Learning Discernment

In Practicing Peace, author Catherine Whitmire talks about discernment, which she describes as the Quaker practice of determining which inner nudges come from a higher power, as opposed to those that come from anxiety, ego, etc. The problems of the world are so overwhelming, she says, and God does not ask any one of us to tackle them all. 

Reading this, I was struck by the similarity to what Rev. Carlton Pearson said when he was interviewed on This American Life. He had been a Pentecostal minister but lost his following when he stopped believing in Hell. Pearson described feeling overwhelmed by the number of people who needed help, who needed to be saved. He described prayerfully asking God how he could really be expected to reach all those people. He said God answered by asking him if he really believed that He would let all those “unreached” people burn in hell. Pearson found he didn’t believe that at all. After that, it’s fair to say his life, his ministry, and his beliefs were completely rearranged. 

Learning discernment is the beginning of the end for the ego-centered self. When ego-thinking is dominant, the pattern I most easily recognize in my own thinking is believing I know what the possibilities are in a given situation. My ego-mind begins to strategize right away. It says, either this will happen, or this, and it suggests that the outcome is up to me, that it’s just a matter of determining which outcome I want to invest in. In truth, the outcome is rarely up to me, and there are almost always more possibilities than I ever knew existed. 

It’s uncomfortable, sometimes, to learn discernment. It causes the tower of the ego to fall. It lets us know we aren’t actually in charge much of the time. But once it’s over and the tower has fallen, it feels awfully good to be standing on solid ground.

An Unusual Sense of Direction

In Bill Plotkin’s excellent essay, “The Art of Being Lost,” he writes of the different types of lostness: You know where you are but not where you are going; you know where you want to go but not where you are; you know neither where you are going, nor where you are. 

Some months ago, I wrote about getting lost in the woods of Vermont, how getting lost seems to be part of the way I move through the world sometimes. I find my way, but it’s not always to the destination I expected, and I don’t often take a straight, clear path. It’s hard to be honest about this, especially in the face of life-altering forks in the road. Lately I’ve been interviewing with graduate schools, and most aren’t too keen on a candidate who finds her way by wandering on all the various different paths she finds appealing at any given moment. But that is, in fact, what I do, and only in retrospect does a coherent theme become clear. I’ve learned to trust that wandering instinct, but it has taken a long time. Perhaps it makes sense that most psychology programs seem more apt to trust the candidate who is devoted to one path and one alone, never deviating. That, certainly, is more predictable. But I find it difficult to get excited about that prospect, or about studying in a place where such a thing would be expected and valued. 

So I find myself becoming acquainted with one of Plotkin’s central truths about being lost, that it is possible to benefit from it, if one is willing to give up old goals in favor of new, more soulful ones. It may be that the old destination is not actually worth reaching. 

I looked at my journal from that time in Vermont and recalled what had come to me on that walk on which I got lost to begin with, that the point was not to conform to a teacher’s (or program’s) ideals; the point was to find a teacher who would support an unusual sense of direction.

Chance and Terror

It’s the glitch in engineering through which chance
And terror enter on the world. 

Robert Hass, from “For Czeslaw Milosz in Krakow”

 

The evening of last year’s bridge collapse in Minneapolis, I spoke to a good friend who lives there. Thankfully, she called me right as I got home, before I had even seen the news and had time to wonder if she had been on that bridge when it fell. We talked for awhile as she watched the news and learned about the school children that had been involved. Wouldn’t that mess with your head, she said, if you were a kid and you were on a bridge that collapsed? Wouldn’t you then grow up thinking that bridges just collapse sometimes, like this possibility is right up there with other small, unpleasant things, like getting stung by a wasp, or falling and skinning a knee? 

In Bill Bryson’s book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, he catalogs the various natural disasters that could cause mass extinctions and wipe out huge swaths of inhabited land on our planet: super volcanoes, collisions with meteors, etc. The amazing thing, he says, is that it doesn’t happen more often. 

The truth is, bridges do sometimes collapse. Chance and terror do enter on the world, and there is real danger in things. To get through it, to go on with our lives, we tell ourselves and our children that we feel sure things will work out, because they always have. It’s as good an answer as any. And somehow, it is often true. Mysteriously, things do turn out fine. Most bridges don’t collapse. Large scale disasters do not visit us everyday, and when they do, there are miraculous stories of survival. 

To really touch that mystery, it seems necessary to sometimes peel back the veil of the everyday world, to remember the chance and terror inherent in being alive, then to take a deep breath, utter a thank you, and go on living in this amazing, raucous, temporary and beautiful world of ours.

 

On the Backburner

An art therapist I know talks about the importance of empty space in the creative process. Just as fire needs oxygen if it’s going to keep burning, she says, you have to have empty space in which ideas can grow.

I’m not great at this. Call it enthusiasm for life, but I have so many things I want to do, I rarely allow for much empty space in my life. The side effect is that I get worn out. Then nothing grows.

Recently, the same message seems to be all over the place. A friend recently told me that her favorite “empty space” activity is playing the computer game Bookworm, which delights her to no end. A talented poet I know has been writing recently about playing World of Warcraft, and how games fit into creative life. If I pay attention, the theme seems to pop out everywhere: Take some time. Have fun. Play a game.

And yet, there are plenty of counter-influences.  At work, my colleagues and I have been asked to create status reports each week, accounting for each hour of our time. The “status report” model assumes one task or project at a time, every moment spent doing something. Last night, NPR ran a story about how “mind enhancing” drugs (think Ritalin) could soon be marketed to healthy people in order to increase concentration and, presumably, productivity.

My goal this week is to appreciate the backburner, that back-of-mind space that prefers to do its work outside of the cognitive spotlight, when the mind thinks it’s doing something else. On a day when I’m feeling particularly ambitious, I might also attempt to create some empty space, without immediately moving to fill it with something “productive.”