Barry Garden Path

I’ve heard it said that there are only two people in the world that understand gravity. I certainly am not one of them. So I’m not quite sure where this writing is going……..

I think that I have gotten glimpses of what gravity must be like. Still, I don’t know if my impressions of gravity are based on anything real. Perhaps they are the result of our collective imagination, certainly of mine.

I think that gravity has something to do with my own mass and how close I am to another entity with greater or less mass. Gravity possibly has something to do with our relative mass.

When I saw astronauts bouncing around on the Moon, I became aware that I might weigh less on the moon. My own mass might not change, but the mass of the moon is less than the mass of the earth. The effect of moon gravity might be less than what I experience on Earth, if ever I should go to the Moon.

A poet has told me that I would also weigh less on some of the planets circling the Sun along with the Earth. However, on Jupiter I would be as ponderously weighty as an elephant. Is this all about the effect of relative mass or are there other factors at work?

I think that distance is also related to the effect of gravity. If I would ever climb a mountain, I am convinced that I would weigh slightly less than if I were at the seashore. I would be slightly removed from the mass of the Earth, and the effect of gravity would be less.

Astronauts in the space station are not only removed from the mass of the earth but they are also moving at great speeds relative to the earth. They float and seem to be beyond the effect of gravity. The space station meanwhile seems tethered to the Earth, its speed not being sufficient to move its mass beyond the reaches of Earth gravity.

The speed of the space station is a lot less than the speed of the earth around the sun. The speed of the earth around the sun is four times the speed of the space station. The mass of the Sun and the Earth are both great, and though the Earth is orbiting the sun at slightly over 66,000 miles per hour, it is still adequately attracted to the Sun that it doesn’t shoot out of the solar system.

This attraction between bodies, large and small, is something I see in how gravity affects how those bodies relate. Each body bends space in its own way, and that affects how the bodies relate. Sometimes bodies run into one another because of this attraction, as when my feet hit the ground any time I am no longer suspended above the Earth. The grip of the attraction lessens if one of the bodies moves faster relative to the other. I no longer have a static relationship with the Earth if I take off running. By running, I seem to lessen a tiny amount of the attractive force between the Earth and me.

I wonder if this attractive force between bodies exists between bodies that otherwise seem to be static, at rest. Does a kind of gravity exist between a tree and me, between another person and me? Is gravity, this attractive force a “given” through all entities in the universe. Do all things have a desire, a yearning, an attraction to all other entities in their vicinity?

I think that, like gravity, desire is a universal law and it applies to all things. It is a characteristic woven into the fabric of the universe. Desire, like gravity, is the underlying force field in which all of us, and all entities, are involved. It is the force that draws all things to constantly try to move together and become one.

Is it too much of a reach to say that gravity is simply the desire that exists between all things? As I am constantly affected by gravity, I am also constantly affected by the desire of all things around me. We are constantly locked in the embrace of desire.

I’ve spent a lot of energy on avoidance. It all began in my early life when I learned how important it was to stay out of trouble. So much of my younger years was structured on avoidance. I did so much more than avoid doing the wrong things, getting hurt, causing people to get upset. But I also got pretty good at avoidance. It was an appealing strategy to avoid undesirable things.

My early spiritual guidance was in a Catholic grade school, and was mostly based on sin avoidance. Already as a seven-year old, I had learned the importance and urgency of avoiding anything that would send me to hell. I was grateful for the opportunity of Confession and the chance to be forgiven for all my failures to avoid sin and the occasion of sin.

I recognize that the important theme of avoidance didn’t stop as I got older. It has continued into today, but has less of a hold on me than it once did. I still buy insurance to avoid the consequences of future perils, real or imagined. My reading yesterday was full of admonitions to avoid anything that resembles racism. Being anti-racist has a different kind of avoidance urgency than Black Lives Matter.

Even the five Mindfulness Trainings used by my Sangha and by my Arise group are dominated by cautions of avoiding unethical behavior. Especially the third Mindfulness Training on Love and Sex is a serious recitation of behaviors to be avoided.

I take some comfort in knowing that I have learned an approach to deep concentration that does not focus on avoidance. My teacher has identified five hindrances that might interfere with concentration. They are acknowledged as stupor, doubt, aversion, restlessness and sensual desire. Rather than attacking or avoiding these hindrances, the teaching is to develop positive antidotes that promote concentration and insight. I like that approach.

I appreciate the value of avoiding whatever leads to undesirable consequences. I am all for avoiding what leads to suffering. Just the same, I prefer a path that is more about embracing life than avoiding life’s perils.

Critical-thinking has typically been a significant part of how I have maneuvered through the world. Notions of logic and analytical thinking have been a part of my mind repertoire. I am now wondering about how much the wisdom of the heart has actually been playing a role in how I approached life. I am trying to learn more how a wise heart can guide me. I am trying to listen more to my wise heart.

Wise heart may be what some people mean when they talk of intuition. But I think my wise heart is more than simple intuition. Definitely more than a vague feeling. I’m not sure it has a lot to do with feeling at all. Not the emotional kind of feeling.

For me, a wise heart requires a relaxed body and an undistracted mind. I allow my mind to be at rest so that my wise heart can be active. This allows concentration on a singular aspect of reality, and that is the realm of my wise heart. There is a fullness of attention that is more than a simple cognitive event. My body and mind, all of me becomes directed to something. If there is a feeling of sorts involved, it is that I can feel that something. This for me is becoming heart wise.

In those moments, I understand in a way that is more than cognition, more than knowing with my mind alone. Being heart wise is a wisdom, a way of knowing that energizes my whole self, and I am aware from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. It is something close to absorption.

I think that I can have heart wisdom, I can be heart wise without the experience of absorption. For me it is like standing on the threshold of absorption, looking in without yet entering. Absorption is still out of reach, even as it is inviting.

Being heart wise is a calm way of knowing, it is a way of understanding that settles in my muscles and bones. To be heart wise, I have to be intimately connected to those muscles and bones. They are integral to my being heart wise.

Heart wisdom is not light and fluffy. Understanding things that are difficult in a heart wise manner is a heavy burden. Heart wisdom means being aware just how difficult and heavy a situation can be. For me, when I recently became more aware of the history and story of the orchestrated imprisonment of Black men, I was nearly overwhelmed with the heavy burden. Being heart wise creates an opening to grasp the gravity of a difficult situation.

At the same time, being heart wise of a difficult situation makes it more manageable to grasp, easier to absorb. I find this is true whether the difficult situation is part of my life or appears to be apart from my life. The difficulty may be more deeply felt, but being heart wise builds a resilience that can better support a difficult, painful awareness.

Being heart wise may actually not be totally new for me. I suspect it has been there all the time, as it is in all of us. I just haven’t know how to pay good attention. I am very slowly learning to have a fuller grasp of heart wisdom, how to pay better attention. For me, this means giving it room. It means not allowing mental distraction or body agitation to eclipse my heart wisdom.

To be heart wise, I need to pause. I need to relax my body. I need to quiet my mind. I welcome my heart wisdom when I set my intention to listen. Sometimes I invite my bell. Sometimes I simply sit. I concentrate.

I have difficulty with scarcity. Scarcity is not my friend and I am not sure what the basis is. It isn’t clear to me where the trauma lies in my life that has made me as sensitive to scarcity as I am. I don’t think that I have a strong desire or concern to acquire much beyond what I have. I don’t rush out to get new things. But I am anxious about running out of things that I routinely use. One of those things I normally rely on is the kind of food I eat.

This is on my mind today because I made my first early morning trip to Cub since the beginning of March. Two items that are part of my routine are distilled water for my CPAP and imitation crab for salads. I like to have them available and neither of these items are carried by Trader Joe’s, the one grocery store I go to once a month.

I am very aware of their scarcity. Every morning when I refill the reservoir on my CPAP machine, I think about how much distilled water I have left. I feel the sensation of scarcity in my body. My mind goes to a quick review of how much is left in the container. A friend of mine has consistently gotten two gallons of distilled water for me when she goes to Cub and I request a refill. She is a reliable supplier. Yet,I have a deep concern about my scarce distilled water.

I haven’t figured it out, but there is a deep unease about being dependent on others to make adequate distilled water available to me. The feeling of scarcity has a deep hold on me, and I cannot see the roots of it all. Today, my solution was to give myself permission to venture out into the COVID world and visit Cub early in the morning. I brought home four gallons of distilled water. Those four gallons are strangely reassuring to me, but it is more reassuring to know that I was able to do it, and can do it again sometime in the weeks to come.

I also brought home a good supply of imitation crab and an assortment of other items it is nice to have in my pantry should I need them. But none had the same hold on me as being able to bring home the scarce distilled water. Nothing else motivated me, almost irrationally, to show up at Cub at 7:15 this morning.

The roots for this anxiety about scarcity are not at all clear to me. My family was poor and we lived a life of scarcity, but there was nothing I would call painful want or need. We had an adequate supply of food. While I learned not to waste food or anything else, it hardly seems like I experienced anything traumatic because of our normal experience of scarcity.

So I think about my current, on-going relationship with scarcity. I try to keep a moderate supply of items, particularly food, that I want to have on a regular basis. I am a little surprised about the satisfaction I feel about my adequate supply of food. I am grateful that I have the option of maintaining an adequate supply. But I am still far from becoming a friend of scarcity.

No one really knows for sure. However, I like to dwell on the notion that we all share intimately in the vast ocean of air we call our earthly home. We are air breathers, and it suggests to me a close connection I have which I might otherwise never notice or might even ignore.

Air is made of so many molecules that they might be considered almost limitless, or certainly not measurable. Each breath I take brings in and sends out so many molecules of air that only an advanced theoretician might be able to estimate their number. Perhaps someone has actually done that, and I am sure that it is a very big number.

The breath I take in is also constantly mixing with the air around me. The shifting wind whisks those molecules of my breath off to many far and exotic places. The vast sea of air that forms earth’s atmosphere is constantly moving. The molecules of air are constantly being mixed with a turbulence that may be invisible to my eyes, but it is something I can nevertheless know and often feel with my skin.

The air I breathed yesterday might well be t in the nostrils of someone in Wisconsin today. Because of the constant movement of air, space puts no practical limits on my breath except for the upper limits of the atmosphere. Neither does time put many constraints. The breath I took a moment ago might well contain molecules I once encountered as a young boy.

That same breath might well contain molecules of air that were in the lungs of ancestors I have never known. Air is such a biological, real world connector. It brings all breathing beings together in one common encounter. We are all connected by the air we breathe. I cannot sustain an illusion of being separate as long as I breathe out and breathe in.

I have been told that I am constantly sharing the same air once inhaled by the likes of Julius Caesar and William Shakespeare. Just by breathing, I am connected with all the beings who have ever inhabited this earth and once drew molecules into their lungs.

This causes me to have a snarky thought. I wonder if the white supremacists are aware that every breath they take connects them intimately, inside their bodies, with countless People Of Color. Those they despise have shared breath with them countless times. They are so very connected. with those they would hold at a distance.

Air is but one way I know I am intimately connected with all beings, and ultimately to the stars from which we originate into which we return. However, it is a nearly tangible expression of the links of existence that joins me to everything. Air is just one expression of the network that joins all things, it is an example of the manner in which living things are connected. It is a connection that we ignore at our peril.

Besides the sharing of air, there is more to this network, but I like to remember frequently how each breath I take binds me intimately with every breath ever taken. I breathe in and I feel the intimate oneness with every being that has ever lived or ever will live on this planet of ours.

Living white, I have been a prince all these years and hardly knew it. I have lived in the ancestral home of my parents and many others who were just like them. I’ve had a general sense that I was a prince. Something made me special, and I was better than those living outside. But it also has seemed so normal and nothing out of the ordinary. Being white has simply been who I was. It has been so easy being white and being a prince.

Now it isn’t so easy being white. I thought I liked being a prince, but now I’m not so convinced. I notice that when I assert that I am white, even in small ways, I suck the air out of the room. I take the air others need to breathe. Non-white people have a harder time breathing just because I am acknowledged and recognized as being white. The prince gets a bigger share.

As I search my memories, I realize how, even though I was born a prince, I was also taught what it means to be a prince. As a young person, I was taught what it meant to be white, and I absorbed that lesson in my muscles and bones. The lessons were deep and lasting.

I learned at an early age that those non-white people smelled funny. They used vanilla to cover their offensive body smells. It was something I would notice when I rode the bus, just as I was taught to observe.

I remember learning that the non-white people made everything unclean by coming into contact with it. As a prince, I needed to be careful that I did not come into contact with anything they might have touched. They themselves were unclean, because that is the way they were naturally. In addition, they were the ones who did the dirty jobs. As a white youngster, it gradually became obvious to me, and I absorbed my lessons well.

As a youngster, I learned that we were white, and the non-whites were “other”, they were not of the same princely lineage. Mostly they were dull and not too smart, although there were some who were exceptional. Some of them could be jovial, and they were occasionally a form of entertainment for me. Mostly, however, they were a source of caution and fear.

By the time I became an adult, I was intimately aware that being a prince was more than having white skin. Being white was something that penetrated my whole body and it was an awareness that flowed through my veins. My whole body responded to non-white people with an awareness that signaled that I was different, I was special. It was like an aura that surrounded my presence. With no effort at all, I had learned to carry it with me at all times. Those who were like me, routinely reinforced my identity as white. We all liked being princely.

Now I am in the uncomfortable situation of learning how to become less white. I feel like I am trying to answer the question of whether the leopard can change its spots. My body constantly reacts to non-white people by reminding me that I really am a prince. My head has to learn and absorb new realities. I have to become aware of new history that explains the foundations for my being a prince. I have to remember the lessons I wrongly received as a youngster and that my white companions constantly reinforced.

My heart and my body have learned the princely lessons very well, and they constantly resist my attempts to become a little less white. Apart from experiencing fear, tension and anxiety, being white has been a fine princely role. But I know it is time to give up that role. It is time to let non-white people breathe.

It is time to give up the pain that accompanies the deep feeling of being separate. The myth that we are separate has been the cause of a wound that I share with other white people. The more I surrender the princely assertion that I am white, the closer I get to closing the gap I feel between me and all the others. Perhaps my body will learn that I may be special, but no more special than others.

Perhaps if I no longer call myself white I will slowly stop living white.

It isn’t often that I get to send a message back in time. Such an opportunity was given me recently when I was invited, as part of an Annex Teen Clinic video project, to include a message to my teenage self. Since the Annex is a sexual health clinic for young people, I thought it should have something to do with sex.

I’m not sure if the Annex will use what I wrote. But I did enjoy being able to send my teenage self a message in a bottle. I got to ignore the limits of time and say to myself something I wish I had heard in my teen years. I might not have understood it. But I would have had something to carry forward as I got older, and maybe someday understand before I met my older self.

“In my bones, I felt it, but I needed someone to say it: “Do not succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.”    

I wish someone had explained to me how sex can be a way to be awake, to develop deep awareness.   When I can wake up, sex offers an intense awareness of myself and someone else.  

Things can be really good when I can be fully present in that awake awareness.    Good for me, good for another.”   

Before it all begins, intention sets the stage for what is to come. For me, the first step into concentration is one of intention. Intention is the first step, if there is a step to be taken.

Actually, there is nothing to be done. The action is all about not doing. But for that to happen, intention frees the needle of the compass to point along the magnetic pull to a natural state of deep concentration.

There is no initiative, no trying. Relaxing my body is part of the movement, but first there is intention. Intention is the essential ingredient for deep awareness.

• May my body be quiet and relaxed
• May my mind be free of distraction and concerns
• May my heart be open to the world around me

Before it all begins, intention sets the stage for what is to come.

For a long time, I have thought I had the total task and burden of shaping my life, my future and my destiny. I am thinking that is only partly true. So much is handed down to me by those who have lived before me. My ancestors are present in so many ways. I notice that the inheritance they provide me is both favorable and unfavorable.

What my ancestors have provided me is in my body and in the human world I am a part of. Both the elation and the trauma of the past are something that are part of the physical me. The memory of the past is imprinted in my cells as concretely as the color of my eyes and hair. There is no escape from the inherited traits my body carries, both the beneficial and the difficult.

The seeds have been planted before my birth, and my experience comes out of cultivating what I want and neglecting what I do not want. My body has the memories of my ancestors, constantly calling out to me for attention and cultivation.

The more obvious aspects of inheritance are those that are physical and monetary. Inheritance is typically measured in things and resources we receive from ancestors. I can see the things I receive from my parents and the things I expect to leave behind for my kids.

I am also aware of what my ancestors have taught me and what guidance I have attempted to give to those who will live after me.

What has been less obvious to me are all the horrible deeds of my ancestors that are also a part of my inheritance. Those too I carry in my body and see in those who live around me.

When I invite my ancestors into my life each morning, I have been forgetting that some of them were the channels of harmful, horrible actions. The drunkards, the abusers of women, the enslavers of people have not been so easy to acknowledge. They too are part of what I inherit. Like everyone, I inherit the harmful along with the beneficial.

These days, it is more obvious to me that the rage expressed in the streets is part of our inheritance, a debt passed onto us by our ancestors. The rage is not just for the horrible deeds of contemporaries. It is also a rage that springs from what my ancestors have done.

It is becoming more obvious that others have inherited the trauma of the misdeeds of ancestors, and they carry the trauma, the loss and the pain. The more they recognize and feel that pain and harm, the more they are likely to act out in rage. I too have a part in that shared inheritance, and that is hard to sort out.

For me, it is a question of how to deal with all this inheritance, my own and the inheritance borne by others. For now, I am simply paying attention, trying to see what is real as best as I can.

I put my hands in the earth and connect with the reality from which I came and to which I will return. There, in these moments of stability, I hope I will better understand my inheritance and know how to act with it.

Stepping into nature can be as simple as walking out our back door.   Being able to take that step may be an essential part of our future and our hope for survival.

It is a common awareness that many species of insects, birds, and many other animals are in serious decline or have already disappeared.   Populations of bees, butterflies and birds are noticeably diminished compared to what they were when we were young.    Just look at the reduced number of insect splatters on the car windshield compared to when we were kids.   

Many of these vanishing species are part of the natural network on which we humans depend for our own survival.  Their disappearance warns us of our own demise.   It is a bleak picture, but there is a serious solution that is right out our back door.

A surprising and simple solution was just put forth by naturalist Douglas Tallamy in his most recent book, “Nature’s Best Hope.”    Tallamy explains how loss of their habitat and sustaining food sources is a key factor in the disappearance of insects and other animals.   Natural areas in places such as national parks are simply inadequate to provide suitable habitat to support a sustainable population of bees, butterflies and birds.   

The good news is that outside those national parks are millions of acres of green lawns that can be converted into sustaining habitat the parks are not able to provide.   Millions of acres of ecologically barren lawns are easily available if we replace the turf in our yards with native plants.   Rather than our going out in search of natural spaces for our own enjoyment, we bring nature to us.   We also bring back the bees, butterflies and birds. 

Tallamy and his research students point out that cultivars are no good substitute for native plants.   Cultivars, those strange and attractive plants we buy at nurseries, may be pleasing to us, but they are more like fast food for bees and butterflies.  Filling but not nourishing.  

Native plants can be equally as lovely as cultivars.  Natives also provide a more appealing and nutritious option for caterpillars that eat the plants and for the insects that feast on the pollen and nectar.  The plants and insects have evolved over millions of years to offer one another their best option.   Birds, in turn, feast on the insects and require those bugs to feed their young.  

We have learned to see green lawns as culturally appealing to us, but they are actually an ecological wasteland.   Many lawns in Bryn Mawr have already been purposefully abandoned and many neighbors have created native parkland in their own yards.   

Bees, butterflies and birds are happier and better able to survive because of this conversion.   So are those neighbors happier who only have to step outside their door to be enveloped by a natural setting.  It’s a setting in which everyone also has a better chance to survive.