Lighten Up -- Again!

"The key to feeling at home with your body, mind and emotions, to feeling worthy to live on this planet, comes from being able to lighten up. When your aspiration is to lighten up, you begin to have a sense of humor. Things just keep popping your serious state of mind."

---Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

"Get your mind unbound and free; and then from the loosest, highest, best place you have, with the fastest and most humorous mind you can get together, you can reach out and make a try at  understanding Spirit."

---Stephen Gaskin, This Season's People

All too often, it seems like those of us who are sincere spiritual seekers can get a bit too stodgy, a bit too stiff, a bit too serious about it all.  

 

It's not surprising, I suppose.

Although it's true that some of the folks drawn to Buddhism had experienced lives of relative comfort, achievement, and success (before realizing that there was still something lacking,) I think many folks were like me. I'd had a hard go of it.  

 

Growing up in what the psychiatrist, addictions specialist, author and teacher Dr. Gabor Mate describes as a toxic culture, my life, like the lives of many of us had included serious trauma.  I just about ace'd the freakin' ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) test!

 

So, when I stumbled across Buddha's Four Noble Truth's I was transfixed.  The First Noble Truth -- that Suffering is inherent in the impermanence of the human condition -- rang True.  I knew suffering to be real in my life.   

 

The Buddha's witnessing of sickness, old age, and death were part of my experience.  My grandmother disintegrated as she lost her bout with cancer.  A special friend disappeared from the school playground because of a failed tonsillectomy.  And beyond these examples of the universal human condition, my childhood had been especially chaotic and troubling.

 

By the time I was six, I had witnessed my mother being swept up into extreme mental states and behaviors.  She disappeared from my life for large swathes of time.  Each time she was hospitalized in a state institution, my father's inability to work full-time and take care of four children (three under the age of 6 the first time) led to him finding"foster" settings -- seemingly with families that just needed the money.  I experienced sexual abuse in each.  

Although my inherent capacity to experience the wonders of childhood curiosity, exploration, and discovery remained intact (most often while wandering around alone), I suffered through a revolving door of frightening and painful experiences throughout elementary school and junior high school.  

During that time Mom would get well and the three youngest would return to live with her.  Then, she would get "unwell" -- and we were off to live with strangers.  Then she would be fine.  And then she wasn't.  My world was a kaleidoscopic swirl of new teachers, new schools, new homes, new "families," detention centers, truant officers, social workers -- and police officers.  I was touched by the kindness of some.  I wasn't touched so kindly by others.

Extremely sensitive ( my radar had been fine-tuned to Mom's moods to know when to seek safety), I also saw and felt suffering in the folks around me -- whether expressed or not.  So many folks seemed unhappy, frightened, angry, sad.

I also saw suffering in the larger world around me as it played out in the stark black and white of television.  The mystery, cowboy, and army shows bristled with malevolence, murder, and mayhem.  The television news was probably even worse because it purported to be real.  

The First Noble Truth? Suffering part of life? Check. I read on.  

When I discovered that the man known as the Buddha asserted that there was a specific cause for suffering, I was intrigued.  Then, when he proclaimed that there was a freaking way out of suffering,  I was hooked! 

Seriously? Damn! Sign me up! 

 

(Of course, at that time, living in rural Northern Illinois, there weren't a whole lot of Buddhists around.  But that's another story for another time. )

 

Getting Serious

 

I've discussed spirituality with lots of folks over the decades -- many of who were drawn to other spiritual traditions.  It seems there often a similar dynamic. Whether seeking nirvana or heaven,  sat chit ananda or atonement, we were seeking some form of release from a painful, dissatisfying, confusing, seemingly meaningless, existence.  We were all looking for Light at the end of the tunnel.  Then, whatever our specific path, at a certain point we knew that we had to make a committed effort.  We get serious about it. 

Unfortunately, some of us then got deadly serious about it.  I, for one, know that I got way too fanatical about it.  I was on a mission to point how how serious our situation was on this planet, how important spiritual practice was.  It's all I wanted to talk about.  My friends used to hate to see me coming.  I could quickly squeeze the life out of any party. 

 

It wasn't until that "oh so serious"bubble burst with a quip and belly laugh (and a joint) that I began to lighten up again.  I saw clearly that what some folks call the Cosmic Joke was for real!  Sometimes the wise crack is how the Light gets in!  A sense of humor is one of humanity's superpowers. 
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