Today’s post is spurred by something written by Thich Nhat Hanh on the subject of love. His statement, printed below, brought to mind experiences from a New Mexico vision quest almost exactly 11 years ago, and their role in opening this guarded, frightened heart.
“When our hearts are small,” writes Nhat Hanh, “our understanding and compassion are limited and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.”
For much of this life, my heart was indeed small and guarded. As a child I’d been hurt early and often, resulting in an adulthood dedicated to protecting said heart from further abuse. Over the years, I learned to employ humor, lies, bullying, drugs, sex, avoidance – anything and everything – to avoid being hurt again. Protection was my central preoccupation.
And as the Zen master wrote, when we are outward-focused, we spend our lives trying to change the world around us to fit our own limited capacities for love, intimacy, etc. (Doesn’t this remind you of 99.99% of the human population?)
The Hummingbird’s Visit
The day before my Vision Quest, I was encouraged to see a healer who would better prepare me for my time ‘on the mountain.’ After an hour together, his diagnosis was clear: “Your heart is closed. You need to open your heart if you’re to ever put an end to your unhappiness.”
A big part of my goal on the mountain, then, would be to seek help in opening a heart hardened and calcified by a lifetime of pain.
Almost as soon as my vision quest began a hummingbird paid me a visit. As I sat gazing across the mountain meadow, he appeared over my right shoulder, inches from my face. I turned to look at him, his tiny black eye reflecting back at me the light of the meadow, the hum of his wings pleasant, welcoming.
It was a short and sweet and whimsical visit, and I imagined him wishing me well before zipping off into the adjacent forest.
Later, I’d learn that the hummingbird symbolizes insight, wisdom, and the lightness of being, the infinity symbol replicated by its wings speaking to the eternal in us all. I’d come to believe my tiny visitor was there at the start to tell me mighty things were to happen, and to see those events as life’s way of helping me achieve my quest.
The Elk’s First Visit
As the sun began to set behind the mountain, a growing ruckus occurred in the forest across the meadow. The deepening darkness made it impossible for me to determine the source of the noise, but it was clear that something sizable and strong was moving through the forest and snapping similarly sizable tree branches.
Abruptly, a couple hundred yards down the meadow from me, barely discernible in the growing darkness, emerged from the forest a large herd of elk. Immediately they began to run up the meadow toward my spot. The words of my guide arose, reminding me that so long as I remained in my prayer area, no harm could befall me. That said, a thundering mass of muscle and antler prompted me to rise to my feet, hoping they’d see enough of me to turn.
As the herd grew near, my heart pounded beneath my breast and I was sure I’d be trampled. Yet at the last moment, the herd veered right and back into the same wooded area from which they’d emerged just seconds earlier.
Darkness descended, the meadow – and my heart – eventually quieted, and I returned to my conversations with God, albeit with a new line of inquiry: What was THAT about?
The Elk’s Second Visit
At some point in the night, the herd returned, once more emerging from the same spot down-meadow from me. Only, this time, while the bulk of the herd remained in place, a particularly large and fearsome looking bull charged toward me. Again panic gripped me and again I rose to my feet, hoping my guide’s words of confidence, already proved correct earlier, would once more prove prescient.
This time, however, the elk did not veer and, in a flash, was upon me. Panicked, I grabbed at its antlers, marveling, even in my terror, at their velvet sheathing (a kind of protective layer I’d never known existed). It’s nostrils blasted hot, moist breath with the distinct smell of vegetation, its neck matted with sweat and an oily musk, the muscles surging beneath my hands. The power of the animal was incredible, and despite my best efforts, it repeatedly raised its head and drove its antlers deep into my heart.
At some point came the thought, “How the hell am I still alive?” And with that thought I awoke, the meadow bathed in silence and a million-billion stars overhead. Sweat coursed down my face and my heart felt as if it would explode from my chest. It had been one of the most vivid dreams of this life.
Sweating Out
Later, in the sweat lodge as part of the vision quest’s ‘sweating out’ process, my guide asked me for my interpretation of the events from my quest. I hazarded a guess or two, but was still buzzing from the energy, exhausted, unable to connect the dots.
He suggested that because I’d literally put myself out there, life had responded in the best ways it knew how – via its mountain citizens. The big bull elk, he said, had come to deliver on the central request of my vision quest, its antlers tearing at a frightened, closed heart yearning to be loved and to love.
I cannot begin to describe the emotions that welled up and out of me, overcome by the beauty of that moment, by the confirmation – the absolute knowing – that something loved me enough to provide such gifts in a life for so longed defined by pain.
Later, I would learn that the elk is considered one of the most powerful of all animal totems (spirit animals), its immense strength and stamina ideally designed to break through even the stoutest defenses.
For the remainder of my visit I felt bathed in love, as if something had indeed opened within and that so long as my commitment remained in place, so too would life’s responses to that commitment.
We exist today in turbulent times, and it is easy to grow guarded, to allow our fears and trepidations to guide our life’s decisions. All around me I hear people fearing the future, talk of building bunkers, of arming up to safeguard one’s family and assets.
If my experience taught me anything, it’s that we make a profound mistake when we allow the outside world to create fear within, and that we further compound that mistake by looking outside for the corrections and fixes.
Human history always has and always will be marked by dark and difficult times. Our goal, said another New Mexico friend and guide at the time, is to save ourselves, not the world around us. Or as Robert Adams said time and again, “Leave the world alone. Turn inward, focus on yourself, the rest will take care of itself.”
