Challenges in Real-Time

by Miki Kashtan

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything on my blog for some weeks now. This is a first since I started my blog. This is no accident, and not even entirely based on having a lot on my plate. These past weeks have been very challenging in multiple ways. The effort it would have taken to pull myself out of that state in order to focus on writing was beyond my capacity given the external stressors that were present.

I have written here more than once about how the path of vulnerability has been my primary spiritual practice in the last 15 years. I have also expressed myself quite vulnerably on a number of occasions. What I don’t recall having done is to share, publicly, my challenges while they are active and ongoing, before something gets resolved, addressed, settled. This is what I am about to do in this entry.

What makes it possible is a change in my outside circumstances. Right now I am sitting in an airplane, on my way to Poland and then the UK, where I have been invited to teach. There is something about being locked up in the air, without any possibility of being accountable to anyone, that feels freeing to me, even though the space is narrow and hugely uncomfortable and the options are so limited. In this space I can almost imagine that I am writing only to myself, or to a few trusted friends, rather than to several hundred people who read my blog.

My deepest challenge of all is one I have mentioned here more than once: I don’t believe, or experience the option, that there can be room for me in this world. Yes, there is room for me to contribute, to support people, to write, to inspire people, to do tasks, respond to people who want things, initiate projects, or even envision a new world. What I don’t believe there is room for is my deep authenticity, my difference in how I interact with people. Even more than that, I don’t experience the option of being fully myself, putting out in full what’s true for me and what I want, and having that received in a way that’s not at cost to others.

I’ve been feeling enormous discouragement. I’ve been working on myself for decades already, and I still struggle in such fundamental ways. I’ve had such clear visions for the world for so many years, and I don’t have a sense of having moved closer to accomplishing anything other than supporting individuals in having a better life for themselves. I’ve created an organization, and I don’t know how to influence it to be the shining force in the world that I long for it to be. I’ve articulated so clearly ways of working together with others to collaborate for everyone’s benefit and I haven’t had the significant effect I’ve wanted to have in supporting organizations to shift into this way of operating.

In all these areas, the gap between what I see as possible and what is actually happening is larger than my organism can tolerate and remain whole. On top of that, my fundamental way of operating is to be stretched slightly beyond capacity. I haven’t learned how to really and truly move from what I want, moment by moment. I have gotten much better at recognizing my limits, not at knowing what I want and trusting that I can go for it. Limits are not enough. I want to thrive. I don’t know how.

Then there is everything that’s larger than my own personal life. For as far back as I can remember I regularly fall into pits of despair about what’s happening in the world. At its most basic, the question that haunts me is this: How can we, collectively, continue to make choices that inflict so much suffering on so many people? I am not even sure which is more painful to me: those who don’t make the links between their actions and their effects, or those who are aware of the links and still make the choices. I personally fall more in the latter category. I delude myself, perhaps, by thinking that I inflict relatively little harm, and that I am dedicating my life to transforming the conditions that make such suffering possible. Still, in actual fact, I haven’t really done anything to reduce suffering in the world at the scale and in the places that matter to me most. Which then brings me back to the personal sense of inefficacy that I already spoke about.

Perhaps you can see, now, why it’s been difficult to know how to write. While all this has been going on inside, I’ve been immersed in an intensive family visit that was primarily joyous. My nephew Yannai had his Bar-Mitzvah, and we had family over from several states and from across the Atlantic. Then, on the tail end of that, I was completely engrossed in a major effort to find a drug that’s nationally out of stock in the US for my sister’s cancer treatment. Just keeping up with the activities of each day left me with no energy to wrestle with the difficulties inside me and find my way to write something.

Perhaps something is starting to shift, though I am far from certain. Two things happened in the last few days that give me some modicum of hope. One is that I am finding a readiness to create a new core practice for me: learning to identify what I want and make my daily choices based on that. Just as with the path of vulnerability, this will require many micro-steps. I won’t be able to jump start myself to where I want to be. It’s micro-steps that will get me there over time. I want to use any sign of knowing anything about what I want as a wake-up call, a mindfulness bell, that reminds me that I matter, that there’s room for me even if I can’t discern or experience it, that I am human like everyone else. The other occurrence which gives me hope is that in parallel with this insight I received a daily practice from a practitioner I see for bodywork. He suggested that I dedicate 10-15 minutes daily to wasting my time. I immediately saw the beauty and wisdom in this suggestion and decided to adopt it. Not even meditation, he said. Simply stopping any activity designed to create or contribute anything. The first day I managed to tear myself away from what I was doing, even despite the internal habitual chatter that suggested I finish first what I was doing. I knew better. I stopped, and I went and sat on the couch, and looked out my window on the sky, the birds, the houses across the street, and the hills extending up from the houses. I can see how within that fallow space of nothing a possible awakening of my knowing what I want can emerge. I know I want that.

15 thoughts on “Challenges in Real-Time

  1. Julie Lawrence

    Oh wow. That really spoke to me. It reminded me of how much more I want connection than answers. I connect with your confusion and pain here, and in that connection, I can start to find my own answers. Had you waited until you'd resolved something, then posted the "answer", I'd not have had that opportunity. Thank you. I really want to remember this lesson: that I don't have

    Reply
  2. Elkie

    This blog has touched me deeply.

    I'd love to share what it stirs up in me:

    Openness…transparency..

    The 'ruthlessness' of walking the talk…the courage it takes.

    The joy and the deep deep exhaustion that that walking of talking can lead too.

    And the relief and hope that can be found in just doing '

    Reply
  3. John Backman

    Miki, Julie, and Elkie,

    Your words and thoughts here are so penetrating that I hesitate to add to them; they resonate so deeply just as they are. I'll just add that this "personal sense of inefficacy" rears its head in my life too. Yesterday, after receiving another rejection of my (admittedly flawed) book proposal, I wondered whether I was devoting a large part of my

    Reply
  4. Andy

    Miki,
    I just wanted you to know that I'm here. I went through a myriad of emotions as I read your latest post, and normally, when I'm video-chatting with my empathy buddy, much of what is needed is just a knowing or a loving glance, when the other person is sharing their vulnerability… clearly, without the ability to share the glance, I wanted you to know that I have that look on

    Reply
  5. Cat

    Deep gratitude and resonance for what you have written. I am once again reminded of the power of vulnerability – especially in the moment that it is happening. A huge challenge for most of us, and the more so for those of us who teach and lead! Such an enormous gift to validate the unknowing we all (I believe) so often swim in. With you in my heart.
    Cat

    Reply
  6. kristin masters

    Like Andy, above, I seek to be a loving witness to the whole of you, of your sharing. I have of late been yearning for Miki time, largely because there is a sharedness to that longing to the experience of the gap between vision and what I can make happen.
    I also share the pattern of operating beyond capacity, and I love that you are willing to take on the practice of wasting time.

    Reply
  7. Rachel AB

    There is a lot that resonates in me from this post, as i have been struggling to figure out how i can make a dent in this culture that, in my observation, creates so much suffering. It often feels so overwhelming, so hopeless.

    There are a few things i am struggling to understand. I don't quite get the paragraph about there not being any room for you in the world. What i am

    Reply
  8. Taylor Duvall

    I want to sit in your lap Miki… Please read my inspiration below.

    Author & lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

    The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy

    Reply
  9. Sarah Proechel

    Hi Miki
    My experience as I read this is that you are demonstrating creating room/space for yourself in all your authenticity and uniqueness. I ask myself, "does she not see this or am I missing something?" You are putting out so much of yourself right here. I see so much courage here. And the more I see, the more I just fall in love with everything about you.

    For

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    Hi Miki 🙂

    I somehow hear how you long to "be" as you are rather than "do" things.

    Or long to be-long?

    How you struggle to find balance of "fully being you" with "us" and experience it as connection/flow?

    Wondering if you long for more models to inspire you to nurture your dreams? Maybe yearning to experience

    Reply
  11. Anonymous

    Miki, in this post I hear you describing an inner state that sounds like a lack of fulfillment, “inefficacy,” and a possible moving between depression and restlessness. Your message could, also, be suggesting, as I hear it, a disappointment in the “results” of your “path of vulnerability,” hence, your considering creating “a new core practice for me: learning to identify what I want and make my

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    I am moved to share two inspirations that come to mind when reading the post and comments:

    1) This week I was hiking in Watkins Glen, NY, and witnessed the loudest and most determined waterfall I've ever seen. Having been pounding against the rock walls for centuries, it has now carved out for itself a vast and beautiful gorge that twists and turns through the valley. I see the

    Reply
  13. Anonymous

    Nathaniel Branden has written extensively on this, in books such as Honoring the Self or The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.

    Feeling fundamentally unfit for life, along with having trouble identifying what we want, are consequences of growing up in an environment where we had little choice but to silence our own feelings and wants, out of fear of being rejected by our parents if we didn&#

    Reply
  14. Anonymous

    Thank you Miki, for sharing yourself with honesty.

    While there is no "remedy/quick fix", opening and feeling and knowing what you are feeling created a door of its own. It's a door into you.

    . . .and that has been, in my experience, the doorway to compassion and humble living–as one of the many who do not know much and certainly do not know enough to change

    Reply

PLEASE NOTE: If you write a really long comment, and the "Post Comment" button scrolls off the screen, you can get to it by pressing the tab key (on your keyboard) once you've finished typing your comment.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.