The World Has Changed (46 page)

 

M.S.: You are such a hard worker—as a tireless activist, as a prolific writer, speaker—how do you keep yourself motivated? What is the source of your energy?

 

A.W.: Love. I have a lot of love. And I think that I’m by nature a revolutionary. Some say all Aquarians are. Even Ronald Reagan thought he was one! And I feel very keenly that things could be so much better for so many more people and for so many more creatures, and for the earth; I just know that. I just know it can be better. And that people have it in them to rise to that. I know they do. And sometimes it’s just a matter of touching that place that can be opened to the reality that, you know, we can do so much more than we think we can. My deepest desire is for people and the world to be happy. I will always believe this is possible and seek to learn how I can contribute. I have felt deeply blessed to have the vehicle of words, of voice.

 

M.S.: Women often struggle with getting older. How can we help women embrace the aging process and value their role as elders and a source of wisdom and power in our society?

 

A.W.: Well, I was just thinking about that this morning because I was thinking about how—I didn’t follow this, but apparently Bill Cosby made some comment about something like, black people should take more responsibility for their predicament and the choices and ways of their children and everything, and he was roundly attacked. He was really attacked, and I think several people actually wrote books about how he dare not say such things. And I was thinking about how, actually elders—and this has been traditionally true in most cultures and still is in many cultures today—elders really need to be listened to respectfully. Even if you don’t agree. They really don’t need to be attacked. You know, you can giggle at them and kind of ridicule them—maybe not to their face; I mean, I wouldn’t do that. You can let it be known that you don’t agree with them. But I think that the disrespect of actually
attacking an elder who is obviously trying to bring some kind of light—I think that’s not a good thing. And then elders have to be willing to assume the role of the person who gets to speak about society and where it seems to be going and what it needs. And because everybody in our society up to now has been trying to stay thirty, there’s a problem with people knowing how to be, and how to speak, and how to take on the role of the person who can actually speak to the young with some kind of integrity. So this is shifting, I think. And I think the war has called out many of the people into that role, who otherwise might not have gotten there.

 

M.S.: On the opposite spectrum, Amy Richards, who is one of the founders of
feminist.com
and does the “Ask Amy” column at our site, also co-founded Third Wave, an organization for young feminists, with your daughter. What do you think about the younger generations of women today?

 

A.W.: Well, they seem to be doing fine. I have to say that I’m not just noticing in that way, but the ones that come across my path, I think they seem really alert. In fact, let me just be specific—at a local college here, Mills College, there is a group of women who founded a journal called
The Womanist
and they came to tea last month. And we had a great time and they all seem so feminist, so alive, so alert, so into whatever they are doing. So I felt very happy that those of us who are older and who have blazed some of the trails, that we did that, because I could see that these younger women are determined to have their own lives, and they just take it for granted that “Yes, of course, I am going to do this, I am going to do that.” So in that way, I think that they are doing really well.

 

M.S.: One of the big issues for women these days seems to be creating balance. How do you do that?

 

A.W.: I spend a lot of time, or as much as I can, in silence. And at home. And more and more as time goes by. I think all this zipping around the world is overrated. In fact, I did a year of studying medicinal plants. And one of them was ayahuasca, a medicine from the Amazon that people have used for thousands and thousands of years. And one of the
things that I’ve learned was that I needed myself to be more rooted. And so I’ve been working on that. I feel that has been so helpful to me—to cut out movement wherever possible, instead of going here and there all the time. Talking a lot less—really talking a lot less. Being much slower, and much more grounded with my animals, the animals I live with, with my friends. Staying extremely simple. Dancing more too. Just learning to really, really love the ordinary—you know, that nice well-made bowl of oatmeal in the morning and walking with my dog—just what is ordinary. What is simple and true.

 

M.S.: I have also read a few interviews in which you talk about the spiritual practices that have most helped you, like tonglen and meditation. Can you tell us more about the practices that have served you in your life?

 

A.W.: Well, I learned Transcendental Meditation when I lived in New York and after a divorce. And it was so much like the way I had lived as a little child, which was just completely merged with nature. So much so that I didn’t know I wasn’t the tree I was looking at, you know? It was just a complete oneness—that sense of oneness and the ego goes somewhere else temporarily. And so that became the foundation of how I could move through the world, do my work, balance raising a child and being on the road a lot—out of necessity, really, making a living—teaching. And I have maintained some form of meditation, yoga, a lot of walking. Tonglen, which I learned some years ago, because it’s a practice that, thanks to Pema Chödrön, we get from these amazing, ancient Tibetans who figured it all out. That you don’t have to just drown in your sorrow and pain, that you can actually learn to live with it and to accept it and to take it in, make your heart really super, super big to hold it, and then to send out to yourself and to the world whatever it is that you would prefer. And lo and behold, I found that the practice worked.

And in general I find that the practices like Native American drumming, for instance, which I also do, chanting, sweats—all of these things really help us. I also am very fond of the
Motherpeace Tarot
deck and have used it for, I don’t know, as long as it’s been in existence I guess. And also the
I Ching.
The
I Ching
I consider one of the great, mysterious, magical gifts to humanity. It is such a divine oracle, it comes close to being a living being, like a tree or something.

 

M.S.: You write and talk a lot about the role of personal transformation. Obviously in your life you’ve been able to overcome a lot of the hardships that you’ve faced. Is part of this learning to find the blessings and lessons during times of adversity and crisis, to use them as a fuel for personal and spiritual growth?

 

A.W.: Well, what else would you do with it? I mean, sometimes these blows are so severe that you just think, “Well, it’s not about whether I deserved it, it’s just that that’s what’s happening.” And since that’s what’s happening, what do you do with it? And so I have, you know, as the years have gone on, really gotten to that place where I do say to myself, “Well, wow—I bet I’m going to learn something pretty amazing right here, because this is so painful. Or this is so strange.” And that has been true!

 

M.S.: I’ve read that you wouldn’t necessarily call yourself a Buddhist per se, since it seems that you enjoy the wisdom from a lot of different traditions, but something about Buddhism has been very helpful and appealing for you. How do you see Buddhism’s relevance in today’s world? There seems to be a growing interest in the Buddhist teachings.

 

A.W.: I think it’s because Buddhism makes so much sense. It is the most sensible thing. And because it works in its sort of prescriptions. I mean, like, for instance if you have the dharma—you know, you have the teachings, which are extraordinary. You have Buddha as a symbol and as a model for how to strike out to find your truth. And then you have the sangha, which is your circle of friends, who get together regularly to support each other. Well, you know, that right there is major. Because the teachings are just invaluable. You know, the things that we are learning through Buddhist teachings, just about how to work with the human heart, with human emotions. I mean, just the idea to finally get it that, yeah, everything is changing, everything is impermanent, it comes and it goes. You sit there in meditation and you just witness that. You see. And you lose a lot of your stress because you know that, okay, if I just am with this, it’s going away. And so I think it’s a wonderful thing. I love it. I just love it. It’s a wonderful gift to us.

Think of what humanity would have lost if Tibetan Buddhism had been destroyed. And how many cultural and spiritual gifts we lose
because they are destroyed. In both the human and then animal realms. Realizing the value of what other branches of humanity offer the human collective could motivate us to change how we relate to whatever is perceived as strange.

 

M.S.: As an artist, how is your spiritual energy connected to the experience of writing? When you’re writing, do you feel like your ability is from a higher source, is that where your inspiration feels like it comes from?

 

A.W.: Well, if you take the position that all is the higher source, you know, all is God, all is light, all is love, all is what is—then you just feel like this little part of it, that’s doing your part. You’re doing your little jig.

 

M.S.: There’s an old hippie saying about having the “juice” or being “juicy”—when you’re in the flow, or flowing with the magic of the universe....

 

A.W.: I always liked hippies. Sometimes they seemed a little shallow but I could really understand it [laughs]. I could almost always relate. They were certainly, partly because of their use of the plant medicine marijuana, very different, startlingly so, from their usually very white, un-medicated parents [laughs]. Racism needs a medicine, you know. Greed. Envy. Superiority of any kind. They all need a medicine, and plant medicines are sometimes very helpful. Hippies were very good for the white race in general and did a lot to make the world more trustful of it. But then they were crushed, as a movement, as so many of the rest of us were.

 

M.S.: There seems to be a growing awareness of how our inner reality is connected to our outer reality, even in the fact people are coming to Buddhism maybe because the suffering is so much....

 

A.W.: Yeah, that will get them in. [laughs]

 

M.S.: Do you see humanity as evolving? What do you believe is the next step in our evolution in terms of humanity’s consciousness?

 

A.W.: Well, I would like to believe it is that all creatures have the right to live without fear. And without fear of being eaten, for instance. And that’s a real hard one because we have been addicted to meat, to animals as meat, you know. And I struggle with that myself, and I think most people do. But I do really believe that is where we’re headed—that if we do survive as a species, we will get it. That we are no more precious than the rest of the species on Earth.

 

M.S.: I struggle sometimes with the notion of organized religion and how it relates to spirituality—and that so much of the wars and intolerance in the world are over religion. What is your view of the role of religion in the world today?

 

A.W.: Well, I think that some of it is self-destructing, because it’s basically set up to be that way. I mean, when you have religions that don’t like other religions and “my God is better than your God” and “your God is actually wrong.” And then the foundation of so much of the patriarchal religion is the destruction of the goddess worship that was before it, and the destruction of the feminine. Which would have to mean not a good future for them, for the patriarchal religions in the long run, I mean the very long run, as it’s turned out. Because you know, the feminine actually has to rise again, because, you know, we are here—the feminine exists. It is what is keeping them (and all of us) going. A world without the feminine is a dead world.

So I think that for many of us, what has happened is that we have perhaps taken some parts of the religions we were raised in, and we have incorporated them into our belief systems—with gratitude. You know, like the teachings of Jesus I really love, and I love
The Gnostic Gospels
and the Nag Hammadi scrolls, sermons, or whatever you call them, parables I guess. But we’re making a new religion. Religion is going to be more self-styled. It’s going to be less and less a group thing, because we’re all taking from various traditions, and we’re all also open to divinity just as who we are! It’s a very one-on-one kind of thing. And once you realize that you are just part of the whole thing, then you just kind of worship that, and yourself, and everything—all is one.

 

M.S.: So many of us feel like we’ve been “wronged” in some way. What’s the importance of forgiveness and the healing process for that?

 

A.W.: Well, it’s one of the hardest things to do, but it’s really necessary. Without forgiving, you don’t really move—you can’t. It’s like this little prison that you’re in. And it’s so painful, because you feel like you don’t deserve to be in prison, it wasn’t your fault. And how dare you have to forgive these horrible people? But actually, you do. And that’s a good place for tonglen practice.

 

M.S.: You have written a lot about humanity as one family. Are you optimistic that humanity will ever live as one family here on planet Earth?

 

A.W.: It could. I mean, that’s about what I would say—that it very well could, and why not? Yes. I think people can do it. I think people have to believe more in themselves. For some reason, and you know we can find many reasons, people have lost faith in their ability to live the higher truth of interconnectedness and family.