On the Truth Mandala and Anger*

Imagine thirty-some participants sitting close together in a circle. The center space that we create is the Truth Mandala. It has four quadrants: sorrow, fear, emptiness, and anger. Each quadrant has an object in it. Sorrow—a pile of dead leaves. Fear—a rock.  Emptiness—a bowl.  Anger—a stick. We as participants are invited to step in and pick up any of the four objects, or more than one at the same time. We express what we feel relevant, speaking from our life experience.

I was scared to step into the center of our space for anger. Sorrow was the safe choice, really. I knew what it meant to be sad, to be broken by grief. Expressing fear wasn’t too far from that level of risk, my analytic mind said. But picking up the leaves or the stone or the bowl was nothing compared to what it would be to pick up that stick for anger. My conditioning to suppress this feeling has been so strong that stepping inside and picking up that stick seemed a revolt, an act of rebellion in itself. Dare I admit I am angry? Dare I touch it and feel its shape, its bark? Shouldn’t I do some internal work instead? Shouldn’t I be praying for some transformation of my anger into kindness? Some magical opening to compassion?

The longer I sat there on the perimeter, the longer this feeling was building inside—the urge to share and the wondering how long I could sit there and not give in to it. And what was I going to say? If I dare ask for the group’s attention, I better be succinct and well-spoken, right? (I don’t even know where this story came from.) And then as I was trying to rehearse what I would say, it was as if the Mandala spoke to me and said, Nevermind the words; I’ll tell you the words. And suddenly everyone else had gone and this was the moment. So with my uncertainty and fear, I crawled into the center of our circle and picked up that stick.

I started with a calm voice: I am angry I’ve been disconnected from my anger and taught to view it as sinful. The group laughed in recognition. I continued,

I am angry I was taught to fear the earth and bugs and creatures and instead that I must learn to control it. I am angry I was taught to hate my body. I am angry I was taught that to be a woman means to submit to men. I am angry that I was taught it is better to obey than to take care of myself. That in fact, I should override the voice that guides me to do so because it isn’t worth as much as the male voice.

Sitting there, I knew there was more. This was only the beginning of reclaiming this part of me that I shoved in the closet long before even knowing it. Hello, dear anger, it is nice to make your acquaintance. Maybe you could stay awhile? I think I’d like to explore your contours, your beauty, your strength, your passion for justice.

When I stepped into that mandala, when I picked up that stick, when I started speaking, I started crying. My eyes were closed as I spoke—I was listening to what the mandala was telling me. It didn’t matter if I was articulate or succinct, because it was the truth. And it wasn’t just my truth, it was and is the truth of other women and men who came before me, who speak other languages, who are younger and older. In that moment, I was a messenger. And the most beautiful thing happened—when I should of felt alone or embarrassed or ashamed while I was huddled, crying, voices around me began to say, I am with you, and I hear you. And I was held there. My pain and anger were held there with me. The intensity was held. As I had witnessed for others, it was the same for me. No comforting, no shushing, no strokes on the back. Just I hear you. I am with you.

And I didn’t break. The pain didn’t consume me. I was still there.

Some of my favorite lines from Pablo Neruda’s poem, Keeping Quiet come to mind:

If we could do nothing for once, perhaps a great silence would interrupt this sadness, this never understanding ourselves and threatening ourselves with death, perhaps the earth is teaching us when everything seems to be dead and then everything is alive.

If we are going to transition to a healthy society, we need to reconnect and feel the depth of our pain for how things are now. This pain is necessary because it is an indicator that we are part of a failing system, a dying organism. The fact that we feel the pain shows that we are connected to something larger than our individual bodies. If we are connected, our actions will impact those to whom we are connected, in positive or negative ways. If we are connected, then we have the ability to make change, big changes in how things operate.

We actually know the solution to global warming, animal extinction, and rising crime, unemployment and school drop-out rates. These problems weren’t invented by aliens. They are symptoms of our current systems, which we invented and perpetuate. They are indicators that what we are doing isn’t working. We can’t pretend it is “business as usual” any longer. And underneath it, I believe we all know that driving faster and consuming more and electing our favorite candidate won’t solve it. What will solve it begins by letting ourselves feel our pain for our own lives, for our families, for our communities, for our country, and for our world. And while this work can begin alone, we need to co-create spaces to understand that we aren’t the only one to feel this pain.

If you feel despair at the state of the environment, at the spread of fracking sites and nuclear waste spills and animals bathed in crude oil, if you feel despair looking at the run down shops in your neighborhood and the young men dealing drugs on the corner and the number of homicides in your city, please know you aren’t alone. Know the fact that you feel this despair doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.

And if you have ceased to feel it because it seems too intense, too huge, too hazardous to get in involved with, all that despair, I want you to hear that that is ok, too. There’s not something wrong with you, either. You’ve been surviving the way you know how. Know that you aren’t alone in not wanting to go there. And know that feeling your pain for the world isn’t about being alone or letting it take you over or paralyze you. It is about reconnecting to everything of which you’ve always been a part.

From our pain comes our strength and our ability to take action.

Come, be in a space with us to hold this pain together. Whether you touch it every day or have never touched it. Together we have enough strength to hold it with gentleness. And together when we hold it, we can harvest the courage and drive and power it yields to make the changes we want in our community.

*This blog is one of two blogs on my experience for ten days in North Carolina at a Work That Reconnects Intensive with Joanna Macy. The time involved discussion and experiential exercises, some of which I describe. Check out more about her and the work here.

On the Mirroring Exercise

*This blog is one of two blogs on my experience for ten days in North Carolina at a Work That Reconnects Intensive with Joanna Macy. The time involved discussion and experiential exercises, some of which I describe. Check out more about her and The Work here.

On the Mirroring Exercise*

Sarah, my partner, wrapped her slender arm around my waist, took my hand in hers, and guided me out from the wooden pavilion. My instructions were to shut my eyes, as I wouldn’t need them anymore.

In silence, Sarah guided me through a breeze, sunshine on my closed eyes, across crunchy terrain and a soft squish, squish, squish. My eyes were closed; my feet came awake. From my toes and heels through my legs and core—when was the last time I knew as much from my feet? I had thought without my eyes my feet would be lost. To my surprise, they knew how to see. They knew how to listen. As we continued onward, they delighted in their newfound responsibility, relaying information to the rest of my body about the ground that supported me.

After a while of quiet walking, we paused. Without a word, Sarah tapped the back of my leg, and I felt myself crouching down. Gently she guided my hand to something on the ground—smooth, cool ridges, I traced my fingers over its contour, over the bumps and unexpected plunge into soft spongy-ness. I stayed here for a while, my fingers delighting in this discovery. And then we rose and continued on. After a while, we stopped again, and this time Sarah tilted my chin up, and instructed, “Open your eyes and look in the mirror.” And there my reflection was—branches and leaves illuminated by the twinkling sunshine that filtered through them. The varying shades of green splayed out in front of my eyes: my strength, my resilience to reach ever higher for nourishment. I gazed at my own beauty, taking in the details.

This wasn’t what I was taught growing up. In fact, I was taught quite the opposite: from growing up in a paved suburbia to spending time among tall buildings to buying food at the grocery store to watching movies with monstrous spiders and snakes. I ingested all this, unknowingly growing into a woman who believed that the earth was ours to control, conquer, ours to use and manipulate for human profit and comfort. There were creatures out there that would harm me; it was a rough place, and the way to survive was to dominate it. In her book World as Lover, World as Self, Joanna Macy calls this perspective viewing the world as a trap. The goal is to “disentangle ourselves and escape from this messy world,” with focus on the afterlife awaiting us (p. 21).

So this was new: this closed-eye wandering and trusting and feeling with my hands without first checking to see if it was “safe.” As Sarah guided me, it was as if I was re-born. Everything was beautiful and alive and breathing. The smells were enchanting, the textures curious and complex.

And what if I opened my eyes and looked in the mirror and truly believed that the Pecan tree before me was me? How might it change me?

I came back from ten days in North Carolina ready to give up my view of the world as a trap and adopt another perspective which Joanna mentions in her book: world as self. This isn’t about giving up my individuality, she points out, because living systems need diverse parts to thrive. It isn’t about forgetting my interests or passions to mindlessly join a campaign. It is about thinking about what energy I use, what I consume, how much waste I produce. It is about confronting corporations and the government about how much destruction we are wrecking on our planet, on our own being, our own body. And it is about taking part in the creation of a community and world that is life-giving as an alternative to our current way which is life-destroying. New structures and systems must arise so that we have alternatives to all that is failing us.

Will you take part with me? If I were with you now, I would guide you silently to that majestic Pecan tree I grew to love over my time at The Stone House retreat center. I would place your hand on its rough skin, tilt your chin up towards the sky, and whisper in your ear. Since I’m not with you, I invite you to stop whatever you’re doing right now, leave your computer, and go outside, just for a moment. Find a tree or flower and really look at it, just for a moment. If you can’t find one, reach down and touch the ground with your hand for a moment. Open your eyes.

 I dare you to let what you see change you.