Another World is Probable

I, like many, have a lot of feelings about the smattering of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. And then there are the bills targeting the LGBTQIA+ community. The trend I’m noticing is more divisiveness, more separation, and more hate, frankly. Is this what human beings are destined for? Are we doomed to splinter off into smaller and smaller groups and engage in constant “us versus them” culture wars?

Maybe yes, maybe no but according to neuroscience, our brains are wired for connection and cooperation. Neuroscientist Matthew D. Lieberman, director of UCLA’s Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab wrote a book called Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect. He says, “To the extent that we can characterize evolution as designing our modern brains, this is what our brains were wired for: reaching out to and interacting with others. These are design features, not flaws. These social adaptations are central to making us the most successful species on earth.”

There can be unity among diversity. Photo by Georg Eiermann on Unsplash

There’s also a study out of Emory University led by Gregory Berns who learned that when pairs of volunteers cooperated with one another, the reward circuits of the brain were activated. These are the same regions that are activated by drugs. The activation happened only when paired with a human – when the study participants were paired with a computer, they didn’t have the same response.

Volunteers were hooked up to an fMRI scanner and invited to play the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” game. Each volunteer pressed a button to indicate when they were ready to play, and then each simultaneously pushed another button to indicate if they wished to cooperate with, or betray, the other player.

The most common outcome was volunteers mutually cooperated with one another. Berns suggests people are hard-wired to cooperate because the brain associates cooperation with reward. Others are quick to point out that correlation is not causation but I’m inclined to agree with Berns because regardless of whether it’s due to our brains or something else, we want to connect with other people. We are wired for oneness.

What so often gets in the way is exactly what we’re seeing now: socio-sentiment. Socio-sentiment means loyalty to a particular social group to the exclusion of other groups. You already know what a world dominated by socio-sentiment looks like – we’re living in it. What’s the solution?

My spiritual teacher says, “To liberate society from this unbearable situation, consciousness will have to be aroused among the people; their eyes will have to be opened by knowledge. Let them understand the what’s, the why’s, and the where’s. Thus, study is essential, very essential.”

In other words, biologically, we want to connect with others, we’re made for connection, and what’s getting in the way is cultural conditioning that says this group is good and this group is bad. We all do this. The challenge then is to see every person as a human being, not a label. Personally, I do this by practicing empathy and guessing what someone else is feeling and needing. And when I do, I feel even more connected. It’s almost as if my brain is wired for oneness and spurring me on.

I dream of a world where we promote unity instead of division. A world where we recognize we are all humans with the same feelings and needs. A world where we stop propagating socio-sentiment and instead recognize we’re all in the same group. A world where we remember we are wired for oneness.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

The mind is a powerful thing. I’m pretty sure every spiritual tradition touches on this using different phrases such as, “magnifying mind,” “as you think, so you become,” “what you focus on grows,” etc. The question for me then is what am I focused on? Am I keeping my mind trained on greed, envy, cruelty, anxiety, fear, or selfishness? Or am I turning toward higher ideals such as love, generosity, and communion?

What’s interesting about the mind is that it’s the “cause of all our sorrows and predicaments, and it is the cause of our supreme bliss,” according to my spiritual teacher. “It is the cause of bondage, and it is the cause of liberation,” he adds. The mind is capable of both bondage and liberation and it’s up to us to direct our minds toward freedom. He has a beautiful metaphor for this and says the mind is a tat́asthá shakti.

What are you focused on? Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash

Tat́a is the line where water touches land. If you move toward the water, the next moment you’ll be underwater. But if you move upward, you’ll reach dry land. The mind is like that — if it moves upward, it will be transmuted into spirit. If it moves downward, it will be transmuted into matter.

I think it’s pretty clear what we as a society focus on, where our minds are at. Take what happened recently in our oceans. When several extremely wealthy people went missing to view the remains of the Titanic, we exhausted numerous hours and resources searching for them. There was near-constant media coverage and updates. However, when a boat sank near Greece with 700 refugees onboard, we didn’t expend nearly the same number of resources or grant the same amount of media coverage.

Keep in mind, the International Organization for Migration called it one of the worst sea tragedies in the last decade. So, you know, a big deal and certainly worth covering extensively. Many people, including Barack Obama, pointed out the discrepancy so it’s not as if no one cared about the refugees but repeatedly, we’ve shown there’s a difference between lip service and action.

Many Republicans, and some Democrats, repeatedly offer “thoughts and prayers” after mass shootings but don’t actually enact change because it benefits them financially not to. They care more about lining their wallets than saving lives. I could keep going with examples but I won’t because I made my point: our society’s collective mind is moving toward the water, so to speak. It’s focused on material goods and worships at the altar of materialism. However, I know it’s not beneficial for me to focus on negativity and tout doom and gloom so I won’t. Instead, I’ll say there are pockets all over the world where people are focused on “land,” they are training their minds toward spirituality, and pretty soon, we’ll reach a tipping point.

I’ll quote my spiritual teacher again who says, “[H]uman beings should always be optimistic. The cimmerian darkness cannot retard your progress, cannot cover the light of the human heart. The spirit of your heart must move on and on against obstacles. Kick away your obstacles like pebbles from your feet – you are stronger than your obstacles.”

I dream of a world where we remember our minds are powerful and we focus them accordingly. A world where we understand the mind can either move toward bondage or liberation and the choice is ours. A world where we each focus on higher ideals and bring a better world into being.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

We humans like simplicity. We want an easy-to-tell story and we want it to be logical. But the thing is, real life is rarely like that. Real life is complicated and hard to turn into a soundbite, no matter how much we try. For instance, the common explanation for Juneteenth is it’s a day to celebrate when slaves learned they were free. However, that’s whitewashing the truth.

Robin Washington reminds us in Forward.com the tale we’ve been told isn’t accurate. The story goes like this: Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to inform enslaved African Americans they were free. As if they didn’t already know. However, historian Gregory P. Downs has firsthand accounts from people demonstrating they did know. Galveston’s Blacks knew they were free and so did their slaveholders, who nonetheless kept them in bondage using brute force.

That means General Gordon Granger didn’t read off from a scroll and let slaves know they were liberated. No, Granger and his soldiers let the slaveholders know the slaves were liberated – at the barrel of a gun. They used force to say, “Let these people go.” Not only that, June 19, 1865, isn’t when all slaves were officially freed. In October of that year, white Texans in some regions still claimed and controlled slaves as property, according to Downs.

The truth matters even when it’s bruised and battered. Photo by Michael Carruth on Unsplash

Why does the true account of Juneteenth matter? Because the sanitized version doesn’t acknowledge how people actually behaved and continue to behave. The truth matters because without it we can’t do anything to change it. In 12-step communities, we say the first part of overcoming an addiction requires awareness of the addiction. Truth is awareness and truth ultimately leads to liberation.

As much as people like to say we live in a “post-truth” world, I don’t think we do. I think we live in a world where we want to have masks and create neat and tidy narratives but the truth always comes out. In Sanskrit, the unchangeable entity is Sat. The external manifestation of Sat is satya, or benevolent truthfulness. My spiritual teacher said, “Only satya or truth triumphs and not falsehood. Whenever there is a clash between truth and untruth, truth’s victory is inevitable. … Untruth, being a moving phenomenon, may attain a temporary victory on its march, but never a permanent one. … Falsehood does not win because it is relative, it is ever-changing.”

Sticking to the truth means a victory in the long run. It means liberation in every sense of the word for everyone, no matter the color of their skin, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else. The truth is more stable than a lie. And the truth is worth sticking to, even if it’s messy and uncomfortable.

I dream of a world where we value truthfulness. A world where we remember as much as many would like to say the truth doesn’t matter, it does. A world where we understand that truth always triumphs in the end. A world where we stick to the truth because the truth means freedom, for ourselves and others.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

With flowers bursting into bloom seemingly overnight, it seemed fitting to recycle this post from June 2018. Enjoy.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that patience is not my strong suit. I want things to happen quickly like a thunderstorm – swift and noticeable. Instead, things happen like a seed planted in soil – slow and subtle.

Here’s a true story: In January, I planted California poppy seeds. In March, everyone else’s poppies started to bloom. Mine did not. I checked my poppies frequently, searching for signs of buds. Each day I stared at verdant green leaves, but no hints of orange. Finally, in about mid-May, the first bud appeared, and then suddenly, a flower. It thrilled me to see orange after so many months of waiting. I beamed from ear to ear and pride swelled within me. But note, it took months, MONTHS, for my poppies to catch up to everyone else’s.

Not my poppies but they could have been! Photo by Dan Akuna on Unsplash

Right now, I feel like those poppies, behind the times. Many of my friends are progressing in their lives. They’re buying houses, getting married, having babies. Things are not perfect – I am privy to their challenges as well as triumphs – but big milestones are happening in their lives. The same is not true for me. Instead, I am a poppy plant with no hint of a bud.

A part of me thinks something is wrong that I’m not cycling with my peers. I’m not blooming while they are. However, I’m reminded of what my spiritual teacher said regarding movement. Movement is systaltic, like a heartbeat. Do you know how a heart pumps blood? I learned this ages ago in AP Bio. A heart is like a syringe – it fills up with blood, pauses at fullness, and then pushes all the blood out. In all of life, we experience this cycle. It’s the natural order of things to expand, pause, and contract.

I think I’m still in the expanding phase. I haven’t reached fullness yet. I’m still pulling nutrients from the soil. When I look at those around me, it’s hard not to compare myself with them. I know, I know, comparison is the thief of joy. I know compare usually leads to despair. I know I’m not doing myself any favors by comparing my life with anyone else’s, yet, I’m doing it anyway.

Instagram makes it hard not to think everyone else’s life is so much cooler than mine. I’m envious of what they have. But when I think about my poppies, when I think about life being systaltic, I feel a smidge better because I’m reminded I am in my own cycle. It may take longer for things to bloom, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.

I dream of a world where we remember we each have our own cycles. A world where we realize sometimes things happen quickly and sometimes things happen slowly. A world where we realize there’s not much we can do about timing other than to take the required action and let go of the rest. A world where after waiting and waiting, then there’s a bloom.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

I’ve lived in my apartment for eight years so I’m familiar with what’s usual and unusual. On Saturday, something strange happened. I walked into my bedroom and a giant beetle crawled on the outside of my window. I’m on the second floor, not next to trees, kudzu, or anything nature-y that would warrant a giant beetle crawling on my window but crawling it did.

As I watched this beetle, it occurred to me this creature was likely completely unaware of my presence because the windows are slightly tinted. Yet, inches away I stood, observing. This beetle reminded me that the way I watched it is the way my loving higher power always watches me and guides me, according to my spiritual tradition.

It’s easy for me to forget this concept, and sometimes believe it, especially when life doesn’t go how I want it to. When I don’t get my way, I’m convinced my higher power doesn’t care at all but that’s not true. Sometimes I need to wait and then I’ll understand why things unfolded the way they did. For instance, earlier this week, a client asked me if I was interested in a rush writing job. I said yes but then they gave it to another writer who responded quicker than I did. I was upset because I need the money, like really need the money. Like, I’m-having-to-use-savings-to-pay-rent need the money.

This is the beetle in question, in case you were wondering. Photo by Me.

When I didn’t get the job, my first thought was, “How could you do this to me, higher power? You know how broke I am and you’re going to dangle this carrot and then snatch it away? Really? Really? That’s so mean.” I kept fuming, not being in faith, and the day I didn’t get the rush job, as well as the day after, and the day after that, I was so low energy I struggled to make dinner, wash my dishes, and do other grownup things.

It’s not because I was depressed about the money situation. It’s because I’m a spoonie so this happens to me from time to time. Instead of having energy reserves, when I’m out of energy, I’m out and cease functioning. If I received that rush job, would I have been able to finish it? Would I have felt even worse and pushed my body to do something it literally could not do? Probably. In other words, this was an instance of my higher power doing for me what I could not do for myself. Higher power said “no” for me because I wouldn’t have said “no” given the chance.

My spiritual teacher says, “The Macro-psychic Entity [aka, Higher Power, God, the Divine Beloved] is omniscient … There is no special endeavor, and no necessity for special effort, to know anything because all things are within [It] and all are within [Its] ectoplasmic dispersion …. Everything is [Its] internal mental projection, intra-psychic projection. That is why [It] knows everything and will always know everything.”

The Divine Beloved knows everything and will always know everything. That means this force understands when it’s in my best interest to work versus rest. This entity knows what the future holds for me before I even have an inkling of it. This entity is always there, always watching over me as if I’m a beetle crawling on Its window.

I dream of a world where we remember we are always being watched over by benevolent beings. A world where we recognize the Divine Beloved is omniscient, which means It knows all and sees all. A world where we trust even if we don’t understand why something is happening, there is likely a good reason for it and if we wait, we may learn the answer.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

An annual sow thistle “volunteered” to grow in one of my pots and I let it. I nurtured the pseudo-dandelion and it was thriving for a while. The bright yellow flowers blossomed in abundance. Green leaves unfurled and stretched toward the sun. And then the plant started to die, for whatever reason. I’ve deadheaded the blossoms, removed the brown leaves, and continued to water it according to the guidance of my plant app. But the plant is still dying.

Some people would say, “It’s a weed. Why even bother? Just let it die,” but I have trouble with that. As I’ve written about before, it’s hard for me to let things go. Here’s a perfect example. For years, plural, I conducted a group meditation where oftentimes I was the only attendee. I made a salad, packed up plates and utensils, and walked 20 minutes up a hill to a yoga studio hoping someone else would show up. Sometimes they did but many times they didn’t. On the times they didn’t, instead of turning around and heading home, I continued singing, chanting, and meditating as usual.

Death also has its place. Photo by davide ragusa on Unsplash

I kept trying new things, new ways of encouragement, new schedules, and even launching a Meetup group, but they all failed. Whereas some people have the story, “I meditated alone for six months, and then people started turning up,” my story is, “I meditated alone for three years, and then Covid happened and I tried meditating in the park and online with local people before giving up and doing that with people who live far away instead.”

In other words, even the first year of the pandemic didn’t deter me and frankly, it was only the allure of meditating with 20 people, albeit online, that was appealing enough that I was willing to give up trying to make a local group meditation happen. One of my life’s lessons isn’t perseverance, it’s knowing when to quit.

These days, I’m learning to quit old ways of thinking and being. The ground beneath me feels shaky as if I’m walking on the beach and the sand is shifting beneath my feet. I don’t know what the heck is going on and I’d like to go back to the way things were. I want to keep watering my metaphorical sow thistle and revive it but the message I’m getting is, “Let it die.”

Leaving behind the familiar is extremely difficult, especially when it used to work. A part of me says, “Wait, I don’t understand! It was working! Why can’t it work again??” but just like with the sow thistle, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you do everything right, you haven’t changed your behavior at all, but the circumstances have. The outside world is different and that means you have to change too.

My spiritual teacher says, “Here in the universe, nothing is stationary, nothing is fixed. Everything moves; that’s why this universe is called jagat. Movement is its dharma; movement is its innate characteristic.”

I wish the universe didn’t keep moving, but it does, and that means I have to move with it. That means I have to let things die even when I really, really don’t want to.

I dream of a world where we understand nothing is static, stationary, or stale. A world where we understand this universe of ours is constantly moving and that means we must move too. A world where we recognize as painful as it may be, it’s important for us to let things die.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

I’m currently in Washington, D.C. visiting friends and it feels surreal. I went to university here and am visiting my old stomping grounds. I half expect to run into my younger self on the street because the memories are so visceral. The ghost of young me is present in a way she hasn’t been on previous trips. Maybe it’s because my college friends and I are approaching 20 years of friendship, or because they all have kids of their own and I’m recognizing how much things have changed. Whatever it is, I’m acutely aware of something my spiritual teacher says.

“A 5-year-old child is transformed in due course into a 15-year-old boy,” he said. “In 10 years, the child becomes the boy. Thereafter, you will never be able to find the body of the 5-year-old child. So the child’s body has certainly died.” He then mentions the boy growing into a man, then hitting middle age, then old age, until he finally dies and says, “The rest of the changes we do not call death; but in fact, all the changes qualify as death.”

We have snapshots of our past selves but nothing more. Photo by Raj Rana on Unsplash

We don’t recognize them as such but all the changes we go through are a sort of death. We can’t find the people we used to be except in memory and that’s what I’m getting in touch with on this trip. I’m not the person I was and neither are my friends, but we all remember each other when we were 18. We tell stories about our past selves, the shenanigans we got up to, how we met, who dated whom, and what happened when.

It’s fun to reminisce but it truly feels like we’re talking about people that are dead, just like my spiritual teacher says. None of us are the same as we were. A part of me wants to go back in time to those college days when my friends lived within walking distance. I want to travel in a pack to coffee shops and restaurants, where we took over large tables and other patrons gave us the side eye for being so animated. These days my friends don’t all live within walking distance. And when we travel in a pack it’s because there are multiple children in tow, not because we’re a group of 10 going out for dinner.

To quote my spiritual teacher again, “This expressed universe is nothing but a collection of temporary entities which are undergoing constant metamorphosis according to the sweet will of nature.” We are all temporary entities and we are all constantly changing. Nothing stays the same. Nothing. I have some sadness about that and at the same time as I wind down this trip, I’m enjoying my stay, remembering who I was and how I felt. I’m appreciating that I do have 20 years of friendship under my belt and for a short time at least, I can say hello to 18-year-old Rebekah.   

I dream of a world where we recognize we are all temporary entities undergoing constant change. A world where we understand that as we age, our past selves no longer exist. A world where we remember who we used to be and take the time to grieve for those small deaths while also appreciating who we are now.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

I learned or relearned something recently about mothers and grandmothers. All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries when she’s a four-month-old fetus, which means we spend approximately five months in our grandmother’s womb. It also means our grandmother was formed in the womb of her grandmother.

As Layne Redmond says, “We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born. And this pulse is the thread of blood that runs all the way back through the grandmothers to the first mother.”

That’s pretty cool when you think about it. Because of how eggs are formed, there’s a chain that stretches far, far back, and connects us to our ancestors in a very real way. We have shared DNA and inherit traits such as eye color and height but we are also connected through the act of being there with them in the womb.

Our grandmothers carried us and now we carry them. Photo by Anton Luzhkovsky on Unsplash

As someone who didn’t know either of her grandmothers very well, this brings me comfort. I may not be able to tell a story about baking cookies with my maternal grandmother or her surprising me with a locket when I graduated from high school, but I am still connected to her. I am linked to her as I was in her womb receiving imprints, vibrations, and memories from the very beginning of my life. That may sound strange. How can an egg receive imprints and memories? But that’s exactly what epigenetics is.

Epigenetics is the study of how behaviors and an environment can change how genes work. Epigenetics change how your body reads a DNA sequence. For instance, rat studies demonstrated that exposure to THC (the active compound in cannabis) during adolescence can prime future offspring to display signs of predisposition to heroin addiction. In a human example, studies of humans whose ancestors survived periods of starvation in Sweden and the Netherlands suggest the effects of famine on epigenetics and health can pass through at least three generations. Nutrient deprivation in a recent ancestor seems to prime the body for diabetes and cardiovascular problems.

We like to pretend we live in a vacuum and are solely responsible for our lives or go to the other extreme and say everything is genetic. Neither is true – we are responsible for our lives and the choices we make affect our genes and the genes of our descendants, for better or worse. No one is perfect and I’m not interested in shaming anyone. Instead, on this Mother’s Day, I’m honoring not only my own mother but her mother and her mother and her mother and so on all the way back. I am connected to them and they are connected to me.

I am grateful for my ancestors, for the traits and skills they passed down, and as a descendant, I’m saying, “Thank you. I see you. I appreciate you. You’re not forgotten even if I don’t know your name. I carry you with me just as you carried me.” May we all be able to say that about our ancestors and our descendants, if we have any. And may we be able to say “Happy Mother’s Day” to someone in our family even if it’s not to our own mother directly.

I dream of a world where we understand just how connected we are. A world where we remember that we were with our grandmothers from the very beginning of life just as they were with theirs. A world where we understand there is a chain linking us all the way back to the first mother.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.

I keep thinking about all the circumstances and events that led to me being here, right now. How my ancestors had to have XYZ happen to them. How my parents had to meet. All of that and many more things. It’s a wonder. So often I feel blasé about being alive because when there are nearly 8 billion people in the world, is it really such a miracle to be in human form? Is it really so precious? According to many spiritual teachers, including mine, yes.

Take this story from a Buddhist text. The Buddha spoke to a group of monks and said, “Monks, suppose that this great Earth was totally covered with water and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole into the water. A wind from the west would push it east; a wind from the east would push it west; a wind from the north would push it south; a wind from the south would push it north. And suppose a blind sea turtle was there. It would come to the surface only once every 100 years.

What an analogy! Photo by Debal Das on Unsplash

“Now, what do you suppose the chances would be that a blind turtle, coming once to the surface every 100 years, would stick its neck into the yoke with a single hole?” The monks answered, “It would be very unusual, sir, that a blind turtle coming to the surface once every 100 years would stick its neck into the yoke.” The Buddha replied, “And just so, it is very, very rare that one attains the human state.”

What a statement! What odds! It’s hard to square that with our current population, but that’s a human-centered perspective. Think about all the plants, animals, insects, bacteria even. There are probably 8 billion bacteria on my pinky finger alone. So in that context, wow, yes, human life is a wonder. That’s even more true when you take into account infertility. I know many, many people who have struggled to get pregnant. They had to get IVF or a sperm donor or a surrogate. They’ve suffered miscarriages. They’ve tried for years. It’s not so easy to get pregnant.

Being a person is like winning the lottery but it’s easy to forget that in the humdrum of daily life. When you’re struggling to pay your bills or the roof leaks or you’re irritated with your neighbor, being alive doesn’t feel like a wonder. But it is. We often search outside ourselves for wonder. We want to be wowed by a beautiful sunset or a spectacular show. We want to string together a life with one memorable experience after another by swimming with dolphins and climbing a volcano. But what I’m learning is that just to be alive is awe-inspiring. To take a breath. To pump blood through our bodies.

My rabbi, Michael Lerner, often says if you want to feel more awe, go outside every night for a month, look at the stars, and say, “Wow! Fantastic! Amazing!” I think you can do the same thing with yourself. You can look in the mirror, notice your chest rising and falling, and say, “Wow! Fantastic! Amazing!” Because it is.

I dream of a world where we recognize the wonder of being in human form. A world where we understand how rare and precious it is to be alive on this planet at this time. A world where we remember taking a breath every day is a miracle to behold.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.