natalie and something more

here’s what i posted near the end of my notes on the natalie goldberg workshop: “i had assumed my reasons for traveling to charleston were natalie goldberg, writing and rest. it turns out it was for something more. it’s never about what we think it’s about.”

i also posted the other day that i had had a spiritual experience while running while i was in charleston and promised to say more.

here’s my best attempt at describing those experiences, although they are the kinds of things that tend to disappear or evaporate when you try to pin them down.

* ** *

when i read natalie goldberg’s old friend from far away, these passages resonated most with me:

this is the funny thing about writing memoir: we go back to retrieve our lives, to make sense of them. often it is painful: to realize our mistakes, the wrong turns we made. but something else also happens. we come into closer relation with ourselves and have compassion for our bungling. …

show me the person who hasn’t goofed. let’s be honest, who hasn’t lied, betrayed, disappointed? it is part of human life. …

hold this thought: “i came to love my life.” now discover its truth. it may take awhile but you can do it.

in reading her advice about writing, i picked up on the bits i most need to learn. i am more than hard on myself. i am unforgiving. i am ruthless. this is an improvement over how i used to be. i never even used to crave anything different. i’m trying now, at least. it’s cliche to say it, but i’ve learned a lot about myself in the last few years. most of it has come the hard way, with some really difficult lessons. but i’m stubborn. maybe it’s the only way the universe has been able to get my attention.

with the help of therapy, poetry and some insightful friends, i’m working on learning more gently, on figuring out that many of the liabilities i can name (intensity, sensitivity, candor, obsession, impulse, for example) are also assets, on allowing thoughts and feelings to be what they are, without asking them to change. of course, i fail all the time. many of you have emails from me in which i lament my lack of gratitude for one thing or another or attack myself for whatever (perceived) atrocity i may have committed that day. but being more open to the possibility of self-acceptance and longing for the ability to be kind to myself is important progress. i acknowledge that a whole world exists apart from the one in which i am the villain.

when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. meditating at “grace church” on wentworth street with dozens of people, i hear natalie goldberg break the silence with this: “the love you want is nowhere else.”

i usually cry to release something. i cried in that moment because i was beginning to fill up with something.

* ** *

a couple days later, i am running on east bay street near its intersection with broad street. the sidewalk is lumpy, and it requires all of my attention to avoid tripping or twisting an ankle. suddenly, i have the sensation that my chest holds inside it the entire world, past and present, known and unknown. in a split second, i see behind my breastbone dozens of tiny versions of myself in the midst of the bad things that have happened in my life, and i see that they are floating around freely with other images of me unencumbered, joyful and engaged. all of it exists at once, the good and the bad, and i understand for a moment that it’s exactly as it should be. that it’s OK for everything to be just as it has been, just as it is. i recognize that the points of tragedy do not define the plot (although we sometimes tell our life stories that way, kind of like elderly people list all of their ailments in answer to the question, “how are you?”). the quest has nothing to do with sadness and difficulty. i am hit with it in less time than it takes for me to release the air from my lungs.

* ** *

i realize it may all sound a little hokey. i warned you that these things are slippery. our ability to convey such things is limited, as it should be, perhaps.

it would be a mistake if i put pressure on myself for these things to be permanent or lasting or to expect them to be the pieces of wisdom that launch me into a new way of life. in fact, even before i left charleston, i spent time in a dark place, indulged in some moments of self-hatred. it took the kindness and patience of a friend to help me see room for compassion for myself.

the point for me is to have experienced these things as meaningful in the moment in which they occurred, to be able to peer into the memories of them now and then with reverence, with thanks, looking to them as a source of hope, not in wanting to go back but in knowing that i’ll get new glimpses.

natalie reminds us during the workshop that the unconscious mind talks louder when we pay attention to it (just like the internal critic grows in proportion to the energy we give it).