To bear witness is a potent act. To bear witness is an antidote to helplessness, it is a testimony to our interconnectedness, and it relieves us of complicity because we allow ourselves to actually see the suffering of the world everywhere. None of us are exempt from the trials of this life. We can’t say “we are all one” and then say “but only when it feels good”.

It is the least we can do for those experiencing tremendous suffering. It takes just a few moments a day, to actually see what is going on and allow our hearts to be opened. To not look away at times of such crisis is what bearing witness asks us to do: it asks us neither to fix nor to withdraw in fear. To bear witness reminds us that there but for grace, go any of us.

We may look at our screens many times a day and see the difficult times this planet is in, but do we see? Will we turn away or will we bear witness? Technology makes more of a demand on us to look, see, and acknowledge what’s so, but we do have still have the free will to turn toward or turn away.

Will we do the inner work required to meet the “barriers to love” within ourselves the poet Rumi speaks about, the barriers to seeing what’s so, with well resourced hearts? If the answer is yes, then our inner work becomes a form of activism: a form of activism that respects all beings.

The reason to do our inner work is to discover that we have so much more to offer the world than our pain, that our hearts are vast, and that we can bear witness to both the love and the suffering of this world.

Beginnings imply endings, whether we are conscious of it or not. What’s challenging for most of us are endings and part of that difficulty arises because we aren’t aware that the ending process has phases. When we are disconnected from the natural unfolding of an ending, we are caught in linear thinking: “This will never end!”, “I will never have another relationship, job, or good health again!” “It will always be like this!” When we find ourselves using words like “never” and “always” it’s good to recall that impermanence applies to everything. Nothing is forever but the experience we have of a situation can feel that way!

Here’s why I take the time to write about this at all: an ending process has stages and being able to locate ourselves in those stages will reduce the suffering in our everyday life. We might be able to begin to appreciate the universality of our experience, which is not meant to diminish our experience but to allow us to recognize our shared humanity.

Stages of Endings

Drawing upon the writings of William Bridges, PhD, whom I’ve quoted before from his book “Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes”/(Hachette Book Group) I offer you here a brief overview of the transition process of endings. This book is one of the most useful ones on my bookshelf and I recommend it to people with whom I work, often.

1. Disengagement–A phase where we are dislodged from what we’ve known, what is familiar: that could be our health, our partner, our home, our partner’s health, our work: this phase involves a loss, something we’ve chosen or something that is beyond our control.
2. Dismantling–This is a phase usually after disengagement where our identity that was built around the previous structures of home, health, job, etc. unravels piece by piece. Here the things, people, and/or social circles that defined us and defined our responses to the world, are shifting.
3. Disidentification–Here in this phase we experience a further deconstructing of what we knew as our “previous life”.
4. Disenchantment–As Dr. B names it, it’s a kind of floating between the worlds and life has a surreal quality. Here this phase our assumptions about reality are challenged.
5. Disorientation–Here in this phase, what’s gone is gone, we can’t go back to what we knew and we don’t yet have the energy to imagine a new future for ourselves.

It’s important to note that Dr. Bridges makes a distinction between making “changes” which are about reaching a goal, and “transitions” which are about letting go of worn-out ways of being that no longer serve.

Endings include the need to let go. The simple fact is if we don’t come to the place where we can let go, we are not receptive to whatever it is life asks of us next.

Each of us unfolds in our own way. There is however a pattern to transition processes and that pattern is imprinted within the human psyche. We are each part of the natural world and as such we are subject to the same rules of transition as everything else in the universe.

And after the letting go…

comes the “Neutral Zone”. The neutral zone can be (believe it or not!) the most challenging for we humans. Life as we knew it has ended, we’ve consciously let go as best we can and then….what? The ability to stay present and true to ourselves in this place of uncertainty is challenging but necessary. In the neutral zone we must learn to live close to ourselves and listen deeply for proper timing: to move too quickly can ironically slow down the experience of renewal we long for.

The larger cycles of pandemics, political, economic, and social upheaval that are impacting us now, are deconstructing systems and institutions that prevent us from becoming who we need to be. It’s important to name where we are, to seek the support we need, and to trust in the deeper workings of life. This is where our inner work intersects with becoming the change we wish to see in the world.

On January 4, 2021 I went into a 3 week solitary at 8000 feet on the ancestral lands of the Ute and Navajo people in Southern Colorado. My life was upended by a move I didn’t want and family dynamics that were chaotic. I trusted the piercing silence and time out of time would restore me.

While there, I was called to prune the deadwood of relationships that no longer serve. I owed nothing more to certain people and I’d already given too much of myself to keep them going. To be a good gardener means to be a good pruner in order to make room for whatever new life might come through.

The symbolic twigs and branches were tossed into the woodstove fire. I sat and watched them for a few moments and then closed the door of the stove. There was nothing sentimental about it, it was simply time to name situations for what they were and release them.

Pruning to me means the situations are energetically trimmed to the ground and I await better days when the warm sun and sweet rains return and I see what wants to happen. Being patient with that in between time is the challenge and the opportunity. It’s a place where our wisdom deepens and it’s not always pleasant but it was never meant to be. We often cannot see how we’ve grown until after we’ve come through such periods.

Collectively we’ve had to prune back relationships and expectations since late 2019. I’ve left some peoples’ lives and some have left mine. It’s been complex but the relief of living authentically far outweighs the losses.

We are being asked to live lean, to let our collective fields lay fallow and continue to let the great uncertainties work us, whether we like it or not. In case you haven’t noticed the dynamics of these times don’t care much about our opinions!

These times have “gifted” us in ways most of us would never ask. But if we dare put our ear to the ground, we’d hear a call to simplicity, deep listening and the courageous act of trusting what we can’t yet know.

May great heart, perseverance, and discernment be yours as we come to the end of a long year.

“Making a cup of green tea, I stopped the war.” ~ Paul Reps

I’ve loved this quote for decades and like all Zen koans, it ages well. How I’d say it now is: when I give full awareness to what is happening in this moment, I stop the war and my mind & body are nowhere else, there’s no conflict.

An American student of mine shared her dilemma: her partner is Chinese and he has a daughter. However, there’s great pressure for my student to bring her partner a son. She lives in China with him and is subject to the cultural norms.

Her partner and his mother are pushing her to go through repeated courses of In Vitro Fertilization. Her body is screaming to stop–her Chinese family pushes her to do more. She had the insight in our session to ask if this was normal? Of course it’s not normal, at least not by her own standards and her own standards matter; she’s slowly reclaiming that truth.

She admitted that for most of her life she has defined herself as the one who fills the void in other peoples’ lives so she can feel loved. However she navigates going forward, she now has the awareness of the unconscious beliefs causing her so much suffering. There’s a self violation that occurs in order to survive a complex situation. Most of us, if we’re honest have done this as well.

There’s no shame in our survival strategies. What’s important is that we learn how to come to the moment when we too could make a cup of green tea & stop the internal war.

Often when we are called to do our inner work, there’s a subtle but stubborn belief that we are “improving ourselves”: that we’re going to get rid of that old, tired, dingy self and come out with a brand new version. In fact a popular phrase is: “becoming the best version of oneself.” Honestly? I have no idea what that phrase actually means but it evokes exhaustion in me whenever I hear it.

Many of us have tried various self improvement techniques and continue to suffer because the starting assumption is not correct: if I’m unhappy, uncomfortable, dismayed, freaked out or despairing, there must be something wrong with me! The definition of a “normal” life is so narrow that anything on either side of that tightrope is terrifying. We’ve somehow gotten far away from accepting that these various states are part of being human.

To open toward our humanity rather than push away what we think are flaws, is gently learning to embrace what ails us and to discover that what ails us is the gateway to restoring our sanity. This is the practice of wabi sabi–seeing the perfection in the imperfection. We’re not seeking the “best version of ourselves”–we are opening to the possibility that the best version of ourselves is already here.