Music Playlist for September 2010
Each week we broadcast six New Dimensions programs four times a day. Click here for this weeks listening schedule.
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With a Little Help From My Friends
by Justine Willis Toms
Have you ever had the experience of feeling that everyone around you is falling apart, and you are the only one who has it
together—only to find out that you’ve been stumbling in the dark?
The recent death of a close friend took me into a journey of some surprising revelations about myself, and about how easily
one can slip into a cloak of denial and self-righteousness. Like a fish unaware of the water she is swimming in, I was blind to
the waters of upset and grief that were engulfing me.
David Carter died a sudden death at the age of sixty-one doing what he loved to do, playing tennis. He was one of the conveners
of a circle that Michael and I have been part of for more than twenty-six years. Through our many years together the
group has shared the full gamut of rites of passage: death, divorce, birth—the full catastrophe, as Zorba would say.
David’s was an especially hard death for me, not because I was feeling so much grief, but because I wasn’t feeling it. I was
going through my day with what I believed was equanimity, moving blithely above the fray, so to speak. I took note of other
members of the group who, I thought, were wandering around in the confusion of high emotion. Proud of myself for the
way I was handling the shocking news, I felt that my Buddhist practice was finally paying off; I was truly making progress
on my spiritual path.
In truth, this was not the case. Living some distance from one another, I and several others in the group relied on the phone
and emails to work out details of how to come together for a memorial service for our dear friend. As the days progressed
my aloofness began to give way to aggravation with my friends. I’d feel misunderstood, or get offended just by their tone of
voice. It got so bad that I began to want to withdraw from the group entirely. I wondered, after all we’d been through in the
past, why so many of them were falling apart. I saw everyone else as the problem, the source of the difficulties—but not
myself.
The evening before the service I became so estranged from several of the others that at one point I could not even imagine
myself attending the event. I felt alienated and outside my circle. Still, although I had no idea how I could possibly get
through it, I soon realized there was no question that I would indeed have to find a way.
Upon arriving at the service, I found myself in the arms of my dear circle mates who were emanating nothing but love and
connection. How did it happen that I had been so blind to my own grief, and further that I would project it all onto my
friends, causing no small amount of mischief and hurt?
As Stephen Levine says, "Grief has a quality of healing in it that is very deep because we are forced to a depth of emotion that is usually
below the threshold of our awareness." My lesson in all this is a deeper understanding of the need to come together in mutual
grief. None of us can ride above the waters of sorrow and pain alone. And the closer we can be to one another when our
hearts are breaking, the better. Phones and emails are good, but they cannot replace the soothing and nurturing truth that we
are physical beings with need for physical touch. Coming together is the most powerful way to go through such "depth of
emotion."
Throughout the memorial I was surrounded by the loving presence of my friends.
It was deeply healing to cry and laugh as together we remembered our dear friend.
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