Suicide

Death - when someone dies, it's tough. But what if that person, close to you, chooses suicide as the way to go? We are often wracked with guilt, ashamed to talk openly and questioning why we didn't see it coming. Suicide is often called the selfish death because of the impact on those left behind.

Countries are introducing various forms of medically assisted death (euthenasia or  suicide) for those suffering previous and irremediable illnesses. Mental illness technically is included but the chance of it being permitted is low, as suffering only from a mental illness is typically excluded as is the case in Canada. Thus, for those with mental health conditions that resist treatment, medically assisted death is not an option.

Consider the case of a person with treatment resistant depression. They've tried it all and nothing gets better. They see no hope and life without hope is a tough struggle. Suicide becomes the best option from their perspective.

Many religions and societies condemn suicide creating the impossible choice - live with the pain or die in condemnation.

So what you may say, does this have to do with meditation? A lot. Meditation is a place of healing for those who have lost someone to suicide. It is a place to find their own lives as worthwhile and not limited by the emotional ties to the now deceased person. It is the moral, ethical view that causes death by suicide to be seen as wrong compared to many other forms of death. Regardless of the method, the person is gone. It is this truth that requires acknowledgment and acceptance. Suicide creates ambiguous loss (because of second guessing what might have been done to prevent it) but loss none the less. Feel the loss in meditation, be honest with yourself and grant permission to love and let go.

Meditation is also the place to know the pain that the deceased suffered. For most, suicide is not a sudden choice but one that has been contemplated over time. It gets ruled in as an option as more and more choices for improvement get ruled out.

In meditation, we become familiar with and honest with what we feel including the anger, resentment, grief and emptiness while seeking our path forward just in this moment. Understanding suicide is to reach across the divide between the self and the other to know their pain was beyond what they could now tolerate. It was not typically a selfish act but one of desperation in the face of un-relentless pain.

The Suicide

He died by suicide
Slipping into death
By pills squirrelled away
They all said, "How sad"
The eulogy lamented his passing
Really I thought
Grieve his life not his death
For living was all pain
Each moment wracked with sorrow
Dying was not wrong
Living was
Those who have stood at that precipice
Know the tipping point
Sometimes letting go
Spiralling down is right

© Peter Choate, 2017

A time for anger and fear????

I was walking in Paris on a lovely Sunday morning. This was several years ago. It was my last day in Europe and would be heading home later in the day. So, up early, coffee and croissant consumed, I wandered off aimlessly. I found myself approaching a large number of police standing around and sitting on buses. There was nothing urgent about their presence. As I wandered along a long street, I suddenly noticed groups protesting at both ends. One was pro-Paleistenian and the other pro-Israel.  They suddenly charged at each other and I found myself taking refuge in a doorway while they ran at each other. It was all over in about 2 minutes as the police suddenly stood between the groups. No violence but lots of yelling and placard waving.

I thought about that moment as I recently attended the women's march here in Calgary a couple of weeks ago. Chanting, singling, speeches and walking -- including walking past a few people with signs support Donald Trump's presidency. No violence, no yelling at the Trump supporters.

This has caused me to reflect upon the culture of dissent, violence, fear mongering and stigmatization that has become part of the daily discourse. Politics has become so much about fearing the "other" who is different in some way. More and more we are being told to fear people. In my travels, while I do pay attention to risks that exist (including here in Calgary).  The politics of hate, whether from the alt-right or the alt-left are designed to create division rather than seek for what brings us together. They are also requiring conformity to a specific ideology.

Clearly, I would be more left leaning in my views but I have met people from more right leaning who are needed contributors to our society. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.

Meditation is a moment to connect ourselves to the universality of human emotion and needs - respect, love, belonging, caring, surviving.  It is the place of humanity in connection rather than separation. Yes, there are some very harmful people (I have met many) but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. Yes, there are countries where a lot of atrocities occur but in them are people seeking the same human needs as the rest of us. Meditation is truly a way to connect to the place of the peaceful warrior.

Inside

Tears block my external vision
I can only sit within self
It's the only vision available
I see what I need
I reach past the scars and scabs
of past trauma

The marks of past hurts stare back
Anger has widened the injuries
Fear has deepened them
Without soothing they bleed
Oozing the source of despair

Then I am held
The love comes to me
The moment of mattering arises
Touch heals
Connection, oh how I need you
This moment where my existence
Is real and safe

I find the space inside
The one I know where truth exists
Here I can receive compassion
Reach out to another
Close the journey into pain
and out to love

There I am held, safe

© Peter Choate, 2017

Divide and Fail

I have been thinking a great deal about the role that stigma plays in the daily lives of so many people. Stigma is a way in which we "other" people - in other words, you don't belong because of (fill in the blank). Some might see it as "us" and "everyone else".

I see stigma operating in a number of ways, but some that have been the focus of my meditation lately include:

• acting as a platform to not give services - this might seem contradictory, but if you can classify people by problem, then you can limit what services become available to them. 
• acting as a way to keep a group out of the mainstream - in Canada, we have certainly seen this with First Nations peoples who have been framed as "less than" in a myriad of ways.
• as a way to isolate - you belong over there not here. Over there is non-inclusive and isolating.
• affirming differences in a way that makes those differences lacking in value - black, gay, trans, Muslim, etc etc - These are differences that are very powerful as they define the person in a way that ensures they can never belong - they will always be "other".
• asserting power over groups by using membership criteria to determine who belongs where - those with power use such definitions as a way to hold on to power. A good example is seen in human rights movements - those for whom human rights are being demanded require that the power structures be prepared to share or diminish their hold on power.
• access to power structures - who you are defined to be reflect which doors to power will be available to you.
• controlling the definition of correct - when you meet the criteria then you are "good" person but otherwise you are "bad", "deficient", "unworthy", "pitied".
• mechanisms to create internal senses of deficiency - for the person who is part of the "other" they internalize the sense of inferiority. Stigma reinforces shame and guilt acting as way in which the person solidifies the stigma within. They become their own oppressor.
• defining diversity - this word is used a lot - seeking diversity; creating diversity; ensuring diversity. Think carefully and you recognize the inherent stigma - diverse from what? The answer is, diverse from the dominant group - who does not give up dominance but rather agrees to share some piece of it (think of the "token" person). This permits the power structures a "free pass" because they argue inclusiveness by the presence of a "diverse" person.

I am sure that, as you read this, many more examples come to mind. Certainly, the politics and language of stigma appear to be gaining greater permission to openly express and behave in ways that support division. Why, however, does this matter to meditation?

In meditation, we seek to know and understand the self. What is that we hold onto? How do our thoughts interfere with right action? What belief structures exist within us that sustain the "othering" of people? How do our thoughts and actions support power structures of oppression?

We also come to know that most of us possess patterns that are stigma oriented - both as a stigmatizer and as a stigmatized. Meditation opens up how we feel as being "othered" and even ways in which we seek revenge or getting people to know how they have hurt us.

When we allow division, we fail. Selfishness, ego, anger, domination and other similar emotional states must take charge - as "othering" requires that we dislike, hate, demean. "Othering" cannot be found in love, care, inclusion, for example. Meditation is peaceful searching for our truth which can include states of being, ways of knowing that are not right thinking or right behaving. It is the search for acceptance of both self and others. Thus, when we see things to be critical of, it is the state of that human being that must be understood with efforts not to diminish but to help for truth to be seen. Success is not creating another divide by claiming that the lack of right action should exclude the person - rather, how do we include?

These are some of the most difficult emotions I find in meditation. For they reflect self and intersection with the ways of those also in the world with me.

The fear of I

The greatest fear is

What lies within

Born of childhood and

generational patterns

Raised to be white

To be shown this is right

Not to question

Learning to obey the rituals

The enclave of belonging

Comes from being white

Defending the border

So our territory stood

Cross not the line

Separating us from them

Know your place

Avoid contamination

A good Catholic boy

Taught the lessons of Christ

Growing as a believer

Fighting the contradictions

How could love be restricted 

Only to those who looked like me

While all others were savages

And heathens to be converted

The clergy spoke of success

Bringing many into the life of God

Letting go of their sinful pasts

But never seen in my parish

Marching for civil rights

Obscured the confusion 

Of Bible and Church

Without including the others

Conscience could be calmed

Guilt assuaged

By clamouring for change

In places not here

These patterns so soundly built

As cement set for a lifetime

Not to be questioned

Only to be dressed in finery

The earthquake explodes

Structures collapse

Beliefs not longer valid

From simply knowing the other

Humanity opens itself

To a sweeping truth 

Not of difference but 

Of similarity 

Now this is seen

So why as white so oft hated

When change is sought

Is escape possible from the patterns of power

The template of childhood

Does not go away

The privilege of behaviour

Rests with self knowing

As the search goes on

Inside views are murky and scary 

The lanes and streets already walked

Littered with the detritus of division

Can the pilgrim

Walk the journey

No longer unpalatable to the other

Still knowing the claim to white is perpetual

© Peter Choate, 2017

Truth or dare!

We seem to be in a "truth" crisis. It seems impossible to turn on any form of media without some fact checking and media storm about a politician lying. Yet, lying politicians are not new - maybe now just more brazen. It's hard to miss the lying businesses, advertisements - indeed lies seem to be everywhere. The old game of truth or dare is turned around to I dare you to tell the truth.

One of the more challenging truths about truth is how much we lie to ourselves. We create family history that is unreliable, twisted in some way and, at times, fantasy that has no factual roots. We lie about our feelings because there is a depth to them we may not be ready to face.

What do you see? If I see it differently who is telling the truth?

There are many times we aim to tell the truth but memory has failed to accurately record what happened. Human memory is quite fallible. There is lots of psychological and neurological science to confirm that. Eye witness testimony is often thought of as the least reliable.

Part of why our recall is so prone to error is partly related to the emotional state we were in at the time - happy, angry, frightened, traumatized, depressed, joyous, distracted. It can also be affected by loyalties to self or others. Harsh truth may be hard to tell about someone to whom you have a strong connection or a sense that being faithful to their image or memory is necessary.

Many lies are quite deliberate; many just poor recall and some related to avoiding. Yet, how we think things are (our perceptions and memories) impact the choices that we make unless we are able to be in the moment, deciding then what must be done. It's a challenging task because so much behaviour is driven by latent memory, interpretation, beliefs and loyalties.

So how does meditation fit in? It is the time when we can allow ourselves to feel what is there - not interpret, not change, nor fabricate or alter - just be with what is - be with the truth. Even if only for a few minutes. Slowly it makes it easier to be non-reactive to the behaviours of others that in the past would create anger, jealousy, sadness or even happiness that is not linked to reality.

Truth

I promise to tell the truth, 
I swear the oath.
What is truth?
Will I ever know for sure?

the whole truth, 
Is this even possible?
The whole truth, is there partial truth?
When is it just a lie?

nothing but the truth.
Who knows the truth?
Do I?
Each memory called forth
contradicts the one before.

I swear to God.
My oath is a lie
I see the past so clearly
Yet it must be a fiction

Please state your name in  full.
I can do that
Is that really me?
Or is it just a character created at birth?

To know for sure I need the truth
But it is not there
Fragments, semblances, hints or pretence
Life is reality in half truths.

Blink away, what was there is no longer - was it true?

Which image will you remember?

Which will be true?

© Peter Choate 2017

On being human

As we start the new year of 2017, many have made a variety of resolutions - the vast majority of which we will fail to keep. That's part of being human. We don't make changes easily. We develop patterns in our lives with which we get comfortable, even when that outcome is not what we wish.

I experienced that this morning going out for breakfast with family. I saw the delicious pain raisin, croissants, muffins - they were yelling out to me. So saying no was tough but I had another choice which also pleased me. Therein lies an important issue - we need an agreeable choice to replace the behaviours which we are trying to stop.

Being content with where you are while also being connected is about being at peace with your humanity

Many years ago, a psychiatrist I worked with in the ER, observed, "People change their behaviours when the cost of change becomes less than the cost of the status quo." Such a insightful comment!

Part of the challenge with change is we, as a member of our society, have been trained to avoid uncomfortable experiences, which  change brings us. Instead, there is a drink, drug, food or exercise for that. Thus, pain is to be avoided. Being human is about feeling all of our experiences ranging from highly enjoyable through to highly unenjoyable. In a society where everything is meant yo be fun, it also makes it harder to reach out for support.

We are also getting lots of messages that if there is pain, it must be somebody else's fault. We see less acceptance of taking ownership of painful or difficult realities. Being human means that things will go wrong and we are often the main or partial author of the difficulties.

Buddha tells us that pain is a normal part of our existence and is a universal truth. If you look at other religious or spiritual traditions, you see similar messages. Thus, we need to come face to face with that truth which means pain is inevitable, whether we are the author or not therefore being less important. Whether we caused the pain or another person did, it is still pain and it must still be accepted and a way to move forward must still be found. As anyone in recovery from addictions will tell you, escape was not a solution but a false trap which brought more pain.

For example, in grief arising from the death of a close friend or relative, we truly never forget, but we adapt. Some grief takes longer to accept but we never "get over it".

Use meditation to feel, accept, know yourself and become familiar with your pain. Become its closest acquaintance and don't fight its existence. Become a warrior for your own truth with the confidence that you can live effectively today and that living with pain and still being content is possible - it takes acceptance and seeing, in meditation, that your life is not just about the pain. It is about being
human.

Human

The pain arrived
slowly
seeping into my existence
making its presence known
deliberately

In time its presence
rancorous
tugging at my soul
as a poison with intent
malicious

Its face in mine
provoking
like a gauntlet tossed at me
vexatiously

This pain is my truth
wholly
It is for me to accept
unequivocally

This reality is unchangeable
definitive
My response is mine
exclusively

It is my humanity

© Peter Choate 2017