Humbled

Dusk kissing the lake during my retreat

Last weekend I drove down to a spiritual retreat in South Carolina. I visit this retreat twice a year, and have been doing so for more than five years. It is the “Home in the West” for a spiritual master from India. This master “dropped his body” in 1969, but he’s still hanging around. So a couple times a year I go down and hang out with him. For months I’ve been promising him that I would come visit one more time before returning to New York, so after I ordered my one-way plane ticket to NYC I called and reserved a cabin.

These visits never fail to stir up my emotional pot. Divorced from distractions like television, internet, phones, friends, family, etc., I am forced to sit with myself and deal with whatever it is I’ve been ignoring. I go there to listen. I listen to the voice inside of me and to whatever wisdom this spiritual master wants to pass on to me. Usually I’m given one word or one directive to help guide my life. During a visit last year, I was meditating in the master’s bedroom when told, “Patience.” On another occasion, I was lying on the beach when directed, “Quit your job.” This time, I had been walking through the woods for less than five minutes when I received my word: “Humbled.”

I have been humbled by the last year of my life. Profoundly humbled. My father had his initial gastric bypass procedure on 3/24/10, exactly 11 months ago today. Easter Sunday will mark the one-year anniversary of the afternoon I readied myself to watch my father die. Hours after boarding a 6am flight in New York, I stood on the curb in front of the Burlington hospital and watched paramedics load my screaming, half-conscious father into an ambulance headed for Durham. “Everything just changed,” my brain kept repeating. From inside my father’s ICU room, I texted my brother out in the waiting room: “Our lives just changed forever. This is the new reality.” Whatever plans I had prior to that moment were obliterated. In the span of one weekend, my life had been hijacked by tragedy. It felt like I was free-falling, and that sensation lasted for months. I was in a constant, relentless free-fall from early April until sometime in September.

And then one morning in September I received a phone call informing me that one of my dear friends had been killed the night before in a car accident. A month later I received another phone call, informing me that my best friend had just been attacked in the Bronx and was lying in a hospital with a broken jaw.

Tragedy happens fast-fast-SO FAST. LIGHTENING SPEED. You turn around and when you turn back someone you love is dead or dying or suffering and all you can do is react. And then when you react, it feels as if you’re reacting in slow motion. There’s no way your slowmo reactions could ever match tragedy’s lightening speed. And tragedy doesn’t give a fuck about any plans you might have had. It doesn’t care that you don’t have the time/money/energy to respond to it. Tragedy audaciously asserts itself as it pleases.

And you don’t get to decide when you’ve had enough. I reached what I thought was my breaking point at least half a dozen times in the last 11 months. Each time I thought I had literally taken all I could take and that I would break apart if forced to take any more. And then each time I was forced to take more. And each time part of me did break apart. I kept telling the universe I had nothing left to give, but it didn’t seem to care.

Some people say “Well, at least now you know how strong you are!” And those are the people I would like to physically assault. I knew I was strong before this year; I did not need such gruesome confirmation of my strength. And now that I have it, I feel weaker than ever. I feel insignificant, powerless…a mere speck in a vast universe. I feel humbled. I now have absolute confirmation that I am not in control. I don’t know who or what is in control, but it’s certainly not me. And I’d bet good money it’s not you. You may not believe me, and that’s totally fine. But I assure you I’m right, and I imagine you will get your own gruesome confirmation some day.

I have been humbled by my powerlessness, but I have also been humbled by the strength of my father’s spirit. By the resilience of the human body. By the love between my parents and their relationship of 40+ years. I have been humbled by Gail, a family member who opened up her home to me even though we barely knew each other. Gail’s wit, kindness and wisdom sustained me during the most difficult year of my life.

I have been humbled by the goodness of the human heart. New friends, old friends and total strangers have gone out of their way to help me this year. College friends I had not seen in ten years randomly showed up at the hospital with food. People I barely know sent me money. Countless individuals have tried to find ways to make this experience a little less miserable for me. I have been swimming in love, though unfortunately my anger has often rendered me too numb to notice.

Last Saturday morning, I returned to the bedroom of the spiritual master. I sat among some of his other followers and meditated. Usually at this point in my visit, I ask or pray for specific things. But this time I didn’t know what to ask for. It seemed silly to pray for anything, because I don’t even know what I want. I suddenly felt like a tall, clear, empty Tupperware container. The feeling scared and depressed me. I felt like I had lost part of my identity…like I had been violently scrubbed clean of my sense of self. I looked up at the picture of the spiritual master hanging over the bed, and he was gazing right at me. The smirk on his face was gentle yet mischievous. Suddenly I realized: this was all a test. It was some sort of traumatic, year-long spiritual test. I think I was being prepared for something else coming in my life. Maybe I had to be humbled and broken and scrubbed clean before I could journey on. Maybe whatever lies ahead needed me to arrive empty.

So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the confirmation of my strength had to be gruesome. And sometimes I worry that I didn’t pass the test. Sometimes I worry that I should have been kinder, wiser, more patient. Sometimes I get angry at myself for letting my anger control me. After I left the master’s bedroom, I went to the communal kitchen to have breakfast. I sat down next to an old hippie from Asheville. We started talking, and I told him about the last year of my life. I told him about the discoveries I made in the master’s bedroom, and I told him I was worried I didn’t pass the test. “Did you follow your heart?” he asked. I said yes. “Sounds like you passed,” he said.

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Tags: gastric bypass surgery, Meher Baba

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