In the nearly 20 years since awakening, I have observed several lengthy “chapters” in the more fully waking-up of the several human expressions: heart, mind, and body.
Prior to 2003 I would have said my primary experience of life occurred via the heart (with the oh-so-busy mind never ceasing its tormenting commentary). I had always been very much in my body (if also identified with its features). Although it appeared as though that ever-suffering heart had catalyzed the moment of the initial awakening, in the long stretch of life to unfold afterward, the primary focus — to my frank surprise — appeared to be on what occurred courtesy of the mind.
From the view of this long retrospect, that is not so surprising. For although I had long had a “good” mind, as the world would view it — I’d always been a good student and a skilled writer and so on — the greater part of my mental life had long been devoted, as it is for most of us, to the upkeep of the illusory self. The forging of identity, the obsession with past and future, fretting and grasping for control — these were the occupations of my intelligence. Which is to say, it was almost entirely squandered on fruitless and pain-generating undertakings.
* * *
Imagine the breath of fresh air, then, when so much space was abruptly freed up in my noggin. The departure of fear, of the lifelong fixation on identity and attachment, endowed me with the gigantic miracle of all the space I could ever desire: for contemplation, curiosity, awe, the ever-human attempt to fathom. None of it generating angst. To my heart’s content I explored terrain newly of great interest to me: things such as the question Why doesn’t everybody experience life this way? Why, indeed, didn’t I, until now? And (increasingly) this: Given that it’s now so obvious that this radical peace is actually everyone’s innate condition, might there be something I could do to . . . help them see? To get that mind-generated suffering is not, in fact, inevitable?
Waking up doesn’t undo our genetic “endowment” or prior conditioning. It frees us from attachment to our gifts.
During the years the awake mind seemed to undergo the most apparent blossoming, my lifelong heart tenderness was surely still in evidence. I continued, as previously, to enjoy being embodied, although the familiar identification with my physicality (and the associated fear) had melted away.
Bit by bit, as life carried on, I began to notice a growing amount of attention to my body. Surely this was in part because of having learned the wisdom of looking ahead, both visually (as in the woods) and temporally, registering that I did not have forever to live. With that increased focus on physicality, I felt my body come more and more entirely alive. I took better care of it, eating a healthier diet and getting regular exercise. Not to “avoid death” (ha!) but to enjoy being here as long as possible.
Then my beloved cat died, and all that unfolded from there. Landing me back, this time absent crippling fear, in the territory I’d begun in all the years prior: the heart. And so (perhaps ironically, given it was where I’d long lived) that was to be the final terrain in which I came to know the full blessing of awakening. Of the incarnation of which we all partake.
In the years since my cat’s death, having learned how to re-engage with the physical and mental realities of a human life, the mind has come once again to do a good deal of learning — some of it to do with reveling in the physical life.
* * *
All my life I have loved words, their meanings, how to spell them. All of which is a “feature” of my embodied self, shaped (as is the case for each of us) by genetic endowment and by the environment my birth landed me in.
The compelling occupation, early on, was the felt experience of curling my small fingers around a fat pencil and bringing letters into being. I studied earnestly to prepare for spelling bees. Anyone observing would have foretold two inevitabilities: I would be a writer, and I would major in English. Early on, being a wordsmith, I became a devotee of Scrabble and other word games.
Scrabble-playing, as it is for me since awakening, nicely illumines the difference between before and after. Historically, beginning in early childhood, I was not only skillful with all things relating to words — spelling, grammar, writing — but also ferociously identified with that strength. Hence the enduring memories I hold of all the youthful spelling bees I didn’t quite win, and in each case who beat me (and with which word). I never forgot it was the red-headed girl who knew how to spell hygiene.
Somewhat later, as an adult earnestly writing poems, I was just as devotedly sending them to a slew of poetry journals in the hope of their being accepted. I wanted to get into really good journals. On the infrequent and joyous occasion when an acceptance letter landed in the rusty mailbox out by the road, I shrieked to the sky. My children still remember me doing that, when they were little; they could hear it from inside the house. It was the sound of Mom-being-happy. To me, getting into a good journal meant I was A Good Poet, and that mattered almost as much as the keen pleasure of writing a poem.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I later ceased being attached to praise or “success.” It was the highest of ironies that I never managed to have a book published until after it no longer mattered, in the way it once would have. When something you’re good at is admired or complimented by another (above all, an “authority”), and that positive reinforcement has no impact whatever on how you feel — well, after a lifelong association of praise with a stroked ego, it is strange to be sure. Sometimes a reader of one of my books will say positive things about its impact or my writing ability. While I’m glad to know the writing is of benefit, nothing in me feels the long-familiar surge of self-worth.
* * *
Waking up doesn’t undo skills that are part of our “endowment,” whether genetic or based on prior conditioning. What it frees us of is attachment to our gifts. They no longer define us. We don’t identify any longer with something we’re good at. It may still be fun (as Scrabble is, in my case). I still enjoy writing, or I wouldn’t be writing this book. It’s just that I no longer take pride in the outcome. A book is not an “extension” of me, puffing up my identify.
As it happens, this very morning I came upon the word zephyrs. The Scrabble devotee in me registered that it would be a killer word to play: using all seven letters (yielding an extra 50 points), including the 10-point Z and two additional high-scoring letters. These kinds of words still get my attention, as they have since girlhood — not because I’m any longer hellbent on getting the highest score. I don’t care who wins now; I often don’t even notice who’s ahead, as a game is under way. Just the same, the lifelong delight in making a good word is intact. And (yes) I’m still good at it. It’s fun!
Nowadays, my daughter often beats me at Scrabble. She has learned well from her mother, as I did from my own. Nothing could please me more.
[From a forthcoming book by Jan Frazier]