Bend the Arc 100 : Come on in out of the cold

So you want to do your part to bend the arc towards justice? Then you’d better check you haven’t left some part of yourself out in the cold. You’re gonna want to bring your whole self with you. 

A week ago I basked in the company of eleven women ranging in age from their thirties to their seventies. We met to talk about how to mobilize our yearning and practice to bend the arc towards justice. We shared our intentions.

We practiced letting in all the parts of ourselves who showed up. 

We started there because we need every bit of our body, imagination and soul strength to bend the arc.

I want to share with you what I shared with them: a few words about inclusion from a nondual perspective. About its origins and power in what I call….

The Radical Oneness of existence, or the Universe, or Reality. Many spiritual traditions view the world in this way.  You could call this Oneness God, the One who Holds (as in He’s got the whole world in His hands), The Buddha-Nature, Isness, The Great Kindness, The Garment of Destiny (as Martin Luther King did), the Quantum Field (if you are a physics nerd.) My own roots are in Kabbalah, the Jewish wisdom tradition. I am partial to the Hebrew name Makom, which means The Place.

This is a Oneness so great that it holds every distinction, separation, split, pair  of opposites, conflict, suffering, goodness, and every known and unknown. This is a world that is One not because it is has not shattered, but because it includes every shattering and every shard and sliver.

We humans, on the other hand, split the world. It is our nature. Hard-wired. For our survival. We make distinctions: this/that, urban/rural, fashionable/out of style, essential/frivolous, normal, i.e. the norm/deviant. Then we go on to label them as “good” or “bad” and attempt to be/do/associate with the good-only. Or we inappropriately ride over, transcend, or erase differences, as in the view that we are a “post-racial” nation.

We do this splitting as we look out at the world. And we do this splitting as we look inward at ourselves. We tend to include the parts of ourselves that we like – that are up to our standards of behavior or performance or skill or kindness or morality. And to exclude other parts we don’t like.

For some of us, it’s the “good” parts we have trouble including, so we deny or minimize – that thing that I do, it’s not such a big deal.  Or diminish ourselves in comparison to someone “better.” Or fall into the mantra, “not good enough, not good enough, not good enough.”

The inner critic manages to keep close track of these. So does the task-master. So does the one intent on personal or spiritual growth, who often teams up with the critic/taskmaster to

–  wheedle, charm, or ring self-acceptance out of us

– turn us into an un-ending self-improvement project

– insist that we “let go of,”  “purify” or “transcend” or “see it as illusion” or otherwise get rid of/kill off the the parts of ourselves we don’t like

– shame us, a category all its own

Living in this gap between our idealized and our real self is a high-maintenance and exhausting job, all the more-so when we aren’t awake to it.

Nondual practice – rooted in Radical Oneness, turns our attention towards forging a path of deep self-acceptance and dedication to staying at our working edge. We do our best to listen to the intelligence of our strengths and limitations, the parts of ourselves that we like, the parts we hate or despair of, the parts we deny or minimize.

The more we can do this, include each of these parts, come into relationship with them, give them a place, the more wisdom we have access to, and the less our limitations are obstacles in our path. The more we can do this, the more we can be intelligent companions to all kinds of people. We have less compulsion to turn our  “opposites” into our “opposition.”  The more we can do this, the more we are neither larger nor smaller than we actually are. (This has been one of my specialities, going back and forth between messianic aspirations and goals and helplessness.)

It also turns out that as we can do this, the more that connection and Oneness shine through the multiplicity. The fabric shimmers, even while wet with tears. The more palpable God’s presence becomes in our daily lives. This is the work of healing and awakening.

What does this have to do with bending the arc?

  • Pragmatically, materially speaking, we need all the wisdom we can access, and all the wholeness we can muster, to meet life.
  • From the standpoint of healing and awakening, we are each born into this world to bend the arc in a particular way: that particular way of bending that we are born for, born to, heals our soul, and heals the world. Inseparably. Simultaneously. The very same life. That is what we are here for.
  • And we are not on our own in this work. Reality has our back.

We humans and God: together we bend the arc.

Essential Questions: Wrestling with the Imperfection that Life Is

I want to share some essential questions with you that I’ve developed from a teaching that was at once a challenge and a touchstone for me from the moment I first read it.

The following words belong to Ben Azzai, a 2nd Century Jewish Sage:

You will be called by your name,
you will be seated in your place,
you will be given what is yours.
No man touches what is meant for his fellow.
No kingdom touches its neighbor by so much as a hairsbreadth. (Yoma 38 a-b)

This teaching held out a life that was so different from my own experience that I really had to wrestle with it, and I did so with the help of healing friends and professionals who helped me to make myself the first object of study in the light of its wisdom.

What made the teaching a challenge were some of the “givens” I had lived (and daily died by):

  1. When my name was called, I knew I was in trouble.
  2. I seemed to be the only one at the Table of Life who had no place card, no seat.
  3. I was more likely to envy than celebrate even a friend’s success.
  4. I carefully guarded my own little stash, not to mention my “self” from being touched.

Over time, I developed a practice of personal inquiry out of this teaching that I will share, because self-study is an essential practice in living this imperfect human life.

The Essential Questions

Pick one.
Begin anywhere,
Just begin.

A practice for cultivating a willing, open-hearted stance in the here and now.

Showing up in your life: “You will be called by your name.”

Who or what is calling you? Are you listening? Do you recognize your name? The biblical response of our ancestors was “Hineni,” “Here I am.” You don’t need to be bible-loving to try this.

A practice for resting more and more in yourself, in all your goodness, brokenness, and complexity, and precisely where you are in life.

Being a “good enough” woman: “You will be seated in your place.”

Do you long to feel at home in this world, rooted within yourself? Can you be at ease with your strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, even as you grow in character? Can you bear to enumerate and talk with them? Can you allow yourself to be a “good enough” but not complacent woman?

A practice for befriending the people and events in your life, and serving them in beneficial ways.

Befriending and serving: “You will be given what is yours.”

Do you long to understand and serve your singular purpose in life, to know your innate wisdom and see it flourish amidst your daily activities? Can you let yourself know what you know about your purpose and your wisdom?

Because no one else’s kingdom touches yours by so much as a hairsbreadth.

And as you begin to live into this, isolation melts and whole new worlds of connection, relationship, and intimacy begin to appear.

Really, this is how things work.


 

What givens have you lived by that may be challenged by this teaching? Which questions will you be wrestling with? Please share your thoughts in the comment area below.