The cyclist and a blue heron 🦅
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Hello everyone,
How do you know when something is a tempting distraction from your goal or a genuine calling to something much more aligned with the whole of you?
I'm going through something similar (an opportunity to co-author a book vs my planned path of applying to a PhD next year), and this week I encountered a beautiful short story by Mark Nepo that could illuminate this situation.
On the day of the race, he waited with the others and felt that life was waiting in the hills. He couldn’t quite say why, but a blessing was about to happen. As the gun went off, he could hear the rush of all the racers breathing—like young horses in the morning.
He had trained for months, up and down the sloping hills, cutting off seconds by wearing less and leaning into curves. His legs were shanks of muscle. He often said, “It’s the closest thing to flying I know.”
On the second hill, the line thinned and he was near the front. They were slipping through the land like arcs of light riding through the veins of the world. By now, he was in the lead. As he swept toward the wetlands, he was gaining time, when a great blue heron took off right in front of him; its massive, timeless wings opening just in front of his handlebars.
Its shadow covered him and seemed to open something he’d been chasing. The others were pumping closer, but he just stopped and stood there, straddling his bike, staring at what the great blue had opened by cutting through the sky.
In years to come, others would ask, “What cost you the race?” Wherever he was, he’d always look south, and once in a while, he’d say, “I didn’t lose the race—I left it.”
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I felt the electric jolt reading the story, almost imagining the large blue heron sitting on my shoulder. The question is not "Should I stick with the goal or do I jump to the new opportunity?" but rather "How might I live in such profound connection with life so that I could listen more intimately to what's happening and discern what is true?" Echoing a favorite question by David Whyte "What can I be wholehearted about?"
When it comes to our striving, what we work towards and what happens oftentimes are different. Disappointment will inevitably come for those who put in the effort but don't see the fruits.
How do we deal with that? The politically correct answer by most people into personal development is to learn from the mistake, try to find the root cause to improve next time.
I beg to differ. What if we can experience them not only as disappointment but also an invitation to listen more closely to what is being called from us?
This is not to say that the former approach is not good. Far from it. Not learning from our mistake is just sheer stupidity, but what kind of lesson can one learn matters.
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Writing the post Beyond Ambition has opened me up to another profound question.
What's the role of the will in this project of developing oneself? Cutting edge self-help advice tells me to train my willpower smartly but don't rely too much on it. On the other hand, spiritual folks tend to over emphasize on letting go, but even in meditation one needs to develop certain grit and dedication to practice.
This is not even a philosophical question but a practical one. I'm feeling lazy and tired, should I power through to finish my work? When is enough?
Spiritual teaching will tell me to quiet my mind and tune in to my body to know the answer, but before I reach that Gautama Buddha level of attunement, what about developing my will even further?
Part of the answer came from my previous post on the dance of inner growth between psychological work (willpower & effort) and spiritual work (surrender & letting go)
This time I discover a more satisfying way of see this issue from Mark Nepo in this interview on Holding Nothing Back.
“Will and surrender are paddles that steer the canoe that we call the soul. The proper use of will is when we drift out of the current, we stroke a little to the left or to the right to get back into the center of the current that will take us.[...]
We are fish in that stream of life force. So if you think of any fish, the purpose of [its] will is not to conquer the stream or the current [or the Tao], not to bend the current or to carve out river banks. The purpose of the will, in a fish [like us] is to help us find the current. [so that we could] return to alignment with everything greater to us [...] Dis-ease is when we fall out of that current. Then yes, we need to paddle back in."
I can imagine you asking "What if we are trying too hard in the wrong direction? Shouldn't we relinquish control and surrender aka what the spiritual folks would say?"
That is true. The difference is the kind of stream we are trying to paddle back in. This is not the stream of conformity, of everybody else's thinking. Using your will to force yourself to follow what you think you should do is a doubly waste effort of paddling against the current of a wrong stream. The most common example is "I should be working harder because everyone is doing so".
No, the stream here is the Tao, the unnamable way of things, the current that is larger than anyone living thing.
Mark continues
"You know, there is an aliveness everywhere in the universe, and each of us is born with this aliveness. Much of our time on Earth is devoted to finding where we can live in concert with all aliveness. [...] We know when we are in the presence of aliveness that touches our own. And we know when we fall out of it.
So that's the reminder for us this week: tune in to myself to know when we are falling off the flow, and then use our will to get back into it.
Let go of outcome, but keep the desire.
The tightrope walker that we are, between our destination and the journey. PC
Recently I made friend with a respectable man in his 50s who was going through an impasse after the peak of his career. He suddenly got head over heel enamoured with a young beautiful woman. In the past, I would have frown at that, but now I get it and celebrate big time his second-half-of-life renaissance.
It's not the woman but what she rekindles in him that's important. It's aliveness, joy, care and desire.
Yes, desire. It is the spicy sauce, the eros and appetite not just in sexual relationship but in everything else in life.
While half his age, something similar is happening to me that maybe helpful to you too, especially you are feeling lackluster somewhere.
I have been owning up to my many desires, including fame and wealth. Here is lesson number one in desire: be very clear about what they mean to you. (Charles Davies has great stuff on getting such clarity ) that you could check out.
As an example, I want to be well-known, not only in a popular everyone-knows-me way but in the profound and intimate way that truly being seen can transform both the seer and the seen. I want to be wealthy, not only in its measure aka money, but its true form as the sum of energy, technical intelligence, and raw materials as Alan Watts insisted.
Only is the keyword here, because not owning up to my desire for those will be straight up lying. Yet similar to the older friend and his wonderful woman, it's not only about those things themselves. It's what they kindle in me.
Mark Nepo says it well in this podcast:
"You need dream, goal and ambition to kindle the aliveness of your heart. But remember that your soul [the deeper, unchanging part of you] doesn't care about what you put into the fire. It just needs to see that your heart has come alive so that the alchemy can happen. So hold on to your ambition, but only loosely, for it is not exactly what you are looking for."
This half holding on, half letting go is the trickiest path that many of us navigating.
Too outcome-focused and we risk tuning out of the current of reality by to control too much. Too "the journey is more important in the end" and we miss out the aliveness that the pursuit of a concrete goal.
What's the key here? Author Carolyn Elliott put it: "Let go of outcome of the desire, but don't throw away the desire itself."
Sounds great in theory, and each of us has to close the gap in practice.
The bad news is that we will surely make mistake falling over one or the other side.
The good news? It is the very tension between these two sides that makes life more alive.
Cheers to us tight-rope walkers. May us go forth and enjoy our teetering.
"Anything or anyone that doesn't bring you alive is too small for you."- David Whyte
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Reading
Carolyn Elliot. This week I have been bewitched by this charming sorcerer. It felt like the discovery of an entire online subculture!
It's the most woo-woo thing I have read online recently to which made my anti-woo woo radar ring ring and ring like boiling kettle. You can tell I'm under spell! But this lady after spending her near-broke PhD in Critical Studies knew how to turn her shit into prayerful fertilizer. I'd highly recommend checking out her work, including some profound articles on her experiences.
Here is extremely thought provoking post that can offend some people but poignantly makes so many good points."If you can't sincerely get off on the pain and tragedy and madness of this world, if you can't walk unflinchingly within it and be both cunning as a serpent and innocent as a dove, then you probably won't enjoy your time here and you probably won't help the rest of us that much." - Carolyn Elliott
Here is another brilliant paragraph.
Jesus is a witch (if you get offended, I'm sorry I didn't mean to...)
"Jesus Christ was a first-class witch. I am like a giant Jesus fan and quote him all the time, which flips some people out, especially considering that I'm also always talking about how I'm a witch and magic and ritual, etc. etc.,
Think about it, folks, Jesus was obviously a witch who loved to party.
"What? There's no more wine? Just pass me that water and stand back folks - bam! Now let's keep this rager raging!"
"That's right, my moms was like fourteen when she gave birth to me in this crazy old barn with goats all around, and then these Persian dudes rolled up on the scene..."
"Awwww man, we're out of food? Wait wait wait everybody, don't leave just yet! Hold on - hand me those loaves and fishes - allllllllllllllllright now! Fish sandwiches for everyone!"
"Cool, so where all the bad bitches and hustlers hanging out? Can you point me there?"
"Yeah, my folks brought me to the Temple a lot growing up, but when I was like 13 I was like, fuck these guys, you know? I'm already more down with the Lord than they are and I'm just a jack-ass kid!"
Anyways, it's obvious to me. Jesus wasn't a mystic. He was a sexy witch and a magician, a shaman, a sorcerer and a healer, and a damn well accomplished one who terrified the Roman empire so much they had to assassinate him.
In other words, they burned him as a witch. Well, crucified him, but you know, same thing pretty much. Both result in torturous death."
Listening
"Your gift is like the tip of the match; you'll need to strike against the need of the world to spark." - Mark Nepo
A beautiful metaphor that came from this interview. A marvelous conversation that I'll come back again about the real purpose of ambition as well as the way we learn to express who we are. Worth a listen. Here is another thought provoking line.
""Perfect" didn't use to mean "without flaws". It used to mean "thorough". When we wholeheartedly dedicate ourselves to something, we are in that sense "perfect" in the pursuit."
Lastly..
a brilliant one-liner for us all as we go into the week.
This is one moment that knows another will pierce you with a sudden painful joy. - TS Eliot.
Poetry doesn't explain. It creates an experience. May you, like me, feel that sudden painful joy of the moment.
Have a great week everyone,
Khuyen
p/s: Do reach out for the Inner Critic Assessment or general conversations about life. I'd love to be helpful.