While sculpting a precarious stone arch, the British artist and naturalist Andy Goldsworthy said that his desire was to create a structure that “looks as though it’s on the verge of collapse,” and to do that the structure must approach true collapse, which meant that, in fact, his creations often would collapse, but he revealed great beauty playing in that space of vulnerability.
Sometimes I wonder if my life is a creation much like that.
My relationship ended two nights ago, lovingly. The next day, I discovered that my chances of graduating, here on the last leg of my journey, are near zero. A key member of my thesis defense committee will be out of the country during the entire month of December, and I cannot afford another semester. A dream that began eighteen years ago and gave my life meaning may die before the year is over. I want to start a job, but without child care, searching for a professional position borders on impossible, and I live in a part of the country now that feels to my soul like a deadzone, a wasteland. In the meantime, I depend on child support payments that often do not come, and I am financially ruined. I’m filing for bankruptcy, applying for food stamps, and hoping the bank does not repossess my car, which I wrecked last week after my auto insurance expired. Family support has ebbed, and the demands of caring for two little boys by myself are far beyond me. Some terrible pain grips my body, arthritis getting worse. I think I’m developing another kidney infection, and crippling pain shoots through my heart and shoulder every few days. This morning, I met with a school counselor to discuss why my oldest son, whose father now lives in another country, wishes he were dead and frequently tries to choke himself. My youngest son developed a skin infection that became life threatening, but antibiotics have yet to clear it, and our health insurance expired the day before he went to the emergency room.
I feel as though I’ve fallen into a hole that I cannot hope to climb out of. Last night, I made a hot bath to sooth my body. Lying in the tub, I cried so hard I could barely breath, until the water was cold. I think often of past loves. I made so many mistakes, and then I made them again and again. They are wounds that cannot heal in the salt of my life. This afternoon, I paced my house in a furnace of pain, and the most I could do to find my way out was whisper a mantra, OM TARA TUTTARA TURE SVAHA.
“I have no power over this,” I said. “I am utterly helpless. I am not the one in control. This tidal wave will scoop me up and carry me wherever it pleases. I have no choice but to surrender.”
There is so much light here, so much love, and so much that is awake, and yet I still carry this darkness. The Zen teacher recognized it immediately. He worked with it, and we both agreed the darkness is the shape of powerlessness and death.
The dance I started in my new town died a slow death. People stopped coming. We canceled our last event which was supposed to happen tonight. Our dance sustained me, nourished my heart. Gave me something to look forward to. With it gone, my soul aches for communion.
After the sun set, longing for music, I played a song in my living room. Dreamdance, by Amethystium.
The sense of vulnerability and powerlessness still gripped me, squeezing so hard I broke into dust. “I could die,” I thought. “I am just this fragile, fleeting human. Someday, I will die.”
The music poured into my awareness like a cool river.
I moved, and instantly my whole body entered samadhi. I was already so close. Complete hopelessness is just one step away from luminous freedom. Moving in hopelessness, there is no thought of any purpose or goal, no investment in even the faintest image of a reward or resolution. Movement happens in pure response to being, pure play. Without volition, my mind became deeply silent. I fell into the universe. It was the most meditative and healing dance I’ve ever experienced. Every slight movement was spontaneous, alive, wordless, and light. Every sensation was imbued with love that came from nowhere and continued on to nowhere. No one was watching… not even me.
If you taste this, even the smallest taste of it on the tip of your tongue, you will want nothing else in the universe, nothing more than to enter it fully, to become it. It is pure nothing, pure unadulterated, incinerating freedom. The pure nothing you cannot capture, cannot preserve, cannot give, and cannot earn or take credit for.
David Dieda wrote in Finding God Through Sex, “make love as though death were imminent.” I danced with the sense that death is imminent.
Afterwards, peace took over me. A quiet joy touched every hurting place. All night, this joy has coursed through my body. Like the Zen parable of the man who eats a strawberry while hanging above a tiger from a vine that two mice are slowing gnawing away. In the face of impending doom, he remarks, “how sweet it tasted.”
