the habit of being

In my last entry, when I said “lots of people think…” or “some people think…”, what I really meant was “I used to think…”

People have asked what happened to me ever since it happened, and I’m still not sure what to say. It’s been over two months now, but I didn’t know what to say a week afterwards either. One reason it is difficult to say is because there was not just one definitive event. There was no fig tree, no visitation… not exactly. There was a dramatic shift, which happened over a relatively short period of time, beginning in March. There was a sequence of events, coincidences, dreams. A friend of mine, Mitsu, who was involved in all this in various ways, and to whom I talked about it throughout that early period, likes to tell my “story.” I asked him to tell it to me, and it’s not a bad one.

There was the hearing of a certain Zen parable, a trip to Portland, a poem my friend Leigh wrote about me, a strange class I was taking fall semester which lead to my reading certain books (including St. Augustine’s Confessions, which made a big impact on me), and a heartbreak. All of these things happened around the same time, and afterwards everything had changed. It is not entirely wrong to say that those things are what happened to me, but that isn’t really right either. There are other things that happened in that small time window in March, many, many, things, all of which are amazingly connected, and in fact project all the way back through my life. If it is the specific sequence of events that defines this, that sequence can’t be isolated from the rest of my history. I don’t think it is the specific sequence of events that defines it at all.

It is very tempting the talk about it in terms of “before” and “after,” but that is misleading for many reasons. There is no after, because it is still happening. Amazingly, it keeps happening. But when I think about my experiences with this in the so-called before (which is not a real before because I was always in this and did sometimes realize it), one thing that sticks out to me is that, unlike this experience now, those had definite ends, in my mind.

When I was a child, the thought often crossed my mind, while I was doing some ordinary thing like walking back from the grocery store to the car with my mother, that it was possible that my whole life was just made up, that I might just be a character in someone else’s dream. Suddenly everything felt very different, but I would actually reason with myself that, well, even if something like that were the case, I’d just have to go along with it and do my normal life, that I couldn’t stand around thinking about how it might not be real because then I wouldn’t be able to do anything. So the episode would come to an end. Later, I would have brief flashes of this different way of being, in a more physical (rather than intellectual) way, after I’d been through some challenging emotional experience and had let go of something.. usually this would happen when I stopped trying to get whatever it was I thought I wanted from some other person. But it was a very brief thing, a feeling of freedom, usually following a huge explosion of some sort. I’d also feel something like this sometimes when I was practicing yoga regularly, about 3 years ago. My whole way of relating to the world would be shifted somewhat after a really powerful class. There were many ways in which I experienced this, “before,” but they were relatively transient glimpses, and I could not articulate them. I was even less able to articulate them than I’m able to articulate what happened to me in March. One way of saying it is that there’s a way to be both in my life and aware that my life is just a dream at the same time.

Recently I was trying to tell someone, another friend, who is skeptical, about this, and he kept saying that while he was all for people having realizations, what he had a hard time with was the way I seemed to talk about the experience I had had as having some sort of special status, some uniqueness among other possible realizations. And of course, being an atheist, he was turned off by the mystical way I’ve started talking about it. I’ve gotten similar reactions from other people, and it is difficult to know how to respond. On the one hand, it is true that it isn’t really that special of a thing that happened to me. Everyone has access to this realization, it isn’t really a secret. As I’ve quickly learned, there are volumes and volumes written about it. It’s also true that this isn’t the final ultimate thing, there’s always more and more to see. But it’s also the case that this isn’t just any little realization. I’ve had other realizations, and they did not have this character. This change, which I’ve yet to really describe, was intellectual, physical, emotional, all at once. It is hard to describe or explain, but it was, and is, not at all abstract. It’s a clear, concrete, experience, that informs everything, literally everything, in my life. It’s not a purely intellectual thought. It is something I feel, physically and emotionally. It is something I participate in. I’ll try to write something about what the experience of it is like soon. The understanding is tightly linked to the experience. I had barely any concept of it a few months ago!

I’ve been reading books about Zen and yoga and philosophy and religion and various things off and on for many years, and I can say with certainty that I did not really understand them at all until now. And it wasn’t that I didn’t feel like there was anything to understand in these books. I most certainly did think there was, and I wanted very much to understand it, and I thought that if I understood it I might be happier. From my own experience, I know that it is possible to go quickly from not understanding this to understanding it to some degree. And I know that the way to make that transition is not by trying to understand it, because I did that for a long time and it didn’t work. I also know what it feels like to be someone who is reading about these things, or listening to someone else talk about them, without having experienced them. The idea that I could experience something like this now is not any more amazing than the idea that I could have NOT experienced it then. I should also say that there’s not any meaningful separation between now and then inherent in THIS, but that’s part of where the trickiness of trying to talk about things comes up… there are so many assumptions in the world that don’t hold from this perspective, and those assumptions are built into our language. But anyway, I think this is where the sort of categorical thing, for me, comes in… because for me there really was a long period of just not getting it, not grasping the full picture. And even though I cannot claim any sort of “complete understanding” now, it is clear to me that I can see vastly more now than I could see only a few months ago.

My friend the skeptic was saying that there are many realizations, little shifts, that can happen; that’s it’s not just one big understanding that a person either has or doesn’t have. And I don’t deny that that is possible, that one could come to this or something else like this in many steps. I’ve heard stories like that. And what happened to me has a little of that character, when I look back on it, trying to find precursors as I mentioned above, but there is also a distinct quality of a door opening, an eye opening, as I wrote the other day and many others have written.

In my own amazement and almost disbelief that such a thing could really happen, even faced with my own experience as evidence, I read a lot of books about it. In fact, I haven’t read anything that isn’t about mysticism or conversion or enlightenment since March. It is partly because I was able to find so many accounts of experiences like my own that I feel comfortable talking about this using terms like “God” or “enlightenment.” I don’t think this has to be framed using those particular terms, but I do think that what it is the Catholics are talking about when they talk about conversion and grace is the same thing the Buddhists are talking about when they talk about satori is the same thing basically all religions are based on is the same thing I am trying to talk about here.

There is no saying how the door opens. There is no saying how the wind is sucked out of the world and you with it, through the door, which, as one can see clearly from the other side, was never closed in the first place. One can see clearly, from the other side, that there is no other side. There are no words to describe a change which is not a change from one thing to another, a movement which is no movement at all. But because writing is what I do, I will try to write about this.

The funny thing about enlightenment is that people think it is a state they should strive to achieve. It sounds like a good thing: enlightenment. It sounds like laying down burdens. The problem with this, thinking enlightenment is a good thing, is that you might then suppose that burdens are a bad thing. Everywhere, there are people who want to be enlightened so they can stop suffering… so that they can get rid of the bad stuff and be free. But that is not how it works. Enlightenment is not about getting rid of suffering. Enlightenment is realizing that suffering isn’t something one needs to get rid of.

I think this is very similar to the saying that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. I think an elephant would have an easier time getting through the eye than a person who doesn’t suffer would have attaining enlightenment. A person who doesn’t suffer isn’t alive. Enlightenment, though it requires a kind of death, is a state of extreme alive-ness. Everything is more vivid in THIS, even suffering.

Of course, the other thing about enlightenment, the kingdom of God, or whatever you might call it, is that once you see that you are there, you also see that you were always there. You didn’t have to go through the eye of a needle afterall. All you had to do was open your eyes. This isn’t really something one can attain, because it is impossible to attain something you already have. This is why you can’t find God by looking for him. But this isn’t to say that looking for God or trying not to suffer is bad either. There’s no difference between saying that suffering is a bad state to be in and saying that trying to stop suffering is a bad state to be in. They’re both wrong. The bad state doesn’t really exist. The line between immanence and transcendence doesn’t really exist. THIS isn’t about breaking through barriers, it’s about no longer believing in them.

A lot of people might say they couldn’t be happy, because happiness requires believing in things blindly. Actually, it is being miserable that requires this. You really have to believe that you are trapped, that you are doomed, that you are worthless, that you have nothing to give, to be truly, deeply, miserable. You have to believe it no matter what other people say. You have to believe it even if you can’t prove it. These are the kind of beliefs that are hardest to let go of. Happiness is the absence of beliefs.

To find God is to see that one has been in God from the beginning. There is nothing new. I think another thing a lot of people expect from a big, universal, insight, is that it will be a new thing that changes the world. That’s not really true either. Yes, there can be a sudden, profound shift in how a person experiences the world. But it’s still the same world, and you’re still the same person. Nothing new is added. Everything was already there.

The thrill of discovering a book on your own, with no help from any of your better-read friends and family. Simply finding it on the shelf, bring it home, falling in love. Realizing that the author has so many more, with overwhelming joy, brings tears. A reason to continue! You want to tell everyone, and yet also to keep it a secret. As if you could keep a Nobel Prize winner a secret. Sharing a favorite book or writer with a close friend can feel like sharing a lover, particularly if you have reason to her believe her feelings will be as strong as your own. It comes as both a relief and an insult if that does not turn out to be the case, and such jealousy if it is true.

Once, my mother even had to tell me I did not have dibs on Faulkner.

I tried to get a third bottle of wine on the way to the subway but it was after eleven and the store was closed. I wound up getting tonic and lemon from the bodega and a takeaway bag full of ice from the Bageltique in Park Slope, to go with the Sapphire Calgary stole from one of the million restaurant jobs she kept losing last year when everything was shittier than it is now and we used to go to the Magician for happy hour and one of us always got sick. We took their two bottles of white and the gin and the tonic and a corkscrew and a blanket and a thermos full of ice and my backpack and a computer and a camera and sweaters for if it got cold and a book to stick in the door so we weren’t locked on the roof. They poured the wine and I poured a very strong G&T because it was dark and I couldn’t see. Calgary taught me how to do kung-fu kicks and we talked about sex. Sex we’re not having and sex are having with people we shouldn’t be and sex we’ve had and sex we want to have and how bad kissers are just not worth the effort. We laughed and laughed and took pictures with the flash and the Manhattan lights were blurry and Carrie finally gave in and peed on the roof next door. We were 23 and almost-25 and almost-27. By two in the morning I was demonstrating yoga adjustments I learned in teacher training in 2003 and Calgary took pictures of me pressing on Carrie’s hipbones and she asked when it was her turn and apologized for not having shaved in a while. I wanted to get a bagel from the Bageltique which is open 24 hours but there was still another bottle. The computer took pictures of us and there was one spot where we could check our email, especially if I used my leg as an antenna. At one point Calgary said hey we’re having a good time, I’ve never had a group of friends. And I wasn’t sure three qualified as a group but we decided it did. Tomorrow we can get a manicure I kept saying. There’s this place on Christopher Street where there are manicures for $8.50. When we went downstairs it was after four and we needed to do handstands against the wall in the kitchen and that was when we realized how drunk we actually were. All three of us got up though. It was decided that I couldn’t go back to the West Village and we were having a slumber party and Carrie said I think I might take a shower and then the water was running. I still wanted a bagel but no one wanted to go to the Bageltique anymore so Calgary made me a minibagel with soy cream cheese but at first she didn’t turn on the oven. When she got out of the shower Carrie blew up the air mattress and gave me some yoga pants to wear and fell asleep in a heap. It was five and Calgary and I set two alarms for noon because she had to leave for the restaurant at 2:30 and we both went to sleep in Carrie’s bed. We got up at 10 or 11 and we were all hungover and hungry and Calgary took pictures of me and Carrie with rashyboo hair and sleepy eyes and it was Sunday so we needed vegan brunch. We decided to go to this place in the East Village which meant we had to go on the train and walk a ways and I kept asking are we there yet and then we almost didn’t know where it was but then we did. We had a cute waiter who was slow with the coffee and we all ordered the breakfast burrito with tofu scramble and vegetables and beans and guacamole and also the virgin sangria. Carrie couldn’t eat all of hers because she has a small stomach but Calgary and I did an impressive job considering the burrito was huge. Afterwards it was raining and we didn’t have an umbrella and Carrie forgot her leftovers but didn’t go back because that would be embarrassing. We weren’t far from my new favorite bus, the M8 that goes from the West Village to the East, which I had just learned about from Calgary who looked it up for me so I could come study with her at Sympathy for the Kettle. We found the M8 and got on it and they got off at St. Mark’s Bookshop and I went home to my apartment and it stopped raining and by then it was afternoon.

It’s weird. It’s as if I just woke up one day and realized that everything is fine. I know that isn’t really what happened. In fact, it took an absolutely absurd number of good things happening to me, one after another after another, to get me to even entertain the possibility that maybe my life isn’t awful, that I’m not perpetually stuck in the shithole that was 2002, that my life isn’t Ruined Forever.

But it feels like one day, maybe last week or the week before, maybe yesterday, I just woke up and everything had changed. I can’t say which day it was, because that didn’t happen, and in fact just last week or the week before or yesterday I was crying and feeling terrible. But it’s like that doesn’t even matter, because right now I can look at my life, my whole life as it is, and say: this is good, this is as it should be.

Normally, I can’t see this at all. At most, I can, even from the mud of my self-pity, force myself to admit that at least one thing is going alright: At least I live in New York. At least my boss thinks I’m smart. At least my mother loves me. At least I’m not ill. At least my fish hasn’t died. And my favorite: I am so lonely and so miserable, so damaged and untouchable, but at least I’m not boring. The problem is that I can’t even look at one positive aspect of my life without weighing it against that seemingly unbearable load of all my baggage and problems, such that the good thing seems so tiny and feeble in comparison that it’s no longer worth acknowledging, let alone celebrating, at all.

When I was 11 or 12 or smaller, I really thought depressed people were fascinating. They wrote all the really moving stories and had all the intense feelings and they seemed so honest and so interesting. And I knew I had some of this stuff in me too, so I played it up. I wrote the kind of stories that depressed girls wrote, and I wore the kind of clothes that depressed girls wore. But, somewhere, for years, even as the sad stories started coming true, in the back of my mind I was worried that maybe it was all just pretend. Maybe I was only pretending to suffer so I could be edgy and cool.

But the suffering got worse and worse and at some point I decided there was just no way it couldn’t be real. Not only was it real, it was everything I had. My suffering became who I was and what my art was about and what made me make art in the first place. To know suffering, I thought, was what it meant to really get it in life.

In a lot of ways, I still believe that. I believe that if you can really go deep into what hurts you, you can learn to understand much more than your personal sadness: you can understand why the world is in the mess it’s in, why people sometimes do horrible things, why religions exist, all sorts of things. I fully believe that suffering is the way to compassion, and that compassion is essential.

But now, I also know I wasn’t wrong when I was 11 or 12. This whole notion of worrying about being a “poseur” is something that seems so adolescent, so immature. And it’s supposed to be some triumph when we stop worrying about whether we’re really being who we really are. But maybe that worry is a real insight. Maybe, even now, my suffering is just pretend.

By “pretend” I don’t mean it’s worthless or it’s dishonest or it’s fake. I just mean it’s something I made up. Pretending about sadness really can lead to real sadness. My reality has always been something I made up. I’d like to think that there’s some outside of me reality, some essential truth or whatever, but I don’t really know. Maybe someday I will feel more sure about that. But for today, I’m just going to pretend to be happy instead.

Nothing is really any different. It’s just that I have this amazing job and this warm, supportive family, and I have this healthy body and these brilliant friends and I live in this endlessly fascinating place, surrounded by beauty, everyday, and my mind is capable and flexible and compared to all that, a little pain, even a lot of pain, just doesn’t seem like such a big deal.