(Written in January 2009)
I’ve been typing up from the retreat at Kripalu. Jack Kornfield asked “Can we touch our broken places with tenderness?” and that helped me soften. Looking at poor wounded Jenny and seeing how very difficult her life is. I wrote then about the difficult stony frozen feeling that isn’t really fear or terror — it’s that nameless dread — some invisible doom is rolling toward me and I am helpless to stop it. I saw very clearly that this is how a baby would feel: a helpless infant whose survival is dependent on a caretaker who can’t be trusted. I’ve been angry at myself for not being able to DO anything to right the situation, but the baby is truly powerless, and I’ve been triggered into the baby state. There’s no energy for fighting or fleeing because that mechanism hasn’t come on line yet. Being angry at myself for not being able to do anything seems really cruel. What I really need is for some larger, wiser, stronger, bigger, older being to scoop me up, hold me with gentle firmness, and reassure me that everything’s going to be all right. I can’t do this for myself, partly because I’m in the helpless baby state — where things are very clearly not all right, and when my adult looks out around her she sees a crumbling civilization, and finds it impossible to say “Everything’s going to be all right.” Most of my friends are also scared and worried, and unable to give me that deep reassurance that I long for. I think the only people who can help me are those who are so strongly rooted in a spiritual practice that they can speak from that place, can say “Everything’s going to be all right,” with conviction. Sometimes I’m able to get to that place and reassure myself, but it’s not happening very often.
And yet. There is some solid stern place inside me that insists that life is meaningful, even though I don’t know what the meaning is, that insists that the Universe is benevolent, even though I can’t feel it right now, and can’t understand how a benevolent universe can result in so much confusion and pain.