I have been attempting to sit down to this page for over a week now. It’s challenging to put that in print, as from a certain point of view the statement appears rather trite; “yes, yes, we are all very busy.” The theme of this post, however, is Openness and Transparency and I hope to weave a story of personal quadriplegic context and a more broadly implicated human aspiration. Therefore, in the interest of providing some detail to the texture that goes into this writing, it’s been a bit in the coming…
Four days ago I wrote: [I just restarted this article after the transcription software crashed, and ostensibly took the word processor with it, as I’ve lost the five minutes of work just put in… Hopefully we’ll have better luck this go.]
A few minutes after that: [Richard called while I was in the middle of rebooting with a request to review his next installment for publication, I’m turning my attention to that now, then back to this.…]
Today… As a quadriplegic I rely on voice transcription software to input nearly all words to my computer. While there has been enormous progress of late in helping the average user skip the keypad and simply write by voice, the casual need for fingers to correct errors make those solutions less than optimal for those of us depending on these technologies as an accessibility aid to disability.
When I refer to the transcription software crash, it’s worth noting that that happens sporadically, sometimes every minute or so, at others only a few times per day. In all cases the crash is noticed only when, in the spontaneous flow of concentrated reflection, inspiration, or effort, the software fails. Flow is broken and a reset is required.
For illustration, next time you’re writing an email or a text message and pause for a moment to consider the next word, wait until you know the word and then stop, do nothing or do something else that doesn’t require typing for about 60 seconds, and then go back to what you were doing. Repeat at random, preferably when it’s most frustrating to be interrupted. ;-)
Sunday morning and gray skies over San Diego offer the chance of precipitation. The trees jostle slightly in the breeze, ravens dance high on the wind or rest for a moment on the streetlamp before pouring some novelty on the road below. There is a slight subtle chill in my body, a familiar low-grade discomfort that persists, often a bit more when humidity rises, but common enough that it’s absence can be easily overlooked or taken for granted.
My attention is held by a sense of urgency, though without particular object. As I write these words, I note them and file them to the part of my awareness concerned with Dharma practice; this fishhook in my attention represents a kind of “grab,” a pointless and even interfering constriction of awareness with both physiological and conscientious consequences. So while I continue to write, I also place some care to relaxation, breath, appreciation for calm, and a sense of peace in the ever presence of transcendent grace.
I will continue this practice. Meanwhile just to say that my attention has been held by this sense of urgency along nested scales of concern. “Is that discomfort in my skin just ordinary, or some greater threat to health today?” “Am I attending responsibly enough to the financial economic concerns of the next month?” “Have I attended well enough to the needs of my caregiving team as a whole?” “Am I simply surviving or really living fully into this precious gift of life?” “As this world turns in turmoil, am I responding to the best of my ability, and where are the accessible steps to grow more capably into that care?”
One of my most cherished conversation partners, David, is away from home while he tends to matters of the estate of his father who recently passed. We two have shared an inquiry surrounding the simple elemental principles that, when nourished, can help to bind a relational world in greater harmony and integrity of well-being.
Working with matters of estate, David is of course right up against the subjects of death, inheritance, and money; each of these fraught in our modern context and often obscured by mystery, opacity, and anxiety. In his process, both with myself, with others close to him, and even city clerks, bank tellers, and managers, he has been practicing a conscientious Openness and Transparency.
At essence is the thesis, “know thyself.” As we embark upon the Anthropocene, this aphorism comes more to the fore, not just for each of us alone, but for all of us together. I remember a line from the movie Kinsey which I saw decades ago and am probably just paraphrasing: “we know more about chimpanzee sexuality than we do about our own human sexuality.” I suppose this has changed (though perhaps not) in the half a century or so since Mr. Kinsey expressed some similar sentiment, but I think the point stands.
In these days where trust in institutions continues to slip, narrative bubbles tighten and isolate, political and financial plots thicken and conspire, the pendulum swing of closed secrecy creeps to an end. While many trust the technologists to pull us out of this nosedive, others of us are not so sure that is a faith wisely placed.
It is in this spirit that I come to this page, with an effort to share a window into my own personal life, for what connection, value or inspiration that might offer. Within that is the burning of my heart that I might effort to something a little more than simply being seen.
Followers of this narrative blog will have some familiarity with the financial challenge it has been to keep afloat with responsibilities not just to the concerns of the modern San Diego city life, but to the additional cost of employing a team of caregivers and other health-related fundamentals necessary to navigating this otherwise “ordinary life.”
In recent months I have made the effort to step more into a sense of faith on the matter (see “urgency without an object,” above.) In the spirit of this I have focused not so much on where to find the next dollar to keep a collapse at bay, turning my attention instead to what might be a most essential offering of care from within this unique expression that is Kabir.
This has produced an exciting time for my heart. I and those close to me have brought an intense focus on a formal launch of Open Field Awakening as the container of offering a meaningful work into the mix of a world at metacrisis. In service to that, the work at hand has been largely a process of continuing to peer deep into these constructs with the intention of refining some clear and inviting collaborative steps into meaningful service.
I find this process paradoxically both simple and profoundly mysterious. I am encountering the layers of my own mind, it’s projections, prejudices, desires and aversions. I am encountering layers of information and meaning in the world, what physical constructs, social realities, and fundamental processes are at play, which of these tends towards flourishing, and which towards destruction? I am analyzing available processes of engagement, and local and personal scales as well as institutional and evolutionary, with groups, ecosystems, the world and evolution itself. I (and thankfully increasingly we) and asking questions about what questions are necessary sooner rather than later, and which of these are accessible to individuals and collectives across context and scale.
All of this striving towards something sooner, rather than later, visible, describable, and practical to others in the spirit of reciprocitive, synergistic, and even nutritive engagement beyond the boundaries of just me here now.
This is a rewarding and encouraging work and I am enjoying pouring myself into it, both the aspirational visionary exercise(s), as well as the more mundane elements of management and systems construction and evolution. Of course I am also feeling the interplay of novice and mastery in all of these domains as I find myself reliably and often interchangeably sliding throughout that spectrum in the journey.
Of course all of this does not simply wish away the real clerical and physical challenges of the quadriplegic context.
I have been aware of an increased sense of frailty in my body, a wariness and low-grade sense of vulnerable health, physical weakness, and occasional disturbance to rest. The broken toe continues to heal. Miscellaneous wounds come and go, some persist. I have had to retire early to bed for six of the 12 days since my last posting to this channel, either to care for a fragile sense of health, or respond to exhaustion brought about by intense spasticity of the body related either to wellness, whether, solar flare, or some other unperceived influence. In all of this, some mystery disturbance (Dr. says maybe stress) manifests as intense itchiness around my shoulders and neck. Nonetheless, doctors and others around me comment on the appearance of greater glow and well-being than has been seen in some time.
I have endured the all too common false start to finding and hiring a new caregiver to the team1; we had one scheduled for training, who decided at the last minute to move in another direction, this left me a bit suddenly shorthanded and with rather unmanageable looming gaps in the schedule. This has meant additional time in searching and interviewing prospective new care partners, though I’m happy to report we seem to have found a likely candidate who shall, God willing, be fully trained just in time to cover otherwise disruptive discontinuity in the flow of care. Owen appears a bright young man; a botanist and chef from middle America, excited and enthusiastic for his recent move to the wilds of California, a hopeful new addition to our little culture of care to be sure.
As I stare back over the calendar in attempts to capture any relevant nuance to the texture of this personal flow, the feeling of gratitude stirs in my heart with appreciation for the diversity of interesting engagements I have enjoyed with new and interesting relations around the country and the world. As if rising to meet a faithful commitment of attention and intention to not simply survive, but rather to focus on service and giving light to what burns most brightly in my own heart, in the face of a personal fragility, I feel also a fullness of welcome in the world.
On April 6 we will gather in community to celebrate a milestone of bringing certain aspirations to the ground where transcendent inspiration can meet and walk an earthen path (see below). Before that, on March 22, we will undertake the next step in our evolving prototype of the Audacity Dialogues, a long form in person engagement intended to enrich the wisdom practices of all involved and hopefully produce some additional artifacts of value for the field at large.
All of this is very much in development and still seeping up through the soil of body and business and relations, new and old, but I find myself as committed to anything as I have ever been and feeling prayerful for the privilege to be both a witness and a gesture in this spring of an open field awakening.
*One of the privileges of working with caregivers is the intimate interpersonal relationship that often affords me a view into the person’s natural growth and development. Not too infrequently this actually results in watching them mature or flower into some new identity and move on to new work more suited to their sacred life’s journey. Davidson is making just such a move and thus the search for new collaborators.
Kabir maintaining your flow of thought and inspiration while buffeted with the uncertainties of autonomic dysreflexia keeps me in awe. Your quiet lessons in lived persistence feed my sense of gratitude. Here's to awakening together!