Am currently buried in an astonishing, Pulitzer-winning book Barbara Kingsolver rightfully described as “Monumental – a gigantic fable of genuine truths.” The book tells the story of nine very different people who converge at story’s end, courtesy their unique discovery of human life as part of – rather than central to – the natural world.
The book’s central thesis could be summed up in a single quote found deep within its pages: “People aren’t the apex species they thing they are. Other creatures – bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful – call the shots, make the air, eat the sunlight. Without them, nothing.”
And while trees are the subject around which these disparate lives intersect, it just as easily could have been any other aspect of existence our giant egos take for granted and/or otherwise overlook.
The book has served to reinforce my growing conviction that we humans exist on a kind of spectrum of consciousness. At one end of the spectrum are the profoundly unconscious (Hitler makes for a convenient example), and at the other is Jesus of Nazareth (he of ‘Christ Consciousness’). You and I and everyone we know exist somewhere in the middle.
Robert Adams said that a key turning point in our progress is when we at last turn inward and begin the process of unlearning all that we’ve been taught, foremost among those lessons that there is a ‘me’ that is separate and apart from a universe of external objects.
This is no small or easy task, particularly for us older dogs. But if we do make the turn, something fascinating and at times deeply disturbing begins to unfold. Evidence can be subtle and results never what one expects, but evidence there is.
For starters, much of the outside world gradually loses its grip on us. It becomes increasingly difficult to care about world affairs because the actors are seen for what they are.
Similarly, the truth becomes the strongest of intoxicants, not out of some mind-made moral compass but because there is absolutely no interest in living any kind of lie – to arrive at The Truth first requires the truth. The ugliest or most inconvenient truths not only are allowed to surface, they’re encouraged to.
And that’s some scary stuff.
What’s been noticed here, over these past several months, is fear. Lots and lots of it, arising out of nowhere, and nothing I can point my finger to or ‘deal with.’ One moment all is fine, the next comes a rapid upwelling of all-consuming fear – at times, absolute dread.
What’s especially curious about all this fear is that ‘my life’ has never been better. I’m in the best relationship I know with a woman I’m mad about, my kids are big-hearted young adults, and I more or less work at what I want. Yet fear abounds.
The theory? That after a lifetime of playing whack-a-mole with an assortment of fears – some of the usual human persuasion, others uniquely programmed into this me thing – I’m no longer interesting in slapping them back below the surface. Come out, come out, wherever you are!
I was especially intrigued by the experiences of one of the book’s characters, a college-aged narcissist obsessed with her voluptuous sexuality (and the sex that came with it), the use of mind-altering drugs, etc. She suffers a near-death experience and, once resurrected, cannot help seeing the acute fear that powers the lives of her seemingly happy, privileged classmates.
Amen to that.
So yeah, fear has been welcomed into this life. I’m not trying to stop it, understand it, thwart it, or transmute it into something good or empowering or meaningful. It’s just fear and it’s being allowed to be. Where will it take me? No idea.
But I think maybe that’s the idea. To get over ourselves, to unlock and open all the doors and windows within and let in the light. No more judging (ourselves or others), but also no more laying claim to our pain or conquests as badges of shame or honor.
The goal now is to empty oneself and perhaps in so doing allow the so-called inner guru – the only guru any of us actually need – to rise up and take the reins.
Again, scary stuff.
