Ontological Mode of Being: Death as an Invitation to Life

2 months ago a dear family friend, Madsy, died from Ovarian Cancer. She was like an aunt to me. My parents told me she was there when I was born and held me minutes after I exited my mother's womb. I have many memories of staying at her home from when I was 5 years old to discussing my pending transition to study at the University of Georgia. Chemotherapy was no match for the cancer and 10 weeks before she passed, she made a conscious choice to surrender to her destiny and fade away peacefully in her home with her friends and family, away from hospitals and aggressive medical treatments. 

Never before had I confronted the fragility and temporary nature of life so rawly and vulnerably. Madsy's led me to examine my own mortality; I too, just like everyone else, will die. This is not a comfortable notion so I needed to investigate further. A long-time Buddhist monk and scholar, Sogyal Rinpoche, put me more at ease with this quote, which I'll never forget. I wish to hold close in all my interactions with others:

"When we finally know we are dying, and all other beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings."

I want to live everyday with this in mind.

In his book about overcoming the terror of death, Staring at the Sun, Irvin Yalom speaks of a famous philosopher, Heidegger, who makes a crucial distinction between Ontological mode of being vs. Everyday mode of being. In Ontological mode, you know every moment is precious, you're in touch with what really matters like your friendships and loved ones, you are mindful that every moment, breath, bite and step is not to be taken for granted. By contrast, in Everyday mode of being, sadly the state Yalom postulates that many people live in, you're mindless, caught up in the chatter of the mind and the inevitable day-to-day annoyances like why the bus was 10 minutes late or why your computer froze for 30 seconds, missing the bigger picture of the miracle of your life, and all the things we have to be grateful for like family, food, a bed, a funded all-star PhD, program, etc. Many diagnosed with cancer report their cancer triggered them to really prioritize what really matters in life, like their closest relationships and shrug off the little annoyances. Tragically, in their last days, many of them lamented, "Why do I need to be dying to finally learn how to live?! Why do I need to be dying to realize what a blessing it is to be physically healthy?"

I want to get into this mode of being now, as I inexorably age, and before I am possibly diagnosed with cancer.

This blog is about my long-term goal of living my life in Ontological mode. When I am, I'm calm, happy and unfazed by the "little things," and instead in touch with the deep vessel of peace that bellows below the mind's agitated surface. My loved ones have reported that I'm much more pleasant to be around when I accomplish living in Ontological Mode. Therefore, this transformation isn't only about me, but everyone who has to put up with me!

Did I Just Relapse?

It's been 3 days since I proposed the experiment of living more in Ontological Mode to myself. Today when I felt stuck in the Everyday Mode of Being, unable to print a simple homework assignment due to technological difficulties, I yelled aloud in frustration. It's a good thing no one else was in the McPhaul basement to hear me. Bottomline: I'm noticing that writing and blogging about living in Ontological Mode is a lot easier than doing it! It wasn't too long before I realized I had a "relapse."

Usually when I feel stuck or frustrated, I tend to consult mindfulness literature to encourage me to observe the habitual and powerful pull of Everyday Mode instead of blindly letting it suck me in. One of the most well-known monks and scholars on the face of the earth is Thich Nhat Hanh, whose life-long efforts to engender peace throughout the world moved Martin Luther King to nominate him the nobel peace prize in 1967.  In one of his over 60 books, Savor, about mindful eating, he introduces one of his observations from visiting the United States. He noticed most people tend to live with a lot of habit energy. I immediately resonated. So what is it?

Habit Energy is a potent force that yanks us through life, propelling us to rush through most of our activities in order to get to the next one. More is better, right? I can smell some Capitalist America there! It's so unwavering because we tend to be unaware of it and feel powerless to change it. so you have a more tangible idea, it's getting annoyed and impatient when we need to wait two minutes in line to purchase our lunch. It's when we feel irritated that our friend arrived 10 minutes later, making us wait, instead of just relaxing with our breath, enjoying the pause to step into Ontological Mode and let all our blessings sink into to consciousness instead of trying to "kill time." What a terrible phrase, killing time! It's our number one allay! It's life itself! In this blog, I frame it as one of the great tricks Everyday Mode of Being has up its sleeve to take us (and keep us) under its spell. As Thich Nhat Hanh states,

"We are always running and rushing. It has become a habit, the norm of everyday living. We run all the time, during our sleep, the time we are supposed to be resting and regenerating our bodies. We can be worst enemies, in conflict with ourselves, and therefore, you can easily start conflict with others..."

As Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, what's the rush?

Is this how we're going to live until we die? Aren't we exhausting ourselves, running all over the place? Is this really a desirable life? If peace and happiness are such sought-after traits, what are we doing to ourselves? I take it as a gentle reminder to slow down, as our lives are too precious to rush through. I don't know about you all, but I rarely enjoy activities I rush through. Rushing through things stymies enjoyment, pleasure and possibly creativity too. How to do you feel when people try to rush an interaction with you, or stated bluntly, rush through sex? Doing things slowly, mindfully and ontologically is how the tortoise beat the hare! It seems like we haven't really learned from this fable as a capitalist, consumerist culture. The stone-cold truth is that even if we are healthy, we are dying everyday. Every breath inevitably shepherds us to our impending demise. Why not live this moment as fully as possible, before an illness or old age primes of our all human mortality? This is what Ontological Being is all about.

The good news is that the more I become aware of these automatic, conditioned Everyday Mode mental states, the less power they have over me. When I notice the pull, the entitled expectation for immediate gratification, I can pause and just notice it, before I act on it, directly hijacking Everyday mode. The more I notice, the longer the gap becomes to catch myself before I compulsively act on Habit Energy. Maybe I did just relapse, but if I'm committed to learning from my mistakes and expanding my capacity to embody Ontological Being, it's true that relapse can be part of recovery! So far...

My Plan to Live in Ontological Mode

Despite having read about this 'mode of being' distinction months ago, which temporarily changed my life for the better (incredibly!), I've noticed that I've been slowly sucked back into Everyday mode of being as I navigate the second biggest transition of my life, moving to Athens, especially when something goes wrong. I don't want to live in Everyday Mode. I don't want to get flustered when it takes me 30 minutes to print my Statistics homework in Dawnson Hall, or when my textbooks from Amazon Prime get lost in the mail. Those are negligible hiccups that don't matter in the grand scheme of things. I want to do what ever it is I need to, and move on, without dwelling or obsessing. As my favorite Buddhist Monk, Ajan Brahm claims, "when it comes to dealing with obstacles, thinking about it is hard, dealing with it is easy."

I want to live in in touch, as often as possible, with the miracle of my life and all I have to be grateful for, like my health, my families and friends, being where I want to be in my life, on track for a doctoral degree, with great training in EMDR, family therapy, private practice and being a fully frequent Spanish-speaker. I want to intentionally dedicate more time to being peaceful, responding mindfully (instead of anxious mindless reacting, apparently my mind's default mode if I let it run the show), trusting that Life is giving me what I need in any given moment, no matter how frustrating a situation viscerally feels. This is includes responding compassionately when I realized Everyday mode pulled me back, and firmly, resolutely yet gently bring myself into Ontological mode of being so I can brush off "the little things" and keep in mind the big picture. 

27 years and 5 months of life experience have taught me that being committed to Ontological Mode is not enough. I need to create a detailed blueprint of specific changes I would like to make. My life experience has taught me as well that I can't be too ambitious here. I need a challenging, yet achievable stars toward this goal. So what's my plan? 

Practicing mindful meditation twice a day, from 5 to 45 minutes each time, at my own discretion, depending on how much time I have and that fully-heartedly commit to without feeling too pushed. I give myself the liberty to alternate between purely mindfulness meditation, gratitude meditation, observing thoughts and/or feelings, using an anchor like the breath, a body scan, etc. This consistency overtime will help me remain more meta to my own mind, so I can watch my mindless reactions (the pull of everyday mode), without reacting, breaking the pattern intentionally and consciously. Here I can directly practice Brent Atkinson's "Canned Attitude" approach with couples, only apply the new desired thoughts and behaviors to my relationship to myself!

I know that writing about this will help me make these changes. After all, what kind of person would I be writing about making all these exciting changes without actually doing them?! The cognitive dissonance would be too extreme to commit such contradiction.