Mysteries without Answers

             After a decade of debrainwashing, I hit an impasse.  “Debrainwashing” is what I called that process of lifting, layer by layer, the conditioning I had been taught by my family, education, religion, and society at large.  In some way to and to some extent, I was finding each layer false.  Whatever I had been taught was not, in fact, true.  I had fallen into the rabbit hole, taken the Matrix red pill, and the more untruths I uncovered, the more I found.  I had hit that point that every genuine truth-seeker eventually arrives: is there anything we can know to be true?

            If you take any paradigm to its natural conclusion, you hit its delusion, its opposite.  You will prove it wrong with your own paradigm.  My heroine of Just like Eve took the training she had been given by her church to its conclusion and exposed the lie based on its own teaching.  Although her church condemned Eve, Jasmine read the Bible the way her church taught her to read it and found Eve heroic.

Physicists are doing the same thing.  While probing the mysteries of science, they are undermining their own laws.  Their own tools and methods are proving their science to be false. 

In Why Fish Don’t Exist, Lulu Miller shows the same for the scientist she follows, David Starr Jordan.  He had faithfully followed Darwin’s scientific philosophy, faced despair, and only conquered his despair by discounting his own philosophy, yet not admitting it.  Taking his own philosophy to its conclusion, he had declared “Nature no respecter of persons,” yet he overcame his despair with an opposite manifesto: “That which is in man is greater than all that he can do.”  Of this Miller says, “It was the kind of lie he promised he would never tell himself.”  Later, she demonstrates that Jordan undermined Darwin’s philosophy when he, Jordan, declared certain persons “unfit,” even advocating for their sterilization.  Darwin, however, had adamantly insisted this is Nature’s job.  Not man’s.  Darwin warned men not to interfere with Nature.  Jordan, a devoted follower of Darwin, did just that.

My own truth-seeking under the paradigm I had been taught also led me to its natural conclusion.  I had “wrestled” for years with the “God” I had been taught, particularly “his” cruelty that extended even to commanding genocide.  In my moment of emptiness, like Nietzsche, I declared this “God” “dead.”  Although the death of this “God” was a relief, I was now left with the greatest of mysteries: What is the realm just beyond our senses?  Is there an Intelligence within it? Does this Intelligence care about us, in our world?

My impasse into emptiness was mirrored by my external life. Within two years (2021-23), a mere blink, I had lost my marriage, my career, my two kids off to college, and even our two cats, the first to my former husband and the second to my daughter.  It was also during this blink that I left the church and the “God” it taught, though continued to follow its teacher.  Just has my inner life had morphed into emptiness, so did my outer life into an empty home, no longer a teacher, wife or mom with kids and cats at home.

My blank slate drew me into discoveries new yet old, ancient, in fact, that had lain deep within my own intuition.  Having studied the wisdom of other traditions, I was aware of the ancient maxim, As Above, so Below, along with its corollary, expressed, for example, in Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas, to “make the inner as the outer,” or that our internal self is reflected by our external life.  My own life demonstrated this to be true.

Meanwhile, I was finding synchronicities everywhere, a remarkable universal harmony among all things, and that what I sow I also reap.  It often comes many years later and in ways I never would have imagined, but in some way, sometimes happily and sometimes sorrowfully, in my own lifetime, I reap what I sow.

Still, mysteries without answers remain.  Maybe I reap what I sow, but does everyone? I’ve longed to see it confirmed, yet meet another impasse.  Bullies keep bullying and the bullied keep getting kicked.  How do wealthy narcissists who exploit others to make themselves great again and again continue to win in the game of life? 

True, occasionally, some rich bastard gets his due, locked up for some white collar crime, with his mug shot plastered over the evening news, and the rest of us celebrate that this crook who had stolen from thousands finally got what was coming to him.

But the story, reporting the conviction of this crook, masks all that’s behind it.  Who are the crook’s friends?  Superiors?  Colleagues?  Was he just a fall guy?  For a much bigger empire?  A pawn of a mafia?  My longing for revenge upon the hateful persists. 

Then there are the kind, lovable, oppressed, exploited, abused ones who have done nothing to receive such abuse, then die a cruel death.  Again, no answers. 

I think about the little boy in a favorite story, who stands amidst a vast mass of starfish washed upon the seashore, throwing a few, one by one, back into the ocean.  A passerby, perhaps a teenager who’s been stomping on the poor starfish to his twisted delight, mocks the boy. “You can’t save them all.”  The boy picks up another, tosses it into the ocean and says, “But I can save that one.”  This little boy will reap what he sows, right?  Some day, someone might save him too?  And what about the teen who’s been gleefully torturing other starfish?  Will he also reap what he sows?

I wonder whether I can’t see the “reaping” for the people I find hateful because I find them hateful.  Seeking vengeance, perhaps I’m not intended to enjoy the chance to see them get their due.

Could the Universe be testing us?  Are we given exceptions to the sowing and reaping law to keep the mystery alive?  We see exceptions, point to them, and say to ourselves, “It’s not true.  What we sow, we don’t reap.  Look at them.”  So what do we do?  We start sowing bad seeds to our own delight at the expense of other people, because, why not? 

Given that we all intuitively believe what goes around comes around, we’re challenged with the exceptions.  Will we follow our intuition and try to sow kindness?  Or, will we be tempted to follow the exceptions that tell us it doesn’t matter, that we can do whatever we want?

With plenty of reason to doubt, many quit bothering to try.  Others persist in the hope for a reward and get disappointed when the “return” seems elusive or takes a long time.

That’s me.  Staying true to my intuition of its truth, I’ve tried to live it, and often, the “reward” comes barely in time to avoid a crisis.  Could this be because I’ve expected one?  If I were more like the boy who casts a starfish back into the ocean just because he can “save that one,” would the return appear more readily?  Perhaps to me, the Universe has shrugged, “Yeah, yeah, you sowed, so you’ll also reap, because that is how the Universe works, but you since you did it for a reward, you’ll have to wait for it.  You’ll have to wait so long, you’ll doubt it.  Then it can be known whether you’re willing to sow even if you don’t reap.”

Imagine a friend of the boy, also casting back starfish, who hears the boy’s reply that he can “save that one” and, in sheer delight, pipes in, “And it’s fun to throw them back!” 

These two boys aren’t saving starfish because they think one day they’ll also be saved.  They are sending the starfish back in a moment of joy.  They delight in saving starfish.  Maybe we also can delight that there are some mysteries without answers.

 

© 2024 by Karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission and/or a link to this blog post.

The Energizer Bunny Learns the Rhythm of Nature (Part 1)

The Rhythm of Nature

strides as the turtle

who wins a race

he doesn’t know he’s in

 

Ever evolving,

neither static, nor constant

 yet slowly progressing

beats the rhythm of Nature

 

Even when we see not

the burbling beneath the volcano

the plates shifting into an earthquake

the atmosphere transforming into a tornado

the waves building to a tsunami

 

Even then, even when we see not the signs,

the Rhythm of Nature is ever evolving

neither static, nor constant

 yet slowly progressing

             I was trained not to stride to the rhythm of nature, but to the drum of the Energizer Bunny, that mascot toy for the battery that keeps “going and going and going” and, even after everyone else’s batteries are dead, is “still going.”  My mother is wired like the Energizer Bunny, and by some genetic quirk, I am not.  Vacations were full, as Mom booked each hotel with a “guaranteed late arrival” and even planned in which rest stops we’d take for our picnic lunches.  Her errands at home, however, were not planned and seemed to follow a random order, defying geographic logic, zigzagging out of the way, and then returning to previous stores that had deals three dollars better than the later stores.  Like all of the competitor bunnies in the Energizer ads, I, her tag-a-long had batteries that died part-way through, but hers were “still going.”  Thinking I should be wired – or “batteried” -- like her, once I had hit my wall, Mom had one of two replies: “Quit whining” or “The world doesn’t revolve around you.” 

            In time, I gained the endurance to quit whining and eventually grew into an Energizer Bunny myself.  Early in our marriage, my then husband teased me for my to do lists that also kept going and going and going.  I had a love-hate relationship with these lists; part of me longed for days with short lists, but the other part reveled in those days when I crossed out a multitude of items on a long one.

            By the time little ones arrived, my love-hate relationship with the lists turned to a hate-only relationship.  One sheet was no longer enough for all that I had to do; multiple sheets were filled, and included only what needed to be done at home; at work, I had another list.  My anxiety grew with the lists.  My chest, neck, and face flushed with a pinkish glow; my heart rate beat fast; my nights were endlessly sleepless, with a cherished hour or two of sleep.  My doctor prescribed me with Prozac.

The lists had to go, and so too did the Energizer Bunny still in me.  In 2005, while juggling a toddler, a preschooler, and a teaching position, I decided to pray every day of the year for a quiet and gentle spirit, and miracles came that began the process to loosen, layer by layer, that Bunny that didn’t belong in me.  Still, for years, vestiges of this battery remained, insisting that I keep going and going and going.

 My body knew what really needed to go were the batteries and that the rhythm of nature needed to come.  What my body might have known, I did not.  Having already been greatly healed, I didn’t know quite how much of this Bunny still beat its drum within me.

             Then came the pandemic.  “Stay at home.  Save lives.”  This was no time for an Energizer Bunny.  Even Mom learned to slow down.  The word Blursday was coined, time felt different, and the process in me was reignited to discard more of the conditioned Bunny within me.  Part of me rebelled; I got out more than most of my friends, but I also acquiesced to begin to learn the Way of Zen.  To my blog and my social media page, I posted this meme with my intent to learn this Way of Zen. 

        

         The Way of Zen is hard for an Energizer Bunny to learn.  In the summer of 2020, we had begun to “flatten the curve,” and we were all getting out more. Feeling I had had my zen, I was eager to get out. My inner Bunny was relieved.

Then came the wildfires, 1800 of them raging throughout the western states.  Our masks returned, we once again retreated indoors, and even more of the Bunny in me was called upon to let go.

             The West burning in flames mirrored my life, as both my marriage and my career also ignited with burning embers.  My husband and I were compatible for projects and parenting, but not for love-making, nor for my soul’s transformation.  He met someone else with whom he shared the right mix of love elements to maintain a thriving marriage.  The following year, after months of marriage counseling and a trial separation, we chose to close our marriage with friendship, which still continues. 

Meanwhile, the university where I taught as a non-tenured track (second-class) faculty member was grappling with a severe budget crisis and turned my employment ladder upside down.  Instead of downsizing and laying off those on the bottom rungs of my ladder, they transferred assignments from many of us like me who had earned the highest promotions to our lower paid colleagues at the bottom of the ladder.  I was eventually downsized all the way, and given with notice, citing a loophole, that I was to be laid off.  But I found a loophole of my own: Emeritus, the university’s honored form of retirement.  My promotions and 23 years of service qualified me to apply.  I did, and I got it, but I was also too young to actually retire. 

The anxiety, tight chest, rapid heart beat, and insomnia returned.  It was the summer of 2021, and I was now both separated from my husband and without work, a financial double-whammy.  I had put out applications, had interviews, and even had completed new hire paperwork, a month earlier, but still had not yet been called with a start date.  The Bunny in me begged to make phone calls and put out more applications.  But the whispers and synchronicities encouraged me to wait.  It will come in its own time.  And it did. 

But first, I had to wait and learn the rhythm of nature.  It was then that I decided to hire myself for the landscaping project to the side of our house that had been itching at me for four years.  Roughly 40 feet long by 14 feet wide, this plot had previously housed two vegetable gardens and a play sand pit, each bordered with bricks and stones.  But our kids had grown; the gardens had been left to waste; the bricks and patio stones were broken, scattered, and buried; what amounted to seven 20 gallon tubs of stones to be collected that were then also mostly buried; and weeds, many thigh high, had taken over the entire plot. 

Since the plot is right outside my bedroom window, every morning when I opened the shades, this disaster welcomed my day, and then it presented itself to me again in the evening at my favorite outdoor spot, also immediately adjacent to it, our hammock. 

For the plot’s neglect, I mostly blame the wildfires, of which we had already had three since 2012 even before the 2020 fires.  While one came as close as three miles, most were further away, but we live in a valley, where the smoke from all of the neighboring fires comes to settle itself as an unwelcome guest for weeks of choking, hazardous air.  How does one care for vegetable gardens in the likelihood of such toxic air?  To those who do, bless you.  By 2018, after the third set of fires, I was done.  With some help from my then husband, I began to clear out the plot of weeds, bricks, and stones and hoped to clear enough to hire a professional landscaper to build a stone patio, for which I was also saving money. 

In the summer of 2021, I needed peace at my window and on my hammock.  And between jobs, I needed that savings for the landscaping.  Why not use the stones and bricks I was collecting and hire myself?  

Continue to Part 2

© 2023 by Karina Jacobson.  All rights reserved.  Please use only with permission from the author.