And then I went home.

I love my family, my work, and so much about my life.  I am so lucky and I know it.  But as re-entries go, the instant I walked in the door on Sunday afternoon, I was immediately catapulted back into the “normal” world.   Tasks, responsibilities, groceries, broken cell phones, dishes… all the usual stuff that is modern life, hit me like a major league pitch to the head.  And with that too came the always present (blessed) need for my attention, from everyone.  I needed to be caught up on what I had missed while away.  The overpowering truth that I had lived over the past three days, on the other hand, was unsharable, at least in language.  And certainly I could not expect those who had not experienced it to “get” it in any real way or, for that matter, be particularly interested in it.  Life at home, regular as it is, needed my attention—now.  In an instant, I had left the place for bathing in the ineffable profundity and meaning of existence, stoking awe for this human experience, and steeping in gratitude for getting to be alive.  Back in everyday life, it was no longer about the meaning of life, it was about the doing of that life.

It was a painful re-entry, not because I wasn’t thrilled to be with those I love, but because it felt like a loss, like in order to re-enter life, I had to give up my beautiful connection with the Divine, as if I had to come back up and swim at the surface when I had been down deep in the beauty of the timeless.

The experience got me thinking a lot about whether it’s indeed possible to feel awe and gratitude for being alive—all the time?  Can we stay connected to the profound when living the mundane?  Can we hold onto the sacred in the midst of the regular, stressful world of living—stay tethered to what really matters when doing what needs to be done?

It turns out that there’s good news and bad news.  The bad news first: it is not possible (unless perhaps you’re enlightened and I’m not so I can’t vouch for it) to feel wonder and awe all the time.  While self-help gurus tell us that we should be in a continual state of astonishment that we can walk, or bliss because we can experience the color blue, in truth, if we have always walked and always seen blue, it isn’t always possible to see these experiences as mind-blowing or particularly fabulous.  There is nothing wrong with you if the activities of normal life do not evoke a sense of great reverence.  Sometimes, after someone has died or we have lived through a trauma of some kind, we, for a time, crack through the window of the sacred.  We get what it means to be alive, and to have this gift of incarnation.  And then, usually, that sense of awe at being alive closes and we return to the everyday with perhaps just a slight scent of the sacred left behind.  The truth is, we have only ever known ourselves to be alive, and so the fact that we are alive doesn’t always feel like the incredible coup it’s supposed to feel like.  And really, how could it?

The good news: we need contrast to feel what we feel.  We need to live without a sense of the unbelievable-ness of life so that when it does appear, we can really experience it.  If it were here all the time, we wouldn’t recognize it as something remarkable.  More good news: gratitude does show up when we stop demanding that it appear; grace does present itself when we stop expecting it to be present all the time.

While our connection with the sacred is not something that must be or can be be front and center all the time, and not something that we can control, nonetheless, there are certain things that we can do to encourage it to appear—to invite awe into our everyday life.  And, since most of us want to feel a sense of wonder at being alive and gratitude for the opportunity to have experiences at all, to “get” to live, it is worth laying the internal groundwork from which awe can grow.

In order to feel gratitude, we need, first and foremost, to be in our life, that is, to be present now.  The surest way to feel gratitude is to pay attention to how we are and where we are at this moment, so that when gratitude does appear, we are here to notice and feel it.  While some experiences contain a beauty that can render irrelevant any tangle of thoughts in which we are lost, for the most part, noticing grace when it arises relies on our being awake and aware to what we are living inside and out.

As we cultivate our own presence, we can also, consciously, move our attention and point of reference from the contents of our life, the thoughts feelings and sensations that are appearing, to the presence that notices the contents.  That is, we can make it a practice to not just focus on what is happening in the relative world, the dishes we are washing, as the determinate of wonder, but rather on who or what is aware that it is all happening, who or what is inside the lens we call awareness. This slight but enormous paradigm shift, from what is perceived to what is perceiving, can instantly put us in touch with a sense of the miraculous.

It is also worth reminding ourselves that all experiences appear and disappear without exception.  While it is human nature to grasp onto those experiences we enjoy, like awe and gratitude, to try and make them stay, these too are subject to unending change.  Imagining that awe could or should be permanent is like imagining that we ourselves could be permanent.  And to remember, as a final paradox, that it is precisely in its impermanence that its grace exists.  One without the other could not be.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

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This is not a blog on trauma, however. Rather, it is about our expectation of what we are supposed to do with the people who make us feel toxic. Many people believe that in order to be “spiritual” they need to:

Be able to open their heart to the people who have done them harm.
No longer experience a negative reaction in their company.
I am often asked, “What is wrong with me that I can’t feel open, loving and calm in this person’s presence?” “Isn’t being spiritual about being able to love the person who hurt me?” “Isn’t forgiveness the essence of spirituality?”

Firstly, the body’s reaction to someone who has harmed you is simply that: the body’s reaction, something that happens. You don’t choose it. It is not an indicator of your spiritual maturity, nor a gauge of your growth in life or in relationship to the trauma. In many cases, no amount of psychological or spiritual work will change your body’s chemical response to the person who inflicted harm; it is hard-wired into your biology, an aspect of survival. That said, the first thing to take off your plate is the idea that you “should” be able to feel good in their company. Any notion that a negative physical response makes you un-spiritual or un-evolved is, quite simply, hogwash.

Secondly, being able to “open your heart” to someone who has caused you tremendous pain is also not a test of your spirituality. Many people deliberately put themselves in company with family and “friends” who are profoundly painful for them to be with — in an effort to develop forgiveness or compassion — and because they feel they “should.” And yet, if your heart is not open, and the desire to be with this other is not emanating from a place of true compassion, it does you no spiritual good to do what you “should.” Pushing harder does not create more compassion. Like getting through a grueling spin class, there is a sense of accomplishment,
of being able to stay in the room without collapsing or fleeing, but this is not the same thing as spiritual growth.

The choice to exclude a person or experience from your life can be the more compassionate choice — for yourself. And indeed, when your heart opens to your own suffering, and your own well-being, that compassion for yourself can open wide enough to include even the one who caused you suffering. But this is something that your heart will tell you — not something that your mind can decide or force.

Spirituality is not a test. Being spiritual is about being with what is. If you feel toxic when in the company of someone who has hurt you, then you earn no spiritual points by forcing yourself to be there, and enduring that toxicity. We behave with spirit when we accept our experience the way it is. Deciding to not be with someone who makes you feel terrible, even if that person is your family or “friend,” is an act of courage — honoring yourself and the truth.

Trust your heart; if it is ready to embrace someone who has harmed you, it will open, without force. Indeed, by giving yourself permission to say “no,” to follow your truth, you are offering yourself the only real chance you have to genuinely want to be with them, at some time. Without permission to say “no,” we cannot find the authentic desire to say “yes.” And if that desire never comes, that too is as spiritual a path as any other.

Spirituality is not about becoming the person that you are supposed to be — not about doing the “spiritual” thing. To be spiritual is to compassionately welcome your truth — what you actually feel — whether you like that truth or not. To be spiritual is to stop trying to be a more spiritual and open-hearted version of yourself, and instead, to open your heart without judgment to who and how you actually are. Perhaps the hardest task of all, being spiritual is about letting yourself — and what is so — be.

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The rituals that this rabbi and countless religious and spiritual leaders offer each week in their in-house services are important not only because of the content of the messages they deliver, but because of their power to make us feel connected to the profundity of the human experience, and something more vast than just our ever-changing personal experience. They provide a narrative for our lives, mark the stages and passages of a life, place us in a larger human context, and address the infinite shared aspects of this mortal journey. Services provide bones for the body of life. These rituals point us to the big picture and remind us that our personal story is part of a larger story: humanity… existence. We come to understand that we are living something profoundly real — life — and that it is deserving of our most serious attention.

Given the fact that we as a society, and particularly our younger generations, are spending far less time engaged in brick and mortar religious and spiritual services and far more time engaged in social media, I am wondering how this shift in our habits will impact us. What I see in my psychotherapy practice is that people feel increasingly disconnected from a sense of context, meaning and the larger human narrative. They speak of being un-tethered, and not knowing what their life is supposed to be about or when it is going to begin. The teen years disappear into the 20s and then the 30s and 40s and onward, all while they wait to feel connected to some purpose, permanence — something bigger and more lasting than their momentary dramas. There is a growing sense of ungrounded or placeless-ness in people’s experience, as if the larger narrative within which their lives could be understood and once made sense is slipping away. We are floating in a world that is changing by the nanosecond, but at the same time, has no ground.

Social media is about immediacy. Before you can finish a thought, there is a new one to replace it. We are living in a Disneyworld for the monkey mind, celebrating every opinion, like, dislike, emotion, and sensation that passes through our awareness. “I am drinking a latte.” “I like this movie.” “I hated this steak.” “I disagree with this decision.” The thoughts stream by unceasingly, beckoning seductively as their 140 characters evaporate into the ether.

Tweets, Facebook musings, and even blogs (this one included) find form for a split second and then splinter into the vacuum that is social media. The speed, impermanence and shallowness of the conversation causes us to feel disconnected and disintegrated. Instant and irrelevant. The opposite of brick and mortar services, social media leaves us feeling ungrounded and without a larger context in which to place our human story. In this immediately-consumed and discarded culture, there is no longer any weight to be found and only banter to anchor us. Our own journey, indeed our own being, feels as transitory and meaningless as the latest tweet.

It is important to come together, shoulder to shoulder, to contemplate life — to consider where we fit into the larger human story, and what meaning our collective and individual journeys hold. It is important that we give weight to this thing called existence. This contemplative process not only keeps us feeling well, but also helps us develop and evolve as people. We mature through the examination of our place and purpose on earth. We develop wisdom and substance. By acknowledging and addressing our shared experience as human beings, we grow more connected to others, the world and ourselves. We deepen personally and collectively as we honor that which is not whimsical and ephemeral.

My hope is that as we disappear farther into the world of social media, we do not forget these rituals that create a structure and narrative for our human story. I hope too, that in our love affair with the instantaneous, we do not lose touch with the disciplines that allow us to feel the roots beneath our feet and all that has come before us, and will come after our personal “I”s and momentary musings have disappeared from the twitter-feed. We cannot maintain a sense of meaning or wholeness in an entirely pixelated world. We become pixels ourselves — without a sense of where we are or even if we are. It is crucial that we stay grounded in some kind of permanence, not a personal permanence, but the permanence of the human journey. Ultimately, in order to stay anchored, we need more than just hashtags.

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