Cleaning Up

Where I come from, all holidays are occasions for self-reflection. Another year has passed creating new conditions both in the world (need I say more?) and in myself. The question then arises…How can I navigate the new conditions? I saw a cartoon on Facebook entitled “What a Poem Feels Like.” In the first frame there’s a person walking towards a door with the caption “Suddenly there is a door you never noticed before.” The second frame is accompanied by the caption “Open it to find.” And the final frame depicts the same person flying high with the birds and the clouds and the caption “A new space in your mind.” I am comforted by the simplicity and the truth of this message and by the fact that it was delivered by a cartoon. You never know when you’ll receive such an unexpected gift.

If your mind, like mine, is an attic crammed with yellowing regrets, moldy ideas, and beliefs that have long outlived their usefulness but which you are nonetheless deeply attached to, you may know what I mean when I say I need to do some serious self-emptying, some major hosing down. Sometimes, I run out of room in my head and annex my belly for additional storage space, but it’s dark and dank in my deepest places and I rarely venture down there. When I feel the impulse to do a little personal housecleaning, it doesn’t take the form of examining each pile of stuff and trying to understand where it comes from or why it’s still in there. Oh look, my mother’s disapproval. I wonder why I saved that? It’s more a simple recognition that something, like a pair of pants I’ll never fit into again, no longer serves a purpose. I can then energetically sweep it into a giant dustpan and toss it out, creating more room and observing what might flourish in the space newly created.

Photo by Rosemary Fields on Unsplash

The other day, I tossed my cherished belief that I could solve somebody else’s problem, that I could save them from a world of pain. In retrospect, this seems like a no-brainer. Those pants haven’t fit for a very long time. But it took me years and years to clean out that corner of the attic filled with misperceptions of my own potency and wisdom about other people’s suffering. This was actually more than a corner. It was an entire wall of trunks and cartons filled with unsolicited advice masquerading as benevolence. In the end, it was all self-serving. If I can enlist you to feel better after listening to what I have to say then I can feel better, too. Until recently, I didn’t know about practices that are really centered entirely on the other person. I didn’t know about metta.

Metta is loving-kindness offered to people who may be struggling with illness, mental anguish, violence and other causes of suffering. In my sangha, in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hahn, our practice is to sit in silence and focus on people we feel called to pray for. It could be a friend or family member. It could be Ukrainians or children in Gaza. It could be the stranger you saw on the bus with the faraway distracted expression on his face. After a few minutes of silence, someone offers the blessing. May all beings be happy, healthy and at peace. May all beings be free from mental suffering and the causes and conditions of mental suffering. May all beings be free from physical suffering and the causes and conditions of physical suffering. May all beings be free to live our lives in peace, joy, harmony, equanimity and compassion.

There is no imposing one’s belief system in offering metta. There is no implication that the other person’s situation is their own fault….if only they had taken your advice and done x or y. Metta is a free will offering and a meaningful accompaniment to the gratitude practice of Thanksgiving.

Many different traditions provide a blueprint for how to empty out, reflect on our frailties, clean house, and then celebrate a new day, a new year. This is the model of Yom Kippur and even of the entire season before the Day of Atonement which begins with a month of soul-searching called Elul. It is also the model of Lent which calls for letting go or giving up some aspect of oneself before the resurrection into new life at Easter. This year, the bounty of Thanksgiving…the food, the loving family, the health and safety many of us feel around our table, is particularly poignant. We are being called to a new awareness of vulnerability. We are being called to understand how fragile human arrangements and life itself can be and to really celebrate this occasion for gratitude in awareness. No agenda. Nothing to do but fly high among the birds and the clouds. Nothing to do but lovingly share the food and clean up afterwards.

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