Beyond Rivalry

I think I'd find a report of a typical or atypical day in anyone's life interesting, and Doris Lessing's, a mixture of 'what I do each day' with her reflections on health, life, and reading, is no exception:

"Luxury has never interested me, but I enjoyed staying at good hotels when I travelled. In Vienna, at the Hotel Sacher, I was in my room, marvelling at the rugs, eating sachertorte, thinking, 'This is perfection,' when a piece of chandelier fell on the floor. I laughed --  perfection is not so easily achieved."

"Last night I dreamt about a Jesus-type figure in Palestine in the old days -- which is not really my country at all. It was very convincing. This Jesus chap was worrying about what he was going to get for people to eat. Ordinary problems -- just like a housewife's. "

Don't miss Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, talking about her stroke at TED. She's dynamic and what she has to say is fascinating for anyone with a brain, literally.

I love her distinctions between the left and right hemispheres, which are quite different from and more succinct than anything I had read or heard before about their differences. She describes the left hemisphere of the brain as working like a serial port, linear and methodical, and the right side as working like a parallel port, experiencing everything as a sort of sensory energy collage. Then (here's where it gets interesting), she says that the right side is 'in the moment' all the time, and thus in the flow of what is happening now, in flow with all other energy on the planet, so that there are no boundaries, no separation between things, and everything is present tense, sensory, elemental, energy. The left side takes this energy collage it's presented with and immediately begins a process of categorising and organising the data, relating it to the experience of the past and the potential of the future.

She also says that the left brain is where the sense of "I" originates, the ego, the idea that "I" am separate from other things: The left side is "that little voice that says to me, 'I am. I am.' And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me 'I am,' I become separate. I become a single solid individual separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you." From the right brain's perspective, 'I'm' in the flow with all other energy, not a separate entity with boundaries. 

(I can't help but consider this from a Girardian perspective, from the very basic rivalry/mimesis of self and other that Girard posits and which feels true to my experience and observation -- why does the left brain have so much authority for most of us, for culture? Her comments also make me think of G-d's "I am that I am" or "I shall be that I shall be" when Moses asks G-d's name -- is that a separation-making statement or is it an expansion of self into all things?)  

Jill's stroke affected her left side, shutting it down, so that even in the early minutes of it she couldn't see where her arm ended and the wall began, because there weren't boundaries between the two: "Because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy."  She couldn't read her business card because she could only see the pixels that make up the lettering and numbers, and she couldn't make meaning of the pixels. She spent a lot of time trying to match the shape of the squiggles she could see on the card to the shape of the squiggles on the telephone dial (so she could call her office for help). This reminds me of dreams I've had, with episodes exactly like this.

Her description of finding nirvana in the hospital -- a huge feeling of expansiveness, an overwhelming sense of peace -- reminds me of how people sometimes talk about the psychosis that is mania; and it also reminds me of how I have felt  near the ocean, on the beach sifting sand through my hands, watching birds, in gardens, meditating, dreaming, writing (even though it's using language, that left-brain tool), looking at art (there was a modern painting on the lower level of the National Gallery's East Wing that affected me this way in February, and I don't know what it was called or who painted it), listening to music, watching movies, in conversation with someone, making love. It's how I almost always feel when travelling on the train, like I am big and don't know or care where I end.

Jill's talk ends this way:

"So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the 'we' inside of me.

"Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading."

A powerful message.

The transcript is here but the video is better. 

Jill's website is here. 

(For 'Six Feet Under' fans: Jill had the same kind of stroke that Nate Fisher had, due to an AVM)

I've uploaded another PDF file for anyone to use, a backgrounder for Cries & Whispers (1972), the last in the BergmanFest! series I'm hosting now.

She must be kidding.

Gretchen at The Happiness Project lists the "Seven topics to avoid if you don't want to risk being a bore." 

Among them: 

• A dream.
• An excellent meal you once had at a restaurant.
• The latest additions to your wine cellar.

Dreams and food are two of my favourite discussion topics. I can easily believe that I am thought a bore, but I also love to hear other people's dreams, the details of their favourite meals, the drinks they like and why.

Her reasoning is even more dubious: She says that when faced with these topics, "the listener has nothing to add. He or she must just hear you describe your experience."

The 'listener' is not much of a conversationalist, imo, if they can't interestingly discuss your dream or theirs (it's a lot like talking about art, generally considered a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation), the strange and unaccountable phenomenon of dreams in general, the practical and neurological nature of sleep; or hold up their end of a conversation about cuisine and potables, the subtle factors of restaurant ambiance, the pleasures of eating al fresco, alone, in a happy crowd, etc.   

What would be boring is to hear about a week's worth of dreams, meals and wine-tastings all in one go with no space for questions or observations.

Some of the comments seem more incisive to me, like the very sage advice to avoid "providing a detailed account of your fantasy football team's heartbreaking loss over the weekend," "a thorough review of your struggles with your latest non-life threatening illness," or"intricate details of the latest problem with your car and how the problem was fixed," and the always-apt reminder that conversation is an exchange. It doesn't have to be an equal exchange, word for word, or even nearly equal; success lies in consideration for and attentiveness to the other. 

From One Foot in the Grave, season 2, during an episode that takes place entirely in the Meldrews' bedroom, as we overhear their aimless conversation at 3 in the morning; this is curmudgeon Victor Meldrew musing:

"I get in bed each night feeling as right as rain. By the time I get up, I feel absolutely terrible.

Pure ritual.

It's like life, I suppose.

Where does it get you?" 

That's how I felt this morning. When I went to bed I was tired but felt good, had some kind of energy, even if it was just borne of momentum. When I woke up this morning, I had been run over during the night by a relentless bulldozer. 

I had so many dreams during the night and early morning.

One featured Martin Luther King Jr. as a 73-year-old speaker to a small group of people assembled in a room that was part indoors, part outdoors. It was a place I was working for two days per week (Thurs and Fri), doing part-time and as an assistant a job I used to do full-time, as a director. The location was different from my previous job, though. I was just starting to be introduced to people and learn my job. King's hair was white, but a yellowy kind of white. As he spoke, a pudgy, freckled, red-headed pre-teen with glasses came over, grabbed King around the head, buried his face in King's neck and kissed him, then ran off. King didn't stop speaking but about 10 seconds later he looked behind him and smiled a sweet smile. King invited us to walk with him from Detroit to Milwaukee that night. My feelings in the dream were happiness and amusement, feeling valued, feeling confused and curious.

There were others but that's the one I remember best eight hours later.

I had a dream last week that I wanted to record here, too:

I was having dinner with friends R.R. (female) and B.B. (male) We were in a restaurant somewhere, seated outdoors I think.  B. was on my left and R. on my right. The items on the menu were in various languages (including Arabic) and I didn't understand them. I had to ask the waitress is there were any vegetarian or fish items; she said no, just the wines. I didn't want a bottle of wine for dinner. I asked if there were half bottles but she said no. R. got something that translated in English as "little meals" and was mostly vegetarian -- somewhat unattractive slabs of yellow and red bell pepper, carrots, and also slices of prosciutto or something like it. I thought that I could have ordered that and just not eaten the meat. I was having fun with them, enjoying the company, even though I couldn't eat anything.

I like this eclectic list of resolutions from TMN writers.

I haven't made New Year's resolutions in years, in the sense of things I think I should do -- and have been reading lately about the benefit of making New Year's commitments instead of resolutions, yadda yadda (Wikipedia sez resolutions are commitments), but the TMN list is inspiring for some reason, maybe for its off-handedness and detail. And I'm surprised how many of their (satirical?) resolutions are swimming around in my head, heart and body, too.

So a few of my semi-resolutions (that is, what I'll do unless I don't), some drawn from previous years' longings:

buy clothes (except underwear and socks) only at eBay or at Goodwill [80% there already]

subscribe to the Economist and don't renew subscription to the New Yorker [DONE! - thanks, Dad]

get the hell to NYC

practice meditation daily

show up and pay attention

learn the mushrooms

love and be in the garden more 

do more art, collage, play, photography

subvert the dominant rivalrous paradigm, starting with my own actions and perceptions ... live eternally now

During Bible study today we talked briefly about dreams. We were reading Matthew 2:12-23, in which Herod slaughters all male children under age 2 in Israel, hoping to kill the newborn Jesus, who "troubles" him as a threat to his power and the status quo. In that 12-verse passage, the magi (wise men from the East) and Jesus's dad Joseph are both warned in dreams to take particular actions. In fact, the magi are told by God in a dream (One magi's dream only? Or did they all three have the same dream?) to return from Bethlehem by a different route and not to report to Herod what they have seen, which "trickery" infuriates Herod and leads him take this horrific action. And earlier in Matthew, Joseph is told in a dream to take the pregnant Mary as his wife.

These verses and other Biblical passages about dreams confuse me. I dream vividly almost every night, and I wonder why it's not clear to me what action I am to take based on my dreams.

My 21st-century mind knows something of Freudian, Jungian, Buddhist, and scientific interpretation of dreams -- they're wish fulfillment, they're a means of releasing the effluvia of the day, they're electrical brainwave housecleaning, they're messages from our bodies or emotions to our censoring minds, they provide insight about our unconscious desires and motives, they offer up to us perceptions we've had but not paid attention to during the busy day, all dreams are telling us to "wake up!", they are the way we can tap into the creativity and wisdom of the collective unconscious or perhaps our preconscious lives, etc. Can they also (or instead) be revelations from God?

It would be easy to say that Bible stories are just stories, fabricated years after the historical facts, not based on first-person interviews with the magi or Joseph (or Jacob or Joseph in the Old Testament). Perhaps the magi went home by another way because they got lost, or found a shortcut, or just decided they didn't trust Herod much. Even if that were so (that the cause of a specific action were reinterpreted by others, later, as being a dream warning), the question seems to remain for me: are dreams ever (or always) prophetic or revelatory messages from God, the universe, the collection unconscious, some force or being or place external to me; or are they always (or ever) "simply" my reordering, symbolising, meaning-making, connection-making, and retelling to myself my own experience?

I'm slowly reading Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama (1997) but so far, I've read nothing definitive about the source and purpose of dreams. The scientists, psychologists, philosophers, religious folk, etc., are bandying about multiple theories, and even within Buddhism there are apparently many schools of thought about dreams, lucid dreaming, levels of consciousness, etc.

This afternoon, I came across Velveteen Rabbi's notes on Dream Interpretation from Genesis through the Rabbis, a talk by Rodger Kamenetz in November. Among others things, she notes that revelation dreams (one kind of dream) "aren't something we interpret -- instead, they interpret us" and that the Talmudic Rabbis "worried about conflicts between interpretations, and they wanted the Torah to be the top interpreter. They said 'a dream uninterpreted is like a letter unopened,' and used Torah to interpret (and, by so doing, to determine and change) the meaning of dreams."

Now Kamenetz has his own weblog, Talking Dream, which so far mostly consists of the first chapter of his new book of the same title. He talks about a "special knowing" available to us in dreams sometimes; that resonates with my reflections on my own dreams: Occasionally, I know something -- either something factual or something intuitive -- in the dream that I don't remembering having known outside the dream, but which it turns out is true or right. Where did that knowledge come from? It could come from my subconscious or my unconscious, just as in crime novels, witnesses often don't "know" what they know, what they have observed ... they don't understand the significance of it, although they contain within them all the information needed to understand or know it. Or it could come from a collective unconscious, from God. It could even be coincidence, I suppose.

All I can really say is that, in my perception of my experience, my dreams are the place where I can make connections that elude me in my waking life, connections among ideas, symbols, experiences, relationships, seemingly disparate or unrelated observations that in the dream "make sense." Dreams, for me, are the most poetic of my life experiences, rich in symbol, metaphor, puns, and other non-linear leaps and twirls. Whether they are prophetic or not, I'm unsure; but I do think they are revelatory: I think they do often reveal what's hidden from me, probably by me (if modern psychologists are to be believed), in waking life. If nothing else, they entertain me like no DVD or film can do.

I spent a couple of hours Friday night, all day on Saturday and most of the day on Sunday at a weekend programme called "Making Friends with Death" at a local Buddhist meditation center, led by acharya Judith Lief. (Acharya means senior teacher in Sanskrit.) Lief's teacher is Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

We had three or so meditation sessions per day on Saturday and Sunday. Friday evening was mostly spent watching and talking about a film titled Pioneers of Hospice: Changing the Face of Dying, about the inception of hospice in the UK, Canada, and the U.S., focusing on four movers & shakers: Cecily Saunders, Florence Wald, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and Balfour Mount. On Saturday and Sunday, we meditated on our breath for 20-30 mins on arriving each day. On Saturday, we participated in a guided meditation on death, and later in a taking-and-giving kindness meditation (called tong-len) with a partner; on Sunday, we did several simple silent meditations. [Pema Chödrön on tong-len; Unitarian perspective on tong-len.]

These periods of silence were balanced with periods when Judith Lief taught, as we sat in a circle or facing her, and with several periods of discussion in a large group, and, for 45 minutes on Sunday, in a small group of about 8 people each. We also took bathroom/stretching breaks, tea breaks, and lunch breaks.

First, after meditating, Judith introduced us to the topic of death/Death. Then we spent about an hour, maybe more, introducing ourselves (there were perhaps 35 of us) and saying something about why we were there. I was there to explore more deeply the death of self, of ego, of identity -- that kind of dissolution -- but I forgot to say that and said something else instead, about wanting to explore everyday death, loss, transition, impermanence, and living fully with every day. I loved hearing why others were there and what they hoped to do with the weekend.

For the rest of the weekend we were led to discuss a few key topics, most of which are more broadly developed in Judith's book, Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality, which focuses on "seeing the immediacy of death as an aspect of everyday life" and accepting "the ongoing reality of impermanence and transition."

Specifically, we talked first about death: our experience with death in general; about what is it exactly that we fear we will lose when we die (what is the nature of the loss, what is the nature of the fear); about how it may be difficult to believe that we really will die, even though we know others do; about the unpredictability of death; about the moment of death.

Then we talked about compassion and its components (awareness or knowledge or intelligence, kindness or friendliness, and openness), and how although we and others might have good intentions to be compassionate, good intentions are not enough -- there is skill required to effectively be compassionate, there are pitfalls in intending compassion, it is a tricky thing. We discussed in the group many of the pitfalls Judith names in her book (without referencing the book), including prepackaged or simplistic compassion (one-size-fits-all), manipulative compassion which expects appreciation or some certain response, viewing compassion as a key part of our identity or credentials (in the book, she says this can make us less like white knights and more like vampires), guilt-based compassion, and heavy-handed compassion. Perhaps not incidentally, this teaching came during the heart of the weekend, on Saturday afternoon and continuing on Sunday morning.

Next, we talked about slogans relevant to dying and to caring for the dying. They balance each other in terms of doing and being, effort and letting go, expansiveness and focus. The slogans, which we discussed in the small group break-out session, are:

• Start with Knowledge: Four kinds: knowlege of externals, such as symptoms, institutions, legalities, etc; knowledge of self, limitations, our own rackets and justifications; attentiveness, tuning in to the atmosphere, the changing situation, subtle vibrations through our "antennae"; and intuitive knowledge, accessed through dreams and visions.

• Give and Receive: This generated the most discussion in our group and in others'. This slogan focuses on generosity, on graciously sharing what we have and graciously accepting what is shared with us. Specifically, those cared for often feel they are in a one-down situation, with perhaps nothing of value to give, while caretakers can feel they are in a one-up position, powerfully providing what is needed. This slogan acknowledges the need to be aware of this imbalance and to be open to generosity in all ways, in receiving and in giving. The idea is to give and receive in ways that are clean, i.e., without strings attached, and not to manipulate, to belittle, or to deplete another. True generosity enriches both the giver and receiver.

• Pay Attention to Details: There is power in small gestures, like giving ice, removing or giving a blanket, opening or closing a window ... not standing on someone's oxygen hose ...

• Slow Down: This is about pacing oneself to the person who is dying, and being patient in the moment. Stopping spinning like a dervish on a mission, stopping frenetic action, perhaps even releasing a need to be efficient; and focusing with compassion, time, and awareness on the situation at hand and on the other. This might take the form of speaking more slowly so that someone who is ill can follow the conversation, of allowing silence between thoughts, of waiting for a full response before asking the next question. Like the others, quite useful in non-dying situations, too (if there can be said to be any)!
  

• Don't Give Up: This is not "don't give up on life, keep fighting to be cured." This slogan is about developing effort that is reliable and steady, able to respond effectively. We might also think about this slogan as asking us not to give up on the patient, whether because she seems to be in denial about her illness or death, and we wish she would "face" it, or because he is unconscious or in a coma. Each person, while alive, is 100% alive and is worthy of respect as a human being.

• Be Present: Be present in body with the other. Be embodied. When we share our essence, our presence, with another, we give a valuable gift, and this way of being may evoke the quality of presence in others, too. To do this well requires a connection with our own bodies, an awareness that silence is powerful, and the courage not to defect in place or to disappear in some essential way from the interaction.
  

Finally, we talked about the Buddhist idea of death, what happens immediately after biological death, and the importance and potency of all liminal places, of those thresholds between one space and another, including between death and life.

At some point I will probably offer some specific reflections on the weekend. In general, I found it worthwhile, even powerful in places, and the conversation and teaching always engaging, the other participants wise, courageous, open and interesting. The Buddhism, as was noted near the end of the session, was soft-pedaled, for which I was appreciative; there was almost nothing said that I felt wasn't easily applicable to my more Jesus-focused walk.

I can recall only one statement that evoked in me a "no" and it was said in passing, early on, so I may easily have misunderstood it. (And even now, I think it is just something I would like to have talked about more in the group.) It was something about noticing how we go to sleep each night, a sort of losing of ourselves, then wake up and there we are again. That way of saying it felt untrue to my experience, which is that I am more awake at night than during most days. I don't feel that some part of me -- or perhaps, that an essential part of me -- is gone when I sleep ... it feels prominent then, in the multitude of vivid dreams I have every night. I would like to explore this further.

I've started recording my dreams again. I won't bore you with them here. Enough to say that it takes me about a half-hour in the morning to "off-load" my dream material, by which time I feel sleepy again ...

From Metafilter: Artist Jesse Reklaw takes people's descriptions of their dreams and turns them into four-panel comic strips. Updated weekly. Submit your dream (or apply to illustrate one yourself).

I like "Supermarket Design" , "CSI: Sesame Street" , "the edible book" , "Hippocratic Oath" , and the angry armadillo in "Fishing for Armadillos."