Welcome to my Online Home!

I'm sitting on the campgrounds of the Highlander Center using a bit of my laptop battery. Beth Burch (from ASPYN, etc.) and I carpooled up together together and camped with fellow Durhamites (oops! Just moved to Hillsborough... still a Durhamite at heart) with Shannon, Danni and Mandy. Here's why the trip's rocked, and some realizations about political/personal isolation and groupthink I came to in conversation with some folks I've met here.

First, as far as the rockin' goes: Highlander's a real historic place. Highlander's been a training ground and gathering space (it's on ACRES and ACRES!) for decades, through the labor movement, civil rights, women's movement... since the 30s, this place has housed major social change work. Just standing on the ground rocks, knowing its history. And while a "headline" to the place is that it's where Rosa Parks came before she famously sat on the bus, and while it's had notaries such as MLK here (reported by NPR no less!) as well for training and organizing, it's had thousands of local organizers on every issue come through the doors as well. Folks not as well known, but powerful agents for change. There's about 1000 of us here today, folks already doing incredible things I'm sure, with more to come.

Second, it's cool to meet both elders in movement work and/or (almost always and) folks doing fascinating, essential, and diverse work currently. From immigration rights to marriage reform, from lgbt youth organizing to mountain-top removal, every topic that pops when I'm meeting folks seems so important and interconnected.

Thirdly, I'm meeting folks from Durham for the first time here in Tennessee. There's a lesson here: I need to either find the spaces in Durham that help bring folks together more closely or help organize Durham/Triangle/NC social justice gatherings every once in a while so we can all do more official check ins. Given that I feel pretty darn connected to diverse work and individuals, and that I still feel like I meet a handful of new, essential-to-the-movement and personally wonderful individuals nearly weekly, I think there may be a missing space in Durham. With Stone House becoming a reality, hopefully we can start some sort of regular gathering, check-in, and coalition building of folks doing diverse work in Durham, the Triangle and NC.

But I want to share a thought or two on isolation, as well. I've met lots of folks (fellow social justice types, friends, both..) that seem to battle with isolation and anger, especially in doing community work. In fact, often I think everyone I meet has some longing expressed one way or another. Particularly in folks that do community work, there's this real sense of frustration or isolation sometimes that seems to go hand-in-hand with caring deeply. In a conversation mostly with Alba of El Centro Hispano (a Durhamite I just met! 6 hours to meet someone 20 minutes away), we got to talking about identity and isolation. It went something like this.

After the LGBTQ meeting in the big tent Saturday, we found each other after asking a question of one of the facillitators and realized we were from the same city. Not only that, but we shared similar backgrounds, particularly in our experiences in queer circles. Both of us identified as bi/queer, but she is married to a man and I've dated almost exclusively bi or gender questioning women. We related to each other how while we're often too queer for straight folks...and internally struggle with sometimes not being "queer enough" to be accepted by the lgbtq community!

She gave another example: she's received challenge from white communities saying she's Latina... but Latina communties see her most often as "gringa." This experience of being "other," being "in the middle," being "unaccepted" by groups is a strong theme in lives of folks I know. Cal Allen, a friend of mine, has referred to it as "middle" space - something that I feel we all embody to some degree.

Whether finding the "accepting" church community, the sports bar to call home, the sense of belonging seems to be pivotal to our experience. To be known. This of course plays out in concrete, non-"psychological" ways in discrimination against groups because of a lack of belonging. But I want to focus on the experience of self-identification and the sense of belonging here... and the inherent opportunity for organizing and finding common ground.

Looking deeply during meditation, it seems that I often leave spaces I don't feel "belonging" in to seek out those that seem to "know me." The sense of looking for home is very real in my mind. Even at my dojo, I feel I belong there more than other dojos I've been too, and honestly have great thanks for that space created by Steve Sensei and other students. But I found that when I stayed there long enough, I still didn't feel like I "quite" belonged. It was better, certainly, but is there better still? What would be truly satisfying? How do you meet that sense of belonging?

Well, I guess the "trivial" answer is to accept yourself completely. But that's almost too quick and easy sounding to be worthwhile. Instead, it reminds me most of a sense of "not knowing" or "not seeking." All that seeking for home, when done in a certain way, I'm finding for myself is keeping me from finding it. I'm rambling, but let's see if I can't tie this together.

So, in conversation, I find that it's very fundamentally hard for me to listen deeply. To listen without waiting for my chance to speak. To listen without immediatly categorizing what I'm hearing into relatively neat boxes, all of which I've created through past experience. Essentially, projecting my practiced worldview onto every situation I find and every person I listen to. The compulsive wanting to "know" too quickly - know another person, know what they're saying, know how it relates to me - binds me to never see anything new, and really never to know anyone. If I'm "satisfied" quickly (whether by judging approval or disapproval), I'll not be able to listen deeply, and ultimately, deep down, not really be satisfied.

I think this is where an open, vulnerable heart and mind saves us. In conversation, perpetually holding open the space of "I might understand some, and I want to know more, but I don't think I get it" is a prerequisite for actually seeing the person in front of you and their words, ideas, feelings - and not just interacting with a quickly constructed plastic representation thereof that I "lay over" the actual, unknowable reality as a proxy for it.

Of course, from my undersatnding of one zen perspective, humans are machines built to do just that. The proxy making, and interacting with proxies, isn't going to stop anytime soon. But if I can practice being mindful enough to remind myself of the nature of that process and the ungrasped nature of the present, to bring my mind back to the openness of the situation, I can probably loosen the control of that particular delusion and might be able to really see something or someone new. And here's where the isolation, social justice and organizing potential kicks in.

What are some concrete examples of this? Well, in my mind, looking deeply moment to moment, I have found myself in this situation. Approaching or leaving my car, I may notice a person of color, probably with dark skin. Because mostly of my racial programming, the thought pops into my mind to lock my car. Recognizing the conditioned, racist thought and the process of laying meaning on this situation, I must say to myself, "hello fearful, racist mind! It is you again; it's been some time since we met so clearly. But the reality is not the plastic image you have layed over reality. That person may be a mentor for me, I do not know." But that must be balanced, appropriately, with intution. Having had too many experiences with sexual assault of friends and lovers, I would never say it is appropriate to ignore concerns completely. (Though I will say, for the record, the vast majority of folks who have sexually assualted lovers, friends and co-workers of mine have been acquaintences of theirs, not racial stereotypable folks). But, recognizing this internal representation of the external reality of locking my car, what do I do? Here's is the moment of paradox, of conflicting impulses, where I must act! In deciding what to do, as best I can, never really knowing whether I acted perfectly or not, in the midst of not-knowing I'd have to not-knowingly act as best I can. (of course, analysis helps! Having a training in how I have been conditioned, and a developed ability to dismantle racist concepts, certainly helps in those situations... which actually happen every day, since race, including my own whiteness, actually impacts every moment to moment interaction). Even if that man of color is my friend, again, particularly a man with very dark skin, thanks to my growing up in my parciularly privileged, white position receiving the messages I've received from media, family and institutions, I am unable to avoid the presence of that piece of my history and therefore the voice in my mind. While awake, it doesn't mean I am bound by that small, racist mind to act in accordance with its wishes - but it is there, nonetheless. While deluded, I am moreso unawarely racist. Looking deeply in myself, and doing a lot of personal and community work around these stereotypes, I believe these sorts of plastic, conditioned responses are in us all and may always be there. Much like other parts of my mind that Buddhism more regularly speaks of as causing suffering like anger, hatred, or greedy affection toward something or someone, prejudice and discrimination may be expected to remain in the mind forever as a small-minded voice unable to see the infinite and uncategorizable depth in each of us individually and in the human experience (and others!).

But this is true of myself, as well! I collect plastic ideas, stories of myself, and then often begin a process of finding a group that I expect or hope to "match" me exactly. But not only can I not really know the group exactly, I can't know myself exactly enough to have something to compare it too! I have prejudices and self-judgements, both "good seeming" (stories with a tone of self-esteem) and "bad seeming" (stories with a tone of self-hatred), that I often lay in place of my self. It is those things I seek to find in a group, somehow "matching" those stories and finding a sense of belonging. That would, in theory, cure my isolation.

But I feel that it is never enough, because in practice what I really want is knowing myself, knowing others, and ultimately knowing the collective "THIS" deeply and intimately. And while at first ideas of myself and others might serve as a proxy to that sense of "knowing intimately", it won't really be satisfactory in the end. Of course I do think it is important, in practice, to find folks of similar experiences - but mainly for the purposes of eventually becoming more intimate with ourselves. Sometimes folks of similar experiences have developed a language with which we may need to learn to speak to ourselves and our own experience. Sometimes folks are discriminated against collectively, and for survival come together to resist. Sometimes folks bind together in cultures to help each other with a shared language of self/other knowing. That's good!

But ultimately, it seems we're all often really not perfectly "fit in" in whatever group we're in. Part of the answer may be going to another group. But eventually, and perhaps immediately, it seems essential to bring the "not knowing" mind to ourselves and each other if we really want to reach that sense of intimacy it seems we crave.

And that process is the very approachable practices of mindfulness and meditation - just witnessing the plastic ideas that inevitably run like a stream through the mind and remaining upright with what IS. That may be with the perpetual reminder of the depth and reality of an actual, real person nearby - and not their prejudiced proxy. Or with the depth and reality of ME, unknown to me, as I sit on the cushion. With the unknowable THIS.

Of course, even if the moment of practice is never far away than the ground your standing on, for me for whatever reason it's the hardest, most frightening thing for me. Sitting on a cushion and facing the unknown, moment after moment, when my perpetually fearful mind wants to be "protected" by only interacting with the plastic, proxy world it creates, is my at my most vulnerable. And actually, it's not even "ME" sitting there, since I can't sit there upholding the last bastion of fearful, plastic stories that is my self. It must become, and perhaps has always been, just sitting - without plastic ideas of others, self, or the practice.

But consider the implications of just sitting with each other, too, in the community sense. Ultimately, we are all unknown from each other. We all seem to long for this sense of "belonging," and share that experience of never having our plastic ideas of selves and groups match up perfectly, deep down... which is often thrown in our face when some drama makes "safe" space into "unsafe space" (which therefore, GASP! was never really safe in the first place! "How could we have been misled!" our blaming mind externalizes, unaware of itself). We who have awakened to social justice might do well to remember that even the right (and left, for those that identify often with out of that spectrum entirely) feels this fundamental lack of longing, this isolation. Heterosexual, homophobic gender rules contrain us all, even straight folks - there's a beautiful poster that connects that for me - and those same rules are deeply responsible for an ever increasing tally of murdered trans folks, significant and damaging financial, family and emotional burdens through the absense of the right to marry (and often more importantly, for the thousands of insurance, end-of-life visiting rights, and financial privileges (anyone married filing jointly on taxes reading this?). Ultimately, deeply, plastic realities keep us all isolated from ourselves and injuring others.

So in thinking of belonging, yes, there is a reason to belong to a group. And no one should be able to belong to a group or self-identity that ignores other's rights - I don't have a right to belong to a group that kicks your ass, because "my rights end at your nose," as I believe Suzanne Farr said this weekend. And yes, there is a reason to seek out others of similar experiences. But a sense of "belonging" also may mean, most deeply, a longing to *be*, both without others expections, ideas, and boxes of where we fit dictating or unduely influencing our sense of self... and without our our own as well. Instead, group and individual ideas come and go, but we are always ready to go deeper, to change them, to become intimate with their forever unknown quality when it does not serve us individually or as a people.

But maybe a good first step would be for me to do some sitting before we drive back to Durham. I think I'll do that.

peace,mike

Labels: isolation, social justice, zen