Gentleness [5.10.2020]

Sometimes you just have to wipe the slate clean.  To begin again and surrender.  There are moments in life where there really is no other choice.  The alternative is struggle and pain and regret and fear and stagnation.  If we refuse to release what is not for us then we will not have any space for what belongs in our lives.  When we resist this rather than allowing it to crumble we only delay and amplify pain. Because the more we refuse to release, the greater the pressure that builds up behind the need to do so. 

Gentleness is a flowing fluid thing.  It knows how to let go in every moment and so it bubbles and hums along like an unhindered creek tucked in its bed of smooth stones and sediment. It flows continuously forward embracing all new destinations equally – arrive, depart, embrace, release. 

By contrast, imagine the pressure that builds up in rivers when boulders and fallen trees rise in their midst.  This is what creates wild rapids.  The faster and more forcefully the water surges forward around these obstacles the more violent the disturbance to the flow becomes.  Kayakers and white water rafters track the number of cubic feet per second (cfs) as a gauge of the force moving in the river.  They use this measurement to grasp the speed and volume of water moving and what that will mean for the strength and difficulty of the water features they ride.  Rapids are classed based on difficulty with those that are angrier and more constrained – more full of obstacles – being more difficult to navigate. 

As the water surges against what impedes its movement it can create all matter of unseen difficulties under its own weight.  Riptides and holes and eddies open up – many of which are large enough to swallow a boat of rafters whole.  The more water tries to move, the less able it is to do so, the more fraught and angry the situation becomes.  This created pressure amplifies any disturbances that were already there.  And if enough pressure builds up behind them, they can become volatile angry things. 

Situations of stress and difficulty in our lives carry a similar force.  They rush up against the pain we carry from the past, the doubts we have, and the fear we hold.  The obstacles to our own growth and surrender can loom as large as the white water that boils at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  The more we avoid facing ourselves and our fear and our pain in the quiet moments, the less able we are to cope when the rains come and difficulty flows fast and hot in our lives.  Greater still is the pressure that builds up against what is fixed and immovable and unyielding in us and in our lives.  If we have such a block in our lives it dams us, impeding all natural forward motion and a force capable of lighting up cities builds up in us. 

We can only churn away at turbines for so long.

The river in us does not want to be – is not content to be – a lake. 

You see it in people sometimes. 

All major dams have spillways that can be used to release pressure from the system, but even if the surface of the reservoir above is tranquil great turmoil exists below it.  Nature seeks always to return to balance.  By damming a great river you are intentionally creating an imbalance that can later be leveraged all at once to create power.  Hydroelectric requires incredible volumes of water and pressure to operate effectively.  It does so by containing the force of the river’s journey to the sea, holding it in reserve and releasing it at planned intervals en masse.  The problem with this – beyond limiting the natural movement of creatures who live in the river and drastically reshaping the natural landscape – is that it creates a system which if pressured beyond its limit is uncontrollable. If the hundred-year flood comes the dam may well explode.

So too, with people. 

Pushing forward against the limits in our lives – self-imposed or otherwise – can create momentum to achieve and to do things with one’s life.  Harnessing the will necessary to learn and to grow.  And yet, as stressors escalate everything that is pent up in us seeks to find release and if the usual spillways people use to cope – like overworking, alcohol, exercise, food, etc. – are no longer available or able to manage the disturbance the person can violently explode.  All of the hurt and anger and pain and pent up frustration accumulated over a lifetime erupts all at once.  And in its wake there will necessarily be devastation. 

This sort of rigid system – this intractable way of being – is destructive at both ends. 

It drowns the forest and changes the landscape and forces the river to become a lake and then when and if you remove the obstacle that you created in yourself there is necessarily a potentially catastrophic and uncontrollable flood of energy.  I know people who live in this way – who accumulate, avoid, explode, accumulate, avoid, explode – escalating angrier and angrier with each perceived affront that they face.

I have watched this choice to live with rigid speed and often thought, “What will you do when something really unimaginably difficult happens and you can no longer avoid this situation that you have created in yourself by avoiding yourself?” I think of them in light of the current state of the world and expect they are somewhere between boiling white water and all out explosive emotional catastrophe most of the time. 

It is a hard thing to love an angry river that sits with its hands tied rather than going forward to simply be whatever it naturally becomes.  There is always collateral damage.  Rafters perish in holes.  Entire communities downriver drown.  It is hard to accept that unseen blocks deep down in people – unprocessed pain and self-reproach and unspoken truth and un-lived dreams – can present a very real danger to us.  Especially if we seek to be gentle streams carefully freeing ourselves of fallen logs.

Committed to carrying them off bit by bit so that they do not disrupt the water or block our way. 

Self-work is sort of like that.  You spend entire seasons removing dead old growth so that when the rain rolls in and the river rises you will not face an unseen graveyard of trees reaching for you from the depths.  You know the way ahead is clear when things get difficult because you have done the work to free the things in yourself that grasp at the water. In good times — like beautiful blue cloudless weather — I think people sometimes wonder if it is worth it to do the work necessary to fully face oneself.  But that is truly the best time to clean our riverbeds and haul off the old branches that have found their way into our lives. 

“Why bother?” one might say, “that branch is not hurting anyone by sitting right there.”

But when the sky cracks open and the canyons flood and the pressure increases those same seemingly innocent branches can become dangerous obstacles or even violent blocks to our ability to adapt and to move forward.  The branch that sits in the sun now may well be the same one that later threatens our safety when the swirling currents turn it into a projectile.  So it is in times of great stress or difficulty that we benefit most from having done the work on ourselves to cultivate gentleness and embrace surrender. 

When things are allowed to unfold unhindered we struggle less and a certain grace opens up for us. 

We may not have any idea where we are going or what the future holds for us, but we trust that by allowing what is to simply be we will arrive wherever it is we are going unscathed.  By choosing to embrace with equanimity whatever we happen to find when we get there we are set free.  No matter how many turns the path before us takes we are able to relax — to fully surrender — knowing that we are never lost.

 All roads open to a gentle heart.