Spirituality

Another Scientist Discusses The Importance Of Insight

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Read this, from The Huffington Post.  It’s the first half of an interview with Susan Smalley, Ph.D., who, like Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, had a life-threatening personal experience that pushed her to tap into the non-rational part of herself.  (The second part of the interview was published yesterday, if you want to check it out.)

PF: What was your life approach before this heightened awareness?

SS: I didn’t think about trying to heighten my sense of consciousness in any way. I thought, yeah, learn more, read more, study more, talk to people, everything’s in books, everything’s out there in a reason-based world. Just follow it.

I gave zero time to places that would increase intuition, or enhance insight, ignoring what is probably a core component of wisdom. I was just running around constantly doing, doing, doing, and trying to soak up knowledge from books and experiments and science.

Sound familiar?  Sure did to me.

Dr. Smalley goes on to describe the nature of her “mystical experience,” and how she worked to integrate the insights she gained into the ‘real life’ she still needed to maintain.

In particular, this part hit home like woah, in the decisions I’m facing right now:

My quandary became that I didn’t know how to go back to work, as I had a totally different view of the world. I felt that the insights I gleaned during that 30 day period were ones that we could each discover but how do you discover them if you don’t give time for yourself to try to uncover that stuff?

Before I didn’t think that this was anything I should value … to take time for myself, to reflect on things. Or to use any kind of tools that could help you to do that.

I didn’t know what to do next and I didn’t know if I could ever go back to UCLA because I just thought it was so inconsistent with this way of seeing the world – an alternative way of knowing – a first-person experiential way vs. a third person scientific way. Both are valuable and I used to think only one was valuable for real truth, until I realized they both are valuable.

How do we find life work that promotes both of these ways of knowing?

If anyone has any suggestions, please spill.  :)

And why do stories like this one garner so much attention?  Why are they compelling? Perhaps it’s a rare and special case when someone so accomplished in a recognized intellectual field (especially Western medical science), but who lacks spiritual knowledge or wisdom, suddenly opens up to this new dimension of learning.  Every day I feel grateful that my life took this same kind of turn.

Tomorrow I’ll post a letter I wrote to someone who helped me make the leap.

Happy Thursday, y’all!

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[Update: Here’s another one from yesterday’s HuffPo: on the science of goodness.  I can just see the new line of Hallmark cards: “Thanks for all the gamma waves.” ;) ]

Weekend Benediction

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Hey, friends!  Happy Friday.

Last night, after arriving back to Izzy’s place in Paris, I had a wonderful Skype conversation with a dear friend in California.  At one point the topic turned to love, surrender, and letting go of the illusion of control.  Reminded me of one of my favorite love poems, by Iranian Sufi poet Hafez.

The Sun Never Says

Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

“You owe me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.

With metta and prayers for the people of Iran today.

Take care, everyone, and be well.  See you Monday!

love,

katie

A Star And A Sun

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Yesterday I stumbled upon this latest entry by renowned hip-hop video blogger Jay Smooth.  I won’t go on about it too much — I think it speaks for itself — but I just wanted to share how thankful I am for his work on IllDoctrine.com (which I had all but forgotten since my Great Escape from the Internet).  I don’t agree with evvverything he says in his vlogs, but most of it gets a big Sadhu (well said) from here.  And this video’s insight about media and culture resonates particularly. As Jay puts it, we need to ensure that the coming generations can differentiate between media attention and genuine affection.  Real love, vital love, does not commodify us. It is not measured in applause, sales, or hit counts.

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One Year Later, A Different Vagina Dialogue

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Hey, friends. Today I’m going to do something a little unusual.

Over a year ago, on another blog, I wrote a piece about my transforming body. A number of people responded to it in heartwarming and wonderful ways, for which I’m still very grateful. In the many months since then, far more than I’ve thought about my particular physical change, I’ve often thought about the way I immediately accepted its arrival.

At the time, I recognized this acceptance as so extraordinary, so unexpected, and so profoundly bad-ass that it could not have come from just “me.” I, alone, was not strong enough to understand such an event so deeply and so quickly. My insight, as I said, owed itself to many teachers and inspirations in trans and feminist communities.

Now, though, there’s a new angle. Looking back on what I wrote, in addition to transfeminism I recognize another perspective: a budding consciousness of dhamma — the teaching of the Buddha. Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. So it’s best to accept the change, and learn to let go of the appearance of things. Learn directly.

This is probably one of the most powerful examples, in my own life experience, of the practical benefits of dhammic wisdom. In Pali, bhavanamayapanya — the wisdom gained by one’s own direct experience. Not because I heard it; not because I puzzled it out; but because, at the level of the body, I felt it. And it helped me.

So here, re-posted, is the piece I wrote. Offered in hopes that it might continue to help! And offered with thanks to more teachers, probably, than I even remember.

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Trans Feminism And My Vagina: A Love Story

Today at 1pm, the hearing for HB1722, “An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes,” is going down at the State House. As always, Quench is on top of it. The following is a highly untheoretical, personal expression of tremendous, joyous gratitude to everyone who struggles against transphobia. Oversharing for a greater purpose, you might call it.

Reclining, legs stiffly spread, during my routine Pap test a couple of months previous, the nurse had neared the end of her business, and I’d asked, with as much nonchalance as one can muster in such a position, whether she’d happened to notice that thing in there…kind of like a swelling?

Trundling out of UHS into another icy December afternoon, I couldn’t remember the medical term she used. Just that it sounded a lot like “cyst.”

And now here I was, back at my laptop, staring at the blank white Google Search box. What did she call it? I knew “cyst” was off — it wasn’t going to help my search. Instead, hesitantly, I typed in a few related words: “bulging bladder vagina.”

Bingo.

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Reggae Dhamma

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Until last Friday, I had never paid any attention to this pop song.  Its strongest association in my mind was with a car commercial that I must have seen a thousand times when I was younger.  Merely background music.  But last week, when it came on the jazz radio station in a café, I listened, really listened, for the first time.  And would you believe it — not only is it beautiful, but it also contains some great Reggae Dhamma.

For real, people, this is exactly what I’ve been learning through meditation. Four parts in particular really get to the root of things:

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Start The Week Off “Right”

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Bonjour, mes amis!  Those of you in the U.S., hope y’all had yourselves a fun Independence Day.

So here I was this morning in Cap Ferret (which, I now realize, is a kind of French version of the way I imagine the Hamptons would be). I’m back up on the blog, organizing my photos and getting ready to publish today’s post.  Then I noticed a new email in my inbox.

At first I almost deleted it.  I didn’t recognize the sender’s name or the names of other recipients, and the text preview showed only French.  Who would send me an email all in French?  But instead of erasing it, I opened it.  Still uncomprehending, I clicked the link.  Where was all this leading?

Watch the video (English with French subtitles), and you’ll hear the story of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and her own “Independence Day.”  From what tryant did she gain independence?  Her own mind.  Her “self.”  Her ego.  Thanks to a brain hemorrhage, the experience of which she describes in vivid and hilarious detail, this neuroscientist experienced what the Buddha called anatta — “no self.”  For one day, in her words, she “found nirvana.”

I remember shelving Dr. Taylor’s memoir when I worked at Harvard Book Store.  I never read it, though.  Never even thumbed through it.  Now I’m thankful to have had another chance to hear her story, which expresses, in essence, the aims of my own meditation practice, travels, blogging, and being.  Thanks, Dr. Taylor.  And to the French Email Angel, whoever you are, Merci Beaucoup. :)

Hell Yes.

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Gay rights march in India

Dear people of India,

Congrats for decriminalizing gay sex!

May you enjoy this new right in as many healthy, consensual, loving, joyful, and creative ways as there are people in the country.  ;)  And may this outer, legal liberation encourage your inner, spiritual liberation — toward the peace and happiness of all beings.

love,

katie

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Update: My friend Ellora wrote a great note on Facebook pointing out the links between queer rights and anti-imperialism in this victory. I’m not sure if you have to be friends with her on Facebook in order to read it…but if not, definitely check it out!

Email 5: end of the camino, end of the emails. (short! promise! :)

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From the final email update, June 7th:

dear family and friends,

i hope you are well, and smiling, and excited for the coming of summer.

this email will be short — partly out of embarrassment at the ridiculous length of the last one, and partly because, well, what i got to say is pretty simple.

first of all, the 25-day, 700-kilometer walking pilgrimage i made across spain last month reinforced, among other things (including calf muscles — with which i could now easily heel-kick all four noses off mount rushmore), my tremendous gratitude for the love of folks like you. i don’t know what i did in past lives to deserve such great people in this one, but whatever it was, it must have been good. like, mother-teresa-type good. or nina-simone-type good. in any case, every stunningly beautiful experience i had — every charming plaza and thrumming cathedral and cheerful bloodbath of red wildflowers; every peaceful moment alone and every joyful moment with others — i owe in part to you. i owe it to you because i can only see such beauty when i feel very beautiful, and i can only feel that beautiful when i understand myself as a composite of the people i love.

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Email 4, Part 4: Death Of The Cool

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From email update May 5th:

DEATH OF THE COOL

Lately I’ve noticed that The Cool is slowly and steadily dying away from me. Can’t say I’m sorry for its passing. Despite its beauty and allure, The Cool gets in the way a lot. It crowds out the tender, more delicate qualities — sincerity, earnestness, silliness, openness. Chokes their roots, hogs the water, blocks the sunlight.

I got rid of a good deal of it in high school, and shed some more in college. But The Cool is sneaky, and very tenacious. It can assume different forms. Some are cliché and therefore easy to spot: Beautiful Woman, Brilliant Student, World Traveler, World-Weary Activist. Others, though, are harder to detect. Some of The Cool’s most clever disguises include Polite Young Lady, Devoted Daughter, Good Friend, and more recently, Serious Meditator. It catches you off your guard.

Still, I’m getting wise to the tricks of The Cool, and I see it weakening. If there’s ever a funeral, you’re invited to come and celebrate. :)