Taking Out Soul Insurance

Originally published in the Hidden Mountain Journal

One thing I am certain about is that we will be a lot better off in life if we recognize and accept the fact that some heavy things are inevitably going to happen. We are going to get sick. We are going to experience deep trauma. We are going to die.

Every great spiritual tradition recommends contemplating these facts of life. Every tradition teaches that cultivating awareness of the experience of these big issues is part of the path to awakening. To put it rather bluntly, any problem not attended to today will make an appointment with us at some later date. The Talmud recommends that after making a fearless inventory of ones life when facing critical problems, if no solution presents itself, then look toward the day of your death and awaken to your life.

The recommendation is that we can prepare ourselves and strengthen ourselves. Crisis and adversity are, it seems, cornerstones of spiritual healing. I call that taking out Soul Insurance.

Just how do you take out soul insurance? Soul insurance requires a willingness to make the initial down payment. Put simply, the down payment is our willingness to deal with and face our fears. It challenges us not to be immobilized by our fear. Fear is the immobilizer of growth and healing. We have to remember that fear flourishes and counts on our ability to avoid what frightens us. It makes us avoid being ourselves. It makes us avoid making contact with others.

But to arrive at the gate of our souls, we have to pass through the gate of fear. Granted, that is not a pleasant prospect but it seems if we can take a closer look at what we fear we think is coming, we can bring our anxiety into the present and, hopefully, to some degree disarm it. The notion is to make it less toxic and make us less reactive. And by all means not to let fear keep us from being who we are, need to be, and to reach those who need us.

We ought not let fear take us away from our caring and loving others. We ought not let fear immobilize us from giving others a hand. We ought not let fear stop us from bestowing kindness. We ought not let fear close us off from the world.

Gunshots and Poets

During the first half hour I was in the trauma hospital, I found myself lying on a gurney in the hallway of the Emergency Center. The hallway was loaded with people like me. Dozens of wounded. My first taste of triage (i.e., those of us not close to death) meant I got the hallway. We could wait; high-risk patients got immediate attention. I was lying next to a young man who was 15 or 16 years old. He had been shot in the stomach a few months back. He was hemorrhaging again and his mom brought him in for more surgery. The head of my gurney touched the head of his. We could not see each other, but we could talk.

Lying there, I experienced waves of first-class terror. I knew I had a rough road ahead. My pelvis was pulverized and shattered; my knee needed surgery. My right foot had all the tendons and ligaments smashed to hell. My head had a big gash and who-knows-what-else was bleeding or oozing on my body. I couldn’t take a look. I was afraid I was never going to walk. I had this gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach. It is an old familiar friend. I knew it would take a lot of work to make it go away.

My wife stood next to me for hours and held my hand. I had my anxiety and I had my love. A weird combination, but a truthful one. We spent a lot of time talking about how blessed we have been to be with each other this lifetime. It was a real heavy scene and a very juicy conversation.

If you wonder why at that time our topic was love, all I can say is that since I was waiting to be called to surgery, it seemed that it was the most meaningful conversation we could ever imagine. Love is, after all, the deepest topic I know. And we went with it. When everything is being pulled away from you in life, what is left is what means the most to you in life.

I have seen this time and time again when folks hit the bottom. It comes about when all your desperation and fear no longer are an option. It gets that way because when you are truly helpless and things are obviously so beyond your control, what surfaces is the depth of what counts in your life. In my life, the No. 1 item always on my list is my wife and kids, and then those around me. As my wife and I poured out our “love talk,” I lie there and we even laughed. The gunshot-wounded kid next to my head, out of nowhere, asked me a question.

He said, “Man, what kind of drugs do they got you on?

I replied, Are you asking ‘cause I am talking the ‘love talk’ with my wife, or because you want to know what they juiced me with? I can tell you my love is real without the shot of Demerol. What brought you in here today?

He sighed, I was shot in the gut a couple of months back. I used to weigh nearly 200 pounds. Now look at me. I have lost so much weight. Had my spleen taken out. Kept bleeding on my insides and was feeling real weak. My momma brought me in here again.”

Listening to him talk got me curious. For a moment I forgot where I was. Listening to him took me right back to the streets. His words were so familiar to me. The kid wanted to talk. In fact, he needed to talk. He picked me because he had eavesdropped into the warmth of our conversation and knew instinctively that anyone talking that talk and putting out that love was safe to engage. He grew up in, obviously, a dangerous neighborhood. He was scared. While he couldn’t see my face, he could sense our energy. He was in crisis and so we talked.

I asked him next, How did it happen? Who the hell shot you? I could hear him let out a long breath. It was ragged, painful and tinged with what I call “chatter breath.” You know, the breathing you get when you are ready to cry and let go.

I was shot going over to my girlfriends house. Someone shot me because I was in the wrong neighborhood. I was told to watch out when I visited her. But I mean, they shot me. Some gangbanger just pulled up and tried to do me in. He pumped one right into my stomach. I would have died right there if someone hadn’t 911’ed me and got me to this hospital.

I then asked him straight out, You don’t sound like a gangbanger. Are you one? Or did some son of a bitch crazy just try to take you out?

His mom piped right in, My son ain’t in no gang. He is a good boy. He goes to school.

Suddenly I realized we were right in the middle of an important conversation. I said right back, What a nightmare. Your son has been through such hell. How do you manage to keep it all together? By the way, my name is Yehudah and this is my wife, Ellie. I could say, pleased to meet you, except while I am pleased, this is the not exactly the place I had in mind to meet anyone.

They both laughed. The young man said, I’m Curtis and this is my mom. What kind of name is Yehudah?

I briefly gave him my bio and told him what my name was in Hebrew and what it meant spiritually. He simply said, Cool. I never met a rabbi, and I never met a Yehudah.

Our conversation went on for a while. Actually over an hour. We just laid there, head-to-head, talking. I learned, in that hour, a lot about this kid. He used to be athletic, muscular and powerful. He was on his high school basketball team. The bullet had taken away his muscles, his weight and basketball. He was in pain all the time and scared. He was afraid he was going to die. At one point he described exactly how he was shot. Every detail from the initial thud of the bullet that threw him off his feet, to the speeding car of gangbangers who drove away laughing. Every detail. Every sentence was pointed and lyrical.

My wife turned to him as he finished and said, “You know you sound like a poet. What you just said could have been written in an incredible poem. I immediately added, Curtis, do you write?

Suddenly the whole scene changed. His mom began to smile and cry. Curtis gritted his teeth and laughed. It seemed as if the whole emergency room went quiet. What really was happening is we had crossed a barrier and landed right in the middle of this kids heart. He was shot and I was shattered. We were lying head-to-head on gurneys and we touched into a place beyond bodies, pain and fear. It all dissolved in that instant. He began to tell me the deepest yearnings of his heart.

Right in that hallway, I met a kid named Curtis — 16 years old and a secret poet. My wife had picked up on his core. Only his mom knew of his love of poetry and his writing. Out of nowhere he began to recite poem after poem that he had written. He was prolific in his writing and had memorized every poem he ever wrote. After his poetry reading I said to his mother, Mom, you gotta take good care of your boy. He is poet with a deep heart. He is a writer. He speaks from his soul. He has to get better and you gotta make sure he keeps writing.

Affirming the Good in Life

OK, what was happening here? I guess you realize a lot. But what happened was that in this bizarre wounded emergency room world, four strangers met and two of the strangers (my wife and I) recognized and affirmed the deepest secret in a kids heart. A secret that no one else other than his mother knew about. It was the one secret that gave Curtis the key to his inner life. His poetry was the expression of his soul.

To have strangers affirm the most profound part of his life pushed him right past this fear and depression. It affirmed him as a person. He lived in a neighborhood where affirmations were dealt out through the barrel of a gun. Everything precious had to be hidden and kept out of harm’s way. The trouble is that living that way, the sacred treasures of the heart can get so hidden that they start to lose their power and their meaning. If you try to protect yourself too much you end up protecting yourself from yourself.

Curtis had a hard road ahead. So much for our breathing a sigh of relief when we hear, after a gun fight, that no one died. When the reports come in that people were just wounded, taken to the hospital for surgery, and then eventually released, I hope we realize that there is so much more to the story. Bullets tear up your insides. The body most likely is never the same.

To heal, you need your soul and your heart. We also I suspect need others. Our brief meeting in an emergency trauma center affirmed a kids heart. A few minutes later they came and got Curtis. He went off to surgery. Right before he left he reached over and held my hand. I said to him, Don’t take what went down here as something that was just random. In a weird way, and I mean weird, we were meant to have this conversation. You got talent and soul. You don’t have to be afraid. The road ahead may be long and hard, but bring your words and your poems to heal you. Bring meaning to the nightmare of your neighborhood. And share it, Curtis. It is good. It touched me. It is you.

He just squeezed my hand real hard. His mother gave my wife a big hug. She, too, took my hand. She had tears in her eyes. I added, Momma, you have a good boy. You have raised him right. I bless you that you keep him on the right track and you keep him writing. Get him through high school. Send him to college. You know you can do it.

I never saw Curtis or his mom again. He is another kid I will carry in my heart the rest of my life. For a couple of hours in the Twilight Zone of my life, I once again affirmed that wherever we are and whatever might be happening, we can pay attention to life and what life wants of us each moment. For that little time, I forgot how hurt I was. I forgot my fear.

I remembered how special each person is in this world. I remembered how important it is to care. I remembered in my mind that God is everywhere and available in every moment.

Giving to others is one way to let go of fear. Giving takes us away from living trapped in the endless loops of our anxiety. And even if the fear returns — and it surely does for most of us — knowing that we can still care in the middle of our own nightmares is about as strong a spiritual statement as we can make about our life.

My accident continually teaches me that to understand I have to live in harmony with my heart. One way to find that harmony for me is knowing that I had to face my fears. And facing fear sometimes means pushing past our fears and doing something righteous and good. Spiritual life begins with understanding, encountering, and dealing with fear and suffering.

Fear after, all is, that which stifles our spiritual growth in life. Fear pushes us away from the Self. Fear also prevents us from taking risks to grow and experience life. It is the obstacle that stands in the way of healing. Healing, by the way, doesn’t mean necessarily healing of the body. It does, though, mean healing the heart.

Pain and Fear as the Teacher

Oftentimes as I lay in my hospital bed and thought about the real possibility that I never would walk again, I realized as long as I was afraid of being wheelchair-bound, I was afraid of envisioning and seeing my life. Not just life in a wheelchair, but my life in its entirety. Oftentimes as I lay in bed, I was in limbo and did not have any answers to many questions that surfaced. I confess that that was really scary. My quandary was brought on by my fear of being incapacitated. I couldn’t move without help and every attempt to move brought on more pain. I wondered how long this would go on.

My previous encounters with pain in general were intense, but did not last for days and weeks on end. Having my body crushed brought on a whole new awareness of pain — the intense variety of long duration. I had no real experience of constant pain that wears you down. Literally, it wore me down. Even with good pain management, it was always there, gnawing at my insides, demanding my attention and continually quietly clawing at my insides day and night.

In time, I learned that pain is an astounding teacher. And in order to deal with the pain that is beyond what medication can touch, I had to cultivate and differentiate different levels and parts of awareness within me. I very much relied on a technique that I learned from various Hassidic masters. The technique called Hisbonnenut (Contemplative Meditation) or Hashkatah, (Silencing The Conscious Mind) allowed me to focus my attention more toward the consciousness of my soul rather than my everyday conscious ego experience. I learned through time that that is where the pain takes up residence. And that the deeper I experienced my pain and fear the more I saw that it clouded my conscious awareness which included the view I had of me and the world, and the view I held of myself when I thought I was in control.

Obviously, I reached a point where living with pain and fear was intolerable. It took away my equanimity and challenged my clarity. I had to do something with my life that was now in the category of “things I could not change.

Hisbonnenut went from teachings that I always found interesting and that I had even worked with to taking what I had learned from Masters and really putting it into practice.

This is what I mean — that pain and fear are the teachers. There was no way I could avoid their message. It was, after all, a 24-hour-a-day message. So, on one side of me I had the message grinding a way at me. On the other side, I had spiritual practices that I had known about for years that now had to come off the practice shelf and be brought onto the field of life.

The beauty of being caught in the middle of this is that I was faced with what I love to call the only alternative and its other possibilities. I had to face this challenge alone, as I am certain those of you reading this who have been down a similar path know so very well. There really comes a time in life when things in the fear and/or pain department become so stretched that you have to act. There is no other choice. In fact, you have run out of options. You know — you tried everything. The only way out, then, is up.