Let Mystery In
Contemplating mortality or the mystery of the vastness of time and space is very heady territory. We have a deep human longing for stability and would often choose a false yet familiar narrative. We often believe that negative experiences are bad and positive experiences are good, and our energy goes towards correcting our external reality in the pursuit of happiness.
There was a beautiful person I worked with last year who taught me a lesson about acceptance of the unknown. She was unusually content as she faced her terminal diagnosis, but not because she held tightly to an idea of what happens after death. Rather, she managed to embrace the next journey with a sense of curiosity. Point in case, after receiving her diagnosis she experienced visitors in the form of spirits. Often these were not significant people in her life but those she had been merely acquainted with in the past. She didn’t overanalyze this but simply observed it with curiosity, allowing the mystery of it all to wash over her. It reminded me of a quote by Pema Chodron, “But if we don’t find some way to make friends with groundlessness and the ever-changing energy of life, then we’ll always be struggling to find stability in a shifting world. And old age and death will come as a terrible shock.”
Another lesson, this time about our infinite universe, came from my son (who is currently studying astrophysics.) When he was younger, we’d be in the car driving to a baseball game or errand running (with me going over my mental checklist of to dos) when he would say something like, “The nearest star is 4.25 light years away, which is also about how far each star in the milky way is from one another.” or “The light from the most distant galaxies we’ve seen with telescopes has been traveling to us for about 13 billion years.” My mind would try to grasp what he just said while also trying to determine the most efficient route to Target. I would recover my momentary stun and say, “Son, you have to warn me before you tell me something like that.” While it was something fascinating to think about I also had a twinge of discomfort, like I lost the ground under my feet a little. These are facts I don’t often dwell on, but that doesn’t make them any less real. And could it serve me to consider them more often? I believe so.
In her book, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change, Pema Chodron says, “All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions. At the bottom, those opinions are merely the efforts to escape the underlying uneasiness of being human, the uneasiness of feeling like we can’t get ground under our feet…But imagine what the world would be like if we could see our likes and dislikes as merely likes and dislikes, and what we take to be intrinsically true as just our personal viewpoint”
Fortunately, we have innumerable opportunities every day to engage with open-mindedness and welcome the unknown. We can cultivate the habit of softening into experiences which allow us to investigate our reactions and, in turn, respond more skillfully. We may still be left with the rawness of our feelings, but we can let go of our rigid idea of how things should be happening and instead try to see things just the way they are. I’ve heard this called ‘eternal perspective’, and what follows is a lessening of struggle and confusion and an increase in compassion and ease. It expands our connection with the spiritual world, the earth, and each other.