Finding Compassion In This “Between Time”

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This past week brought my 60th birthday, my first COVID vaccine and impeachment.  It’s not a birthday that will fade from memory any time soon.  We are in the midst of huge transitions in our government, community and personal lives.  It feels like slack tide, the time between the tides when the boats are all akimbo, facing this way and that, yet still secure on their moorings (hopefully). They are waiting for the next tide that will turn them all facing the same direction again.  

This “between time,” while chaotic, also carries opportunity.  Like when moving to a new home, we have a chance to look at all of our possessions and consider whether it serves us to carry them forward into our new life, to pass them along to someone else or to discard them. We are in the between time when the old house has been pulled apart and everything is in piles and boxes and we are looking forward to getting to our new space and getting things organized and settled... but we are not there yet.  And I think it will be a while.

In our seasonal cycle, Earth time represents the transitions.  It holds the center like the hub of a wheel. And the 73 or so days of Earth time are split into the spaces between the four seasons.  I say “or so” because Earth time is not set like the four seasons.  In the Roman calendar, we have leap year to make that adjustment. In this calendar, it is absorbed in Earth time because each season is exactly 36½ days on either side of the Solstice or Equinox.

 
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You’ll notice that this year we are entering Earth time on January 27th.  This means that the seasonal energetics will be in that “every-which-way” feeling of slack tide until February 11th at which point, we will start to feel the definite directional pull of Spring.  This will likely amplify the feeling of being betwixt and between.  It will be especially interesting this year to see this play out collectively on the world stage.

In the meantime, we can focus on staying securely on our moorings.  What moors or grounds us (Earths us) are those things in life that are Real.  One of my teachers has a saying that “only that which cannot be lost in shipwreck is Real.” These are the things human beings have been doing forever that align us with Life. The things that make us uniquely human among the rest of creation.  Connecting with loved ones, connecting with nature, simple acts of loving kindness, empathy, compassion, creativity, spiritual practice, etc.  We are all so weary of the restrictions of the pandemic making many of these simple things so difficult.  But hang on!  With the energy of Spring also comes a surge of energy that often feels like cabin fever, but maybe this year, with the mild weather, it can be directed toward the things that nurture us and each other.

I have been reading The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk.  It is about the neuroscience of trauma.  I know it sounds a little dry, but I can tell you I am riveted! 

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Dr Van Der Kolk is a psychiatrist who started to work with Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD before it became a diagnosis.  He describes what happens to our brains when we experience trauma of any kind.  While he is talking about the brain neurology on an individual basis, we can see it being played out collectively in the insanity of this time.  He describes how the limbic brain (responsible for fight or flight) is the first to develop in the womb. And it is in early childhood that the process of developing the prefrontal cortex (responsible for reason, empathy, etc.) begins and then continues into our 20’s.  What really resonated for me was that it is now understood that trauma shuts down the prefrontal cortex to deal with the emergency at hand. In PTSD all the hormones and brain chemicals that were triggered by the initial event are randomly re-triggered by everyday emotions and sensorial inputs, replaying over and over in a never-ending loop for years afterward, leaving us exhausted and in a constantly state of fight-or-flight.  I feel it in my own body/mind every time I read the news; I get angry and frustrated.  I have been using my breathing practice to settle my nervous system when I feel it ramping up.  Turns out that Van Der Kolk’s studies found that breathing techniques (among other body-centered work) are an important part of healing PTSD. 

I know I have shared the Dalai Lama’s practice of Tonglen with you before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x95ltQP8qQ. Pema Chodron is an American Tibetan Buddhist teacher and here she walks you through the process of the Tonglen breathing practice. I figure if the Dalai Lama can get to a place of compassion with all he has had to contend with over the last 60 years, maybe he is on to something.

I think it safe to say that we are a traumatized species, nation and planet at this point.  Collectively with all the uncertainty of the time, we are in fight-or-flight mode, and we can see it in the angry, aggressive choices and behaviors all around us.  It makes me wonder, what are the personal traumas that these individuals have suffered that are that they are unconsciously acting out? Is the collective discord triggering old individual trauma into a PTSD reaction and accompanying loss of reason?  Seems plausible… It also makes sense that by bringing our conscious awareness to what is happening in our own bodies and minds, we can be part of the healing.

Here is a poem by Hafiz that I found especially relevant at the moment.

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THIS SANE IDEA

Let your

Intelligence begin to rule

Whenever you sit with others

Using this sane idea:

Leave all your cocked guns in a field

Far from us,

One of those damn things

Might go

Off.

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