#210: Living in the Bardo
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” - Douglas Adams
Three mornings ago, I reached out to Corey. Something is stirring inside me and I thought he would be a great person to connect with. I study change for a living and, in doing so, I recognize a distinction between conceptualization and internalization. I think I am steadily internalizing more and more that a meteor truly has struck Earth. There won’t be a cozy new equilibrium anywhere ahead and that this is what “the other side” will look like.
Ongoing high level uncertainty.
I think it hit me that we collectively don’t know so much about how things are going to work. I don’t mean things out 3 to 5 years from now (but also true!). I mean more day-to-day things 4 to 6 weeks from now. Will school be “in” and what in the world will it look like? Will my Buckeyes play this fall? Probably not. Will I work side-by-side (at a minimum six feet apart) with other humans? Will I physically “see” a client in person? Will I venture into New York City, and if so for what possible purpose? And if I have dormant, un-surfaced, unsettling questions...I suspect many humans have far far more.
But this isn’t all bad.
I have long considered this link:
Collective uncertainty begets collective compassion.
Compassion is a relationship of peers.
Collective compassion is a starting point for true community.
True community is a space we can accelerate serious problem solving.
Is it “perfect”? No. Is everyone on board? No. Is that OK? Absolutely.
What I have been increasingly feeling is that right now I would be wise to alter-modify-re-invent many of my daily/weekly processes, methods, habits, and rituals to create a great-active-empowered space for the time ahead. And I am actively doing so. From “little” to “BIG." Aiming to make my own weather as opposed to reacting and reacting and waiting and waiting for answers of what everything will look like once we get to “the other side.” I sense this is “the other side."
I found Corey’s thinking below utterly amazing.
Thank you for your help Corey
- Pip
Living in the Bardo
We’re right in the middle of it. Past the beginning, somewhere before the end. Certainly, the end of things is in sight. Or maybe it isn’t. It’s as though we’re in this strange, nebulous, uncharted, hazy space of uncertainty. Well, at least we can say we’re somewhere in the middle. Somewhere meant to be transitory, not a permanent place to set up camp. We are definitely in a liminal space. That’s a fact... I think.
The middle of what, you’re asking? Your Life. The time between birth and death with no finite middle or end date. Did you think I was talking about something else?
There was a time, maybe life before 2020, where in-between spaces were only thought about by philosophers, architects, mathematicians, and physicists. In architecture, liminal space might mean the transition spaces between entrances and exits that give subtle cues to let you know you’re in a different space. In mass transit, the platform you wait on for the train or bus. In music, the silence between notes. In government, the time between when a social movement has gained popular favor and laws are created or rewritten. These spaces are only ever meant to be moved through, not dwelled on or stuck in.
Each religion has its own idea of the in-between space. For Christians it’s purgatory, the space in between life and death, neither heaven nor hell; an eternal waiting room. (Is it still purgatory if you know you’re in purgatory? Or is not-knowing a condition of being stuck?) For Buddhists it’s bardo, the space we experience when between any two states. This gap may be the everyday variety of the moment between chewing a bite of a cookie and considering the next, or the existential - death and life. A bardo is said to be the optimal time for transformation and enlightenment, as it creates a break in our normal routines and patterns. The quick and unexpected shifts in work, travel, and life during a worldwide epidemic definitely feel like they qualify here.
It seems to me we’re all currently stuck in a group-bardo, a shared societal liminal space. A great opportunity for transformation.
And we’re not getting unstuck using the same methods that worked before, nuh-uh.
BC, (Before Corona) it always seemed like my big life events were set in stone: go to school, attend university, find a career, find a partner, get married, start a family, buy a car, buy a house, then repeat the process with your own kids. Right now, all of these things feel up in the air. What were inscriptions carved in stone now seem like they were written on a whiteboard being sprayed with cleaning fluid faster than I can redraw the plan. My expectations of what was supposed to happen this year, next year, that year I enter a new birth-age-decade... those hi-res images, fixed in my mental Pinterest Board labeled “My Future by year” are now low-res at best. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still there, or that I haven’t created new life events for this AC (After Corona) existence. Now I’m all about: what’s for lunch? What recipe can I make for dinner? Can’t wait for that FaceTime date with friends this weekend. What does it look like to shift our expectations from decades, years, and months to instead consider the next week, next day, next hour as the “future”?
It makes one wonder how and what kind of people thrived in past times of uncertainty. Those who seem to be finding the greatest success with getting on with it are people used to making their own weather already: entrepreneurs, small business owners, self-starters, and risk-taking folks who haven’t known or trusted stability when they found it in their lives. Their ability to reset their own expectations in the moment, depending on whatever they’re sensing, keeps them dexterous. It’s a strange but useful type of myopia or intentionally limited vision.
I don’t know about you, but most of my old ways of creating mental rest aren’t working quite as well as they used to, if they’re working at all. We humans, as biological beings, adapt to the variety of situations we experience in our early years, and our brains expect those conditions will continue. Without our typical tethers to “normal” situations, we start to feel lost, and slip into a sort of purgatory. Since this is a global phenomenon, and everyone’s regular has been removed, how do we identify and “escape the room”?
Sure, Zoom, Slack, and email allow us to maintain functional business operations, and IG and messaging apps suffice for basic social interaction. But for humans to continue thriving, we need more. It’s as though we’ve been focused solely on building physical power, using technology to augment our bodies, and have set aside the other part that’s gotten us this far in the first place - our minds. I’m reminded of The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov; when a catastrophic event happens, there are two sects of people sent out to rebuild civilization. One focuses exclusively on the physical, developing amazing technology, the other on the mental, training mental powers like ESP.
In the time of Corona, I’ve witnessed more and more humans coming around to the value of Mental Wellbeing practices as a necessity rather than a nice to have. Perhaps this builds a path to a future with Mental Gyms in the same way there are Physical Gyms. Not to be conflated with universities, these places would serve as active recreation for esoteric contemplation as a medicine for unmet expectation. To provide a way of understanding and appreciating the ephemeral, mysterious existence of consciousness we experience. Maybe you do these sorts of things in your home already: practice mantra meditation, journal, play music, or create art...not for skill, but to simply “spark joy”…providing the brain some clean break time from the work of predicting an unpredictable future.
It’s clear that we can’t go back to before. But what if whatever is happening now, what you are creating for yourself and others, is better than what used to be or could have been? And what if it wasn’t possible for this new way of being to happen without a global bardo? Haven’t we always been in bardo, anyway? The inexplicable expression of life between birth and death?