24. Daily Practice
The outcome? Change happens. Real change at a level I have not found any other way. This process of change, of necessity, requires a daily discipline, the importance of which is not widely understood.
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It's one thing to have a new insight. But the capacity to trust is a whole new ballgame. When our "unthought known" speaks absence, trust can be gradually built through a discipline of dual awareness. For ten or twenty or thirty minutes a day we can sit and breathe with an intention: 1. to recognize negative or fearful thoughts as memories-of-absence (while periodically saying "Of course," which dissipates their power), and 2: of simultaneously rewiring our brain's architecture by creating new neural pathways bathed-in-Presence. More on this later.
You may notice that I now capitalize the word Presence. I have gradually come to recognize that presence/Presence is a fractal. I have gradually come to trust in a sense of loving, holding companionship in all of this – an Other who is with me and,
inexplicably, for me. (I tend to get nervous when people talk this way. It can so easily be filled with a self-certainty that puts me off. Even so, in my own experience, this quiet awareness is simply true.)
Me. AND. Another. Hardwired and simple. Nothing special, yet absolutely essential.
Through the years I have moved from silence to Silence, from presence to Presence. I’ve come to recognize that tenderness doesn’t show up as some-thing; rather, tenderness is found with another.
Moments of meeting. Moments of trust.
Buddhists often speak of enlightenment as the direct experience of intimacy. Christians, in the 1800's, would speak of finding God as "being met by the Great Affection."
Sometimes this intimacy is experienced with another person: the touch of a friend, the memory of a teacher's voice, the glance of a child. Sometimes, it’s the greeting from an animal, walking past a familiar tree, the coloring of the sky. And sometimes, sitting in the quiet of the morning, I find tender companionship in an ineffable, discernible Presence too subtle to be grasped. Uncertain, yet sure.
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Absence of proof is no longer proof of absence. Unseen isn’t the same as unreal or unavailable. I’ve come to know Presence by how I shift internally: I settle, I rest, I feel less alone, and – sometimes – I feel deeply connected, as though I’ve come home.
How could it be otherwise? The child/parent paradigm wasn’t pathological when we were young. It isn’t pathological now. The needs each of us originally had for holding from a loving caregiver (soothing, support, organizing guidance) don't disappear. Our early absolute dependence hasn't disappeared, we just learned to defend against it. ("It's up to me.") Our original needs are primal, ongoing, and always relevant. Acknowledging this has become the foundation of my daily practice.
This has led to a new kind of trust. Admitting need on a regular basis, I have realized that I’m no longer the prime mover in my life. As I said a few moments ago, it isn’t “up to me” after all. I’ve chosen to be less in charge and more available to the hidden, yet consistent Presence and gradual transformation being offered.
“Give your weakness to one who helps ...” is the very thing I learned not to do as a child. As an adult I’ve had to admit the painful cost of this negative conclusion, and to gradually recognize that hell has nothing to do with weakness or vulnerability and everything to do with isolation.
Vulnerability is sacred. Isolation is a lie. Which is to say that I’ve learned to risk becoming dependent in a way that is risky and soothing in the same moment. I often enter my procedural certainty (“absence is the final word") while at the same time trusting that Presence (vast, fathomless, tender, and intimate) is with me and for me, holding and providing what I most need.
Thirst is, indeed, proof of water.
This learning has made all the difference.
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I have a dear friend, a Catholic Cistercian monk, who has dedicated her life to meditation and prayer. I once put the following question before her: "What, in all your years in this monastery, is your greatest learning?"
Veronique's answer was immediate, brief, and confident, "I have learned to ask."
So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold.
— Anne Lamott