Breathing It All In... Blog #10

Wednesday April 17^th, 2013… Flagstaff Hill, Schenley Park…6:56 p.m…68 degrees … dusk…Last Blog…

The sun is low and deep not seeking attention instead humbly passing it to the sky.  She condescendingly glides through emptiness towards an invisible horizon. It feels like a moment where everything slides into their place.  The singing and chirping of the robins and wrens hushed; the screams of excitement from the ultimate Frisbee game whispered. The echoes of machinery muffled. All about them it is still and shadowy and sweet. It is a wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems greater: a moment when almost anything can happen or be believed in. It reminds me of something someone said to me long ago that I have never forgotten because it is right. “Never waste any amount of time doing anything important when there is a sunset outside that you should be sitting under!” And Why not? There is a sunrise and sunset every day, and they are absolutely free, so why miss any of them? Like the first pangs of love the colors blaze a grapy dusk; the sun looks like burgundy, the color of pressed grapes. Sunsets drip and smell of fruits: melon fields, and peach groves with bits of tangerine. I trust Cezanne might capture it best. As the last remnants of redness seeped from the sky the air turned cooler, staining and dyeing the evening purple. 

I sit and breathe. Breathe… In… and out… simply… breathe. Of all the things I have taken away from coming to this spot this semester, it is the acknowledgement and humble attention I have given my breath. It is my breath that will resonate longest and provide for me the most.  It is easier here, more natural, less restrained, more pronounced, fuller, deeper and rounder. The presence it provides brings me nowhere/ now here.  The moment, dangling, never to be had, only to be… It is where I find my friend myself and experience: allows me to look with eyes that can see and listen with ears that can hear. Why can I find this easier here than elsewhere? What is it that nature supplies and provides for this ease?… this BIENG?…  this sensitivity to life?

Why is nature so beautiful? Why does sitting still or a short walk amidst nature have such a calming influence on our mind? Why does the sight of sunsets, flowers, green fields, blossoming trees, singing birds, and quiet streams fill our hearts with such ineffable joy ?

It might seem obvious for some, but my intense love and need for nature is still a great mystery, one that even evolutionary biologists would be hard-pressed to explain. After all, what is the utility in admiring a sunset, or delighting at the breeze blowing tree limbs and leaves, when it serves no evolutionary purpose? I suppose I could use reason to find a semblance of an ordered idea, but there is something beyond this limited language and consciousness that nature holds. Evolution and science can explain many facts of our daily existence, yet the answer to this profound puzzle lies beyond the reaches of present day science.

How is it that nature, in my breath, is trying to teach me to see the sacred in the mundane and the profound in the prosaic? In the preface to "The Forest Unseen", David Haskell reminded me that more than two centuries ago William Blake offered up the most extraordinary of possibilities in his poem "Auguries of Innocence". “To see a world in a grain of sand. And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.”

Unfortunately, most of us don't know how to hold eternity in the palm of our hands.Maybe David Haskell can and has come as close to it as anyone, but I know I normally can't. To be honest, I feel lucky if I can just hold it together until the end of the day. I attribute that mostly to most of us having lost our minds.  And I mean that literally. Our attention is endlessly lost in the endless blur of appointments, to-do lists, responsibilities, worries, should have's, could have's, concerns and agitation that makes up our glorious and sophisticated modern lives.

There are times,though, that for just the briefest moment, we do pick up a vibration or sense that there is something more going on than this monotonous daily round of survival. But, unfortunately, those moments are too few and far between; those glimpses of clarity into the world pass only to see the waves of mundane urgency swallow us again. Tumbling through the chaos of our day-to-day repetitions, I wonder if Blake's vision of a broader, more expansive experience is nothing more than a poet's quixotic dream. Can we really see the Universe in a grain of sand, even as we slog through interminable traffic? Can we really hold infinity in our hands, even as we go shopping, drop off the mail, pay our bills, clean the dishes, do the laundry or search through Face Book?

When I sit quietly with my breath in nature, it seems to me that we can. The connection between the everyday realities we experience and boundless landscapes of cosmic beauty, inspiration and joy found in the flowers, sunsets and trees surrounding me is actually so close, so present for us all. I feel like they are there in everything we come into contact with:the dried fish food flakes stuck to the aquarium, the dust and pollen on my car, the mess on my desk and the dirty dish water in my sink.

.

What Shenley park has told me in my breath is that the key is in the noticing and that happens by  living and not necessarily answering the question hidden in Blake's poem. Can we really see the whole world in a grain of sand?

Through the lens of stillness and the breath, I can begin to recognize how even the smallest things surrounding me like a snail’s slow persistent meandering, a blooming flower, darting squirrel, regal red cardinal, broken tree branch or torn patch of grass can be a gateway to an experience of the extraordinary, if only we can practice noticing.

We walk and look past a thousand natural miracles every day, from the purple sun's descent in the sky to the arc of birds seen chasing each other in joyous flight. Those miracles are there waiting for us to see them, to notice them and, most importantly, to find our delight in them.

For anyone looking for a little transcendence, I recommend that they go on up to Flagstaff Hill and breathe.

Blog #9 A Little Sadness Goes a Long Way

Flagstaff Hill, Schenley Park…Sunday, April 7, 2013 11:12 a.m...

This is the first day since we began these blogs twelve weeks ago that I come to this place of my own volition.  Each time I have been here previously, it was out of necessity, to fulfill a requirement. I have taken it seriously and have been the better for it. On each occasion, I have been granted a small dispensation of grace and well-being, and if for nothing else, I am thankful for the excursions and musings done here.

Today has been different. Today, I went for another reason. I went for me. I went because I wanted to and it wasn’t because of the weather. Schenley was warm today and enveloped me in an accepting kindness. Her reception was soft and gentle and abounding in hospitality. The abundance of generosity and wisdom in nature never disappoints. She is always there waiting to attend because she somehow knows before you do why you are there. The root systems within her flow down deep within the earth and extend its tentacles far and wide to pick up on the languageless vibrations that reverberate through the air and fall back to the ground.  Our feelings transmit directly to her before we are able to articulate and recognize what they are for ourselves. Without knowing it, I have cast out my sad nets and red signals to her waiting to be retrieved. I have heard the blaze of her invitation today and so I aimed my road towards her hope.

I had a vivid dream last night. In it I was drunk. It wasn’t a good or bad dream; I was just very drunk. No one was injured. It was just a couple of friends and I drinking. I woke up. I haven’t had a drink in for a while now, and I was curious as to the significance of this dream. Why now? Does it mean something deeper? I sat in bed and felt an undefinable emptiness. I felt weak and heavy, lifeless and prosaic, torpid and apathetic, somnolent and ache. I felt sadness. Cunning that little disease alcoholism is. I was experiencing an emotional pang and longing for something not in my grasp like a building love wanting to be sent out but not ready to be received remaining like an endless necklace wrapped around my heart. I hadn’t lost anything and wasn’t grieving but the feeling was certain. It must have been clandestinely accruing while I have been inundated with constant work and fatherhood. Feelings like this used to be triggers for wanting to drink in order to drown out the sadness and to not have to confront what it was, where it came from, how it felt, or what to do to assuage its demands. Not anymore. I get up and follow my morning routine to confront and disinter the causes.

 First, I kneel and give thanks and gratitude for the beautiful things in my life: my daughter, my daughter, my daughter, my daughter, my wonderful supportive and loving family, my best friends living in North Carolina, my home, myself, music, art, creativity, ideas, books, forgiveness, second chances, redemption, my recovery and the moment. I give dignity to my material poverty by naming the things that I have, that I need and remembering that I need nothing more, and although I may be monetarily poor, I am spiritually full and as rich as I could possibly be at this moment. After this ritual, I meditate, take a quick dive and swim around my nameless interior to check in and make friends with myself. This is my spiritual tool kit. But alas, I am still sad. The feeling persists like a solitary bell burning with echoes.

I have learned and trained in the art of letting go through searching for and acknowledging the derivations. I have made a call to nature today. Schenley Park offered her open womb for this ancient cleansing of letting go. I brought my sadness to her. I may be quiet and lethargic today, but I will not withdraw form life. Anchored and laying in the cool olive grass, staring up at the sky, I understand the unified cohesion of earth and sky. There is no separation save for our own imposed and illusory boundaries. I am reminded of the advice to always stay rooted to the ground, to stay down and not get too high with elation or excitement; to always stay grounded because it is the ground that will bring you up to the sky. I get it. 

Sadness is one of the most natural states of life and yet so many of us do not know how to cope with it. We as a society no longer allow people to cope with sadness in a salubrious and natural way. We are either taught to ignore it, hide it or suppress it when it expresses itself. Some families don’t allow their children to bear any semblance of it because they dash in to relieve it without allowing the child to experience and cope with sadness. Later on, when that “screened-off” emotion isn’t available to them when they need it, the loss of sadness will result in manic and unbalanced behavior. Sadness requires a great strength to bear and if we are constantly protected from it we will not develop the requisite endurance to cope with these essential, natural and unavoidable feelings. People will run out of ways to avoid the experience of sadness resulting in all forms of self-destructive acts. We have become a medicated pharmaceutical society. If sadness cannot be confronted organically we can bypass the whole notion of grief and wish it away through chemical drugs administered by Pfizer and the like. When an infant, child, or adult shows that he can cry from sadness you can infer that they have traveled a long way in the development of their feelings...like the wind blowing and whistling above me, sad crying is one of the main roots of the more valuable kind of music.

The park has bestowed a kind of solitude where I am not alone. Nature offers a place where I can be patient and attentive to my sadness while knowing something more than myself is also there to listen to it. There is a utility in staying with the sadness; this ground, this earth and sky, the sensuous warmth of the spring wind offers emotional support helping me to feel and endure this sadness. Lying on this ground, I receive from the earth, an underlying belief that the capacity to bear sadness wholeheartedly, without pushing the experience away, emerges as essential to being truly alive and engaged in the world. 

 

I have been coming here for a few months contemplating the ineffable powers, mysteries, and beauty of nature; wondered what our connections to it are, how we need it, take from it, destroy it, create it, are it, live with and without it. I haven’t found any answers that can be categorized or memorialized in writing; but today, coming to her humbly and vulnerably, not looking for anything, I finally may have touched upon a semblance of an answer.