It’s a funny thing to write these newsletters. Sometimes I am quite clear from the outset about what I’d like to write, other times I think I am, and I start writing and then it just takes on a life of its own, and goes its own way. This one is of the latter kind. So here it goes.
There is rarely a person who does not wish to live a life of inner peace, feel held by a peaceful community and live within a peaceful world. Peace is safety, it is ease, it is well-being, it is flourishing. ‘Peace Is Every Step’ is the title of a beloved book by the well-known Buddhist monk, peace activist and prolific author Thich Nhat Hanh. It’s been on my bookshelf for 30 years, stains and dog-eared pages reflecting the many times I picked it up, reading and re-reading it for understanding, for inspiration and for love. He writes: ‘Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it.’ In my daily life, I translate these words into a question, something like: Is peace present in this moment? If not, what’s caused the disturbance. And what might be the path back to a peaceful mind and heart? Perhaps, though, someone like author Isaac Asimov (long deceased) might challenge me on the importance of inner peace. In much of his writing, he raises the danger of complacency and what it can lead to (the fall of empires, no less). It’s helpful, I think, to hear different voices on something we hold dear, to let another view be part of one’s contemplations. This, I imagine, would also meet with Asimov’s approval who saw intellectual laziness and one of the contributing factors to aforementioned complacency.
Do all babies come into this world with a simple peace imbuing their little being, a peace only disturbed by hunger for nourishment and love and comfort, I don’t know. But not long into life’s journey, few of us escape life’s injuries, that imprint and are stored in the mind and body through the complex ways that trauma, the body and memory are knitted together. Life wounds people. In the late 19th century, William James, a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher, described the enduring impact of traumatic experiences on the human psyche as “thorns in the spirit”, a thorn that niggles and stings, gets inflamed over time and ends up impacting our every movement.
But unlike the pain created by a thorn that is hard to forget, the impacts of traumatic wounds often move so deeply into the very fabric of our being that they live beyond conscious awareness. And can only be known by the disturbances and conflicts they create in our lives. Like by the worrisome thoughts circulate in our minds. By a pervading sadness, an inflamed anger or a ceaseless anxiety. By too much conflict with others. By a deep, deep longing, for an aliveness, a joy, a freedom.
In the book ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’ author Haruki Murakami writes: ‘…. certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.’ These words describe well what happens with unhealed trauma. So, the most important thing to say is that we can, it is possible, there are ways to heal the trauma-injured parts in us sufficiently to live a life of sustained inner peace. But the path to restoring wholeness is not through going into battle with ourselves, to try to beat the unwanted parts into submission. If we do that, we likely frighten ourselves further into silence and exile even more that which longs for kindness and love.
Poet and theologian Padraig O’Tuama writes:
‘Tis the gift to be gentle
with yourself at the end
of a day when you’ve given
of a day when you’re spent.’
(Readings from the Book of Exile)
The Buddha’s wise counsel, unflinching in its commitment to cultivating freedom of the mind and heart, reminds time and again that life is a continuous flow of interconnected energies, or is it one energy made up of lots of interconnected phenomena? Either way, the ‘thorn’ can get in the way of this flow and tie us into pain and inner upheaval. The Buddha’s earliest recorded words, passed on through the ages, offer what is the repeated message throughout his 45-year career as a teacher:
Let what was in the past fade away,
Make nothing of the future.
If you don’t cling to what is in the present,
You can wander about calm.
The Atthakavagga, translation G. Fronsdal
These words don’t represent mere instructions (as if it were so easy) but an invitation. Something to engage with, to live into, cheered on by the possibilities of a peaceful and contented life. Each line represents a process that requires patience, commitment, and steadfastness. It also, in my experience, takes guidance and encouragement, like that of a teacher or therapist and supportive friendships (at least one), to have a sense that someone’s got your back, no matter what. The process of healing traumatic wounds also shows us something about the courage we are capable of, the resilience. We grow with the journey.
Cybernetician (what a great jobtitle) Heinz von Foerster said: ‘I shall act always so as to increase the total number of choices’. In my experience, that is one of the gifts of the healing journey, that we grow our choices so that we navigate life in a deeply authentic way.
The last words belong to the beloved Michael Leunig who died shortly before Christmas. His poetry and cartoons have made me laugh and cry and think and rejoice and feel tender and feel real and I am ever so grateful for what he generously and bravely gave to this world. He wrote this reassuring poem:
How to Get There
Go to the end of the path until you get to the gate.
Go through the gate and head straight out towards the horizon.
Keep going towards the horizon.
Sit down and have a rest every now and again,
But keep on going, just keep on with it.
Keep on going as far as you can.
That’s how you get there.
Warmly
Sabina
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