FilmOnDeepWater

15 January 2006
Berkeley, CA

More and more I realize how often I confuse hope with expectation.  Hope, as we have come to know the word, has changed very little.  In Old English it was hopian, and was related to the Old German hoffen, to hope.  Not much new there, except to notice how these simple, powerful words in our lives seem to change so little over time.   But the real learning occurred for me when I looked at a second definition for hope, and archaic one – trust.

This old, dusty use of the word opens new possibilities.  Such a way of thinking about, or holding, hope brings it very much into the present moment.  And it makes it much less some expectation in and for the future. 

What if I were to substitute the word trust for hope whenever I encounter it?

I trust that I will sustain joy in my life.
I trust that all is unfolding now in ways that it needs to.
I trust that my heart will remain open to all that is possible.

And then, from this perch hopelessness becomes the same as trustlessness.  “The situation is trustless”, seems to be a more honest sentence than: “The situation is hopeless.”

Grounding hope in the bedrock of trust forces me to take responsibility for the posture I am holding.  If I am feeling hopeless, no when I am feeling hopeless, what would happen if were to instead sit with my trustlessness?  It is then that I would see the deeper connection that hope has to fear.  If, and when, I am without hope, and so without trust, it is then when I am acting or not acting because of fear and isolation.  I cannot then hold on to the illusion that the “situation is hopeless”.   The only thing a situation can be is situated.  The honest statement here would be, “I am hopeless.”  And again looking deeper at this, I would have to say, “I am trustless.”

So now, what of this word “trust”?  It is as old and as unchanged as hope.  Trust is a variation of true, especially in the sense of being reliable and dependable.  Thinking about it more, the word “trustworthy” came to mind.  That word has such a wonderful quality of dependablity as well.

The root of this word, dependable, is pendere, which means “to hang”, like a pendant.  In a way being trustworthy has much the same attribute as a pendant hanging around someone’s neck.  It is like a plumb line, steady and true, always pointing in the same direction.

If I say, “I am hopeless”, then I am also saying, "I am trustless”.  To be without truth is to lose one's way. 

Hope is a posture in the present.  If I say, “I am hopeful”, then obviously I am also holding in that moment the possibility that I am trustful as well.  And here to be truthful means to be as trustworthy as that pendant, as reliable as a compass needle.

Hope also then becomes an investment in others.  A way of putting myself in trust with and for others.  There can be no hope in isolation, just as there can be no truth.  In this way hope is always in a relationship with truth.      

Posted by Edd at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12 December 2005
Berkeley, CA

What are expectations? Ex-pectere means “to look forward”.  In addition to the current meanings to the word, there is also an archaic one.  Expect also means “to wait” or “to stay”.  From this meaning there is a quality of standing still while looking forward.  With this in mind, how do I hold the distinction between expectation and anticipation?

Anticipate comes from ante-capere, and capere means “to take”.  Anticipation, then, is a kind of taking before there is an offering. In my imagination I create something I want to have, or to occur in my life.  My anticipation is expressed in the images I create that make it as if this thing, or this occurrence, has already come into being.  Anticipation is a taking, maybe even a stealing, from the future.

Just how different is expectation form this?  Isn’t it another way of stealing from the future?  As I was looking into these words, another emerged that is related in some ways to capere.  That word is heave, as in “to heave a heavy rock”.  In Middle English it is heven, and in Old English it is hebbe, which means “to lift”.

Maybe anticipate is on a different axis than expect.  Rather than looking forward, anticipate has a quality of lifting up, or at least looking up.  Some quality of raising up.  Whereas expectation has a more expansive feel to it – of looking out and forward to the horizon line both in terms of space and time.  And there can be a somewhat neutral sense to the word.  If I am standing still while looking forward, and not anticipating a good thing or a bad thing, a happy event or a sad one, just looking, then there is a quality of waiting for whatever is “out there” to be offered to me, instead of me grabbing it from the future.  Taking from the future what does not belong to me yet, blinds me in the present to what does belong to me now.

Posted by Edd at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

9 January 2006
Berkeley, CA

The other day I found myself worrying about something.  Doesn't matter what, really.  Maybe it was global warming, or my son’s future, or my future.  Whatever.  I was worried.  And I became aware of how familiar the feeling was.  Familiar and uncomfortable at the same time.

So what of this word worry?  Where does it come from and what are its deeper meanings?  Turns out that worry has a short, but ancient lineage.  In Middle English it was worrien, form the Old English wyngan.  In that form it is related to the Old German word wungen.  And here is where it gets interesting – wungen means, “to strangle, or constrict”.

When I am worrying, what am I strangling?  What am I constricting?  Immediately what came to mind was that I am strangling the possibility for change, for the situation to be any different than it is in that moment.

Until now I never thought of how limiting worry is.  This primal focus on one outcome, one unfortunate, unpleasant, or even tragic, outcome.

Worrying, when I look at to through this lens of language, is like having a death grip on the throat of the future.  The flow of possibility becomes so constricted that the only droplets that can get past that grip are precisely the ones that I so want to prevent from emerging into the world.

Holding on - even with a light touch - to this notion of worry as a form of strangulation, I can feel myself letting go of some of that worry that I was focused on a minutes ago when I began this entry.  I find that I have given myself some breathing room to allow for other possibilities to emerge.

Like most things of this nature, it seems that the antidote for worry is breathing.  And there may be something important here.  In a way the origins of this word inform me that worry is somehow lodged in the throat, and in the neck.  If I open my throat I can also let go of grief, and loss.  Opening the throat also allows me to connect more deeply to my heart.

The Medusa story also comes to mind here.  It is revealing to hold the image of Medusa’s hair that was transformed into snakes as a manifestation of strangled thoughts with a writhing and worrying nature to them.  When Perseus cut off her head, out of that wellspring came the blood that spilled into the ground.  From that pool emerged Pegasus, the winged horse, and the patron of creativity, especially poets and writers.

Worry becomes a slayer of the future.  It becomes another way for me to lapse into unconsciousness, another way for me to lose my way.  And as I open myself up to other ways of being in this moment besides worrying, I find that I become flooded with feelings of compassion and care.

As I let go of worry, I feel a sense of openness to change, an openness to the inherent truth that everything is right here waiting for me.  And what is this everything waiting for?  Maybe it is waiting for me to release the dammed up possibilities that I have strangled and constricted with so much worrying.

Posted by Edd at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

3 January 2006
Napa, CA

Somehow I managed to do it again!  I was late again getting to the meditation session in Santa Rosa last night. This time it was due to the road closed across the mountain from Saint Helena.  That – the closed road and all the recent flooding - is one explanation.  The other, more valuable, explanation is that I am learning about belonging, and it is a long and difficult lesson.

What is most important for me to capture here, though, is the process I am watching unfold.  Almost magically, I arrived at the meditation last night at the exact same time as the week before – fifteen minutes late.  Only this time, rather than walking around the neighborhood for a bit less than a half hour waiting for the meditation to end, I sat and meditated on a bench near the back door.  I sat with the feeling of being an outsider.  I also sat with the koan that John, the Zen teacher, gave me last week – The whole world is medicine.  My mind turned on the word “medicine” – its healing quality.  Healing led me to health, and health brought me to home, and home brought me to belonging – right where I started from.

I began to feel a sense of home as a field that neither moves nor stays still.  I also began to experience belonging as a kind of granting permission.  Not just granting myself permission, but also receiving permission from others who are in this field.  I was not at all aware of the what in all this – the granting permission to do? To just be? To belong?  Not at all sure.  And then I realized that as long as I am open to accepting that permission, it is always open to me.  It may be just as true that belonging is a gift I give to others as much as a gift I receive from others.

“Belong” comes from the Middle English word belongen.  And longen means “to be suitable”.   In ancient days suitable meant something different than it does today.  Then suitable meant “similar, matching”.  Its last vestige, I guess, is the four suits in a deck of cards.  There still was the sense of “fit”, but maybe back then fit was a bit tighter than now.

There is some important learning for me here.  Just as I am never “exactly the size I am” (as an old companion of mine would say), the fit may not be exact either.  When I pay attention to my breathing, I am aware of how my body is constantly changing shape, how it expands and contracts with each breath.  I – this material self – is no less ephemeral than my constantly shifting emotional self, or emotional body, or my spiritual self for all that.

And just as I am never exactly the size I am, my clothes – this “suit” I wear, is never exactly the size it is either.   The next time I look at a label with a garment’s size, I hope I stay aware that this is their size only when the garments are not breathing.

Just as a good suit is forgiving as my body changes size and shape in every moment, so it is with a community of belonging.  Maybe belonging is a kind of conspiracy where everyone who belongs is breathing together, where everyone gives permission to all the many selves who show up in the constant expansion and contraction to just show up, and expect no more than that.

So, there I was sitting on the bench next to the back door sitting with belonging.  There came a moment when I chose to break another of my well-worn patterns.  As quietly as I could, I entered the house through the back door and went into the kitchen.  I sat in a chair next to the kitchen table.  The kitchen was perfect in its ordinariness as a kitchen – comfortable in its familiarity.  And then in that moment I found some peace.  I found in that moment that I was exactly where I belonged – right on the edge, right at the boundary of belonging.

Had I chosen to stay out there on the little patio, I would have ploughed another well-tilled field.  And I somehow knew that going into the living room with the others would have been a tight fit in that moment, and so would not have been suitable.

It was then that I realized that only in that moment did I belong on the periphery, in the vestibule of my own house.  In that moment I also remembered the vestibule in my grandmother’s house.  It was a place of transition – a place to take off my jacket and boots on a winter afternoon, a place for me to become comfortable with belonging.

A bench is medicine.  So is a kitchen chair.  And a vestibule.  The whole world is medicine.

Posted by Edd at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)