“Autobiography in Five Short Chapters” by Portia Nelson.
Portia Nelson was an American popular singer, songwriter, actress, and author.
Chapter I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.
Chapter II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place
but, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter V
I walk down another street.
Sermon
Spiritual teacher, author, and
psychologist Ram Dass wrote about the process of spiritual growth,
enlightenment, and gaining wisdom. He said: “I realized that people arrive at
spiritual understanding through a much wider spectrum of experience than I ever
anticipated. Part of the process of
awakening is recognizing that the realities we thought were absolute are only
relative. All you have to do is shift
from one reality to another once, and your attachment to what you thought was
real [or important] starts to collapse.
Once the seed of awakening sprouts in you, there’s no choice—there’s
[really] no turning back. Actually, we
all know that reality is relative, we have known it since childhood: ‘row, row,
row your boat, gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.’ Life is a dream.”
When
Aaron, my eldest son, was born, I learned very powerfully, what Ram is talking about. My reality shifted and my attachment to what
I thought was real and important started to collapse, replaced with a seed of
awakening—and after that there was no turning back--how I saw myself and how I
chose to act in the world changed. A new
inner filter, not an obstruction, but a new way of considering the world and my
place in it snapped into place. I began
to see myself through the eyes of my son.
What I thought, who I was and wanted to be, how my behavior would impact
him and his life. I had always tried to
be aware of how my behavior impacts others, but when my son was born, the
practice took on more meaning, more depth.
Questions
arose within my unsolicited, like “How would my son be affected if I used my
aggression or male power to get what I want?”
How would my son be affected if I didn’t treat my wife with respect and
worth?” “How would my son be affected by
my not doing the chores that needed to be done around the house?” “How would my son be affected by my absence
from his life or my not being engaged with him in his activities?”
I recalled
asking some of these same questions of myself when Martha and I were
married. This does not mean I am perfect
in considering all my actions through this inner filter of how my personal choices
affect others. I think I had already developed some bad habits while living
with Martha in a commune before we were married. I mean except for her we were all guys and we
were not as good as we could be in cleaning up the kitchen. Usually her tolerance for kitchen messes was
much lower than ours, and we kind of all knew that if we waited long enough,
she’d lose her patience and just get it done.
And there was also a noisy roach problem in the kitchen which didn’t
help much either.
It seems to me that these powerful
life changes offered me the opportunity to look deeper within and to consider
my actions through the filter of new insight. Births, Marriages, Deaths, moves,
especially to different parts of the country or away from family, friends or
support systems offer us new ways of looking at our lives. When a major life change happens we often ask
ourselves questions about how to live our lives, or how we might have to live
our lives differently.
Many times these life changes,
these opportunities, bring powerful emotional reactions—grief in
particular. I remember thinking about
what I would not be able to do after I got married and after I had children. My life would become more restricted; my
choices would be limited. What if I wanted to just get in my car by myself on a
beautiful weekend and drive to see the largest ball of string in the world; I
couldn’t go without considering how it would impact my wife or my son. I just could not do whatever I wanted after
making such a commitment.
This is not to say that I am sad about the commitments I
made. I have been enriched by them. Almost every year that Martha and I has been
married our relationship has become more wonderful and grown deeper than the
year before. Well except for the two
years from hell, otherwise known as Seminary, we hit some real roadblocks on
how to be in a relationship, nurture our relationship, and raise two
children. As Nietzsche said, “That which
does not kill us, makes us stronger.”
Learning from life changes can take time and effort and well new insight
in order to move forward and go deeper within oneself and between oneself and
others.
I make it sound like life changes
are like stepping into a hole in the street over and over again. I resonated
with Nelson’s “Autobiography in Five Chapters” not because she stepped in the
hole again and again, although goodness knows I’ve don’t plenty of that, but
because she kept moving, kept learning, and gaining new insight, even if it was
seemingly incremental insight, not all insights arrive as “eureka”
moments. Sometimes insights sneak up on
you after repeating the same mistake in different ways over and over and over
again. And my friends, life will offer
you opportunities to repeat your mistakes over and over again until insight
happens.
Take parenting for instance. I remember how my sons when they were around
3 and 4 would not obey me when I tried to correct them. This came to a head when we were grocery
shopping and they refused to stay by my side in the store. I felt I had no
control over their behavior. Now, they weren’t damaging anything in the store
or bothering anyone in the store, other than me. People on the outside of our family dynamic
probably saw two moderately well-behaved children without a parent by their
side. This is so embarrassing to tell you.
I was the one who looked out of control.
I tried telling them what to do, yelling at them, threatening them with
no deserts or early bedtime, and probably a hundred other bad parenting choices
to get them to obey me. It wasn’t until
I ignored them, did my grocery shopping, and prepared to leave that they
suddenly began to follow my directives.
After this situation, we had a long talk about their behavior and mine
in that situation. And you know what,
they showed empathy and understanding and so did I. After that situation, we had fewer, not none,
situations where I felt their behavior was out of my control. We all became a little wiser after that
experience.
Zen Buddhist Haemin Sunim (in “The Things You Can See Only
When You Slow Down”) wrote: “If I had to summarize the entirety of an
enlightened person’s life in a few words, it would be complete acceptance of
what is. As we accept what is, our minds
are relaxed and composed while the world changes rapidly around us.” This is how I would summarize how I finally
managed to negotiate, or get through, so many of life’s many delightfully
enriching opportunities for growth, insight, and wisdom, acceptance of what
is. Acceptance is really a spiritual
discipline.
When my father was in hospice,
during the final days before his death, my family and I were all grieving, each
in our own way. It was hard facing the
fact that he was going to die. I mean we
really knew it would happen eventually.
I had flown down to be by his side because the doctors had told us his
death would be soon and I wanted to be there. Now, my father had been near death a few times
and recovered, but this time was different.
He had stopped eating or drinking anything days before and was now
unconscious lying in a bed in a rehabilitation center when I arrived. One of us, my mother, my brothers, our wives,
someone was always by his side.
Sometimes we read or watched TV.
Some of us talked to him. While there are a number of studies that have
reported that after regaining consciousness some patients said they heard and
understood various conversations that took place while they were
unconscious. These studies have
conflicting results, but I have come to believe people who are unconscious can
hear us or perhaps feel our presence when we talk to them. So we, each member of my family, took turns
talking to my father. This went on for
about a week with no change in his condition.
While my grief was acute, I also realized my brothers were having
difficulty letting him go, and I wondered if my father was experiencing that
and trying to hold on. Whether that was
quantifiable or not, it is what was on my heart. I also was beginning to feel pressure, mostly
from myself, to get back to the church I was serving in Iowa. I called the airline and made a reservation
to return. Before I left, I spent some
time alone with my father. I told him I
loved him and that the family would be okay when he left. I said my goodbye to him and told him I was
leaving to go back to Iowa. I squeezed
his hand, kissed him on the forehead and left.
Martha and I headed to the airport.
When we were checking our bags in, we received a call. My father just died. I have often wondered if my acceptance of his
death and telling him we would be okay and saying goodbye had had any impact on
his letting go. It is a piece of wisdom,
true for me, that I hold in my heart and have passed on to others who are in
the same situation. It is a piece of
pastoral care and wisdom that calls forth tears in me, whomever I offer it
to, whenever I offer it.
Insight or inner intelligence, born
of a divine spark and/or from experience, understanding, and acceptance, needs
an open heart and perhaps access to the soul itself. Wisdom is the outward manifestation of an
inward insight. Insight is a filter that
I pass my thoughts through before acting, encompassing my mind, heart, and my
soul. I can’t say I always use this
filter because life is busy and complicated and my attention is often fractured
across way too many things that are going on, but I do make every effect to do
so consciously and intentionally.
Gaining insight and acting with
wisdom sets us upon a pathless path,where the journey leads us to the deepest truth within
us. Each experience, each insight shreds
a layer of our mind or ego like taking layers off an onion until we come closer
and closer to our essence (from Ram Dass), or some of us might say closer and closer
to that divine spark within us all. As
we get closer, we are more likely to practice reflecting on our decisions and
actions through this essence or divine spark.
What are
the filters that you pass your thoughts through before you act? Are they grounded in experience,
understanding, acceptance, your essence, or a divine spark? What about big decisions, particularly after
large life changes or difficult life experiences? How conscious or intentional is that process
of using your inner vision? Do you rely
on your inner essence or connection to a divine spark as a component of
understanding life, the universe, and everything? Is your wisdom something you could share with
others here? Would you? Does your wisdom
bring tears, laughter? Does it bow
before children?
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