The
imagery on TV of people on the East coast left broken and broken-hearted –
calling out for assistance, as if they have been abandoned - has touched my
heart, touching that same feeling of abandonment deep within myself somewhere. And I wonder, how could I live in a contemplative
bubble that I am wont to - and close myself off to what is happening in the
world, under the guise of “spirituality”? I can’t.
There’s no either/or. It’s all
one Life living ItSelf out here – just as it is… Pain and Peace… And maybe it’s really that I
want to protect myself from feeling my own pain. That’s what global pain
does. It gets us in touch with our own pain,
our own vulnerability, our own helplessness to know what to do for a hurting
world, let alone our own pain. And
ironically, the more time I spend contemplatively in Silence, listening within,
the more of the world’s pain I seem to feel, as well as peace.
I saw a
woman on TV helping in the clean-up effort in her own coastal town – crying –
saying – “I want to go home, but there is no home. It’s gone.” I turned away and cried silently in my heart. I can’t imagine the devastation to the psyche
that no amount of religious platitudes of non-attachment, or non-dual refrains
of, there is no “me” who wants to go home, can assuage. It is a deep wound of the heart to lose one’s
sense of “home” – to *feel* that sense of separation. I’m sure we have all felt that in one form or
another at some time in our lives, whether it was a loss of a physical place, a
person, or an emotional/spiritual sense of “home” – that led to a sense of deep
“homesickness” of the heart.
And a lot
of us know people in our daily lives who need our empathy and our compassion,
who have lost their sense of “Home”, feeling abandoned by “God” – adrift in
their lives. It is a deep wound. I know such people in my family. And it is a helpless feeling not knowing how
to help them. It’s as if some people’s
pain is so deep that it cannot be mended.
It is not a tangible “fix” on a practical level, or seemingly a
“spiritual” one either. It is a deep
pain of the psyche. It is a loss of
“Home” - that sense of eternal Beingness – a loss of internal bearings of the
Spirit; an insatiable pain that no one and nothing can fill. I’m sure you’ve met them too. The ones whose hearts cry the cry of
desperation in a dark wilderness of the mind, like sleep deprivation, leaving a deep hollow hunger within. How
do we help these wounded wanderers?
It all
trickles down, pain upon pain – or maybe I sound too morbid - too dramatic… But it’s true. We are all impacted by the pain of others, by
the global pain of a wounded world. One
person’s pain affects us all. And yet,
many times, as I have discovered, we are helpless to end their pain, and so we
distract ourselves from their pain, and our own, by shutting out and shutting
off; by pretending this is all an illusion. I have done it too, not wanting to experience
their pain. But their pain ripples out
anyway - through humanity. How can we
*not* be affected – how can we not allow ourselves to *feel.*
I once
read a story online. I believe it was a
story of an African man who when asked how he was said he was “unwell”, even
though he was very well. The story went
that his grandmother was not well, and that when one member of the family was
unwell, they were all unwell. And I knew
what he meant. I experience this myself
in my own family. One family member’s
unwellness of being affects the whole family, and we are all “unwell” - we are all in
pain, until that person becomes whole again. To some that sounds
“co-dependent”, but it is energetic; an energetic vibration felt throughout the
whole.
Their
pain *is* my/our pain. I don’t want it
to be. I want to ignore it, or blame
them for their choices that created their own pain… But there it is. It’s all a reflection. And lofty beliefs and words are not helpful, because
it cannot be heard, or received by those caught in the deep pain of the unconscious…
There is nothing I can offer
that buffers the pain,
that softens the heartache,
or heals the wounds -
for my sister, my mother, or the
world…
And yes, at times I want to hide
from their pain,
to not feel their pain,
because it is often too overwhelming…
And because I have my own pain.
And what to do with that as well…
I sit with it and let it speak,
let it cry,
let it take me to the “mothering”
womb of Silence of all Life,
and rest there – waiting;
petitioning the Cosmic energies,
neither male nor female,
to intervene;
on behalf of my sister,
my mother,
myself,
and a suffering world.
Sometimes
that’s all I can do…
When the “practical”
fails to touch the soul…
We pray…
And that is our offering
of love…
Photo: A piece from another canvas in progress…
