Transcending woo-woo

In the early 2000s, I lived in Portland, Ore., where there was plenty of woo-woo culture for a 20-something White girl to soak up. And that I did. Armed with my bicycle and the now-arcane iPod with audiobooks from Carolyn Myss downloaded for my daily commute, I was riding a new age wave in my attempt to find myself, to find insights to feed myself. In retrospect, I was probably right where I needed to be--this woo woo, so to speak, was the shape of my healing at the time. It was part of my process and my story, and the tools, symbols, and notions about how energy works within and around us served me somehow. It was safe. Safer than the Judeo-Christian model, highly fear- and guilt-based in my upbringing, that was the dominant, normative backdrop of my understanding. I was searching for anything but that. 
​
What did I find in places like the New Renaissance Bookstore on NW 23rd St, a fashionable old home turned new age consumer haven? Crystals, runes, pendulums, oils, cards, books, and singing bowls--certainly. I'd hunker down in the Tibetan Buddhist section of the house, 4 towering wooden bookshelves that felt like a shelter to me. The sense and softness, and the ease of letting go that Buddhism represented soothed me. It didn't insist on toxic positivity, on magical thinking, on human hierarchy in the order of things. It insisted on temperance, on us facing the temperance of life. That felt bold and real to me, even speaking to the parts of me that felt depressive. In all that admission of nothingness, I thought, in the stark truth of Zen Buddhism, was a deeper warmth than all the Baroque era, than what felt like the false promises and avoidant nature of Western religion. What I realize I got out of those studies, that resonance with Buddhism, is validation. A sense of acknowledgment that being imperfect is OK, that we are the sand in the wind. And to keep being. It affirmed for me that figuring things out is the nature of life, and being without a destination, so to speak, that was great comfort. Wherever you go, there you are took the pressure off my decade of soul-searching. Every stone I turned was a fair stone, and I could take my time. 

Fast forward to 2011, where I am teaching a course on Buddhism at the Rudolf Steiner High School in Ann Arbor, Mich. It was one of many electives I taught during my time teaching humanities. Was it my personal favorite? Not really--that would have to be History of Art II, a topic for another time. Putting together that course, though, was probably the smoothest process, the most organic and familiar material to me. I wonder now why so many of my former students remember this course with me more than the others, and what they recall from it. One student, we'll call him Cayden, told me at his graduation, "I'll always remember what you said about trees in that Buddhist class, that was my favorite." In the passing of roses and congratulatory background noises, I smiled and said something encouraging, gracious for his feedback. I couldn't help but wonder what I said, though, about trees. Another student came up to me after the senior play and said, "Ms. Good, your Buddhism course was the best," her Midsummer makeup glittering in the cafeteria light. "Oh, I'm glad it spoke to you--" "It did, and my senior art project is a buddha face with a mask over it that is my face." 

These students, attendees at a private school that prizes the whole self and in using and learning art as a means of being and learning, were incredible artists. I was continually amazed at their productions, at how they could jump into the cold water of creating and start swimming in a way I had never seen so many young people do at once. It inspired me to learn from them, too, to study them and use their gifts as a teacher. For example, I'd mock myself during Mythology lectures by attempting to draw out the plot on the blackboard (having zero drawing skill myself). I learned the fine art of self-deprecating humor when teaching teens. And how to incorporate self-reflection in everything we studied together. 

By the end of my short stint with teaching, I was awestruck by the students. Even the rascals had my heart. I found that my woo woo roots in Oregon served my teaching spell, and some of that magic and awe of the world came through to them, and also because of them. Was it that Buddhism is the answer, or holds some kind of ultimate truth? Not necessarily. I still wasn't joining anything organized or set on a framework that felt like spiritual sense to me as a whole. And now, I realize that was the point--the aimlessness of life is actually a feeling, a grappling, a space of being in-process. Our own journeys and pilgrimages reflected back to us. There isn't so much a simple quip or structure that can seal us in certainty, like "everything happens for a reason," because it doesn't. That urge to find and make sense for and to ourselves? That's the beauty of the individual, of being human, especially during certain life stages when it feels vital to "figure it out". 

I've still got a lot of crystals, stones, tarot cards, and books that hold pieces of me, my past, and of insight and knowledge. I hold and see them differently now, with a kind of earned self that has integrated over time, finding truth in illuminated bits and pieces along the way. I use the Tarot with less literal, externalized power than ever before; it is a tool that I consider a beautiful representation of life, and like any tool, we can get better and better at handling it with care, time, respect, and self-study.