Notes from Half a Life Part 2

This is part two of a letter to my son, offered as he enters the age of initiation. It’s written from the threshold of my 50th year. Find Part 1 Here. Here I cover thoughts on resentment, boundaries, meditation, prayer, ritual, awakening, teachers & mentors, service, love, family, purpose and action.

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Resentment is poison

Let it go. Really and truly. Let it go.

Look, I will be honest with you, right now I can see the places where I’m still holding on to resentment.

But there is nothing good in it.

The old adage is true. As I first heard it from my Master:

Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person gets sick.

You can see it at play in the culture today. Our democracy is coming apart due to the politics of grievance and resentment.

You don’t need resentment to protect yourself.

You can learn to hold good boundaries. In fact you must.

The clearer your boundaries the greater your compassion.

Some people will have to be asked out of your life. But resentment is different from boundaries. It corrodes you from the inside out.

Note that we can be resentful about whole systems, whole peoples, ideas and religions, not just individuals.

Yes. Even these resentments will hurt you.

Yes. Even if they are backed up by “good analysis.”

List your resentments. And say as many prayers as needed, until you feel yourself let go.

This is literally the best thing you can do with a sticky resentment. You can say prayers for the person. You can wish them healing. You can wish them well.

And if you are not into prayer, try “loving kindness” meditation.

Meditation Works

One way we release resentment is by looking deep within. By learning practices that grow our awareness, restore presence and nurture peace.

Meditation is an ancient technology. A way to pierce through the nature of reality itself. There are many schools. And many of them work. It is important that you know why you are meditating. Yes. It’s good to manage stress. But that’s just skating on the surface.

Meditation can change everything.

Imagine changing your relationship to thought itself. Even those very smart thoughts we like to have.

Imagine seeing through to the very nature of the mind!

Don’t believe everything you think. Become intimate with your breath. Ground. Open the heart. And get really, really present.

Practice, practice, practice. Today is a good day to start.

But let me say a word about prayer.

Prayer is part of what gets lost in the “spiritual but not religious” vibe of our day. And prayer is powerful because prayer is relational. I already told you that I believe there is only Oneness. But we see and experience the world as a relational species. So to pray is to relate.

Think about it this way: when we put eyes, nose and a mouth on a train we can quickly call it Thomas. And a world of adventure begins.

So why not personify the great mystery itself?

It does wonders for intimacy with the Sacred and the Divine.

Ritual is essential too.

We know things with our bodies. We had bodies long, long before we could talk. Our bodies are the way we understand being. Everything that matters happens through our bodies.

So ritual really, really matters. Because ritual is embodied.

We are stuck in a culture of abstraction. And it's only getting more abstract.

We think that knowledge is about propositions. We think it’s about thoughts. And about how different ideas wrestle with each other. But that is just one way of knowing.

What we want is participatory knowing.

Dancing together. Drumming together. Singing together. Lifting our arms together. Laying hands upon each other. Enacting great stories together. Breathing, shaking, getting still. Being in the cathartic together. Experiencing ecstasy together.

These are the sacred ways of embodiment. These are the ways that keep us together. We synchronize through ritual.

And you can do it when you are alone too. Fall to your knees before an altar. Make a thousand prostrations. Sing the old songs and notice your body’s vibration.

Awakening is Real

We hear great beings speak of awakening across cultures and across the ages. There is such a thing as a free human being. There is a state of being asleep and a state of being awake. This wakeful state can be steadied until it becomes an embodied way of being.

It is not quite like a switch that turns on and off. It is usually more gradual than that. But it is worth knowing that awakening is real and true.

How do you know you met someone who is awake?

Their default is a state of calm. Even if they are not calm all the time. And kindness and compassion flow through them.

You will know their generosity.

Teachers and Mentors are Essential

A good guide is a good companion. They will make you greater, not smaller. There are people who know more than you about what you want to get good at. Learn from them. Honor them. Imitate them until it’s no longer time to imitate them. Learn discernment in your relationship with your teachers. Find the right balance between humility and self-sovereignty. Lose your ego. But remember your Self.

The best way to get good at anything is to know people that know more than you about it. To have peers who are learning about it with you. And to have people to mentor and show what you are learning as you grow.

Find them all.

Service is the Whole Point

All of this learning, all of this growth, it is all for the purpose of service. You fill your cup so that you can pour from that cup. It’s just the way we are made. Made to be in community with each other. To be of service to each other. To help each other along.

There are a thousand ways to serve. But make sure you are serving in concrete and specific ways. Not just by giving to charity or working for policy change. Find ways that let you look into the eyes of the people that you serve.

Gather People

This is a most essential service in our time of dislocation, loneliness, hyper-individuation, and smartphone mediated communication. People need to gather. And they need to be gathered. We need to come together in the flesh. We need people who know how to ease us off our phones for extended periods of time. (This part is hard and will get harder. Which only makes it more important.)

You don’t have to be a large group facilitator. You can gather a couple of friends. There is a dark force at work in the world. And it seems to be growing in power. It lures us into separation. Seduces us into the comforts of “doing our own thing.” It is a growing bubble of “frictionless” transactions where every real interaction starts to feel like a stretch.

Gather people. Bring folks together. Help them get through the initial discomfort of stepping outside the bubble that is trying to trap us.

We need to be the antidote.

Love, Family, Community

And underneath every act of service are the forces that shape our relational human existence: love, family, and community. Each of these is implied in everything I’ve said so far. But I’ll quickly lift them up since they are of the greatest importance.

Love

We are here to love. To love life itself. To love God, for sure. To love our own damn selves. To love each other.

And while I honor that partnership is not a path for everybody, I have to tell you that the love that is expressed in my most intimate relationship, the love I share with Tuesday, my wife, is the ground where I grow the most. It is wind beneath my wings. It seems to make everything better. And what seemed impossible before started to become possible again.

Family

Kin matters to us humans. It’s how we are made. Families can be messy. Messy enough that for some of us, sometimes it's best to walk away. But wherever possible, do your best to try and stay. To care. To learn the ways of those you are bound to.

And think extended family. Think across generations. Honor your elders. Bond with your cousins. Know your stories.

If it is your vocation, grow your own family.

Living with Purpose in a Time of Crisis

Purpose

I'm going to take a turn here as we bring this to a close. Let's bring some of our attention to the culture at large and to the historical moment that you have been born into.

I was always moved when the older men said: “A man's got to have a purpose.”

Because you must serve something greater than yourself.

Pay attention to your role and contribution to the society that you are a part of. Listen to your inner voice and find out how you are meant to meet this moment.

Take Action

As you grow into the world, you will inherit not just beauty, but crisis. Our ancestors and wise elders hold the wisdom for who and how to be when things get really hard. As they inevitably always will.

We are witnessing a global rise in authoritarianism. And we can expect more instability as a result of the metacrisis. It is good to know how to resist. (I wrote about it here and here.) How to keep our dignity. And how to aim for greater freedom.

Oppression is brutal. It feeds on fear.

So fear is what you want to get free from.

There are wise ways to be when we find ourselves in the midst of the worst. Victor Frankl had some really important lessons to teach here. Man’s Search for Meaning is a central text.

Learn from ancestors who were enslaved and colonized. Sometimes we have to take the long view.

You can also learn from more recent liberation movements.

There is much to be said about armed struggle.

But nonviolent direct action holds a moral high ground that confronts us with what is true, good and beautiful in the world.

Pay attention and learn. These are times to reflect, strategize and find creative, courageous and redemptive ways to act.

Be wary of utopian ideologies

These can be political or spiritual. They can come from the left or the right. They close down the future. They determine an imaginary outcome. A clear and perfect end point. And once the perfect future is on the table. Then anything is justifiable in the present. Because “why not? We are right and the future will be perfect.” The ends start to justify the means. And suddenly you are just a step away from a cult, an atrocity or both.

All in the name of the perfect world that is to come.

Take the Long View

By which I mean the really long view. The view of the creation of the universe. But also the view of the birth of human culture, something like 70,000 years ago. There are cycles. There is good. There is evil. There is creation. There is destruction. These come like waves upon the vast ocean of being. And they are all present, all at the same time.

Aim for the good. Make the world more beautiful. Even if it will all come apart again.

What really matters is that we know who and how to be towards all of life itself, towards ourselves, and towards each other.

To be in reciprocity.

In right relationship.

With the mystery of being.

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Gibran RiveraComment