This post is dedicated to two women who were the seminal influences for the Dharmajunkies community. Michelle Killoran and Dr. Jamie Zimmerman were amazing beings who passed from this world instantaneously and unexpectedly, leaving a hole in the circle of my heart. A hole I choose to not fill. A hole they let their light in. A space I will cherish.
In the 90’s I lived in a meditation center in the Rocky Mountains. What was then known as The Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, was based on the Shambhala Buddhist Tradition and catered to a variety of communities. Each year a group of college students from Chapman University in California came for a 10 day immersion in the healing arts we called “Ancient Wisdom, Modern Madness.”Or program introduced a variety of ancient traditions from Buddhist teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham to the African tradition of Malidoma Some’. The director of the program was Michele Killoran, who was to become a major influence on my life. She had been leading the “Chapman Program” for a decade, when she picked me to be her successor. I was very new to teaching but my youth gave me entry into the students’ trust and heart. I immediately felt a kinship with them. And this was the first principle in the healing circle: trust born of heart connection.
MIchelle introduced me to the wisdom of the self-healing circle. Community circles are employed in many traditional cultures, including the Native American, First Nations, African Shaman and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. These were introduced to the students both academically and experientially through ritual, meditation and study. It was our goal to not only impart knowledge, but to allow the wisdom of these traditions to fundamentally affect the students. I first met hearts with Michelle as I sat across her kitchen table. I was very agitated and had come to her for what I thought would be good advice, herbal tea and hippie healing. I sat there bundled stubbornly in my pain unable to listen with my heart. I tried to impress and compete with her, which was all I knew of how creating a human connection. I was getting more and more tense. Finally, she took a persimmon from a bowl of fruit on the table between us and told me to hold it. She told me to be quiet. Close your eyes, she said. Eventually she removed her hands. I sat holding that soft yet firm fruit that felt so alive, like the heart of a child. I don’t remember when I began to cry, I just seemed to awaken in tears with the feeling of being firmly, yet lovingly embraced by the earth. Her eyes were open and clear, radiating warmth and acceptance. Her silver woven hair billowed like smoke as the afternoon light came through her kitchen window. Her husband Eamon was a sailor who followed her calling far from his port. But, he was home with her, as was all who knew her. She was his ocean. She was my earth.
Essential elements compliment and balance each other. The next idea of the Healing Circle is returning to balance. Healing is coming back to balance. Earth balances fire. Water balances wind. The Healing Circle is balancing the elements in nature. Most Asian healing systems refer to the elements and to balance.
MIchelle showed me the notion of the self-healing, self balancing community. Buddhists call this a mandala. Many indigenous traditions employ this principle, or their version of it. The mandala denotes a community or an environment that organizes around a primary principle. That principle may be a fire, a mountain, a lineage, a teaching, or an idea. In the Chapman program we used Wisdom as our organizing principle. Whatever tradition we introduced, we were looking to use it to develop wisdom. Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge is the map. Maps are important but they are the not the and they represent. The Buddhists talk about fingers pointing to the moon. The finger is not the Moon. Truly seeing the moon, as we would at the RMDC on high alpine nights, is an experience. It is contact with something we can never own. Wisdom is knowledge married to experience. It is knowledge that happens within us. Wisdom changes us. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition we refer to transmission as an instantaneous download of wisdom that affects our body, spirit and mind. A given student might experience transformation in a moment or over time. The ones who were open might experience a transmission from launching a bow in Kudo – a ceremonial Japanese archery, or from a rebirthing ceremony with Meledoma, in the sweat lodge or a fire ceremony. The transmission might occur in meditation, when we come back to the breath. If we are open enough transmission may happen as we notice a falling leaf or hear a bird sing.
My job in the community was to guide the students to openness. I would employ Tonglen and other heart opening – Bodhicitta – practices and try to allow everyone access to the energy via vulnerability and openness. Trungpa Rinpoche was an example of a master teacher who turned no one away and could speak to the wild and crazy as well as the cultured and sophisticated. In this way, MIchelle accepted everyone into our circle. Yet she defended her students with a lioness’ strength keeping away all elements of distraction. The next point in a self-healing mandala is that while all who are within the circle are accepted fully and completely, yet in order to allow the community to feel safe enough to open their hearts, there are elements that would have to be kept out. Thus the balanced mandala has openings to communicate with the outer world, but also to restrict access. This is described by the iconic “enzo”or Zen circle, which is not a closed circle, but has an opening. The community needs connection to the world around it, but also needs to be safe within. And within that magical enclave, the open hearts connect to each other and by holding space, they allow each other to be seen and accepted. Being seen or heard without judgement or coercion is elemental to healing. Healing is community and connection. Madness, on the other hand, is bred in isolation. Isolation can be mental. We can isolate within learned logics that remain closed with no gate into larger reality. Many of us experience growth when we are forced into a larger frame by tragedy or discomfort. We are fired from a job or break up from a relationship that nonetheless leads to an entirely new iife once we heal enough to step beyond our patterns. Intermittent openness is essential to healing. Yet, too much openness creates too much chaos and erodes that sense of safety.
As important as a sense of safety is to healing, we can never completely seal ourselves from the world. Hence, we are never completely safe. Reality is ever-changing. We cannot escape that. Michelle died in her kitchen from a massive stroke. This eternal force of being was gone in an instant. Yet, echoes of her wisdom remain because the wisdom was not hers alone. She was the gateway to a universal humanness.
Years later, in New York City I met a woman named Jaime. She seemed a younger version of Michelle, with flowing gold-woven hair and piercing bright eyes. She was a student of mine, who quickly became a colleague and finally my teacher. She was a shooting star that illuminated my life and then touched down in darkness, leaving waves of her benign effect on the world. She was our original co-teacher in Dharmajunkies, a group we founded on the idea of the sacred community circle. Jaimie and I taught together weekly on Monday nights and her heart touched everyone who came into that circle. Jaimie instructed us on how to speak with each other in ways that opened hearts and fostered heartfelt communication. Like Michelle, Jaimie was gentle and tough. She ushered our group away from competition and comparison. She taught us to support each other by maintaining an awake, loving space. She taught us deep listening. She gave us the strength to be a community based on individuals who, like her, were entirely, completely, unapologetically themselves.
Jaimie left to lead meditation at ABC studios and to her own developing career. I never knew anyone who engendered so much good will everywhere she went. And she did this without ever being full of shit. She could talk shit with the worst of us, drink whiskey with the roughest, and fiercely protect her clan wherever she was.
Jaimie was on vacation in Hawaii when she slipped on rocks overlooking the ocean, fell to her death, and was swept to her grave by Namaka, goddess of the sea. The hole she left in my heart will never be filled. Perhaps another key to the healing circle is that wounds need not be healed. That space need not be filled. That all is blessed just as it is. I suppose it is our work to remember that. Who are we bending ourselves to be? Who are we apologizing to? To whom are we explaining ourselves? And why?
The ultimate fruit of the self healing community is when we can step back into the world with remembrance of our natural human dignity and grace. LIke sitting before a campfire. Like watching a leaf fall. Like hearing the birds signal life all around us. Like holding a persimmon. Like resting in the arms of a good friend.
Like coming back to earth and opening to the vast sky.