Love is Not a Victory March

by Shuzo Ikeda

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Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Driving home Easter Sunday from visiting a friend in Napa, Rufus Wainright's cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah" came on the radio (Yes, I know this was from 'Shrek', which just shows you how out of touch I am with pop culture.) I burst into tears. For some reason the song brought home the horrible, beautiful poignancy of love. I and a man whom I once loved a great deal had recently exchanged some heated e-mails in which I had communicated about being hurt due to a lie, and he had responded that he had lied because I was so unpleasant to talk to that he had wanted to get off of the phone. Rather than be devastated, as I had been with similar e-mails in the recent past, I felt my heart shut down on the last vestiges of our love. I let go a tiny bit more.

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

When 'Hallelujah' came on, it seemed to communicate the deep joy and pain of love, a well as the profound ambivalence. My sadness wasn't for myself, but for all of us who have loved one another and then found ourselves on the other side of love - trading angry, hurt words laced with bitterness and disappointment. I wondered how this man and I had gotten here. We had once loved each other so much that we told each other we'd do anything for each other. And now we were spatting like an angry old married couple, and we weren't even in a relationship anymore. It made me - makes me - so sad. The song seemed to imply that this is also love: this disappointment and pain. That the joy can't exist without this other side. And I was so sad that this has to be true. I cried for all the souls who have fallen or will fall in and out of love.  

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Later, at my sister's house, I found myself telling my six-year-old niece not to ever fall in love. It came out of my mouth before I could stop it. I never want to teach her to be afraid of love, just as I don't want to be afraid of it. But sometimes the deep pain is too much and I wonder if all people feel this, or if I feel it more deeply than they do. If it hurts so much why on earth would anyone allow themselves to fall in love? I just have to rely on my memory of the wonderful, awesomeness of love, the other side from where I am now. And to have faith that it will happen again, and that next time, I can be better at opening myself to all of love, letting love come sit on my shoulder without needing to cage it. 

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Butterfly on a Pin 

Predictably, a few weeks after I wrote my earlier post about being happy, I sank into a deep 2-week depression that was worse than normal. It broke, the way a fever does, a little over as week ago, and since then I've found myself at a loss for words. Part of me feels like I'm a fraud for writing this blog about how we need to accept what is and open to our emotions, even when they hurt, about happiness and dancing, when, in fact, I often feel no hope that I'll ever be able to reach any emotional stability in my life. At times like these, I can't imagine that anything I say would help anybody.

I was just re-reading an interview in the spring 2011 edition of Tricycle magazine with John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher, existential therapist,  and author of several books, including Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships . He discussed the concept of "spiritual bypassing" - the phenomenon of spiritual practitioners using their spiritual practice, not as a way of becoming friends with themselves and of opening to all experience, but as a way to wall themselves off from unpleasant emotion, repress painful truths about themselves, or to beat themselves or others up about not being "good" (nonattached, generous, spiritual) enough.

At one point he says "We are not just humans learning to be buddhas, but also buddhas waking up in human form, learning to become fully human." and goes on to say " It can be quite threatening when those of us on a spiritual path have to face our woundedness, or emotional dependency, or our primal need for love." I take this to mean that, by avoiding our emotional experiences, we actually hold ourselves back from growing as spiritual beings. By avoiding our real human needs, we're ignoring the truth about what it is to be human. By trying to be more than human, we deny our right to be merely human.

My depression is invariably rooted in attachment issues. When I feel depressed, I feel a crushing loneliness, a desperate fear that I will never be loved the way I need, a primal need to connect with and bond with others, combined with a deep-seated disappointment in the fragility and fleetingness of the bonds that I do make, as well as a need to back away from those that I feel are too needy or desperate themselves, where I fear I will get lost in the swamp of their deep need. When I sink into depression, it's usually because I feel rejected or unseen, a sense of not being okay, of not being enough. At these times, the child in me cries out: "Why don't you love me??"

I get depressed when someone I care for treats me dismissively, lies to me, or withdraws from me, because to me, it feels like they're taking their love away, and I can't figure out why. Almost invariably, when this happens, even if it's only my perception of what's happened, I fall into darkness and have to let it run its course, like a bad cold or flu, before I can recover.

Welwood talks a lot in the interview about how striving for  nonattachment can be a form of attachment, by denying and repressing our very real human need for connection, and how humans must heed the needs of our souls but also of our psyches. That in order to grow past attachment needs, we need to have healthy attachments first. In this, he compares many spiritual practitioners' attempts to force themselves to be nonattached to "an unripe fruit trying to detach itself from a branch instead of receiving what it needs - which will allow it to naturally ripen and let go."

I love this metaphor of an unripe fruit. For years I've beaten myself up about needing my partners to love me in ways that they clearly could not. Words my exes have thrown at me about how needy, desperate, flawed, voracious, and unsatisfied I am still buzz in my ears. I've always believed them, even, at times, wondered if I'm simply too crazy to ever have a healthy relationship, because something deep inside is so broken that I will never be able to form a deep and true partnership. I still sometimes wonder this, but I can also see that my need for healthy and loving attachment to a partner doesn't mean I'm flawed or unenlightened. What it means, simply, is that I have not received what I need to grow past attachment, to let go of the branch.

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It comforts me to know that my need and desire for healthy love- and my striving, however misguided,  to make unhealthy attachments healthy - doesn't mean that I've failed as a spiritual person or that I'm all those things that ex-lovers have called me. Yes, I need to learn to meet some of my own needs in a better, more consistently loving way, but I also don't have to feel embarrassed because I believe that some of these needs will best be met in a relationship with another.  It also comforts me to remember that all of experience is our teacher, which means staying present in the moments of pain, confusion, judgment, anger, avoidance, sadness, or loneliness.

That last part is always the kicker, right? For me, this means even being present in the moments of disappointment at myself for not being present, for not being okay with what's happening. I'm angry and hurt today because I was lied to. Is it okay to be angry and hurt? Is it okay to also doubt myself, to wonder if I'm overreacting, and to believe a friend's insistence that I'M in the wrong? Yes. This is what we don't want to face, this messiness and doubt. This is what some of us try to escape with spiritual practices. But I can't escape it. I'm like a butterfly on a pin, stuck here, and doing my best to accept it all - the stuckness and the fact that the pin doesn't actually exist.

I Just Gotta Dance! 

Or: How I Faced one of My Strongest Fears

Actually, that top title is a lie. I've been terrified or intimidated by dancing all my life. The first time I ever danced on a dance floor in public was at a company Christmas party I attended with a boyfriend when I was nearly 30 years old. I'd always been terrified that people would make fun my my dancing, so I would only dance alone, in private, and even then I'd be self-conscious. At the party, I had had some champagne, and lost my inhibitions. I really enjoyed dancing, and now I'll dance at parties no problem. But I've always wanted to formally learn to dance, to take classes, and I've been intimidated, afraid to be that physical in front of other people. Afraid to be judged, or to be clumsy, or to not be able to do it right.

Several weeks ago, at a party of people I know from the Burning Man camp I'd camped at for the last two years,  one of the women asked me if I'd perform a dance with the other ladies of the camp, at an upcoming Burlesque-themed fundraiser party. I said yes, of course. I felt so honored. These women were people I'd been admiring for years. They were sexy, hot, confident, talented, kind, and, smart. I'd never felt like I was part of their inner circle, even after knowing them for three years. When I was asked to participate in the dance, I felt like I had been accepted. Yes!

But wait, I was terrified of performing in public! How on earth would I do this? What was I thinking?

I couldn't attend the first practice, so one of the participants sent around a video of the routine. I sat down at my computer, nervously clicked 'play' on Quicktime, and watched the dance. As soon as it ended, I got up and walked out of the room, telling myself "Oh, HELL no, I could never do that! I'm no dancer! They're all dancers!" I knew right then and there it wasn't going to happen, and I felt terrible, let down and disappointed. But clearly, I wouldn't be able to do it. So, for the next day, I thought of excuses I could use about why I couldn't participate. I couldn't make any of the practices, I was sick, I hurt my leg. I even considered just saying that I was no dancer and I didn't think I could do it, and I didn't want to hold everyone else back. But I SO wanted to be part of the crew! It had been something I'd been longing for for years.

I suppose it's worth mentioning here that several days before she asked me to participate in the dance, I had actually had a daytime vision of myself dancing at the event, on a stage, in my corset. 

Then, I went out with a friend and had a couple of glasses of wine. On the drive back, for some reason, maybe the wine, I realized: I probably could do it. For some reason, the fear went away. Even if it was the wine, when I woke up the next day,I still felt that way. Yes, I could do it. And that feeling never left me. Another practice was scheduled for two days later. I told the organizer that I'd go through it at home the evening before practice, and if I got it down, I'd go to practice.

That evening, it was just me and my cats. I got on my exercise pants, got a chair, positioned the computer so I could see the screen from the chair, and played the video. I poured myself a glass of wine. I had to play the video a few times - and have a few sips of wine -  before I got over being too self-conscious to even practice alone in my house. Finally, I took a deep breath and I started to dance, one piece of the routine at a time.

Before I knew it, I was doing the whole routine from memory, keeping up with the video. I did it over and over again. It was fun! I was enjoying myself! When I stopped, I felt high. Not from the wine, but from triumph. I knew that even if I never made it to the actual performance,  I had broken through a wall in myself. My skin was shiny with sweat. I felt loose and warm. I felt great.

I went to practice with two women who were experienced performers. I was far from perfect, and I still don't understand the whole counting thing, but I could follow it, basically. I got a few pointers from them, and then practiced several evenings at my house. Finally, a few days before the event, we had one last practice with almost everyone present. Again, I could follow with a few stumbles here and there. The routine had been expanded, and I now had another assignment (hat girl!) and there were more bits to learn. This was the only time I had a jolt of fear, but I sat with it and didn't let it derail me. The night before the event, I practiced the whole thing through 5 or 6 (or 7 or 8) times and got it down each time. I understood the routine.

Through it all, I kept waiting for my old terror to come back. But it never did. Even the night of the event, even as we went out on to the dance floor in the middle of a crowd of hooting and hollering people, I didn't feel it. That beast had been vanquished, at least for that night.

Then, we danced, and then it was over. The whole routine was only about 3 minutes long. It was even a bit anticlimactic; I was so intent on doing the dance (and on not falling down on my heels on the slippy floor) that it was over before I knew it. I didn't even notice peoples' reactions. Later, watching the video taken that night, which was too dark to make anyone out, I heard the crowd clapping and hollering. The cameraman said "This is great!":-)

When I told people what I had done, only one person really understood how big a leap it was for me to be dancing with that crowd: the man with whom I had camped on the playa, the one who had introduced me to these people in the first place, and who had seen me in the paroxysms of anxiety that had overtaken me at their dance parties, had heard me wonder aloud if these people would ever want to get to know me. He was so supportive, and so proud, and I want to thank him for that support. For everyone else, it was "cute." For me, it was like a new person emerged out of the one who had been terrified to show that side of myself for so long. I feel renewed now. I want to take dance classes, maybe even poi spinning! Who knows where I'll go with it, but it feels great to have gotten over yet another roadblock to total self-expression.

Thanks S, for your support, and thanks E, for inviting me to participate, and for your wonderful choreography. And thanks to the Decadent ladies for being such wonderful dance companions, and to the rest of the camp for being such an appreciative audience.

What Happiness Looks Like

Or: Is Happiness a 60's Muscle Car?

Recently, something really strange occurred to me. It could be, could it be....that I'm happy?

Not happy like brimming with blissfulness all the time, not happy because I finally got something I've wanted for a long time, not happy because I'm rich or freakishly beautiful, or wildly successful (which I'm not). My life is pretty much the same as it was before. I still have days where I'm cranky, sad, or tired. I still get irritated when my cats careen around the house at 4 am. I'm still single and don't want to be. I still say things I shouldn't, still don't exercise like I should, still feel fear and anger and still have some bad days. Still wake up lonely most mornings.

But there's a lack of compulsiveness or obsession that's different than it used to be. It's not mania, and it's not lethargy. Things don't stick as much. It's like my mind is teflon and my emotions just sort of roll off. I still experience emotions: still feel a jolt of joy at receiving a compliment, still feel tongue-tied in a room of people I perceive as more creative/attractive/lucky than me, still feel upset when someone is upset at me.  I'm not completely detached or disassociated. I get upset at pictures from Japan. I still swear at the keyboard sometimes when I type so fast that I make an error. I even still have days when I ruminate. But I see it all clearly, even when I'm in the midst of it. The emotions don't go down to that wounded place inside. They don't pour salt there anymore.

Walking back to the office after lunch, I was musing about first dates, and how they no longer make me nervous. They don't make me nervous because I no longer have any inclination to pretend I'm different than I am. I am me. As much as I would love everyone to like me, I know to some people, I just won't be their cup of tea. And vice versa.

Maybe happiness is really just about not putting pressure on ourselves to be different or to be having a different experience. I know I probably jinxed myself by writing about this and that maybe tomorrow I'll wake up in the clutch of another depression, but right now, the thought doesn't bother me. Because then is not now.

Maybe happiness is just a willingness to let the stuff all go, the gladness and the sadness. To experience it fully, then watch it go on down the road, like the kind of beautifully kept 60's-era muscle cars that always catch my eye. "Wow, nice car!" Then it's back to the present.

How Can I Help?

As I was looking at photos of the tragedy in Japan, my mind just reeled. I kept thinking "How in the world will anyone be able to make a difference there, with such overwhelming destruction?" Of course I donated money, but it feels like such a tiny drop in the bucket, doesn't it? It doesn't seem enough. Before this happened, I was thinking about writing a blog post about how difficult it can be to want to help our loved ones but to not  be able to fix their problems. What's happened in Japan just mirrors - on a grander scale - the frustrating reality that we can only do so much, no matter how much we want to jump in and save the day.


Last week, in one day, no fewer than four people I know and care deeply for let me know they were struggling. I was beside myself the whole morning wanting to save them. I came up with half-baked plans to raise money for a friend who's sick with no health insurance, stopped myself from sending unsolicited advice to a friend who's trying to decide the best way to support his teenage daughter, and talked on the phone with two people who were struggling with depression, anxiety, and interpersonal conflict. I almost felt frantic that morning, with wanting to help, and not knowing how. If I could, I'd send my one friend enough money to pay for health insurance and a good doctor, I'd get my other friend a wonderful job, I'd somehow impart to the others the wisdom to know exactly what to do to in their situations to make everything work out perfectly. But of course, I can't do that.


Another factor is that, for the first time in awhile, I feel pretty good and strong. Maybe even happy, even though things are, as always, imperfect. Shouldn't I then be able to use my superpowers to bring everyone else in my orbit happiness, as well?

I think one of the hardest things we can experience is to know our loved ones are suffering and to not be able to take their suffering away. We can rationalize that to ease their suffering might dilute the strength of the lessons they're meant to learn, but when we care for someone who's hurting, we don't care about that other stuff. We just want them to feel better, and to be able to fully embody their true, beautiful nature without all of this struggle and pain.

I sat in meditation and wanted to do tonglen for someone who was suffering. When I thought of who to focus on, I couldn't decide. So I gave up and did it for everyone, and for the entire planet. 


I've come to realize that the only thing we can do in these situations is to witness our loved ones' struggles. We can listen to them with patience and compassion, even if we've heard the same story a thousand times. We can challenge them, if it seems appropriate. But we can't save them. We can only be there for them with the resources we have, even our only resources are our open hearts and our words. But this still doesn't seem like enough to me, and neither does sending them love and healing in meditation. When the chips are down, what's all this woo-woo stuff got to do with anything? On the other hand, what are the alternatives? I can't send all my money, I can't get my friend a job, and I certainly have no idea how to motivate a teenager.

So, I sit with the energy of wanting to help, try to be there in the ways that I can, and do something I'm  pretty good at: witnessing peoples' experience with respect and open-mindedness. It's my gift and it's all I have, really.

To L I send healing. To S I send patience. To D I send compassion - I know how it feels, believe me. To M I send strength. To my mom I send openness. To J I send the energy of moving forward with joy. And to the people of Japan, I send all of these things and more. You are all in my heart. It doesn't seem like enough, but it will have to be.