The Terror of Becoming

 Rejoice, surrender, I vow to live a life of wonder
I vow to reduce the unnecessary suffering in the world
I vow to become rich soil for others to bloom
I vow to live in embodied awareness

I just spent a month at the Organization for Awakened Kindness (OAK) - the bay area branch of the Monastic Academy for the Preservation for Life on Earth (MAPLE). Within one week, I was head of operations. The CEDAR network is like this - pushing you into the bleeding edge of your abilities - trusting that you will grow and fail and grow and fail and grow until you become what you are not for the people you’ve never met; for a world that desperately needs awakened leaders. I love it and I hate it. It leads to spiritual stretch marks. It leaves one scarred. It sometimes simply isn’t calibrated right. It is a model meant to create teachers within years rather than decades. Will it work? Will we mature adequately? Will we grow in a safe and healthy way? Trees live longer if they're able to grow slowly. Is this true for humans? One of the great frustrations of my training has been a maddening inner cry of “where are the adults?! who’s in charge here!?” Are we being nurtured enough? Protected enough? Are we being taught how to strive with love? Are we being taught to be kind to ourselves, to cherish and tend to our human bodies? 

We are taught that one meditates with the body, breathes with the body, moves and speaks from the body but is the message getting through that we must cherish our bodies as a part of nature? (We must cherish our bodies! Please hear this! We must cherish each other!) As a part of the beautiful world our hearts know is possible - a world that we desperately wish to protect. I had to leave MAPLE a year and a half ago in order to learn how to love myself. For me, leaving MAPLE was a first step in self-love. It was a first attempt at saying “NO” to things that weren’t working. I thought of myself as a failure at the time, as being too “weak” to stay and do the training - choosing to pursue romantic love and work-life balance instead. In retrospect, I believe this is exactly what CEDAR, MAPLE, Willow, OAK are meant to do - invite us into true ownership of our lives. CEDAR is here to help us step up and become the ones we’ve been waiting for - the ones who will protect the earth and each other even at the expense of our own comfort.

But what of our health? Must we sacrifice that too? Is that really what is best for the earth?  I’m asking myself: Is it possible to prioritize personal well-being and communal well-being in the monastic model? Is this a “me” problem? The question plaguing me for so long has been “how can I justify self-care when the world is burning?” A truer question now seems to be “how can I NOT?” This commitment to great love, to protecting the earth, to protecting all living beings- it starts right here, it starts right now. It starts with this body, mind, and heart and the knowing that a commitment to life is a liberation for all of us. It starts for me with a gentle coo of “it’s ok body, I love you, you’re safe, you’re doing great.” I keep repeating that, no matter what comes up, because I don’t totally believe it yet. I keep repeating it, no matter what comes up, ESPECIALLY in a monastic model where a focus on striving can make it hard to rest and easy to forget that we ourselves are as deeply precious as the beautiful world we fight to protect. 

The last month of training has been the best and worst of my life. I'm as exhausted and spent as I’ve ever been but annoyingly, because I don’t want to admit it, I'm also the happiest and most satisfied. When I first arrived at OAK, I immediately wanted to run away. I wanted to escape so many times in those first few days as the trauma of monastic training came back to me in waves and the fear of losing myself, of losing autonomy over my life flooded my system. Can I trust this container? Can I trust myself? Can I trust anything? I almost ran. Just like I almost ran away from supporting a vision quest last month. But both times I didn’t. Both times I stayed. Both times I faced my demons - at least enough to stay in the room with them. Both times I’ve come out stronger, more confident, more grateful; full of laughter, full of some mysterious sense of purpose and energy. I can’t deny this and I don’t know how to trust it yet. I want to understand the mechanisms that lead to awakening and from what I can tell so far, you don’t get a true peak behind the current until you’re so far in that the only way out is through. This terrifies me.