Shattered Love

by Richard Chamberlain

  DEPENDENCY, FEAR, AND HAPPINESS

  One night I was quite tired when I went to bed and expected to fall asleep easily. The night was cool and silent, the bed soft and enfolding. Oblivion beckoned pleasantly. But I started thinking about a business problem, a confrontation concerning an unfair contract that I’d scheduled for the morning. Immediately I felt confused, anxious, and fearful. The possibility of sleep vanished.

  So I switched on the light and picked up the nearest book, which happened to be The Impossible Question by J. Krishnamurti. I opened it and found by happy chance a discussion of fear and the process of self-awareness.

  Krishnamurti was describing each individual life as swiftly alive, ever changing, vital, always new. Our fixed self-image is an idea, a concept, not the real thing. Knowing one’s self is not a matter of accumulating knowledge as memory, which is always of the past, but of deeply observing one’s self right now, of seeing who we are each moment.

  He suggested to his listeners (which included me as I was reading) that we look at our fear—not our memories of fear or our ideas about fear, but whatever fears we feel at this very moment—and that we look into the effects of our present fear and also its causes.

  So I quit dithering about the imminent confrontation with this greedy producer and did just that. It was immediately apparent to me that I was intimidated by the necessity of dealing with this overbearing guy and his one-sided contract because I hadn’t yet clearly thought out the deal I wanted. I was feeling victimized by a document that I now realized I had the power to rewrite according to my needs. I went to my office, typed up a statement of terms I thought were fair to both parties, and returned to the warmth of my bed with a quiet mind. Sleep was sweet. The next day we both signed my version of the contract.

  This is an example of dealing sensibly with a particular instance of fear. Dealing with the whole question of fear requires deeper inquiry.

  Threats to one’s physical survival—the hiss of a poisonous snake, being awakened by the smell of smoke, an onrushing truck—engender fears that are natural and vital. They provoke immediate action.

  Or almost immediate. Once I was playing the part of Frederick Cook in a television movie about the race of Cook and Peary to be the first man to discover the North Pole (Rod Steiger played Peary). We were shooting the film in northern Canada.

  One crystal-clear, frigid day we were filming scenes driving dog sleds on a vast five-hundred-acre island of floating ice. The amazing sled dogs were stealing the show and all was going well when suddenly there was an unearthly sound of crackling, sliding thunder and our bright white ice island slowly, gracefully broke in half. The large crew, vehicles, cameras, and sound equipment were on one half and the actors and dog teams on the other.

  As I watched in awe as these two enormous plains of ice slowly drifted apart, I was still in the fantasyland of acting, and my first reaction was a kind of wonder at the terrific special effects moviemakers could contrive. Then I noticed the magical beauty of the brilliant green colors of the submerged areas of ice against the black arctic water. Finally the mad and barely successful dash of the dogs and sleds charging over the widening gap woke me up to the reality and danger of the situation. Without thinking my adrenaline-charged body leapt across the broad abyss of freezing water like a champion broad jumper. Fear triumphed—I made it.

  Psychological, spiritual fear is quite another matter. Fearfulness, which is not the result of actual physical danger, is nearly always caused by our attaching our happiness to someone or something. This could be to a lover, money, beliefs, social position, home, Porsche, job, husband or wife—whatever we believe is necessary for our well-being. Any attachment creates dependency (my happiness depends on your love, your approval—my-well being depends on my wealth, my power, my youth or status). Any dependency invariably opens us to the fear of loss. Where there is attachment, there is dependency. Where there is dependency, there is fear.

  The obvious truth of this dependency-fear equation brings up an astonishing question. Is there such a thing as unconditional happiness? We’re so used to being emotionally dependent that the very idea sounds loony. It seems laughably impossible to even imagine a way of living, a state of being that is emotionally and spiritually independent of desire, possession, control, security, and habit—a way of living that is utterly free and full of spontaneous uncaused joy. But isn’t that exactly what love really is?

  Of course we depend on thousands of people for thousands of things: the trash collectors, the sewage plant operators, the farmers, the truckers, the schoolteachers, and all the people and machines that make our physical lives possible. When our survival is threatened, naturally we’re afraid.

  But psychological, emotional, and spiritual dependency is another kettle of squid. As long as I attach my happiness, my well-being to fame or applause or good reviews or even big paychecks, I’m in trouble. All these things come and go. As long as my well-being depends on your love I’m in trouble. Personal love can be fickle, it comes and goes. And if my happiness depends on your loving me, my love for you will subtly take a backseat to my need to possess and control you.

  This is my case for detachment. Detachment is usually thought to be cool and distant. It is in fact the opposite. When I am attached to you, I must hang on to you and manipulate you so you’ll stay around—that’s what makes me cool and distant. When my source of happiness is within myself, only then can I appreciate and love you unreservedly, only then can I set you free. When I’m with you the music is beautiful; when I am alone the music is still beautiful, just a different melody, a different rhythm.

  Detachment and happiness and love are the best of friends.

  THE ONLY THING TO DO

  Idly flipping through TV channels one afternoon, I came across a public access program featuring a youngish guru type expounding Eastern philosophy. We’ll call her G. She seemed to me too attractive; too, well, ordinary and down-home American, too pretty and sunny to be taken seriously as a teacher, but something kept me watching.

  G. was speaking to a large group of mostly young people who seemed utterly enraptured by her. I found their enthrallment suspect, as if they had abandoned themselves, their independence, to her glow.

  And glow she did. As I watched I could see that G. was richly gifted (she was the student of some high-powered Indian gurus) with a profound serenity enlivened by keen intelligence. When she interacted with members of her audience, she was fully present for them, fully engaged with them. I began to fall under her spell.

  I sent in for some of her videos and was so impressed and enraptured by her teaching that I flew to the mainland to attend several of her meetings. Actually being in G.’s presence was indeed a heady experience, but I began to feel an important limitation in her work. She was able to invoke a state of bliss in her gatherings that I thought was somewhat like a drug in that it was hugely pleasant, but, as far as I could tell, had little or no relevance to one’s daily life.

  I think one’s religion, one’s spiritual life, is not a matter of beliefs and theologies. One’s religion is the way one lives day to day. One’s spiritual life is the way one relates to one’s fellow beings and to one’s self. Ultimately one’s religion is simply awareness of what is—awareness being an invitation to the action of love.

  It seemed to me that G.’s avenue to bliss was in fact an alluring escape from a mature understanding of the reality of exactly who and what one is in the present moment, an escape from seeing what is. So, with a touch of regret, I lost interest in her teachings.

  A couple of years later I was again idly surfing through TV channels when I happened onto the final moments of yet another G. video. G. was working with a handsome young woman who complained of the frustration of her fruitless search for inner peace and enlightenment. All her efforts toward the divine ended in failure and continuing unhappiness.

  With radiant calm, G. pointed out the fact that concepts of enlightenment, of God, no matter how beautifully
thought out, are never the thing itself. Consequently chasing after concepts, however magical they may seem, is chasing after illusion. Enlightenment is always new and only now. It can never be captured and held by thought. Thought, ideas, are always the response of memory, which is obviously always an accumulation of the past.

  G. then suggested that the young woman stop all searching for some ideal fantasy beyond herself and instead turn her entire attention to the present facts of her inner state of being at that moment. If she was feeling frustrated, unhappy, and lost, then embrace those actual feelings with her entire awareness. G. encouraged her to delve into her present state of being not intellectually, but by allowing the loving intelligence of total awareness to penetrate to the very core of her present suffering. G. suggested that this total awareness leave behind all desire for change, all likes and dislikes, all judgments of good or bad that cloud clear seeing. Just look at what is. This clear awareness is itself action. It is the gateway to understanding, which is the opening to effortless change. Clear, clean awareness is a profound aspect of love and an utterly natural window to the divine.

  The young woman tapped into this beautiful understanding, as did G., as did I watching. This is sometimes called an altered state of consciousness, because it’s so unlike our “normal” state of highly conditioned thought. But when you touch this silent awareness, it seems supremely normal, absolutely right, utterly clear and whole. It is vibrant with a kind of clear, nonverbal intelligence, a knowing beyond knowledge. It is indescribable in words, but essential to living wholly, without conflict. It is truly our home. The handsome young women found truth right in the middle of her frustration.

  Whatever I had thought missing in G.’s teaching was now abundantly present. It seems to me that clear awareness is the pathway to the personal transformation that will in turn begin to transform our world. Keeping the eyes of our soul—our awareness—wide open requires constant attention.

  Even when we experience occasional moments of awareness, of being awake, the dominance of comfy sleep returns to pretty much rule our lives. My dear and longtime friend Sarah is a physical therapist of uncommon ability. She is highly trained and has immense knowledge of the human body as well as its psychological mysteries. Her learned skills are vast, and when working with her clients, Sarah taps into a level of intuition and wisdom that transforms her learning into an ability to heal far beyond mere knowledge. As she accelerates her clients’ physical healing, she offers acutely perceptive suggestions concerning how their lifestyle and thinking might change to restore their health and well-being.

  While working, Sarah is clear as a bell. The rest of her life, however, has been a bit of a mess. Her professional maturity tends to ebb in her daily life, which is at times fraught with conflict, indecision, and self-defeating stories. She often becomes a little girl avoiding responsibility for practical matters and her personal growth.

  Until recently, Sarah smoked around ten cigarettes a day. Intellectually she knew smoking was harmful and was a pretty stupid thing to do. When I suggested that she quit like the rest of us (I smoked until about twenty-five years ago), she said: “Yeah, I know I should, but I’ll gain weight if I quit and besides you don’t seem to understand that I’m a much more addictive personality than you [do you see the fictional stories here?], so I just can’t.”

  Then came the big shock—Sarah discovered a small lump in her breast that was diagnosed as malignant. It was successfully removed, but her doctor told her that smoking could have contributed.

  Well, Sarah’s factual, conceptual knowledge about the dangers of smoking suddenly expanded into awareness. All at once she knew deep inside, beyond all rationalizations, that she was dealing with a life-and-death situation. She woke up. She quit.

  Sarah is an example of how strenuously even smart people resist awareness when our lazily habitual thought patterns, our usual ways of getting by, our precious fictions and addictions, are threatened.

  We’re all ensnared by the gravity of the imagined safety of the familiar. We all hesitate to venture into the unknown, into levels of living beyond memory, beyond recognition, beyond the past. Life, love, wisdom, spirit, God—all are always new, now, fresh, never to be repeated. When, in the sleep of the known, we miss the fresh newness of the unknown now, we miss that new moment forever.

  The past is gone, the future can only be imagined. We humans are swift. We are ever-changing and evolving. We learn at every moment. Discovering the joy, the intensity, the silence, and the freedom of the eternal present requires our full attention and the courage to see what is and to welcome change, the surprise of the new, the passion of living.

  THE BEAUTY OF BREATHING

  One way I cope with the alarming aspects of this newish century with some equanimity comes from something incredibly familiar. Breathing. Breathing life-giving air in and out of my lungs is the activity I’ll be doing most constantly during the entire length of my physical existence. My heart beats even more often than I breathe, but I can’t really be said to beat my heart—that stalwart muscle is happily beyond my control. Breathing, though semiautomatic, is an action I can perform at will with various rhythms and depths.

  The life-giving molecular substances of air are created by and are part of the entire universe. Just like the composition of our bodies, air is (for want of a more original word) stardust. We are so used to the constant action of breathing and we take it so for granted that we seldom astonish ourselves with the realization that we are breathing the universe. Our breathing is absorbing life from the stars.

  Since matter and energy have been shown by no lesser a gent than Albert Einstein to be interchangeable, and since my basic proposition is that there is nothing but God, it seems likely that everything (stones, molecules, quarks and all) is full of spirit.

  Naturally we’re going to spend ninety percent of our time being far too busy with the swirl of life to think much about breathing. But somewhere in the remaining ten percent it’s wonderful to sit down in a quiet place (if you can find one) and focus on the miracle of breathing.

  Try this. Sitting comfortably and alert, breathe in slowly and deeply, pause a second, then exhale slowly and pause briefly. Give your breath your complete attention. Not only is this simple act of breathing an effective way to calm the mind, with a little imagination it can become an art form. Imagine, for instance, that you are breathing divine love into your whole being, and then exhale the warmth of this love into your home or family or into the great oneness of humanity. Or, if you’re ill, inhale the vibrant healing energies of spirit, of the angels, and exhale this beautiful energy into your environment. Breathe silence into emptiness, exhale nothingness into nothing. Disappear and discover. Breathe eternity. Whatever we focus our entire attention on tends to bloom and deepen and open to us. Attention is love, and love invites loving response. Even pain and stress, conflict and hostility will share their secrets with love.

  Breathe love into a problem and gently ask for solutions. Breathe love into a relationship and see without any expectation what unfolds (or doesn’t).

  I’m sitting in my study high up in the hills above Honolulu writing and listening to the songbirds that are extramelodious during these early days of spring. Their music lilts into the room on a cool breeze that I inhale and make part of me. Who knows, I may be breathing in some of the very same air these chatty birds just musically exhaled. Breathing birdsong.

  ON GLIMPSING ONE’S SOUL

  Several days ago a friend in New York sent me several books by Andrew Harvey. I began to read Harvey’s The Direct Path to God, in which he describes three experiences that opened him to the mystical aspects of his life. One of these was a vivid dream in which Harvey sat on a beach as a golden androgynous being walked toward him radiant with compassion. The being sat in his lap and a great love flowed between them. Awestruck, Harvey asked the magnificent entity who it was and it replied, “I am you.” In the dream Harvey was seeing the loving divinity of his own soul.
I found this vision deeply touching.

  The next day I was amazed to receive from a fan I’d never met a videotape of the first four television shows I’d ever acted in, dating from around 1959 to 1960. This was especially surprising because I’d just been writing about these same shows in this book.

  I watched the tape the following morning with some apprehension. I wasn’t sure I wanted to revisit those early days when I had to work so hard to disguise my fears. As I watched the episode of Gunsmoke, my first job in television, it was painful to see how emotionally tied up I was beneath the performance. I could see it in certain facial tensions and in the way I moved around as if there were a huge invisible weight on my shoulders. (A writer friend once said watching my early performances was like watching a gazelle caught in a net.)

  But despite these inhibitions I was astonished to see the radiance of a beautiful innocence and clarity shining in and around me. It was like seeing two people intertwined—one luminously beautiful and the other tied up in knots. I could see this duel presence only in the first two shows. Then it disappeared.

  That evening I was thinking about Andrew Harvey’s dream and was suddenly struck by a moving insight. Perhaps, like Harvey, I had glimpsed my own soul. Perhaps each of us is in fact a sacred, radiant presence that has assumed whatever distortions and travails we experience in this life in order to explore and more fully understand and appreciate the nature of its own divinity.

  The concept of a divine soul is ancient and so familiar we often take it for granted. But there’s a world of difference between a concept and the actual mystical experience of one’s spirit. By daring to say that I might have glimpsed the light of my own soul, I’m suggesting the possibility that each of us will at some point be invited by life to delve into the sacred depths of his or her own being. There is great importance in recognizing and exploring this possibility. Imagine coming to know the golden being that is you.