Another Good Saying for the Practice of Discernment

There is a famous Hasidic saying whose words are often sung, “The world is a narrow bridge; the main thing is not to be afraid.”
This is the spiritual counsel of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. Like all his teachings, this one is rich in meaning. Here is one way to understand what he is saying.

I envision this bridge not as the straight and narrow path through sin on all sides or over a chasm of transgression, over which the faithful cross safely to purity, planting each foot on the solid wooden plans leading straight ahead. Instead, I see this bridge as some others do—as a razor-sharp high-wire that one must walk across gently, arms outstretched, eyes fixed on the horizon.

What lies on the two sides of that bridge? We are walking the high-wire, constantly balancing. What is pulling us to one side and what to the other? Name your paradox and it probably fits: mercy and justice; patience and boldness; or the paradox we spoke of last week, of our earth-ness, our humility and our spirit-ness, our dignity. For we human beings are creatures built of paradoxes and our challenge, though we meet it awkwardly, is live gracefully with all these paradoxes, to walk between these forces pulling us to one side and the other.

And here is where discernment comes in. We do not walk this high-wire in fair weather at all times. The weather is constantly changing. So we cannot find our “balance” once and for all and then think we have it made. There are gusts, there are heavy rains, there are tornadoes and hurricanes. We must adjust the way we walk that narrow bridge as the weather changes. When the force pulling us to one side is stronger, and threatens to topple us, we must lean more to the other side, to stay standing upright so we will not fall. Is the pull toward justice too strong? Then we need to lean to the side of mercy. Is a strong wind pushing us to take bold action? We need to lean toward patience in order to stay upright.

Sounds terrifying. It is terrifying. This is the human condition—never to be at rest, always to be facing new dangers, always to be at risk. Everything changes. Everything is changing.

As the Prophet Mohammed says, “Everything perishes but the face of God.” The main thing is to walk through all that is changing with our heart fixed on the One who is constant. And that is what Rabbi Nachman reminds us when he says, “The main thing is not to be afraid.” Fear, that is, lack of trust, makes us lose our balance and our steadying eye of discernment. It is love for the One keeps us walking steadily forward, discerning which side to lean toward to stay upright, which pocket to look in.

Think of the story of Thomas in the Christian gospels, when Jesus told him he could walk on water just as he did, that he needed no special spiritual powers to walk through life on earth in this way, heart fixed on the One, never sinking into fear, drowning in a sea of possibilities. Thomas tried. He sank. Fell in. Because he did not trust.

Trust is the root of discernment.

The Writer/Self Steps Aside for the Work—Again

Lately I’ve been lost. Feeling anxious, fearful, an overwhelming sense of the uncertainty of life pulling me away from the center, as if I were spinning in some great centrifuge run amuck, the better parts of me flying off into space and the baser parts coagulating inside, gumming up the machine.

For years, as I writer, I have followed these words of the poet and novelist Edmond Jabès, “The writer steps aside for the work.” To write something beautiful and true one must put aside the ego and surrender to the world of the story. It’s not easy to do, but it’s what I strive toward as a writer.

This morning those words of Jabès came to me not as a writer as a seeker, one struggling to become truly human in this world and who has lost her way. “The writer steps aside for the work. “ To be present to the world, in but not of it, one must de-center the self. How can one see what’s really going beyond all the illusory doings if one is blinded by one’s own needs or concerns? How can one hear what the world is saying, singing, with every breath in and out, if one’s mind is chattering away about what dangers to look out for or what needs to be done? To know what needs to be done, realize what one can do in the moment, any moment, every moment, in order to be a messenger of hope or peace or grace or joy or justice to another, one needs to get out of the way, to return to an empty center of radical trust from which all things radiate in beauty, joy, and love.

Anxiety and insecurity constrict the heart, seal it up in itself, a hardened mass of scar tissue that shuts out the world.

Trust releases the heart so it can soften, open outwards toward the world, infinite in its beauty, in love.

The major turn in life announced by all mystics is that from fear to love; but the turning comes through trust.

How hard, though, to get out of one’s own way and release oneself into the surrender of trust. I may manage for a time, and then, as now, I lose that still center of trust that carries me beyond my little self to the larger world. It happens over and over again. When I lose that center I am tempted to berate myself. How can this happen, I wonder? Why can’t I hold on to the peace, the joy, the calm at every moment, in every season and situation? Am I not trying hard enough? Not advanced enough? Was I fooling myself about trusting so deeply? Often it doesn’t even take an external event to set that centrifuge in motion and get me spinning out of calm and focusing all the me-ness at the center to gum up the works and throw everything off. It just happens. Because with all my efforts I am not as constant as I would like to be.

Then I remind myself that whipping myself is part of that centrifuge run amuck. Begin again. And again. And again. There is no arriving. The Sufi master Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan often quotes his father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, to remind seekers that there is no arriving. As we move forward, Khan says, the horizon recedes and seems to grow even larger. We never arrive. We are always on the way. Always setting out toward the horizon, that larger world beyond our little selves in which our selves find their true place, their true home, their true rest. Always beginning again.

So today, once again,I must give up that moaning and self-loathing of the little, constricted, hermetically sealed self and just get on the way. Today I must travel back toward that empty center of surrender, radical trust, and begin the journey toward the horizon again.

Emptying, Emptying, and Again Emptying Our Vessels

Mystics often use the metaphor of “polishing the mirror of the heart” to point to the ongoing process of coming into deeper communion with the One. Ghazali speaks of the heart as being made of iron. It inevitably rusts unless we keep polishing away the grime and other impurities in the surrounding atmosphere that build up on it. This work is never ending. Once one has polished that iron into a brilliantly mirror that can reflect the beauty, love, and glory of the One, one still must work daily to keep that surface free from blotches, smears, and scratches, or the cloudy mists that settle on it and darken it. This is the work of the heart.  Part of this work is forgiving oneself for the spots and layers one must polish away and thanking God for the grace to see and remove them, and  giving thanks for the times when the mirror remains clear. Here is how he expresses this in On Knowing Yourself and God, or, as he called it in Persian, The Alchemy of Happiness, the summary of spiritual teachings he wrote near the end of his life.

     The heart is like a bright mirror; repugnant traits are like smoke and darkness which, when they touch it, darken it so that tomorrow one will not see the Divine Presence and it will become veiled (to one’s view).  Good traits are the light which reaches the heart and wipes away the darkness of sin.  It is for this that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)  said:  “Follow a bad deed with a good (deed) so that (the bad) may be erased.” At the resurrection, it will be the heart which comes into a desert, either bright or dark.  None will be saved except him who comes to God with a sound heart. (Qur’an 26:89)

     A person’s heart, at the beginning of creation, is like (raw) iron from which –if a person keeps it as he should—is made a shining mirror that displays the entire universe.  If not, it will all rust and become so that nothing will be reflected in it.  As God Most High said: Nay, but that which they have earned is rust upon their souls. (Qur’an 83:14) [Al-Ghazali On Knowing Yourself and God, tr. Muhammad Nur Abdus Salam, pp. 18-19]

Recently I had an experience that showed me a different image for this daily work, an image which led me to a deeper understanding of this process of cleansing or emptying the heart and the goal of this daily work. Here is the image that came to me.

This world was God’s storeroom.  Lined up on the shelves were billions of clay vessels of all sizes and shapes, each one unique.  When God needed a particular vessel, God would reach directly for it.  Only if the vessel was completely empty could it be used. If it was not completely empty, it remained on the shelf, for it could not contain what God needed it to contain; it could not be used. 

Different religious traditions emphasize different kinds of imagery for experiencing God and pruifying our hearts to serve the One in truth.  Roman Catholics often prefer visual metaphors—to see God or have a vision or the truth; “For with Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light do we see light,” as the Psalmist (36:9) sings, and Augustine and others love to chant with him or her. Protestants, picking up on the prophetic tradition of Israel, often prefer audial metaphors—to hear the call or listen for the Word of God, whether it comes in thunder or a still small voice.  Mystical traditions vary, too, with some, like Ghazali, using visual images and others audial images. Still others use sensual images—the fragrance of the spirit, the warmth of God’s love.  Individuals, too, though formed by traditions, have their preferences.

The visual and tactile image of the clay vessels that came to me helped me understand not only the process of emptying, but the goal of this emptying as well. What fills us up and makes us not useful?  Things and desires, distractions and addictions, yes.  But also anger, fear, grief, and disappointment.  And hope and expectations and longings—even the longing to serve, to be used.  These all crowd around us in out vessel, forming a barrier so we cannot feel the true shape of the clay vessel that God has shaped for us at creation.  To be present to the One, one must be wholly empty.

And how do we empty ourselves?  For many of us, it is God working through out lives who empties us, who batters our hearts until we exhale all we have been clinging to, leaving room for the presence of the One.  Some of us do what we can to aid and abet this emptying process:  We chant the name of God, Yud-He-Vav-He, the Jesus Prayer (Lord, have mercy), or Al-lah,  exhaling all that fill us up, all that is definite, the Yud, the Vav, the have mercy, the Al, and inhaling the Nothingness that is the One, the He, the Lord, the Lah.  

This was not all the image that came to me made me see.  When I saw the storeroom of clay vessels, I realized that not all the vessels that were empty were used.  They had to be ready to be used by God for whatever purpose whenever they and only they were needed, but being ready, empty, was no guarantee that they would be used, ever. Some vessels might wait 80 years to be used, some only a day.  Some might empty themselves  every day for 50 or more years, only to be full on the one day that the hand of God reached for them.  Some might empty themselves every day of their lives and never be used.  The goal was not to be used, to be of service.  That was a goal of the ego, a hope and expectation and longing that filled the vessel and made it unusable.  The goal was simply to be empty, to be usable, to be serviceable, to be ready, if and when God needed one, and to accept that this was up to God, not oneself.  If one sat empty on the shelf one’s entire life, then one sat empty on the shelf.  One does not guide her own destiny, chart his own path.  One surrenders, empty, emptied, emptying, to the One. This is our daily work and our daily spiritual nourishment.

Give us this day our daily bread—empty us. Give us this day our daily work—emptying.

We Are Anxious, We Are Afraid, We Want to Fall Back Asleep

It amazes me how many ways we find to run away from ourselves.  The temptations are endless.

What is temptation? Anything that keeps you from becoming who you are, who you were meant to be.  Anything. 

Some temptations confront us with a clear and urgent choice like the one Moshe put before the fledgling nation:  Choose you this day life or death, the difficult freedom of the way of the Teaching or the easy way of the scattered and lost. Emanuel Levinas, in his essay “The Temptation of Temptation” (Nine Talmudic Readings sets before us another like choice like this:  Place ontology, the science of being, first, or ethics, the responsibility to the Other that confronts you, first.  The temptation of temptations is to choose knowledge, for knowledge sets you at the center of the universe.  If your choose obligation, you acknowledge that you stand always already in relation to an Other than has a prior claim on you. That is the way to life.

Some temptations come with the full force of drama, complete with warning lights and sirens and axes falling.  That woman or man who promises to be a better match for us than our current partner.  That urge to hurt the person we love.   The need to push another lower to raise ourselves higher. 

But it is the countless, tiny little temptations we face every day without realizing it that worry me today.  All the distractions of “normal” life that we allow to crowd our lives and dull our attention. We want to pay attention, be present to the Presence, and what do we do?  We watch TV, we exercise harder, we call our friends, we drink wine or beer or smoke, we surf the Web, we frenetically try to keep up and stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter, we read literature meant for consumption, we clean our houses, manage our family’s lives, search out great meals and other pleasures, shop, find new hobbies to “pass the time,” consult the stars and psychics, follow the lives of the gods and demigods we call “celebrities.”  None of these is bad in itself.  But when we do them unconsciously, repeatedly, they keep us from going deeper.  It’s easy to stay on the surface.  Nothing is required of us. 

We know how alive we feel when we wake up from this stupor and are really present, even for a moment, to another person or the natural world or ourselves.  Yet we keep going back to sleep.  We keep sipping that sleeping draught so we will not be fully present. St. Paul said it well:  “The good that we would we do not; and the evil that we would not, that we do.”

Why, when we know gives us life and what numbs us, do we keep choosing what numbs us?  Why do we keep enslaving ourselves to empty habits that drain the blood from our lives?  Why do we keep running away from ourselves?  Why do we keep hiding?  Why are we so frightened of becoming who we are?  So afraid to be free?   So afraid to be found?