NOT THERE MEANS NOT BEING HERE
A friend of mine, who happens to be a psychotherapist, used to say about this or that person, not unkindly: “She’s not there”. By the statement “she’s not there” she meant that somehow the person in question was not fully present. Perhaps such a one is standing there before you but still absent somehow. As we might say: “She lives somewhere else but not in her body and not in her life.”
We say for example about someone that “Yes, she appeared at the event. She was there the other evening but only physically, not in any other way.” We might say: “Yes, I met her at the party or after church but it was a non-event. We might say and perhaps unkindly, “Yes, she was there in some bodily sense only. Her lights were on but, it didn’t seem that anybody was home. I recall that she chattered incessantly but nobody had any idea what she was talking about. Eventually something distracted her, thank God, and we were able to make our get-away.”
My psychotherapist friend would often go on to say that she thought that to not “be there” is a choice that many people make. They choose never to be in their bodies and in their lives and live somewhere else instead. Her explanation for their absence from their life was that many of these live within their emotions and distractions. That is, they do not live from a deeper ground for their being. Which means therefore that they never show up anywhere soulfully. We call these social butterflies, flitting about.
So these folk who are never present though they are present, may of course be ever so busy, running hither and yon but, as the years go by it is found that they have been fulfilling what T.S. Eliot wrote about in his play “The “Cocktail Party”. In the play, the psychiatrist O’Reilly talks about how many people live their lives without ever truly knowing each other and who then go on to create children who don’t know each other. An endless empty cycle. The central character in the play is Celia a seeker after wisdom and truth who has had quite enough of the ‘phoniness’ and is determined to find another way to live. The other way to live has to do with discovering a life within that is deeper than one’s social act.
My therapist friend did not speak with a sense of disdain about the people she observed. It was a fact for her that many people show up here, there and everywhere not as vital and real presences but as walking, talking, joking robotic, automatons. These have demonstrably not found the “key”, if there is one, that enables one to be “fully there” whenever they’re somewhere.
There is much talk today in spirituality circles about the importance of being present. I think that what’s required to be present is that I have to first be present to the deeper life or soul within myself, an experience that does not come easily. Great and sustained attention is required to cultivate that deeper dimension.
As I write, I’m flashing back to when, many years ago, I sat in a horribly boring class at the University of Victoria. Hundreds of students sat there with me, dulled and bored. Sardines in a can we were, enduring the unendurable, in a class called “Social Psychology”. But, happy day, one little guy, way off in the upper left corner kept looking back and around the room, doing, as it seemed to me, the kind of scan of everything, that I always do. Our eyes met. We instantly knew what each of us was thinking which was something like: “All of this is a colossal waste of time and, surely there’s something more to life and I’m going to find it!” A friendship began, one of my best ever, with Ian Rabin, the Jewish rock musician from New York. Ian had soul. He was vividly present there in that class and then in my life as a friend. Ian! If you’re out there somewhere! I remember you with great affection!
The story is told that in ancient India there once lived a nun who was required to become a Queen. She agreed to play this role but with one condition. This was that she would be allowed to have a room for herself to which only she had a key. No intruders allowed and especially not the King!
But as time went on, the King did not like this arrangement. He wanted control of everything, including her secret. It is said that he was also “jealous of her radiance.” He could not account for the vitality of her presence. She was in touch with a reality he knew nothing about.
So one day the king followed his queen to her secret room to find out what was going on there. Upon seeing him, the Queen did not react but simply went about her business. In an exceedingly plain room, all bare and whitewashed, the Queen took off her rich attire and jewels and put on a sackcloth robe. Then she meditated for a very long time, seated on the floor. Finally she turned to face the King and said: “Here I am “myself” a woman who loved God alone before she became Queen and who still loves only God.” (p. 95 “To Live Within”, Lizelle Reymond)
I love this story about knowing a deeper life than the surface role that is played. That she was the Queen meant nothing to her! She didn’t care about the status and recognition it brought. It was simply a role she played. Her deeper life was what she found in deep meditation. It was that life, cultivated alone in her room on the floor while wearing sackcloth that caused her to be a radiant presence. Her powerful presence, her ability to be “really there” was the result of deep spiritual practice.
Another aspect of the Queen’s meditation practice was the element of renunciation. It’s easy to think that to renounce is to give up some external thing. Well, that may well be. But there is a deeper renunciation that Lizelle Reymond writes about it. It is the giving up of all emotion whatsoever. (p. 172 Ibid) As I said, in quoting the psychotherapist, emotions and distractions disable our ability to “be there”. Says Lizelle Reymond about destroying emotion: “If you want to climb to the top of a mountain, do not lose yourself in sentimental ramblings about its beauty. It is better to look for a clearly marked path that will take you to the top.” (p. 170 Ibid.) That is, do not get all “happy clappy” about this or that. “Get a life!” as we say. Which in this context means the discovery of a life that exists beyond our emotional one.
We’ve got to destroy our emotions, as Metropolitan Anthony described to the philosopher, Jacob Needleman. Professor Needleman had noticed that Fr Bloom’s Russian Orthodox choir sang without emotion. Which did not mean that there wasn’t deep feeling there. Anthony Bloom explained to Needleman that it had taken a long time for his choir to shift from emotion to feeling. There’s an enormous difference between these two things.
Emotion has to be destroyed so that inner feeling can emerge. To find “ananda”, the bliss of our being, is not about emotion but concerns something much deeper than that. The bliss of our life is a deeper sensation than emotion. It is a steadying force within.
It was this deeper dimension of being that Lizelle began to discover when she first met Sri Anirvan. As I wrote and said last week, “the taste of truth” destroyed the emotional impulses that she had known before, including impulses of devotion, of self-abandonment, of submission, of sudden understanding or gratitude. This time, as she wrote: “I felt alone and laid bare in my inner life. His look held me to the awareness of the moment without any possibility of escape.” (p. xi Ibid)
Sri Anirvan was helping Lizelle to discover an inner stability and balance that exists beyond emotion and beyond the distractions of the mind.
I was up very late last evening and so was surprised when I woke up early. As is my practice, I sat for meditation. The shift I experienced was so deep. When I went back to bed I fell into a very deep sleep. The result was a sense of grounding in ultimate reality. I had to face a crisis the next day. I was able not to flinch in the slightest during the tension. I am sure that that was because of the early morning meditation.
I repeat over and again: “Lord Have Mercy, Lord Have Mercy”, or, “Om Namah Christaya, Om Namah Christaya.” I cannot live without meditation. How’s your practice going? I think that the ability to really “be there”, to be fully present to others, is related to the alone time spent in deep meditation. Otherwise, we can tend to be social fluffs, social lightweights. So, I repeat that not “being there” means that I’m not here, that is, not living in a vital connection with the ground of my being. The remedy is to acquire a still mind and the steadying sensation of an abiding deeper reality.
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