clinging and self-portraits from memories blocked

self-portrait from memories blocked

self-portrait from memories blocked

O’Donohue: “I’ve always thought that tradition is to the community what memory is to the individual. And if you lose your memory, & you wake up in the morning, you don’t know where you are, who you are, what ground you’re standing on. And if you lose your tradition, it’s the same thing.”

Tippett: “And tradition, like memory, has dark passages in it.”

O’Donohue: “Oh, it has huge dark passages, & I mean, I would say that within the Christian tradition there are dark zones of complete horror.”
- “The Inner Landscape of Beauty,” On Being

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I don’t remember the first 8 years of my life. At 18, I left Mormonism, the religion I was born & raised into–the tradition of the last 8 generations of my ancestors. So, when I heard these words by O’Donohue I thought of how I work w this experience of personally & communally losing the “ground (I’m) standing on.”

After leaving Mormonism I began learning abt Buddhism from Pema Chödrön. Chödrön writes abt groundlessness, or the truth that “there is nothing to hold on to.” This truth stands in direct contradiction to Mormonism with its “rod of iron” on which one clings to stay on the “strai(gh)t and narrow path” of the One True Church.

Bc I lost my formative memories & baseline reality (Mormonism) I often feel groundless, but not in the accepting & fluid way that Chödrön writes abt. More in the confused, anxious, & displaced way O’Donohue speaks of. This is exacerbated by the fact that I am a Euro-settler on stolen lands. This is not the land my People evolved w & in that way we are a displaced people. I don’t remember my childhood because of domestic violences. I grew up on Nuwu lands bc of settler colonial violences.

By practicing leaning into emptiness/darkness/groundlessness with curiosity & “compassionate inquiry” I can develop the ability to find liberation rather than anxiety in groundlessness. By letting go of my addiction to comfort & personal purity, to righteousness & innocence, to solid ground & stability I can connect w a deeper tradition, an older memory–flow/balance/change.

Everything is changing. Nothing is permanent. And that hurts.
Everything is changing. Nothing is permanent. And that is a relief.