Pain's Precipice

My ears strain to hear his constant chatter as I take orange halves, breathing deep their scent, and push them over the top of the little juicer. My palm feels the hard ridges belonging to the circular piece that spins methodically round and round as I press hard against it. It scrapes the pulp off the peel to spin below as juice slowly trickles out of the small spout at the bottom and into the ornately carved glass below. The tiny glass sends me back to the days of my youth. Of sitting at my grandparent’s kitchen table after a night of sleeping over with my sister. Poached eggs, grapefruit and canteloupe before us as well as my grandparent’s loving eyes and warm voices drifting melodically in a shared space made sacred. A time of memories being woven deep in the fibers of my consciousness. My heart winces as I know my grandmother is no more. Her remains now in a marble urn atop my grandfather’s dresser. Those days gone forever.

I answer in short phrases as I catch the majority of the conversation. The fragments I can’t quite make out I try to fill in with what would make sense and am relieved when I can finally turn the little apparatus off and place a fresh glass of orange juice in his outstretched hand. It shakes profusely, an outward symptom of his Parkinson’s.

I feel a sudden surge rise forth within me. Compassion. I want to bring him comfort, joy. He looks so vulnerable and weak, laying in a bed that has been put in his living room for his convenience.  He has lived such a long and extraordinary life. He tells me stories of being in WWII, of working for the Associated Press designing art for their publications in New York City and of losing his young wife to cancer. He is an accomplished painter who has managed to bring to life the ocean, busy harbors, fighter jets and Marilyn Monroe on simple canvas. I look around and marvel at his talent. Pure brilliance is captured within the frames that adorn the ordinary walls of his humble abode and his eyes brighten as I voice my appreciation towards them. Others that come here to care for him that I talk to think him a silly old man that rambles on and on. I see him as a genius and if one only cares to listen he reveals a life where splendor shone daringly at its crest. I seek to bring him some sense of peace and ease as he now sinks to the trough of a wave he once fearlessly mastered.

He does enjoy his talking.  I keep listening as I start his breakfast and place his pills before him. Mind still full of energy and ambition, he rattles on about the art classes he is still teaching and businesses interested in products he sells that have his artwork displayed on them. Mugs, coasters and other such items. At a time and condition in life when many just decide to lay down and succumb to the encroaching illness that is slowly ravaging and inhibiting his body he is still making business deals and sharing his wisdom with a new generation. All of this makes me want to shake my first at nature. At the cruelty of life that would hinder the dreams of someone truly passionate towards a life worth living when so many  seem perfectly content sleepwalking through it. Many times it is those of us who reside comfortably within the confines of mediocrity that are free from such impediments as faltering synapses and dying brain cells that bring rise to shaky hands and the permanently afflicted gait that causes him to grab hold of furniture in order not to fall when he tries to navigate without his walker. Something I gently chide him not to do!

Later on that day he asks me to come up to his studio with him. He is still trying to finish a painting that he began months ago and every time I’ve caught glimpses of it my heart sinks more and more and my consciousness shudders at the realization that his gift has withered away and no longer manifests itself in the form that once defined it.

He longs to just make one more piece of art. To paint a portrait of his daughter who died years ago of cancer. I hear every time he speaks of her that she was the bulwark of his family and a constant source of joy and strength, of inspiration and love, especially after his wife died. And now she is no more like so many others he has known and loved.

An enlarged printed photograph is pinned up beside the canvas that attempts to capture her image on its surface. I look around at the portraits of others he has painted throughout the years. They look so real and lifelike, as if the acrylic they are composed of could easily transform itself into flesh and they could rise out of their framed dwelling and live once again. His daughter’s portrait, however, has deteriorated more and more so that now as I come to face it I don’t know what I should tell him. If I tell him I’m impressed or it looks fine I would be lying. My mind momentarily drifts back to the words of Sam Harris in his small book Lying where he asserts that any lie, even a small lie, is wrong.  I decide to keep silent and that works as the silence is soon filled in with his ongoing monologue.

The painting consists of crude lines and now her visage is inundated with a dark hue of blue. She looks sad and disfigured. There are two places where you can see he started her forehead and either one would make sense if the other were absent. As my eyes settle on the image before me he laments that he is having trouble deciphering the differing colors and thinks he might have added too much blue. An understatement if I’ve ever heard one. That’s all there is, varying shades of blue.

His eyes are slowly failing him even after multiple surgeries.  I begin to sort out the different tubes of acrylic, caked so heavily with multiple layers of different paints I have to look at each one’s opening, putting them one by one up to my eyes and scrutinizing them carefully, to tell what colors they contain.  He laments openly at the condition of the painting and goes to point to the eyes of his daughter in the printed photograph and the unthinkable happens. His fingers wet with paint now smudge one of her eyes that have been gazing at him for so many months. He takes the photo down immediately and reaches for a piece of paper towel but he gets the paint from his fingers on it and as he desperately tries to clean the photograph he gets it even more embedded with dark acrylic paint. He looks up at me, pain's precipice etched in his features in the form of a woeful expression and asks if I can help.

I reach out and gently take hold of his shaking hand that is moving towards the picture once again. In despair it squeezes tightly the crumpled piece of paper towel wet with paint. I cup his hand with both of mine and slowly take the paper towel out of it.  I place it on the table. The picture is not a glossy photo but a printed copy so one cannot just wipe away the dark smudges of blue and black. They are absorbed in the fibers of the paper.

I tell him I’m so sorry. That I will try but I don’t anticipate any success as I think any more efforts to remove the paint that is there will just ruin the picture even more. Eventually he tires of the pursuit and pins it back up beside the canvas. Now two distorted faces of a daughter he once cherished with his whole being stare gloomily back at him. The brilliance of the lake skirting the periphery outside of his window and whose surface dances with the sun’s rays shining from on high is a stark contrast to the mood within the small room. A room  stacked with canvases and frames, layered with heaps of tubes of paints and brushes and in this moment impregnated with sorrow. I tell him that perhaps he could have some lunch and come back to all of this another time. He thinks that’s a reasonable suggestion and I help him downstairs.

When I leave that day he is sitting in his favorite chair and it appears as if his spirits seem to be in order once more. His usual optimism revealing itself in the form of future plans. As I look back a final time I see him close his eyes in fatigue. I silently hope that his dreams take him to the ships and sea that have so long been objects of his adoration. May the sound of busy harbors and lapping waves cradle his consciousness in a temporary peace that can only be attained in the comforting folds of the depthless world of the dreaming state.

Sam Harris: Spirituality and Mysticism

In a recent post I expressed my dissatisfaction regarding the seemingly subjective nature of spirituality and announced my resolve to focus on investigating and exploring areas that at least offer the chance of obtaining some clarity into the nature of things.  I figured I would turn to science, whose scalpel of reason appears to quite effectively slice away at misconceptions and whose systematic approach focuses on objectively finding answers.Since then I have read a couple of books that have really made me reflect more deeply on my decision to forgo spirituality in its entirety and I'm starting to see that perhaps in my frustration over what seems an unending battle between intellect and heart, and my apparent thirst for some sort of clear direction in which to proceed in my pursuit of truth, that I might have entered into the mindset Ken Wilber would label as "flatland". A tunnel vision way of thinking that focuses completely on that which can be scientifically measured and analyzed.

The two books I have read recently and that really started making me re-think my approach was Andrew Newberg's book, "Why We Believe What We Believe" and Sam Harris' book, "The End of Faith". I would like to mostly focus on what Sam Harris has to say regarding spirituality in the last chapter of his book, so I will only briefly note that in Newberg's book it became clear to me that science can also be laden with a level of subjectivity has well.

"...personal experience is subject to numerous perceptional, emotional, and cognitive distortions that occur at every stage of neural processing. What is finally summoned forth into consciousness turns out to be a very limited and subjective view of the world.

Science tries systematically to utilize subjective experience to measure objective reality, but even scientific views of reality differ. Every hypothesis finds dissenting views, so scientists themselves are challenged to choose who or what to believe. Furthermore a scientist's belief system can influence the outcome of a study as much as a theologian's belief system can influence his or her perception of the world."  ~ p. 280

It seems like everywhere I turn subjectivism is glaring me in the face! From science to spirituality. Though, I do think spirituality is given more of a free ticket in allowing the imagination to take flight and encouraging one's mind to lift off of the foundation of reason and into the open skies of ambiguity and subjective speculation which, to me, is no way of going about trying to ascertain any sense of clarity into the nature of the Absolute. So, is it possible to wed reason with spirituality and erect a meaningful yet logical platform in which to proceed on one's journey towards understanding? Sam Harris seems to think so.


In his book Harris points out that spirituality has been a source of transformation for man since our very beginning and that it certainly can provide one with a deep sense of meaning, clarity, inspiration and depth. Spirituality itself is not necessarily the culprit that battles reason and plunges seekers headfirst into delusion, but more so religion. Harris points out that there is an underlying essence that carries much truth and lives at the heart of all religions and spiritual traditions. These truths were  most easily recognized and espoused by their mystics but covered up by false layers of dogma and doctrine; religion's sweltering blanket smothering their fragile lights.

"Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is mysticism)...

A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior and strong communities are essential for human happiness... While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it. Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world." (p. 221)

Harris points to the rational and systematic approach in empirically studying the nature of consciousness and reality that the philosophies in the East have and how they contain gems of wisdom derived from those who used their consciousness as laboratories. Those who chose not to superimpose fanciful false layers of myth but instead  dove straight into experience and extracted precious truths.

" Even the contemporary literature on consciousness, which spans philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience, cannot match the kind of precise, phenomenological studies that can be found throughout Buddhist canon."  Harris goes on to say, "Mysticism to be viable , requires explicit instructions, which need suffer no more ambiguity or artifice in their exposition than we find in a manual for operating a lawn mower. Some traditions realized this millennia ago." ( p. 217)

The "manual" like instructions that Harris is referring to are the similar techniques mystics and yogis the world over have discovered in which to allow oneself to enter into the state where "our sense of "self"-of subject/object dualism in perception and cognition-can be made to vanish, while consciousness remains vividly aware of the continuum of experience."( p. 217)

I found Harris' views on spirituality and mysticism refreshing. Overall what I got from the last chapter of his book, The End of Faith, is that spirituality can be approached in a rational manner implementing reason and logic. That any interpretation of what one experiences should be compared by, might we say a "peer review" of sorts, with other conclusions of those who have explored the nature of consciousness themselves. The mystics,  those who themselves have traversed the landscape of consciousness, are great examples of sources to draw from for they have provided maps for those who wish to make similar journeys in the form of texts like the Buddhist canons and the Vedas. Even the Western religions offer their own mystics for one to extract insight and direction from-Islam has Sufis like Rumi and no one need look any further than Jesus when looking at Christianity for an example of someone who attained to a self-realized state.

So, in closing, after some introspection, reading and insightful conversations lately I've decided that I would be rejecting the very reason I am attempting to implement in my pursuit of truth and understanding if I turned away from spirituality completely. Instead, I will proceed practicing the disciplines that I have found meaningful and inspirational. However, I will do so with caution as to not be led astray by interpreting any of my experiences with any undo sentimentalism and while simultaneously discovering the wonders of the natural world that have been revealed by science. By developing the widest lens in which to perceive things as they are I will hopefully progress in a fruitful direction that will at some point allow mind and heart to converge in a harmonious consensus. Okay...being completely optimistic. ;)

Your thoughts are always appreciated in the comments section. Thank you!