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I write to capture the essence of a fleeting visitor. I am attempting to paint the lines of a face I want to know. Since it is gracing me with its presence, I dutifully reach out to trace the chisel of its jawline and observe how light softly bounces off its cheek. I reach out and touch it, holding it for however briefly or long it visits, and examine them like fireflies in a jar. Everything I write about is a moment, a wise companion, a guest, walking through my door and invited inside. Rumi said, "this being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival," and urges one to welcome and invite them in— anger, despair, hopelessness, joy—entertain them all! My notebooks hold evidence of an examined life and its many guests.
Japanese writer Haruki Murakami says, "I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning." I take this to mean I have a job daily: to know the contents of my life, no matter how bizarre or offensive, to become a vessel and home familiar with everything and afraid of nothing. I want to live something other than a peripheral life. I want to catch every visitor's dynamism and distill the quality from it, which holds meaning and weight.
I read somewhere about a woman explaining how she learned to pray when she was a little girl. I'm paraphrasing because I can't recall the source, but she said it wasn't from the lines of scripture recited but from the feelings coming off her mother as she prayed beside her. She could taste the depth of her mother's well, the wealth and richness of an inner life made meaningful and holy, rising off her body and into the room as an enchanting ambrosial bloom around her. This bloom created a bridge transporting the little girl into the quiet wordless place of her mother's relationship with Life (God). When we pause to recognize and commune with the guests moving through us, our bodies begin to house a hypnotic medicine that infuses us and then perfumes off us onto others. It doesn't come from reciting or memorizing spiritual texts but from the number of guests we have metabolized, gleaning its wisdom and meaning. When I share what goes on, it is a glimpse, a snapshot of a conversation I've had with a guest moving through the room of my life. It is not the whole picture but one intimate rendering of the face. What wafts up from these words into you is a transmission of that personal exchange that (I hope) will become medicine somehow in your heart.
My chronic hip pain is just the pain of wear, but what visitor accompanies that pain? The fear of my mortality, disease, my unwillingness to die. My resistance to reality and my fear of discomfort. My motherly worry and wanting to protect and preserve my child's innocence are normal mother feelings, but what guest accompanies that worry? My distrust in the world and the process of life. My inability to let go and my need for control. The mounting stress we all carry is a human condition, but what visitor lives in that stress? Fear of failure, scarcity, and lack. Distance from the heart, faith, trust. The guests hide in plain daylight. They are often inside the things we dismiss and the symptoms of everyday life. They invite us to see the myriad ways we are in opposition, and if held, if spoken with, the potential of another way to be in our lives. A trusting way, an open, available and honest way.
Our visitors pass by primarily unnoticed, like ghosts, so instead of ignoring them, I have spent my life trying to see them, putting them in a jar, and waiting until they spark a light in the pot. The light is what I share here. The encounter goes something like this: a visitor comes like a flash from the corner of the eye, and it sends a message to the body, which often points to a sore place where we are holding something untrue (stress), a long-held doubt or distrust in yourself and about life. If invited by our attention and practice, it pierces the heart and ruptures the thin membrane of the protected and protracted parts of ourselves. If listened to, it makes us grow mad with its stories of wounding, pushing with both hands on the places adhering to these stories, and then, under our persistent and unconditional attention, it begins to drain. If this guest were to appear again tomorrow, and you would act kindly toward it, you have succeeded. It exhausts itself before our eyes, and the wound flies out through a crack in the ceiling. Slowly our lives become a continually expounding painting containing the myriad of colours and dimensions we most long to see smeared across our walls—the colours of a meaningful life.
I was speaking to a friend the other day, and I sensed she was pitying (unintentionally) how I had to go through life. She was exasperated and exhausted by my proclivity to dive deep into everything, and she said, "maybe this year you should try to float on the surface of life. Just don't look at anything too closely. Stay in the superficial." I heard it as a judgment, a condemnation of self-intimacy. I suppose this could be an argument for an enlightened way of being, maybe we could just let everything pass by, but I see her goading as a sort of death to my spirit. A depraved way to live. A mediocre way to be inside this immense and breathtaking world, peppering our path with the blessed company, bearing gifts.
