. The other morning he pushed me to define what exactly IS 
spiritual? What does that mean?

It’s not based on “belief.” I don’t take blind leaps of faith. I don’t 
believe because it is just so damned uncomfortable NOT to believe. That’s 
just denial all dressed up. That’s just being a good girl, looking pretty 
on her way to church, but really underneath being battered and bruised and 
suffering. When people say they “believe” that the world will muddle on for 
several more decades or centuries I bite my tongue and wonder if they also 
believe in the tooth fairy. Belief doesn’t seem to have much to do with it. 
Belief doesn’t cut it.

What I want and what I trust is experience. The experience need not be 
“rational” or understandable or scientifically verifiable. But the 
experience does needs to be palpable. I need to be able to point to some 
area of my body between my neck and my lower abdomen and say, “I feel the 
truth of this.”

I need to resonate with things, not believe in them.

Tim eats this up of course. Because it puts into words his own experience.

In order to develop love—universal love, cosmic love, whatever you would 
like to call it—one must accept the whole situation of life as it is, both 
the light and the dark, the good and the bad.
~Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

If I cut to the chase, the essence of real spirituality for me is the 
ability to look at, and be with, things exactly as they are.

When we look at the current predicament of Peak Oil, climate change, 
political and economic meltdown, depleted uranium toxicity, desertification 
of the rainforests, etc. etc. etc. What happens? What happens when we look 
at these things exactly as they are?

What happens for me is that I feel. And what I feel is not comfortable. I 
feel what I perceive to be overwhelming sadness and fear about the future. 
I fear that life will become too much to bear. I fear that the pain will be 
endless, that I’ll have to die to escape it. I fear that there won’t be any 
help or comfort or relief or humor.

A scene from the movie United 93 comes to mind. As it became clear the 
plane was going down despite all efforts on the part of the heroic 
passengers to take back control, the atmosphere was rife with fear and 
pain. And as I watched that movie about a plane full of people, going down 
amidst great chaos, I reflected, of course, on how this is a perfect 
metaphor for the situation we all face with the impending collapse of life 
as we know it, perhaps of life on the planet.

As I watched that final scene in the movie I was struck with a very clear 
image of what I would do if I were in that situation. What I would do is 
this: I would take the hands of whoever was sitting next to me and I would 
look into their eyes. I would let them know that they were not alone and 
that in that very moment they were loveable. And in doing so I would 
experience the same, my own lovability. As I imagine that scene, there is 
something that stirs in my gut that feels true and profoundly meaningful.

And relevant.

It is in extremity that all reason for hiding or pretending or defending 
oneself from utter transparency with another and with life itself, 
dissolves. In extremity there is the opportunity to be completely oneself, 
true and real, and to reveal that self fully. That way of being, utterly 
true and honest and in the moment is the essence of real spirituality.

That’s why I consider Tim to be a spiritually developed person. He 
demonstrates that capacity to show up and report the truth of his 
experience, his thoughts, his feelings, his assumptions and his prejudices. 
As much as any other person I’ve ever known he has the capacity to be 
utterly transparent.

It has nothing to do with praying to God or meditation or chanting or 
eating right. Those things may be helpful for different people at different 
times. There may be all kinds of tools that aid people in developing that 
capacity. But for me, real spirituality is about showing up and being who 
you really are, without masks, without delusions, at any given moment.

That kind of transparency and unmasked presence is not uncommon for me to 
experience and witness. I’ve been a glutton for it most of my adult life. 
Over the years I have consciously cultivated the ability to hold the people 
who come to see me for counseling with great regard and a distinct lack of 
negative judgment. And people respond to that regard and lack of judgment 
by allowing me to see them, to hear the truth of their experience, to tell 
me their stories, without embellishment or defense, unvarnished and raw. I 
make it safe for them to feel the full catastrophe of their lives. And in 
feeling that catastrophe, in that extremity, they show up and tell the truth.

I’ve learned to engineer my own personal catastrophe by putting myself 
alone in the woods fasting for a few days every year. Fasting and exposure 
to the elements creates a physical catastrophe and the body responds by 
slowing down movement while heightening perception. The catastrophe the ego 
experiences is even more profound. In the silence, solitude and extreme 
restriction from cultural distraction, there are no fixes for my ego’s 
addiction to achievement and productivity. There’s no escape from 
anxieties, sorrows or unresolved resentments. There’s no running from 
boredom either. This is indeed calamitous for the ego.

It is no wonder that “vision quest” kinds of experiences, silent retreats 
to the desert, extended times of meditation in a cave, have been prescribed 
spiritual disciplines across religious and cultural traditions. These 
practices are effective because they create a catastrophe for the human 
ego. Every time I’ve done a wilderness fast I’ve had a breakthrough. I’ve 
surrendered some part of my conscious identity to Life. And I’ve emerged 
truer, more courageous, and more compassionate.

The other situation where that truer, less ego-identified self emerges for 
me is in counsel circles with others. Interestingly these have largely been 
in workshop or training retreats not specifically devoted to creating a 
“spiritual” experience. They have been settings where by design or 
willingness, the group agreed to enter catastrophe together. That 
catastrophe came about as we encountered our differences and conflicts and 
crashed, hopefully gently, but not always gracefully, into our personal and 
collective wounds. Out of commitment, and then necessity, we mysteriously 
reached inward to find our more essential selves. I say mysteriously 
because it is a mystery. It not a rational technique learned by the ego. 
But over and over I’ve seen it is in that place of interpersonal 
catastrophe, where nothing is working, nothing is being resolved, and the 
conflict sits as an inescapably gaping wound that magic happens. It is 
there that my individual ego identity becomes willing to give up, to 
surrender her stories, to suspend her long held and well-defended 
assumptions, to let go and open to experience a larger view, a larger truth.

The culture of Empire, the culture of consumption, is designed to keep 
people from experiencing these kinds of transformative catastrophe. People 
are too busy, occupied with work and television, cars and cell phones, 
mortgages and health care. They are busy trying to look good so no one will 
see how empty it all feels.

The truth is that the American lifestyle IS a catastrophe. It is shallow 
and meaningless and disconnected. It is life threatening in every way 
imaginable. But very few people allow themselves to feel that. They are 
living a catastrophe already but they can stay numb to it so long as the 
oil and food and entertainment hold out.

That’s why the prospects of the coming convergence of resource crises and 
ecological crises and the ensuing economic and social crises seem 
unbearable. We’re pretending that the worst is yet to come. And so we fear 
that those things yet to happen are unbearable.

They are not. But to be bearable we will have to allow the catastrophes to 
do their work, to have their impact on our egos and cherished identities as 
surely as they will have their impact on our cherished lifestyles. We’ll 
have to notice that the airplane is in a nosedive, that there is no pilot 
in control, and that its time to take the hands of our neighbors, look into 
their eyes, and love them. And let them love us back.

We could do this now, with those other precious souls, the ones that are 
now self-identified mutants. We could learn together to drop our defenses 
and ego positions and just be quietly, albeit messily, honest with one 
another. It won’t be pretty. The wounds of Empire have affected us all. We 
need to acknowledge that. We need to be willing to look at ourselves and 
each other exactly the way we are.

If we do that, if we let ourselves have the catastrophe that is already 
happening, we will find new courage to do things we never thought possible.

Like making a very confronting documentary. Like quitting meaningless jobs 
and walking away from our addictions to comfort. Like learning to grow food 
and build cisterns to catch water. Like learning to show up and tell the 
unique truth we’ve been given to tell in ways we never thought possible.

If we who are awakening do that, we don’t know what will happen.

But if we don’t, it’s pretty clear there won’t be much of a planet left for 
our children and grandchildren or the millions of other species who inhabit 
our planet.

Tim and I thought, naively, that we would make a documentary and then run 
away to the woods to create our lifeboat and hide. It’s not turning out 
that way. As our new friend Carolyn put it, “Its seems you are being asked 
to show up and ask people to feel.”

For a recovering “baby of the family,” that’s a catastrophe, but just one 
of many.

****
I had a similar reaction when I saw “The Day After” about 20 years ago - a 
TV movie about the aftermath of an atom bomb hitting Lawrence, 
Kansas.  Those who weren’t dead, but dying of radiation sickness had lost 
everything they thought identified them - loved ones, home, sexy car, all 
those toys they’d bought, any sense of power, and now their health as their 
hair fell out and gums bled and all the food and water were 
contaminated.   Some still fought over the last crust of irradiated bread, 
but it was clear that all that was left was the care and kindness they 
could give each other.  And it was clear that’s all we ever have.  WB