Finding Refuge in The Storm

I’m not sure about you but I’ve always been a bit confused by the word retirement but gratefully, I grew into an understanding that it can mean a place of refuge, a place of shelter, perhaps even a golden sanctuary where everything can finally be complete or fulfilled, it’s not so much a hideout but more a safe place to anchor nearer to the end. Conversely, a traffic island on a busy highway could be considered a safe refuge from impending danger or a dishonest person accused of deceit could take refuge in a lie in order to hide their bad behaviour. Safety is therefore relevant to our conditions, connected to feelings and one’s own defence mechanisms, to whatever you’re dealing with right now, the very matter at hand. 

Refuge can often be misinterpreted as an archaic term only related to someone entering the priesthood or monastery for religious solitude or contemplation. But increasingly, the pressures from our modern society are moving us into places of great anxiety where uncertainty now rules the game. So how does an everyday person go about finding some cover from the deluge that’s coming, is there a place where I can be invulnerable, even immortal? By definition, taking refuge would indicate some danger or trouble brewing that requires sanctuary in the first place.

If you’re sitting here feeling anxious it’s more than likely you don’t notice its power; the power to stop us from taking any meaningful action. There are so many layers to it and we fail to see how our actions or otherwise can shift the course of our future.  If you had 100 head of cattle you would probably worry about them being safe and kept in healthy condition, in fact, this valuable asset may keep you up at night worrying about where the price of beef will land. Perhaps you have no cows at all and you lay awake dreaming about how to get some because you believe this herd will do the trick i.e. make you happy and wealthy all at the same time. Where does it all stop, what then can I depend on to become immortal? Are my cows the final refuge?

We should begin to observe our thinking if we want to understand this behaviour. Are we standing on the wrong foot when entering our golden years, sunk up to our ear lobes worrying about things that ultimately have no substance and no place for refuge or peace of mind? How do we find our real hearts, the seat of our emotions – but how rarely do we look there to see what’s going on? What if I spend my whole day trading shares or cleaning my house, trimming my lovely lawn but failing to see the unhappy expression on my face or not noticing how uneasy my heart is at his particular moment, those complicated feelings that arise, no matter how hard I try to clean and polish them away it’s only ever temporary. Our lack of understanding means we don’t know what to do when they arise. So then, is mowing the lawn your refuge?

No one says any of this is easy, the world we are moving into is an increasingly tiresome challenge but if we continue to add layers of emotions for protection then we will inevitably move away from the heart and into the mind, which is where we seek the approval of others, where we measure our worth up against friends and colleagues, where we wonder if we’re smart enough to be successful and good enough to make enough money to survive. It’s an old story we keep telling ourselves and we have become so sidetracked by a society that tells us what works and what doesn’t that in the end, we have no idea where we’re supposed to be headed.  Unfortunately for many, it’s looking more and more like that story needs to be heavily redacted or strongly edited if any we’re looking for a happy ending.

“Retire from work, not from life”

Unknown

Consider this matter “ Who am I and Why am I here? “ These are some of the things we might contemplate while we still have some vigour about us. True refuge is always close but like anything, we need to develop new practices if we hope to create a bunch of new habits. Most men and women say the same thing “ I’ll wait until I get old for my burden to be lifted “ Any contemplative human being will already sense that within our deepest intuition lies the truth, the vastness of the sacred, just waiting for the spotlight to be shined on it and this has nothing to do with age or being ‘fed up with the world’.

Our own judgements have covered up so much that we never know when enough will be enough, it’s become a maddening spiral of just enduring to achieve something that we can’t even define. This life is not a business and we don’t need to develop a ‘mission statement’ we only need to pause long enough to allow ourselves to gaze briefly from the window, seeking a view of the distant mountains that makes our hearts swell, we could find our minds becoming silent, our criticisms and judgement falling behind us and the very presence of the moment enough to be truly ourselves, our true refuge.