Pema Chodron

Sometimes I have trouble with the Buddhist teachings, especially when they get into the Eight Worldly Dharmas, the Six Kinds of Loneliness, the Six Paramitas and all that stuff. But, after some resistance, I became totally absorbed in Pema Chodron's book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Here are a few quotes that lit me up.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh.

The process of becoming unstuck quires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA.

Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.

We can’t attain enlightenment, let alone feel contentment and joy, without seeing who we are and what we do, without seeing our patterns and our habits . . . it’s a process by which self-deception becomes so skillfully and compassionately exposed that there’s no mask that can hide us anymore.

The middle way is wide open, but it's tough going, because it goes against the grain of an ancient neurotic pattern that we all share. When we feel lonely, when we feel hopeless, what we want to do is move to the right or left. We don't want to sit and feel what we feel. We don't want to go through the detox. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken the bravery that exists in everyone without exception, including you and me.

New Beginnings

Day 27
I’m not prepared for what I see when Linda walks into the terminal. She looks young, radiant, and glowing. We hug each other passionately. “You’re not going to believe it,” she says, looking at me with eyes of love. “I’m a different person. I've been reborn.”

"I can see that," I say, placing a sweet-smelling lei around her neck. "It's so clear."

This marks the beginning of a new life for both of us.

And it all started with a simple intention of doing a month-long retreat.

Doing the Work

There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation. W.C. Fields

Day 26
When Linda calls, I can’t believe she's the same person who left a few days ago. There’s a new aliveness and strength coming through her voice, like someone who has woken up from a long nightmare to finds themselves fully and joyfully alive. What a courageous journey she's been on. She'll be home in less than twenty-four hours.

Without my usual social interactions during the retreat, I’m noticing that when I talk to people, that I smile a lot. Nothing wrong with that, but at some point the smile becomes forced. I can even feel the muscles of my face tighten when it happens. I remember David Deida, an old friend, saying, “Peter, I often see you smile when you’re not feeling like smiling. It’s not authentic. What is it that you’re hiding?”

I have a session with David and Tom, my two therapists, and tell them about my compulsive need to smile. “It’s your way of coping.” Tom says. “You try and please everyone by being nice.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Smiling is my way of keeping everything on the surface, so I don’t have to show any emotions. I can keep everyone at a distance. It’s like skippping a stone across the surface of a pond."

David says, “So, this is a chance for you to be more serious than you take yourself to be.”

“That’s so true. If I was serious, friends would see who I really am - a frightened little child that feels completely worthless, I'm terrified that they'd abandon me.”

Tom hands out one of his helpful little lifelines: “Be gentle with yourself. Your friends clearly see who you are—a kind, loving person."

I love these guys.

A thought pops to mind. “I also smile so that I can avoid confrontation of any kind. I’m terrified of strong, aggressive men. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with someone like Donald Trump or Vince Vaughan.” Heat courses through my belly. “Wow, there’s so much rage in there!”

“What would it be like to let that masculine side out more?” David asks. “What if you could let more feelings come through—anger when you’re angry, sadness when you’re sad, without being afraid it will overwhelm you?”

“That would feel so good.”

“And you can be the curious observer, watching it all,” Tom adds.

It’s hard to believe that I’m still dealing with the “wounded child” at my age. But if it helps me open my heart and be authentic, I don’t care if I’m a hundred years old and still doing this stuff. It’s not done until it’s done. Ya gotta do the work, baby.

Renewal

Day 21
Clare calls from the Ibogaine Clinic to tell me that Linda has gotten through her first treatment with an A+. There were two doctors with her the whole time. A number of people have died while taking ibogaine and they take every precaution.

I’ve had my phone on “silent” for the retreat, but recently turned it on to make sure I didn’t miss a call from Linda if she needed me. The phone rings and it's my dear friend Christine calling from New Mexico, saying that she and Kenn will be visiting Maui in November. What wonderful news. Once I feel complete in myself, the people I love most in my life seem to be miraculously showing up all around me.

Linda calls. It's like talking to a completely different person - clear, strong, and at peace with herself. What a huge step this is. Of all things, she met with a naturopath today and enjoyed it. She’s even eating real food (instead of caffeine and sugar). She's tired after the treatment, but tells me that she went to a place where constellations of stars rearranged themselves into form. "I came away with a deep acceptance of what is," she says. "It was like my brain was reset to the clarity and innocence of a six-year-old. And I don't have any craving for the pain meds." It's almost too much to believe.

The Core of Life

Let’s remember why we’re here at retreat: for the amazing opportunity to really look into the core of our existence, the core of life itself that is so easy to overlook. It’s not easy to pay attention to it, because it’s not noisy and it’s not clamoring for attention like all other aspects of the human mind. Adyashanti

Day 20

With Linda gone, I'm sure that my fear of abandonment will show itself. I've been haunted by this fear ever since my mother died when I was twelve. The frightened child in me believes that if someone is not physically present, they might just as well be dead. That was my experience as a boy when I was told to “get over it” after my mother disappeared off the face of the earth. No one in the family ever spoke of her again; photos were hidden away; any sign of her was eradicated. In my twenties, this fear left me suicidal when I went to live alone in Paris, leaving behind friends and family. Unable to make friends and not knowing the language, I spiraled into depression. Since then I‘ve been afraid that if I was left alone again, the depression would come back to devour me.

Now I have the chance to sit with my aloneness. Since I'm on retreat, I don't want to take any easy outs - calling a friend or distracting myself on the computer. I sit quietly on the lanai, watching the thoughts float up to the surface. How interesting, there's the thought, "Where is Linda now? I'm on my own. No one even knows I'm here. Maybe I should call someone . . ." Much to my surprise, the thoughts come up and drift away; they no longer have any charge. Inside of experiencing emptiness, I'm experiencing fullness. What was once an “empty hole” needing to be constantly filled is now whole and complete. It is my own Self . . . the gift of retreat.

Ibogaine

Day 20

As soon as I start to slow my life down, Linda begins to undergo a major shift around her health. For 12 years she has lived with Behcets Disease, an auto-immune illness similar to Lupus or MS. It leaves her in a state of almost constant pain. To help relieve that pain her doctors give her pain meds, gradually having to increase her dosage as her tolerance to the meds goes up. Now she needs enough medication to kill an elephant to keep the pain tolerable. Even with the meds (and partly because of them), her quality of life becomes barely tolerable. For days on end, she barely gets off the couch. She often longs for life to be over, so that she can escape from the constant pain. It is a nightmare of waking up every day with what feels like the flu, along with mouth sores, painful rashes, aching joints, and a swollen belly.

While searching on the internet, Linda comes across a treatment for chronic pain called ibogaine. Ibogaine is a natural substance made from the bark of the iboga tree in West Africa. It has been used for centuries by the pygmies in Africa for its healing properties. When taken, it provides a psychedelic experience, where many go through a “life review.” Only recently scientists have found out that it also is a highly effective drug for treating addiction of all kinds, from heroine, to cocaine, to alcohol, to pain meds, to gambling. It seems to “reset” the brain, taking away the cravings that drugs create.

Linda gets so fed up with her twelve-year dependency on pain meds that she calls the Ibogaine Clinic in Rosita, Mexico and decides to go next week for treatment. For Linda to make this choice, and get on a plane by herself, is huge. Believe it or not, she leaves tomorrow. It’s the first time we’ve been apart in six months, and the first time she’s gone anywhere on her own in the seventeen years we’ve been married.

I get to spend the week alone.

Being

Day 15 The idea of just stopping—nowhere to go, nothing to do—becomes more and more familiar. I always had a fear that if I stopped, I’d be like an old person in a nursing home, staring vacantly out into space. So far I’m not drooling—not yet anyway.

Practice Run

Day 13

This retreat is just a practice run—a taste. I’m being pulled to do it longer, deeper.

The real challenge for me is with people. I’m so happy to be in silence. Whenever I do talk, I find myself incredibly impatient. Ninety-nine percent of what I talk about seems totally unnecessary, totally unimportant, totally preprogrammed, and endlessly repetitive. At times I feel I could just put in a tape, play my past conversation, and go to sleep.

Until I can remain in that place of unconditioned awareness without being shaken from it, there is no way out. Who would guess that I’d be happy saying to people, “I’ll see you in a month.”

I have blissful evenings sitting on the lanai reading, watching it get dark, hearing the mynahs fly down to their nests for the night, smelling the sweet, fragrant night-blooming jasmine. I’m in heaven.

One of my most treasured books is The Heart of Awareness, a beautiful and moving translation of the Ashtavakra Gita, one of India's most sacred texts:

What is yesterday,
Tomorrow,
Or today?
What is space,
or eternity?
I sit in my own radiance.

Why talk of wisdom,
The three ends of life,
Or oneness?
Why talk of these!
Now I live in my heart.

Growing Up

Day 12 Our puppy Kamalani is finally growing up. No more nipping, yelping, chewing, crying, biting, whining, tugging, jumping in the morning. I’m sitting in my chair with Kamalani lying quietly at my feet. Is he just picking up on my calm energy? Change yourself and the whole world changes around you.

Hibernation

Day 11
All I can hear is the creaking and cracking of the bamboo swaying in the wind, the cooing of the doves, and the distant sound of someone working on their house. An airplane flies by. I'm sitting on the lanai with the laptop on my lap, feeling I should be writing something, yet there is nothing to say. The retreat has been a soothing balm to my brain. I seem to have dropped all anxiety about having to “produce” every moment of my life. It’s finally time to put the computer—and my mind—on “hibernate” for a while.

It amazes me to see how wrapped up I’ve been with writing for the past ten years, day after day, thinking I have some important message to share with the world. In the last six months, three books have come out with the same message I thought was so important—and doing it better than I could have done. So, where does that leave me? Free! I no longer have to save the world!

Elizer Sobel out-wrote, out-experienced, out-humored me in his book The 99th Monkey; Mark Matousek out-researched, out-performed, out-slicked me in When You’re Falling, Dive. James Swartz out-memoired, out-sexed, out-nondualed me in his online memoir. The funny part is that I can barely remember the names of their books and none of them have stuck with me. The stuff I wrote is just as forgettable. Even funnier, any idea of getting rich off a book went out the window. I doubt any of them made more than a few pennies. So, what was I was trying to prove?

In retrospect the book was an attempt to win the “next race,” to be recognized, to be better than, to give the finger to just about everyone. Now I have no idea where the writing will go—if it goes anywhere—and it no longer matters.

Adyashanti talks about the idea of “striving” (coming from the mind), versus “allowing” (coming from a place of not-knowing). True creativity is like an artesian well, naturally bubbling up from the earth. Ego-creativity is like using a high-pressure pump to force it up from the depths.

Coming Down

Day 10

So much for all the highfalutin stuff. Most mornings I just want to sleep. Afternoons I usually have to run off to a doctor’s appointment or make calls about selling the Roadtrek . Who cares? Retreat is still happening—sitting in the dentist’s chair, on the phone, walking on the beach, taking a nap.

My life is beginning to slow down. Any activity becomes all the more pronounced. I’m detoxing from my frenetic life. Right now my mind feels fuzzier than when I began the retreat. Maybe it’s from slowing down; maybe it’s the toxic rubber smell from our “organic” mattress after putting it out in the sun. Who knows? Even a toxic mattress is part of the plan.