In the subway, you may witness a perfect sight of this. Several times a week, beggars walk down the aisles asking for a helping hand (sure they want money - but what they really want is help and support) - the beggars are sometimes missing arms, legs, functional eyes. One day, a man with severe vasculitis or some similar inflammation was broadcasting for all who happened to care the sad news that he would not live another month. Few cared (at least outwardly). If I remember correctly, I was one of maybe two in the car who gave him money - who even looked at him sympathetically. The way I look at it is: whoever a person is, whatever sort of life they've had, whatever regrets they may have, however much they may disgust us, EVERY HUMAN BEING deserves to die gracefully. AT THE VERY FUCKING LEAST, THEY DESERVE TO DIE WITH DIGNITY. No one deserves to die in the gutter, alone. Sometimes, when I look around at the accepted, nay cherished, obliviousness of my generation and of the current American cultural norm - I wonder if I'm not the only one who gives heed to such thoughts of compassion. I know I mustn't be THE ONLY ONE. But I do wonder.
[to be continued...]
Adam, I absolutely love your reflection. There is a tremendous split in our collective being, and for me in my own being. A sort of great separation from the fragmented, painful, disjointed possibilities of our own existance; a mutual conditioning of turning away, withdrawing from, looking through anyone who makes us feel unsafe or uncomfortable, challenges us to touch into our own intolerable places; the poor, desolate, the misfit, broken and the lame- a sort of fear and trembling in the face of suffering- an unwillingness to hold it all, to touch it even with our eyes as if for fear of contagion by the stark reality of awakenning to the fundamental qualities of the human condition disease, loss and death. Despite our most nobel longings, many of us dont seem to be able to handle the dirty, empty, abandoned, vulnerable mad faces of the divine among and within us. And this impulse to split, to turn away is so strong even in me, despite my inner struggle, my dedication to tolerating the intoletable, despite my equally present impulse of compassion, of connection, of awakenning that having followed it time and time again, i live with an equal volume of guilt and numbness in the parts of my heart that hurt the most. I think fundamentally i turn away because i get overwhelmed. And lost as to what to do with all the suffering. So i have learned to cut off my wave of compassion because i want to resist the pain. So i have no answers, I am just holding your words deeply at this moment of my life and am actually touching into precisely this territory in my own personal process.
ReplyDeleteI actually just started a healing program called Integrated Kabbalistic healing with a wonderful teacher Jason Shulman, who is kinda an enligtened version of you. And i already love him deeply and am transformed by his work which seems to be largely founded on living with the questions such as you are asking. He says something i have been intuiting for a long time and now hope to live into.
"There is only one safety: the container that is large enough to include existential suffering and ambiguity. The bigger the container, the more qualities of life it holds, the safer we feel."
I pray that our container keeps growing that we grow to hold life, ourselves and each other exactly as we are in all of our faces, learning to follow the strongest impulse of the heart. You are not the only one. for sure. And thank you again for sharing. i love you. V