The Nest in the Stream

by Michael Kearney MD

  As I squatted there, looking at the nest with the water flowing through, I became aware of a loosening in my torso and limbs. I imagined water flowing through me. I felt like I was being washed clean, as though I were letting go of something heavy that I had been carrying around for a long time.

  Before I left, I poured the glass of water on the ground and dropped the tobacco in the stream in gratitude. When I returned, Wolf and Lisa and everyone else were already sitting in a circle under the oaks. We each shared our stories. The image of the nest in the stream, with the water flowing through it, and the phrase “the loose and open weave of the heart” stayed with me all through that night.

  The nest in the stream speaks to me of a way of being that is deeply receptive. Our hearts pump, but only after they have opened their atria wide to receive the body’s blood. Receptivity is neither a feminine nor a masculine quality. It is how our heart is in its most relaxed state. Our hearts are designed to receive before they pump, and our lives depend on this happening.

  It is important to distinguish between receptivity and passivity. Passivity suggests defeat and may have negative connotations, especially to those who have been on the receiving end of abusive power relationships. Receptivity, on the other hand, implies a conscious choice. Choosing an attitude of receptivity, choosing to open our hearts wide, and to keep them open, even in the face of suffering, is a courageous and powerful way of meeting the world.

  John Moriarty speaks eloquently about this. He describes this stance as “A new kind of heroism.” He says, “A hero like Cuchulainn isn’t what we need. We need another kind of hero altogether….A hero now isn’t someone who goes out and fights the sea….The hero now isn’t someone who wields a sword—it’s someone who puts down his sword and lets nature happen to him.”1 The new kind of hero is one who faces life with an open and receptive heart.

  In watching the nest in the stream, I began to understand the relationship between receptivity and compassionate action. As the heart opens, receives, and swells, before it pumps, so the impulse to act is born in receptivity. When we come into the state of being that is deep receptivity, the impulse for compassionate action emerges, spontaneously. Bernie Glassman, author and founder of Zen Peacemakers, writes:

  When we bear witness, when we become the situation—homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death—the right action arises by itself. We don’t have to worry about what to do. We don’t have to figure out solutions ahead of time. Peacemaking is the function of bearing witness. Once we listen with our entire body and mind, loving action arises.2

  I am reminded of a teaching from my root tradition that continues to be full of significance for me. The angel Gabriel has just announced to the Virgin Mary that she is to give birth to a child who will be the messiah for whom Israel is waiting. I imagine Mary pausing. I imagine her head saying, “That’s impossible!” and her heart saying, “What if?” I imagine her confusion. I imagine the moment that she chooses to trust as she opens to the silence between the words, and I hear her reply, “Let what you have said be done unto me.” In consciously opening to the flow of what is, the miraculous happens.

  The nest in the stream brings me into a new sense of self. I had always considered myself to have substance and solidity, and despite the changes that came with time, a certain continuity and permanence. Now, as I watched the stream flowing through the nest, I began to understand that this is not how it is. On their own, the nest is just a nest and the stream is just a stream. Together, they form an image of temporary solidity in fluidity. I realize that I too am a transient pattern in change, and I wonder if this is what the Buddha meant when he spoke of “no-self” and “impermanence”: that while there is “no-separate-solid-permanent-self” there is self-as-change, self-as-relationship; self-as-flow-through.

  Above all, the nest in the stream teaches me a new way of being with pain; my own, the pain of others, and our world’s. I have come to see that there are different elements to this teaching that interweave with one another. The first of these is that the nest is in the stream. The nest is not in the branches of the sycamore above the stream, where, in a sense, it belongs. It’s in the stream, which is unusual and like an out-of-context dream image, calls particular attention to itself. The nest in the stream shows me how I am inextricably connected with the rest of nature. It speaks of how, in my deepest identity, I am immersed in the flow of life. The nest’s being in the stream tells me that it begins by my realizing this, by my remembering this, by my experiencing this.

  When I look more closely, I see that the water is flowing through the nest. I recognize this is only possible because the nest itself, how it is structured, allows this to happen. The teaching I receive here is about opening to the pain that I am feeling; not just being present to it, but consciously, and as deliberately as a buffalo with an approaching storm, turning to face it, head on, and, as I do this, letting it flow into me. As the water continues to flow through the nest, I understand this is not just about being receptive to the pain but also about allowing myself to feel it. This is about experiencing in my body what Eugene Gendlin calls “the felt sense” of the pain.3 This is about suffering my suffering.

  When I step back, I notice the bigger, deeper stream that is flowing over and between the rocks upstream and downstream and to either side of the nest. I see that the essence of the stream is in its always flowing; it’s always flowing through. And, as I see this, I hear an invitation not to cling to my pain, not to ruminate on the narrative of who is to blame and what this pain is about, but instead, to return, again and again if necessary, to the felt-sense of the pain, and then, to release it, to surrender it, to let it go, to the always flowing through of the deeper stream.

  Finally, as I expand my awareness further still, I see that the stream is flowing into the river, and the river is flowing into the ocean, and the ocean is rising as clouds, and the clouds are falling as rain, and that the rain has, once again, become the stream; that all is flow, that all is flowing-through. I understand then what Wolf means when he says that pain is energy, and the energy that is our pain does not belong to us; when we unconditionally release our pain to the Earth, we are releasing energy back into the great creative cycling that is life. I see now that I do not have to hold onto my pain, that I can let it go to the deeper stream, and I can do so in the hope it may be of benefit to others in a way I cannot see or imagine, and will never know.

  What this looks like in practice is that I begin by paying attention to the breath, to the sensations of the breath stream, which allows me to experience the flow of inner nature connection. It means honoring whatever pain I am feeling just then, by letting it be as it is, not trying to change it in any way. It means opening to the pain with the inhale, and for just a few moments, lingering with the felt-sense of the pain in my body, however I am registering it. Then—and this is especially challenging for me—it means unconditionally releasing the pain, letting it go with the exhale, to the bigger, deeper flowing through.

  The other day I sat with a young woman, Jo, who is dying of ovarian cancer. She was feeling very fatigued and was frustrated by this and her lack of independence. As I was sitting by her bedside in her room the hospice, I looked out the window at the coastal oaks, at the hummingbirds coming to drink at the nearby fountain, the juncos picking on the ground nearby, and among the branches of the oak, the blueness of the sky. I mused out loud how wonderful it would be if we could just plug into this incredibly creative, interflowing, co-arising energy that is nature. I told Jo how I found that sometimes the simple act of paying attention to other-than-human nature with all my senses enabled me to do this. When I had finished speaking, she looked at me in silence for a few seconds. Then she said, “No offense, but I think that’s bullshit.”

  I smarted at this, and pulled back into myself. I struggled to find my feet, and my voice. I acknowledged to Jo that I understood that my approach may not be her
way. I asked her what energized her, what restored her spirit. How and where did she find peace in times of chaos? Jo began to talk about her daughter, with whom she was very close. “If only she would spend more time with me. It seems to be too hard for her. I guess she’s doing the best she can,” she said.

  As I listened, I felt for Jo in her loneliness and grief. I was aware that I still had some hurt feelings from being rebuffed in my earlier attempts to help. I brought my awareness inwards to the sensations of my breath. Then I turned my awareness to what I was feeling, and for a few moments, I allowed myself to experience what this felt like in my body. Breathing in, I opened up; breathing out, I consciously let my feelings of discomfort go. I continued to breathe in this way; opening with the inhale, letting go with the exhale. Jo was quietly weeping now. I reached out with my left hand and placed it on her foot. For a little while, we sat there like that in silence.

  Once again, I see how frightened I am of pain and how I have always done everything I can to avoid it. My career of “managing pain” has allowed me to come close to the suffering of others but always from a position of power and expertise. I see how, over time, I have paid a price for this. The short-term comfort of being protected from what was messy and uncomfortable has given way over time to a pervasive sense of disconnection and isolation and, with this, low-grade unhappiness and burnout.

  The nest in the stream offers a radically different teaching. It suggests that I do not have to be so defended any more. It offers me a way of holding my pain that is not so self-protective. “Let suffering happen to you,” it whispers. “Allow it in. Feel it as it washes through. And then, let it go to the deeper flow of life. This will bring you out of isolation and into connection.”

  When we are in pain, we tend to pull back, to contract, to cut off, to curl up in a ball and separate ourselves from others. But pain in isolation is the definition of suffering. Pain that is trapped in an isolated system, such as when we are ruminating on our hurt feelings, is perpetuating itself, and only making things worse. The paradoxical teaching of the nest in the stream is that turning toward, opening to, feeling with, and then letting go of our pain brings us back into connection, back into relationship, back into an open living system—and this changes everything.

  I can see how the nest in the stream could, at first glance, appear to be the wrong medicine for someone who already feels overwhelmed by pain. After all, the prescription involves opening to, allowing in, and being with what already feels like “too much.” But pain that we resist, or that we try to contain with our own effort, intensifies and becomes an even greater threat.

  The key is in our capacity to choose. Jung says, “Don’t drown. Dive!”4 By choosing to open to and experience my pain, and by then choosing to release my pain to the flowing through, I paradoxically find myself empowered rather than weakened. Yes, at first I may feel the pain more intensely than I did before, but then I notice a subtle yet significant change; the pain has somehow lost its sting, and I am now more awake, more alive, and more connected.

  As I learn from the nest in the stream that my deeper identity is to be a flow-through to life, with all that this brings, I experience a lightness of being. Before, it felt as though it was all up to me. It was my responsibility to manage someone else’s pain in whatever way I could, and that brought a certain heaviness on on my shoulders. The nest in the stream teaches me that while it is still my responsibility to do what I can to help and to hold another’s pain, my even greater charge is to be with my own pain, and, ultimately, to surrender the energy that is my pain to the deeper currents that are flowing through my life, in the hope that this will somehow be of benefit to others. It is such a relief to know that it’s not all up to me. I still do all I can to ease others’ pain. I still suffer my suffering in the face of another’s pain, but it does not end there. I do what I do in the spirit and practice of letting be and letting go to the flowing through that I am immersed in and that is happening naturally, without any volition on my part, and without an expectation of a particular outcome.

  This morning as I was out running, I noticed as if for the first time how much harder it is to run uphill than it is to run downhill. I thought, “This is because, when I’m running downhill, I’m running with gravity. That’s what makes it easier.” With this thought I flashed back to the nest in the stream, and saw that the water would not be flowing through without gravity; gravity is the invisible dynamic of the nest in the stream.

  Surrendering to gravity allows life to flow through us. At the deepest level, we don’t have to do anything. The water is already flowing through all by itself. The flowing through is how it is, how we are, in our deepest nature. What we can do is to wake up to this, to remember this, and with our great yes, to consciously realign ourselves with what is already happening. As we do this, we open the floodgates of compassion as we too become nests in the stream.

  In the weeks after this encounter, I went back occasionally to visit the creek and to check to see if the nest was still there. Each time I did, I found it more waterlogged and worn. It had by then sunk to the bottom of the pool and the coils of twigs were bare. Eventually, the few remaining bigger weaves began to loosen and fall apart, until one day when I visited, the pool was empty.

  FIFTH

  UP ON THE HILL

  Wolf and Lisa describe the vision quest as the most “intensely personal” of all Native American ceremonies. How the vision quest is conducted varies with different traditions. What is common to all is that the ceremony involves a time of waiting and fasting on the land, alone, while “crying for a vision.”

  After attending sweat lodge ceremonies for some time, I offered Wolf tobacco and asked him if he would consider putting me “up on the hill” on vision quest. We spoke for a while about why I wanted to do this. I said, “I have a longing in my heart to be close to the Earth.” He looked at me silently for a few moments before we shook hands as he accepted the pouch of tobacco I was offering.

  With Wolf and Lisa’s detailed instructions, I prepared for my vision quest with a group of five others over the following six months. The preparation included making a specified number of “prayer-ties”—pinches of tobacco in small squares of cotton—in each of the colors of the four directions. Each tie was made while burning sage and offering an individual prayer intention. Later, the prayer-ties would be laid out sun-wise on a bed of mountain sage to surround me during my time on the hill.

  I was nervous about the fasting: no food or water for four days. Previous experience with kidney stones and my medical training told me that this may not be the smartest thing to do. I was reassured when Lisa later told me that she and Wolf, and their elders, had supported a great many vision quests for two generations without any mishap. She pointed out that ordinary people have been doing this for thousands of years. Wolf added, “If it’s too hard, you come down. But the fasting is important. It’s what drives the prayer.”

  The day before going on the hill, I gathered mountain sage in the high desert with my fellow questers, to be used as groundcover in our “altar,” the small rectangular space marked by four willow staffs at each corner where we would be during our fast. This was a day of eating and drinking and making lastminute preparations. It included instruction from Wolf and Lisa on how to tie the six, large prayer-ties called “prayer flags,” and a special prayer flag called “The Red Blanket.” As we worked, Wolf told us, “The flags are powerful offerings to the grandfathers of the four directions, and to Mother Earth, and Father Sky. An especially powerful spirit is attracted to the Red Blanket. That particular spirit only has permission to pick up prayers that affect large groups of individuals. It’s a prayer for the people.”

  At sunrise the following morning, Wolf led us in two rounds of a “dust off” sweat. This was a deliberately mild sweat so we would not lose body water as we began our fast. We six vision questers were in the honor seat in the west, directly opposite th
e door. Wolf was sitting at his usual spot just north of the door. He told us: “During life there’s a cord of connection between body and spirit, but at the moment of death the cord is severed. If it’s a sudden death the cord breaks abruptly. If it’s a gradual death it’s a more lingering process; then the cord gradually disintegrates with little pieces breaking off over time. This attracts the attention of the ancestors.”

  “When you begin your fast,” Wolf continued, “You’re beginning the dying process. As far as I know, we two-leggeds are the only animals that voluntarily choose to give up water. So we enter this dying state in order to attract the attention of the spirits. We have been doing it this way for thousands of years because it works and because we don’t know of a better way of coming into that state of being we call prayer. The spirits pay attention. They come and notice what’s going on. There’s a spirit to attend to each of your prayer-ties.”

  Before we had entered the lodge, we had filled our sacred pipes and left them on the altar outside. As we left the lodge, we were instructed to pick up our sacred pipe and to hold its red bowl in our left hand to our chest, while holding the stem in our right hand pointing diagonally upward and away. We were then led the mile or so into the backcountry to our altars. Wolf came to where I was kneeling on the ground in my altar with the sacred pipe in my hands. He put a blanket around me and then, squatting beside me with an arm around my shoulder, he said a prayer for me and left.

  I was on my own. Slowly I looked around. I was in a grove of scrub oaks through which I could glimpse the mountains on the far side of the valley. Holding my sacred pipe, I knelt on a bed of mountain sage surrounded on all sides by the hundreds of brightly colored prayer-ties. It was exquisitely beautiful. After all the months of preparation, I had arrived. A wave of exhaustion swept through me. I laid the sacred pipe on the altar, a small mound of sage in the corner, unrolled my sleeping bag, and crawled into it. I slept for several hours.