On Destiny and Birthright

It is tempt­ing, in the midst of the big eco­nom­ic, social, and polit­i­cal changes going on now — not to men­tion human impacts on the earth itself, to want to turn and run, to pro­tect what we have as indi­vid­u­als and play it safe. Isn’t that the smart thing to do? I know the feel­ing and have watched friends fal­ter in the cur­rent econ­o­my and polit­i­cal strife — “go dark” to their own pos­si­bil­i­ties, become neg­a­tive, “prac­ti­cal,” set­tling for less while work­ing ungod­ly hours to keep what they have. Go into emo­tion­al hiding.

Instead of speak­ing up we keep our heads down.

Instead of set­ting lim­its and bound­aries for what is right, we go along.

Instead of fol­low­ing our dreams, we give them up to wor­ry about what we could lose.

Instead of act­ing from our hearts, we chill into self-pro­tec­tive logic.

This is the def­i­n­i­tion of a soci­ety — of peo­ple — increas­ing­ly dri­ven by anx­i­ety. Anx­i­ety and uncer­tain­ty that seem to be every­where, and that seem to be increas­ing. But as Lol­ly Daskal points out in a a recent post: “Uncer­tain­ty may cause you fear. But the fear of the unknown expands your knowing.”

I take this beau­ti­ful phrase of Lol­ly’s to mean that instead of turn­ing to run or play­ing it safe, the best course is to explore the fear, to get in touch with it direct­ly and authen­ti­cal­ly, to let it emerge for what it is and then decide how to pro­ceed. This “fear con­scious­ness,” I believe, can lead to height­ened aware­ness, pow­er­ful reflec­tion — and some­thing else — a reduc­tion of the fear itself. By look­ing into that eye, fear’s ener­gy can actu­al­ly begin to trans­form into a dif­fer­ent kind of mas­tery and vital­i­ty, while the alter­na­tive — not look­ing — becomes sim­ply a form of denial, a fan­ta­sy that means we are being dri­ven uncon­scious­ly ever far­ther away from our own courage. We let fear lead us into self-betrayal.

As human beings we are built for some­thing else — some­thing so much bet­ter. As Carl Jung writes in the epi­graph at the begin­ning of this post, the alter­na­tive is to “affirm our des­tiny.” But what is that?

For the last sev­en­teen years I have worked in inner and out­er ways to under­stand what Jung meant. For ten I co-facil­i­tat­ed a work­shop for lead­ers devot­ed to the notion that we all have a des­tiny, a path to fol­low, a sto­ry, an “arc” of learn­ing as we inevitably move toward high­er lev­els, not only of con­scious­ness, but of direct con­tri­bu­tion to the world. Peo­ple came to the work­shop with a sense of rest­less­ness, that “things had hap­pened for a rea­son” or a new under­stand­ing had been awak­ened in them through some mean­ing­ful coin­ci­dence: the meet­ing of a par­tic­u­lar per­son, for exam­ple, or the appear­ance of resources for a deep­er pur­pose. To me, per­son­al­ly, des­tiny is like stand­ing up in my own life, mak­ing a choice that then seems to fol­low some more fun­da­men­tal but also unique thread. And that only by accept­ing this thread as my call­ing, my pri­vate and indi­vid­ual form of integri­ty, my mean­ing, can I live the life I was meant to live.

It is time, I believe, to not let the crazi­ness and chaos of all those shift­ing eco­nom­ic, social, and cul­tur­al par­a­digms rob us of our true work in the world, our rela­tion­ships, or our souls. As always, we are being hol­lowed out by our adver­si­ties; hol­lowed out, as they say, to become the flute through which a new melody will be born.

It is one thing to ask, “What is my des­tiny?” and relate it to a sense of per­son­al pur­pos­es and gifts, which is most often the way peo­ple think about the con­cept of des­tiny. In this sense it rep­re­sents a “des­ti­na­tion,” an end-point, and it depends on some spe­cial tal­ent and apti­tude. But there is at least one oth­er way to con­sid­er it, and that is that our des­tiny real­ly takes us back to our own begin­nings — our “birthright.” In this sense, des­tiny and birthright are the same. The cir­cle com­pletes itself. Let me explain this sec­ond mean­ing as it has showed up in my own life.

Many years ago, in a dream I was assist­ing a doc­tor with a patient on an oper­at­ing table. Blood was every­where. I said to the Doc­tor, “Do you want help? The patient is hem­or­rhag­ing.” He said with sto­ic pas­siv­i­ty, “No, there is noth­ing that can be done now.” But I ran out of the room in a search for just that help. I came to a crowd­ed wait­ing area filled with oth­er patients and with nurs­es. I called out, “The doc­tor needs help!” But imme­di­ate­ly a nurse came up to me and angri­ly said, “That’s none of your busi­ness. We will decide whether the doc­tor needs help!” I left in despair, went back to my room in a near­by hotel. But then, some­thing on top of my dress­er caught my eye, a pile of sparkling stones I’d nev­er seen before. And when I picked them up I found they formed a kind of mag­i­cal or sacred neck­lace of unknown ori­gin. I placed it over my head and as I did so, all of my expe­ri­ence was sud­den­ly illu­mi­nat­ed, a feel­ing of total peace and well-being enveloped me. The neck­lace brushed my cheek and there are no words for it, but in a way I felt as if I had been kissed by a divine being, an angel if you will.

I shared the dream with a ther­a­pist who at the time was help­ing me work through a divorce. She com­ment­ed, “Well, the first part of the dream would seem to be about your work and the world­ly obsta­cles it entails. But the sec­ond part, there you’ve touched your birthright.” I was stunned. Jung’s words came to mind: noth­ing had been “dis­turbed” in me and I was still “vic­to­ri­ous.”

Indeed, I had touched a pro­found core, one that over time has become the real sto­ry of my own life, the end and begin­ning of it, des­tiny and birthright. And all I can say is that it has noth­ing to do with fear at all, or with gain or loss, win­ning or los­ing. It has to do with deep­er things that I strug­gle to express but pull me every day to do the work I do, to be who I am in my heart — whether “the patient,” in fact, can be saved.

I have tried many times to find ways or words to ade­quate­ly express that feel­ing of the neck­lace and that oth­er-world­ly kiss. Recent­ly, I dis­cov­ered some­thing that comes a lit­tle clos­er although dis­tance still remains, a record­ing of the Bud­dhist activist, poet, and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, a poet­ic med­i­ta­tion put to music. It is on a (mag­nif­i­cent) CD devot­ed to facil­i­tat­ing the pas­sage of life and death. You can find the record­ing here with Thich Nhat Han­h’s words below.

The End of Suffering

May the sound of this bell pen­e­trate deep into the cosmos
Even in the dark­est spots liv­ing beings are able to hear it clearly
So that all suf­fer­ing in them cease, under­stand­ing come to their heart
And they tran­scend the path of sor­row and death.

The uni­ver­sal dhar­ma door is already open
The sound of the ris­ing tide is heard clearly
The mir­a­cle happens
A beau­ti­ful child appears in the heart of the lotus flower
One sin­gle drop of this com­pas­sion­ate water is enough
to bring back the refresh­ing spring to our moun­tains and rivers.

Lis­ten­ing to the bell I feel the afflic­tions in me begin to dissolve
My mind calm, my body relaxed
A smile is born on my lips
Fol­low­ing the sound of the bell, my breath brings me back
to the safe island of mindfulness
In the gar­den of my heart, the flow­ers of peace bloom beautifully.

So what does any of this mean to you? Assum­ing it means any­thing at all!

This is not about con­coct­ing some fan­ta­sy of per­son­al pur­pose or lodg­ing for­ev­er in some pri­vate, dis­con­nect­ed nir­vana. It is about know­ing, expe­ri­enc­ing, feel­ing that thread in your own life in a deep­er way, and help­ing oth­ers around you feel and expe­ri­ence and fol­low their own threads as well. We lis­ten to one anoth­er; help each oth­er with our adver­si­ties, help each oth­er remem­ber that birthright. We con­front our dif­fer­ences and dis­tances — some of them large — and we are deep­ened and hol­lowed out even more. Bring­ing these threads to the sur­face, talk­ing about them, I’ve found, results in an unusu­al­ly strong, vibrant com­mu­ni­ty; results in us remem­ber­ing who we are and what we are about, no mat­ter what tough con­di­tion our per­son­al world or the world at large might be in.

In this sense, the truth is no one finds or fol­lows their des­tiny alone, do they? We are in this togeth­er, a com­plex com­mu­ni­ty and sub­tle matrix, many dif­fer­ent petals, per­haps, of a sin­gle irre­ducible flower.

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Please join Lol­ly Daskal and me for a tweet chat, “Lead­er­ship and Des­tiny,” on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 24, 2012 at 8:00 PM EST. To par­tic­i­pate, please go to this page, enter Lol­ly’s hash­tag (#lead­fromwith­in) and sign in. It’s a great com­mu­ni­ty of learn­ing: fun, fast, full of soul.

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