When I first heard about silent retreats in my early twenties, I remember turning to my good friend and saying, "If I went to one of those retreats, I would probably end up sobbing for most of the time." The thought of being alone with my thoughts and sense of self terrified me. It touched my rarely-admitted notion that if I were to be exposed to myself long enough, I would see what a failure of a human being I was.
Now this had nothing to do with how I functioned or what "kind" of human being I was at the time. In fact, I was functioning well. This had to do with conditioning within my own experience and the culture in which I lived. The conditioning that says: "You are not good enough; something is wrong with you and you have to make up for it."
Most of us carry within us a degree of self aversion, a sense of inadequacy, insufficiency, not being enough, a gnawing feeling of unworthiness, of falling short of who we should be. All of us have made mistakes, wrong choices, tripped over assumptions and acted rashly out of ignorance. All of this is grist for the mill of shame making, a mill that culls seeds of fear, envy, craving, addiction, jealousy, hostility and self loathing. These are potent seeds that can easily continue the cycle of self aversion, as we work to avoid these feelings ruled by judgement and distrust of our true nature, the Source within.
Shame. The root of this word comes from a word form that means "to cover." When we are ashamed, we feel exposed, uncovered and vulnerable, and somehow we deem these feelings as wrong.
Our Judeo Christian heritage has done much to solidify this assumption about ourselves through traditionalist reading of the Bible. And that reading is alive and well. At the hearing I attended this last week in Annapolis, scores of people referenced Adam and Eve as "proof" that God wanted marriage a certain way.
Adam and Eve: the originally shamed ones, described in the second creation story of Genesis, ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, opening their eyes so that they saw that they were naked and sewed fig leaves together to cover their shame. It was Adam and Eve, as well, according to St. Augustine centuries after the mythic tale was crafted, who introduced the concept of original sin because humans engage in sexual reproduction.
With the taint of original sin, we are born to rid ourselves of shameful human being in a way that only God fully achieves. Doomed from the start, this collective consciousness of shame finds reason to exist in our psyche. We then deem pain bad, an indication that we are being punished, and our misfortunes what we deserve. When things occur to us that we feel are not deserved, we then question our relationship to God or the universe, wondering "why me?" and seeking a way to find fault. We may be able to repel the sense of shame into accusation: "things are this way because of you." Remember Pat Robertson's declaration after 9-11, that God let this happen because of gays and feminists and abortion.
We all have done this in smaller ways, claiming ourselves victims of another's way of being. I would be who I should be if "they" would let me. I'm not able to be fully who I am because of "you." We all do this now and again.
Shame creates a formula for life, albeit a self destructive one. It thrives on judgement, usually self condemnation. The pain of being not enough is so hard to bear that we often cover it with other behavior. We protect ourselves from a sense of worthlessness in a variety of ways. A common way to hide shame is through addiction, another is to repel out in hostility and anger, putting down others to lift ourselves up. Another symptom of covered shame is envy or jealousy, comparing ourselves to others who we deem "better" or in "better situations" than we are. Sometimes we become deceitful for fear of punishment over our inadequacies or we isolate ourselves through hyper activity or seclusion.
It's all about a basic distrust of self as inherently good. It's also about seeing God or the Universe as distant and judgemental, something or someone to whom we have to prove ourselves worthy.
Unitarians and Universalists throughout history have argued the good news of a loving God or life-affirming Universe, that creation is a success in all its mystery, that our being is a gift and our moral wisdom intact when we discipline ourselves toward truth, beauty, justice and love. The inherent worth and dignity of life, that which transcends shame and can teach us the way to our true worthy nature is within us and about us. In the 19th century our forebears were known for rousing, reasonable and liberating Biblical scholarship, lifting up the celebration of life and our part as co-creators, the gift of love and our moral obligation to deepen and widen that Love.
Getting rid of the tyranny of shame is not about finding ourselves free to do whatever we want and fulfill any whim. We are creatures that forget, that lose our way, that strike out in fear and avoid discipline. Getting rid of shame and the cycle of self destruction that continues to feed and justify that shame is about finding ourselves as capable of goodness, claiming our ability to heal, finding our way again, picking ourselves up and persevering with the intention to discover our inborn worthiness again.
A Buddhist teacher once looked out to all his students after a weekend workshop. "You are all perfect," he said, "and you have a lot of work to do." (story by Pema Chodron)
Heal your shame and get to the glory and the challenge of life.
When I was serving a church in White Plains, there was a mother of three who had one child with downs syndrome. She and her son taught us a great deal about embracing what we had in life and adjusting to unexpected situations. Their strength helped us all grow stronger. Our care and welcome helped us all feel hope.
Each year she would offer to facilitate a discussion in the Sunday school class that her son attended The children would learn about his behavior and how to dwell together. Their road was by no means easy, the struggle was evident. But the wisdom of being where you are even when you'd rather be somewhere else was remarkable.
One Sunday morning, the mother shared a reading with the congregation. It is entitled Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley (adapted):
When you are going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The coliseum. Michelangelo's David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and go. Several hours later the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?!!" you say, "what do you mean Holland, I signed up for Italy. I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of Italy."
But there's a change in the flight plans. They've landed in Holland and there you'll stay... It's just a different place. So you must go out and get new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy. Less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice Holland has windmills... and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will think, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the special, the very lovely things... about Holland.
Another "ought to be" that has the potential to plague us, is the one we feel when our lives are different than we expected them to be. The pain of that realization can be quite overwhelming, and has caused many to shut down, to close their hearts and create a steal barrier around their tender aspirations.
Lifting ourselves up from that disappointment can take enormous energy, energy that we don't always feel we have.
This is not a new phenomenon. Epictetus, a Roman philosopher and former slave crafted a handbook, now named the Book of Life some two thousand years ago. This is a book that has been handed down for centuries to those who seek conscious living, inner peace and harmony in relationships. The Serenity Prayer of twelve step programs is based on his teachings. The handbook begins with this simple, difficult statement: "You can be happy if you know this master-secret: some things are within your power to control and some aren't."
Epictetus guides his students toward discernment, keeping the focus on what choices they can make and letting go of that which happens that cannot be controlled. When we try to control that which we have no control over, we are in the tyranny of "ought to be." We want it different than it is. Furthermore, we never really know reality because we are commenting on it rather than living it.
Expectation can be an important process of hope. When we look forward to something or encourage into being, we are participatingin the birth of something new; but once that which we have expected arrives, whether it is another person, event or circumstance, whether it is our own growth or learning or accomplishment, the challenge is to see what has truly arrived rather than compare it to what you expect, to grow with the circumstance rather than fight it, to improve your sense of being by embracing its reality.
When we can do this...and sometimes it is the hardest challenge of our lives... When we can do this, then we know we are free.
Tara Brach writes in her book Radical Acceptance about Ed Brown, a Zen teacher who is also a brilliant cook, famous for his natural foods cuisine. At a mountain retreat center, he found himself unable to get his biscuits to come out right. He realized he was trying to create the Pillsbury biscuits from his childhood.
"Oh, my word," he said to himself, "I'd been trying to make canned Pillsbury biscuits! Then came an exquisite moment of actually tasting my biscuits without comparing them to some (previously hidden) standard. They were wheaty, flaky, buttery... they were incomparably alive, present vibrant—in fact much more satisfying than any memory.
"These occasions can be so stunning, so liberating, these moments when you realize your life is just as fine as it is, thank you." He went on, "Only the insidious comparison to a beautifully prepared, beautifully packaged product made it seem insufficient. Trying to produce a biscuit—a life—with no dirty bowls, no messy feelings, no depression, no anger was so frustrating. Then savoring, actually tasting the present moment of experience—how much more complex and multifaceted....
"There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect life. With even a glimmer of that possibility, joy rushes in." (pp. 85,86)
Saying "yes" to life. This is the overall discipline of Unitarian Universalism. It does not mean anything goes. It does not mean there are no standards. "Yes" emerges from very real standards of trust and faith and affirmation and dignity and integrity. "Yes" emerges from allowing the whole of life in, knowing it is beyond our reach and yet ever present in our touch. "Yes" emerges from our insistence on the free and responsible search for truth and meaning... of our deep trust in inherent worth. "Yes" emerges from humility in the face of the grandeur of Creation, and embracing it all without knowing it all. To repeat our quote of the day: "Life does not have time to wait for all the information to come in."
One of the benefits of accepting that we do not know everything, that, indeed, we cannot know everything, is the increased ability to learn and a sudden surge of hope—that is, after we slog through the fear of being vulnerable. When we release the tension of needing to be on top of our lives, we truly start to get to know our lives fully. Because then we let ourselves be curious, we let ourselves ask questions, we open ourselves to possibility and a deeper listening. The world is an endless source of learning.
We are not born to claim the ultimate formula for all life—to define ourselves for all time. To judge ourselves in terms of "ought to be." New life is not brought into this world to maintain a static definition. We are here to grow, to manifest, to find wholeness, to invigorate love. Our purpose is not to end the vibrancy of existence with a final answer, unless that response is "Yes." Yes to it all for all being, which would naturally dissolve the barriers, the oppressions, the cruelty, the comparisons, the tyrannies of ought to be into an acceptance of what is the true essence and ultimate goodness of life.
I'd like to close today with these wise words from an anonymous source found in the book Life Prayers:
After a while you learn The subtle difference Between holding a hand And chaining a soul. And you learn That love doesn't mean leaning And company doesn't mean security. And you begin to learn That kisses aren't compromises And presents aren't promises. And you begin to accept your defeats With your head up and your eyes ahead With the grace of a woman or man Not the grief of a child. And you learn to build all your loads on today Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight. After a while you learn That even sunshine burns if you ask too much. So you plant your garden And decorate your own soul Instead of waiting for someone to buy you flowers. And you learn That you really can endure That you really are strong And you really do have worth. And you learn.
And you learn. And you learn. So may it be. Amen.
Copyright © 2006 Lisa G. Ward. All Rights Reserved.