I'm coming to see that of the three primary fear responses available to human bodies (fight, flight, and freeze), it's freeze that's the most habitual for me. Like many people who share a similar personality structure to me, the presence of fear or despair in the world is easily an opportunity to tune out, to dissociate, and to disappear in the midst of life. And this week, with ongoing news about the state of the earth's climate, with the attacks in Sri Lanka, and with the ongoing presence of an energetic xenophobia in our politics, there has been ample fuel for the kind of asleep-in-the-midst-of-things that it is so easy for me to fall into.All of this is one reason why I'm grateful for the increasing role of practice in my life. As I've written before, when I remember to live a life of practice - swimming, writing, contribution to community, meditation, Jewish practices, walking, music, intentional conversation - I feel more spaciousness in my heart, a renewed sense of aliveness in my body, and my mind is quieter too. I’m less convinced by stories about who I should be and what I’m supposed to be doing. Without practice it is easy for me to be swept up in my habits of absence, as if hurled by a swelling tide until I no longer remember that I’m swept up in anything and life becomes an invisible whirling torrent of fear and falling short and things to do and places to be. It should be of little surprise to me (though it often is) that in the midst of all that my body has tightened up, my heart more rigid, my mind filled with barely visible oughts and shoulds, judgements and obligations and disappointments.
It's practice that allows me to rehearse, repeatedly, a relationship with the world that’s full of life, and full of expression, full of connection to others, and full of welcome for all of it – even the greatest difficulties. And this, I’m starting to see more clearly, is the very point of practice – that over time, done again and again, it allows us to experience life as if parts of ourselves that are more often marginalised, abandoned or simply forgotten have come home again.
--I'm particularly grateful today for the poem Thanks by W S Merwin, which points to the restorative possibilities of giving thanks, practicing gratitude, right in the middle of the darkness. It's what I've needed these past weeks, and the conversation that Lizzie and I had as part of this week's Episode 82 of Turning Towards Life (another restorative practice for me) explores it in depth.
And, if you missed them, we've also talked in the past couple of weeks about the moment-to-moment choices between possibility and fear (in Episode 81, Two Paths), and about the problems being too certain about things can bring us (in Episode 80, The Place Where We Are Right).You can catch up with all the conversations in that project over at turningtowards.life, and you can also find all our conversations on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash
Automatic:
Between June 2011 and the following July I had three close encounters with death. Three life punctuating events brought about by sudden and unexpected changes within my body, each shocking and frightening, each a reminder of how fragile and unpredictable life can be.As I recovered from each episode I expected - hoped - that I would in some way be profoundly different. I wanted so much to find myself more grateful, more accepting, more joyful of life's many small blessings, less judgmental, less afraid, less irritated by small things, more kind, and more dedicated to being present and welcoming and loving with the people who matter to me.But it didn't work out so simply. I emerged from each experience blinking and shaken and grateful, and soon settled back into many of my familiar patterns.Over time I've found myself thinking about this differently. What happens if I allow these experiences to inform the way I live rather than expecting them to change me? How can I, having encountered the possibility of death so closely, use my experience to commit fully and wisely and generously to life?In taking on this question I'm finding out that the change I seek is a question of practice rather than of events. And that I am an ongoing process much more than I am a thing with enduring properties, an object that is a particular way. I live myself into being, day after day. I am always living myself into being by the very ways in which I live.How I move, how much I take care of myself, how I express curiosity and interest in the world, how I speak and listen, how I sleep, how I sing and laugh, how I play and create, how I bind myself up in community, how I practice compassion and stillness, how I love, how I work - all these shape the life I am living and who I become, far more than the punctuating events themselves.And this tells me so much about the mistaken ways in which I look for change in myself and in my relationships with others. When I mistake life for a thing I imagine an event of sufficient power will do it. An affecting conversation, a kiss, a show of force, a book with a revelatory idea in it, an illness, a windfall, a conference, an argument, the right gift, or a brush with death will fix things, in the same way that I might fix a dented metal bowl by attempting to knock it into shape. But when I know myself as a living, unfolding process, events take up their proper place as teachers rather than fixers, educating me about the ongoing practices by which I can take care of this one precious life.The more I imagine events alone will do it, the more I set myself up for the despair and frustration that comes from relying on something that cannot help.And the more I commit to the ongoing, long-term, diligent and patient practice of living in a way that brings life, the more genuine reason I have to hope.
If it's our everyday habits of thinking, action and relationship that keep the world as it is (and they do), then it's experimentation that has the greatest chance of opening a new world with greater space for us to move in. And when the old world is no longer working out, or bringing suffering, we could all do with a way to open to a new kind of freedom.This is the topic that Lizzie and I took up in yesterday's Turning Towards Life conversation, which you can 
Whatever we say we're most committed to, a great many of us live as if judgement were the primary human value, judging ourselves mercilessly and without respite. And, when we live in the stream of harsh judgement, no effort is enough, no achievement worth much, and our efforts to help seem to us nothing but disguised selfishness. In this relentless stream we find that the only way to bring ourselves to the world with the care and commitment we wish for is to fight an endless battle in which parts of ourselves - our essential goodness and our inner criticism - are pitched against one another.In a battle there's really never any time to rest. We live in state of vigilance, braced and ready for the blows that can come at any moment: for the offhand critical comment from a loved one or colleague, for the figures on our latest bank statement, for a tweet or instagram post that reminds us of all the ways we're falling short.And we find ourselves mounting all kinds of pre-emptive defence: doing our best to look good (which we'll do even at great emotional, spiritual or financial expense), tuning out from our lives with distractions (so as not to feel the difficulty we're in), shaming ourselves (to avoid the pain of being shamed in other ways) or deflating and collapsing (as if hiding from the world will save us).Perhaps the worst of all of this is the way we hide the very battle we're fighting, as if we are the only ones, as if nobody else has it this way. We become convinced that life has to be a battle. And that is our lot to live a life of inner harshness that only adds to whatever harshness and struggle we already experience in the world around us.Nearly all of us are doing this - whether we're teachers or CEOs, politicians or parents, artists or activists or accountants. And the more we live this way, the more exhausted we become, and the fewer of our gifts - the gifts we each have that the world needs from us - we get to bring.All the while that we're caught up in harsh self-judgement (which easily and also becomes harsh judgement of others) we've forgotten that judgement isn't the same as discernment, and that discernment only becomes possible when judgement is balanced by a stream of mercy. I say 'balanced' here, but it seems to me much more the case that true discernment (the kind that can be life-giving, truthful and contributory) only comes into being when judgement is thoroughly infused with mercy - when judgement and mercy pour into one another, illuminate one another, become a single river.And what is mercy? It's a commitment to not turning away. It's dignifying our anguish and confusion, the transience and unpredictability of our lives and the difficulties we've all had to face, and reaching for the essential goodness that is present in all of us. Mercy is indeed our turning towards life itself with a fiercely kind and loving embrace. It's a commitment to see the beauty in our very unfinishedness, to cherish and honour both our inevitable falling-short and our capacity to improve things.Most of us haven't practiced mercy towards ourselves with anything approaching the diligence with which we practice harsh self-judgement. But until mercy can become a serious part of our constellation of virtues, until we practice it as much as we long for it, we'll struggle with more difficulty than we're due and we'll doubtless bring more difficulty to others than we intend.