Liebeslied

In a reframing of the Buddhist meditation on death, I have often immersed myself in visual and written arts reflecting the inevitable. 

This practice has taken many turns, one of which was deciding to have a natural burial at Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery. 

Now in my 84th year--though no threat looms with immediacy--it's no longer possible to ignore the eventuality of my own death. And I love the idea of going back to earth in the woods, with a natural marker.

Without the barrier of a coffin between me and the earth, my molecules can easily mix with those who've preceded me, and in the moment of dying I anticipate imagining the company I'll join. My growing list of those who've preceded me includes dear family, friends, pets--and also poets, writers, artists, spiritual teachers, psychologists, scientists, and musicians who have brought beauty and inspiration to my long life.

This practice of drawing others' spirits to me is a reminder to simply rejoice in what flows from intuition. Often, I've experienced the emotions of my son, a friend, or a client prior to contact -- not always realizing the mood's source until later. A friend I told about this said, "They're playing the strings of your guitar." I so resonate with that image, which echoes my lifelong favorite among Rainer Maria Rilke's poems, "Lovesong" (the original "Liebeslied" follows the translation by M.D. Herter Norton):

How shall I withhold my soul so that

it does not touch on yours? How shall I

uplift it over you to other things?

Ah willingly would I by some

lost thing in the dark give it harbor

in an unfamiliar silent place

that does not vibrate on when your depths vibrate.

Yet everything that touches us, you and me,

takes us together as a bow's stroke does,

that out of two strings draws a single voice.

Upon what instrument are we two spanned?

And what player has us in his hand?

O sweet song.

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, dass

sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie

hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?

Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendetwas

Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen

an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die

nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen.

Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,

nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,

der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.

Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?

Und welcher Spieler hat uns in der Hand?

O süsses Lied.

Everything that touches us takes us together as does a bow's stroke that draws a single voice from two strings.

-----

The Symbol of the Wave

Philosopher Alan Watts' essay on Zen
used the metaphor of a wave ~
while each wave appears
separate and distinct
  all waves are part
of the ocean they share.
Likewise, there seem to be
nine patterns of personality fixations
yet each is whole in spirituality's ocean.

The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

One of my favorite stories about C.G. Jung is a reported dream where he was drowning in a vat of human waste and calling "Help me out!" to his therapist, who stood on the rim of the vat. Instead of taking his outstretched hand the therapist pushed Jung's head down into the liquid, saying, "Through, not out."

That's often what it feels like when I commit to greater self-awareness and then see what I've gotten myself into: "Get me out of this!" No matter how innovative my efforts, there's a quality of struggling in, yes, a vat of shit.

In an episode of "John Adams," he teaches one of his sons about the virtues of manure, insisting that the young man mash it around with his hands. Adams' recipe for compost would delight today's organic gardeners -- seaweed, marsh mud, dead ashes, rock weed, livestock waste, kitchen scraps.

My own dung has a similar variety -- scraps of history; ashes I thought were dead; a deep sea of muddy droppings from unconscious creature selves; weeds I'd imagined pulled forever; the waste of years spent serving an ego-image.

I keep in mind this quote from William Bryant Logan's Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth: "Not only the grain in the mealbag, but the full-blown rose are, in one sense, the gift of turds."

What "The Big Picture" May Miss

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, drawn from Jungian psychology, groups people by cognitive function, and the starkest contrast lies in two broad ways of gathering information: Sensing and Intuition. 

Sensors―interested in facts―are good observers, focusing on the present, on facts, on what can be processed through the five senses; concrete, literal thinkers who value realism, common sense, and ideas with practical applications.

Intuitives--interested in frameworks--are introspective, looking for possibilities, patterns, impressions, imagination, reading between the lines. I test as high as possible on Intuition.

Neither is better than the other; however, the stronger the difference in cognitive style, the greater the tendency to disparage such a different way of seeing the world. I grew up in a family where both my parents and my older brother had a Sensing preference, so in spite of my good grades in school and college, I thought I had something missing until I was in graduate school in my thirties, where big picture thinking was a great asset and I learned about these cognitive differences. What a relief!

My deficit in the cognitive pathways of Sensors, however, continues to haunt me, most recently in a poetry workshop where we're learning to model our poems after Sharon Olds, Dorianne Laux, the teacher, and former students--all writing "accessible, detail oriented, image-driven poetry," of course following poetic principles, but focused in tight on a moment that can be visualized. As excited as I've been to be involved again with a critique group, I was really struggling until I found an article about the Sensing/Intuition difference in creative writing. 

Writers and poets tend to be drawn toward creative work that matches their cognitive preferences and, of course, their own writing reflects their way of perceiving the world.

Sensing Poets:                                                                Intuitive Poets:

are detailed, empirical, and concrete	are abstract, symbolic, and figurative
prefer plot-driven themes	prefer concept-driven themes
employ similes	employ metaphors
like to stay on-topic	are comfortable with fracture
tend to be explicit	tend to be implicit
tend to be linear and chronological	are comfortable with split timelines
prefer scenes to summary exposition	use scenes as a jumping-off point to explore larger themes
point to what’s present to the eye	bring to mind what’s absent from view
They ask: What happened? Were police cars light or dark blue in Wichita in 1970? Does this stanza progress logically line-to-line? They may be wary of speculative leaps and abstractions in a poem.	They ask: What larger question about the human experience does this poem explore? Which opposing forces create tension?  They may look for hidden patterns between the lines of a poem.

 
I can't change the wiring of my brain, but I can develop new neural pathways with practice, and because I want so much to learn this way of writing poems, I'm determined to give it my best effort.

 

Grace and Grit

"Friends and family often wondered, is she being unrealistic—shouldn't she be worrying? fretting? unhappy? But the fact is, by living in the present, by refusing to live in the future, she began exactly to live consciously with death.

Think about it: death, if anything, is the condition of having no future. By living in the present, as if she had no future, she was not ignoring death, she was living it. And I was trying to do the same." Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit.

After I finished reading Grace and Grit I couldn't sleep, not sure what was going on, but when I told someone about the book I started weeping. Then I knew what was going on.

Treya Killam Wilber fought so hard and died anyway within five years. I had a good prognosis and knew I could easily live another twenty years after my December 2010 surgery. Or not. The Buddhists tell us to live our death. This doesn't mean worrying all the time. It means living NOW, whether you have twenty minutes or twenty years left. 

I try to do the same.

I Know What Endarkenment Is

I don’t know what enlightenment is, but I know what "endarkenment" is… a way to get endarkened really well is to be narrow, to only see things one way (Charles Tart, Enneagram Monthly, March, 1999). 

So many people I talk to describe their own transformation process in terms of shifts in awareness, a sense of stepping outside a frame of reference they'd always held. And it does feel like moving from the dark into the light.

"The most profound moments in my life," said an Enneagram style Eight, "were actual events where I came out on the other side." She's strong, responsible and had tended to avoid signs of weakness or feelings of vulnerability. So you know the enormity of the shift when she said, "It scared the f------ shit out of me!"

Completely transforming one's awareness is a scary place, and it helps to know where the process is leading:

At the first level (of development) people simply realize… how much of the time they spend on automatic pilot.

The second level of insights are… psychodynamic or personality revelations. People begin to see more clearly patterns to their motivations and behavior…

There can arise a clear vision of the dissolution of self from moment to moment, and this often leads to a realm of fear and terror…

Later there arises… a spontaneous process of letting go of personal motivation, and… a vision of the true connection between all of us...

~ Jack Kornfield, "The Seven Factors of Enlightenment", pp. 56-59 in Paths Beyond Ego

Understanding your Enneagram style can be enormously helpful as a road map for your patterns of motivation and behavior. One psychological pattern I discovered in myself as an Enneagram style Nine, for example, was how I'd made myself passive-aggressive by setting myself up to feel discounted. This usually happened when I’d failed to state my needs clearly. Then, when someone failed to read my mind and act on my needs, I became passive-aggressive and the other person felt I'd set up a trap. And of course, I had. 

So I know what endarkenment is. You know, too, when you see how you set up and feed into the stories that reinforce old, narrow views. 

How Society Grooms Women

Journalist Connie Chung penned an open letter supporting Christine Blasey Ford, while for the first time publicly sharing her own experience with sexual assault. Rachel Yang, Variety.

Shortly after it was published, I read Connie Chung's account of being sexually assaulted by her trusted family physician when she was an innocent young woman seeking birth control. Someone will no doubt have asked, "Why didn't she stop him?" when he brought her to orgasm with his fingers. Such a question would come from someone who has no idea of the strength of social conditioning on females to trust doctors and others in authority positions.

Feeling sick to my stomach, I remembered a similar experience when I went to a gynecologist before my first marriage. Though not as naive as Connie Chung had been, I wasn't sure about the physiology of sexual intercourse, and the doctor was a woman. So, when she explained that she was slowly stretching my hymen tissue so I wouldn't feel any pain on intercourse, I didn't stop her, even though I felt its inappropriateness, especially because I'd told her about being raped at age 16. Nonetheless, I did exactly what Chung did, kept quiet and afterwards dashed out of there as quickly as I could, embarrassed and ashamed.

We tend to think of sexual grooming as specific to child sexual abuse, but the elements are the same in any form of abuse -- the appeal of a relationship with someone who gives you special attention, the underlying assertion of power not evident until trust is established, and the sense of secrecy based on the expectation of not being believed, or chastised if believed. Those negative judgments can be overt or covert.

In the case of my being raped as a teenager, I was on a family trip to Scotland, my parents knew I was walking on the beach near the hotel where we were staying, and they looked for me when I was not back after dark. Yet when I finally stumbled in, the police they called insisted on a medical exam to make sure I was telling the truth.

And then MY PARENTS NEVER MENTIONED THE SITUATION AGAIN! No one asked if I wanted to talk about it, no one assured me that stopping to chat with the man did not make the rape my fault, no one commented on my sudden need to have a light on in my room at night.

The Scottish man who raped me used an abbreviated form of sexual grooming--approaching me when there was still daylight with a casual question about my being American and some conversation about the golf tournament I mentioned my Dad was there to attend, treating me like an adult without ever being openly seductive, then offering to walk me back to the hotel, as it was getting dark. A very nice local man being thoughtful to a tourist. I was flattered and trusting, only half-way back to the hotel realizing--while deep in conversation--he'd walked me to an area away from the lights where sand dunes blocked a clear view from the road. When we saw the headlights of a car--which I knew was my father because one of the lights was out--the rapist clapped a hand over my mouth and said, "If you make a sound, I will kill you."

Why am I posting this in "The Only Gate is Now?" Because this blog is where I've written about surviving another kind of death threat -- breast cancer -- and reminds me that no matter what life brings, "there's nowhere to go, there's nothing else to be." Staying present for me means not numbing out, not dissociating from the emotions that flashbacks arouse. I dealt with my anger at the rapist of the past, but not until forty years after the event, awakening terrified from a nightmare and writing it down so I wouldn't numb out again, emotions that eventually found a home in my poem, "Union."

I had to allow the anger to move through me again when aroused by Brett Kavanaugh's appointment in spite of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony and his obvious lack of integrity, and beyond these specific events to the larger world we live in, characterized by the ascent of greed and dominance of wealthy white males, to the exclusion and--often--terror of anyone not part of that club.

I Choose Authenticity

(Published in The Enneagram of Death: Helpful Insights by the 9 Types of People on Grief, Fear, and Dyling, 2012)

Authenticity is a daily practice. Choosing authenticity means cultivating the COURAGE to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable; exercising the COMPASSION that comes from knowing we are all made of strength and struggle and connected to each other through a loving and resilient human spirit; nurturing the CONNECTION and sense of belonging that can only happen when we let go of what we are supposed to be and embrace who we are. Brené Brown, Ph.D.

Many people who've had cancer report significant changes in their lives and a gratitude that might seem strange to those who haven't been there. Having had breast cancer, I realize how difficult it is to put into words the gratitude I felt. Of course I'm grateful to be alive, grateful to all the helping professionals, friends, and acquaintances who were part of my healing, grateful to my body that the cancer didn't spread through the lymph nodes, grateful that I didn't have to have chemo. But my gratitude spread beyond those happy aspects -- I was grateful to the cancer because it brought me into greater presence than I'd ever experienced.

The important question became, "Now that I am present to my impermanence, how do I live every moment going forward?" The answer to this question was not a conscious decision. It bloomed in me as a consequence of opening myself, of having yielded and embraced breast cancer. The biggest lesson I learned was how I'd contributed to the burden of caretaking I'd felt -- in my life and in my work -- by keeping the focus completely on other people and not asking for what I needed. I was giving, but not allowing myself to receive. 

Caretaking fed my ego and also exhausted me. Having cancer required that I learn how to ask for help and be clear to those around me what kind of help I needed: to be listened to, encouraged to talk about myself. Instead, my gift of focusing on the positive had taken charge, and left no room for feeling tired, disoriented, lonely, or that dreaded state -- NEEDY.  Everyone was rejoicing in how brave and amazing I was, while some newly acknowledged part of me simply wanted to curl up and be held. 

Exactly as Dr. Brené Brown's research on authenticity suggests, I'm more connected now because I learned a new kind of courage -- to be imperfect (needy), to set boundaries (ask for what I want and don't want), to allow myself to be vulnerable (admitting these needs without shame), and along with this came true compassion (giving is no longer a one-way street). Thus, I'm grateful to Dr. Brown for having put into words the lesson I most needed to learn.

Once my energy and mental balance returned, instead of feeling I was "back to my old self," I found myself "going forward into a new self," one that has a squishy part I didn't have before. Vulnerability can be interpreted as feeling defenseless, exposed, insecure. My new squishy part has none of those negative connotations. It has made me softer, more yielding, tender, sensitive, open, and accessible.

The Enneagram: A Compelling Vision

Susan Olesek's TED talk on behalf of the Enneagram Prison Project (EPP), Both Sides of the Bars, is the most compelling Enneagram presentation I've ever seen, for her own transparency, for her clarity and vision, for her compelling examples, for her intelligent presentation, and most of all for the power of her presence. This is the finest example of how life-changing the Enneagram can be in the hands of someone on an authentic spiritual journey. See also this Forbes article about Olesek's work.

The Pattern That Connects

"Premonitions open us up to each other and to the greater world... they show that we are part of something larger than the individual self, that we are an element in the great pattern that connects." Dr. Larry Dossey

The opening story of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking should convince even the most skeptical that there are ways of knowing beyond the ability to make logical connections:

"A team of experts with state-of-the-art measurement tools took more than a year to assure the authenticity of a supposedly ancient Greek statue the Getty Museum of California was going to purchase for $10 million. Then several art experts looked at the statue and knew instantly it was a fake. One said he "heard" the word fresh, which seemed odd to him, but on further examination he realized the statue was too "fresh" to be that ancient." (David Brooks, New York Times).

We all have the capability to access these versions of a "sixth sense" although many shy away from that possibility, especially those who fear the unfamiliar. Even the word premonition carries an aura of foreboding - that something "bad" is going to happen.

When we're fully present, however, the possibilities are neither good nor bad, we're simply open to a broader context of knowing, a larger "mind" or "field." Whether you experience this knowing as a feeling in your bones, an image, or a nagging thought, it's saying to you, in Larry Dossey's words, "Wake up. The evidence for a larger world is staring you in the face."

Dream Journaling

For years, I've used Clyde H. Reid's Dreams: Discovering Your Inner Teacher as a straightforward format (based on Jungian dream analysis) to walk myself through the key aspects of a dream:

• Date of dream:

• Title:

• Motif:

• The dream in detail:
• Context: what's happening in my life at this time?

• In this dream, who are the main characters known to me before?
     Name: 
     Outstanding characteristics:  
     What part of me is this?

•  Who are the main characters not known to me?
      Same sex figures (shadow)?
      Opposite sex figures (anima/animus)?

• What are the outstanding features of this dream (flood, explosion, animal, house, etc)?
      What part of me is this feature or image? What is it saying to me?
      What important symbols appeared? How are they related to me?

• What archetypes may be manifesting themselves here?

• What feelings did I have during/after the dream?

• What other thoughts, ideas, or memories does this dream trigger in me?

Audacious Ekphrasis

In December I accepted the role of Editor-in-Chief for Bacopa Literary Review. Below is a copy of my first post on our Editors Blog:

If you want to know more about me, Googling Mary Bast will first evoke echoes of my other life as an Enneagram coach and related books. But I've also written flash memoir and several forms of poetry including found poetry and ekphrasis, an audacious poetic form that's among many we're encouraging for Bacopa 2016.
You'll find a long history and many definitions of ekphrasis. I like the most open, contemporary version best:

Ekphrasis: the intersection of verbal and visual arts.

I first learned about ekphrastic poetry in a workshop with Melanie Almeder, who drew our attention to two famous poems written in response to Pieter Brueghel's painting, The Fall of Icarus: William Carlos Williams' "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" and W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts." 

Note that Williams' poem to some degree follows the tradition of describing the visual scene (a farmer was ploughing / his field / the whole pageantry / of the year was / awake tingling / with itself), while Auden's interpretation is a bit wider (About suffering they were never wrong, / the old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position: how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window).

Almeder invited workshop participants to write our own poems in response to the Brueghel painting, encouraging us to range as far as our muses would go. My poem "plummet" (published in Bacopa Literary Review 2012) imagined Icarus as a woman:

somewhere
there is an Icarus
a woman who flies 

on intricate
feathered web
of covert

sheath
shaft
veins

warm-blooded
she breathes faster
learns to soar

ignores
the admonition
do not fly too high

her efforts full
of sky
of wind

her breasts
still flecked with honey
dripped from wings' wax

heavy with her father's
architecture
heavier than water

when she dives
no sun's light
scuffs the surface

As a visual artist I've explored other ways to interpret "the intersection of verbal and visual arts." For example, in response to Kim Addonizio's poem "Divine" (Oh hell, here's that dark wood again. / You thought you'd gotten through it--), I created my acrylic painting, "Oh hell, here's that dark wood again." Then I reacted to my own painting with the poem "Backdraft" (again the dark wood. / Guardian of the Abyss hovering above / like a gold flame to incinerate what's left of my life).