"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."  ~ Rumi

 "What the hell am I doing here?"  This thought crosses my mind more than once as I walk through the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.  This is not at all a comfortable place for me to visit, and I wonder if I'm taking my freedom-through-embracing-fear experiment too far.  I had some idea of talking to some of the people I meet here and making a compassionate connection, but who am I kidding.  About all I can manage is to see people here with compassion, send them a silent blessing, and keep walking.  These are the people that a friend of mine would call the "Keepers of the Shadow".

I'm walking up Hastings towards Main, trying here and there to make eye contact and nod hello.  Once or twice I get a response that I would call friendly.  Most of the faces are grim or ghostly, hardened or hyper, sad or beaten, beaten in every sense of that word.  I turn down a quieter side street and walk past a man standing alone against a building.  His face is stony and cold, his eyes piercing with hatred.  I nod hello to him and his face remains utterly frozen.  Our eyes lock for the briefest of moments and the hatred in his eyes burns through me.  I barely maintain my composure.

Back on Hastings I walk past different groups of people, some just standing around talking or shouting, some selling all sorts of things laid out on the sidewalk like a makeshift bazaar.  Many are trying to sell drugs.  Several times I am asked questions that slide out of the corners of mouths, "You need anything?" or,"Dope?" or, "Weed?"  I hear myself say, "No thank you," to a man who asks me, "Rock?"  How polite of me.  (Rock is slang for crack cocaine.)

I walk into the community centre on the corner of Hastings and Main and find a library that is quiet and well attended.  Another room in the centre is full of men playing chess and checkers and other games.  Women are drinking coffee while they talk.  The community centre is welcome respite from the bedlam on the streets.  There is still much evidence of poverty and pain in here, but there is culture and community too.  I wander out to the courtyard and watch the street life from behind an iron fence.  Two women are twisting and gyrating on the sidewalk in ways that lead me to guess they are very high.  One of the women holds an imaginary something between her thumb and index finger and places it lightly on the other woman's hand as part of their dance. 

In the courtyard with me people are sitting quietly with coffee cups and empty expressions that look at nothing in particular.  This could be an opportunity to start a conversation and make a connection, but I cannot get past the sense of defeat and dissociation I perceive on these faces.  More so, I can't get past the overwhelm I feel as I imagine what it would be like to live these people's lives.  Clearly I have some inner work to do before I can be present with the people here.

Only once while I'm walking through the Downtown Eastside do I get afraid for my physical safety.  This happens when I think a man in a jean jacket trying to sell cigarettes is following me.  Then, for a few brief moments, it seems to me that maybe one or two other guys have joined him in following me, but it's my mind playing tricks on me.  

No one is following me, but I'm sure many are well aware of the beanpole of a guy in the very red sweater and brown corduroy pants who looks like he just got off at the wrong stop from the Sensitive-Guy Bus.  I wish I was wearing some tougher-looking clothes.  Yet another person asks me if I need drugs.  This time it's a woman who has walked across Hastings to come and see what I need.  Part of the problem is that I'm just wandering around the neighbourhood without any obvious reason for doing so.  I'm very sure that no one who sees me is thinking to themselves, "Hmmm, I bet that guy is looking to move through some fears and make a compassionate connection with someone here."

I walk into a convenience store cafe to get some water and to gather my wits.  The clerk looks battle-weary but determined to hold the fort.  I take a seat at an empty table.   A guy in the corner has a plastic bag full of boxes of cold medication.  He is trying to sell it to another guy who looks like he has extra cash and extra power.  He says he isn't interested in the whole bag of cold medicine, just a box or two.   They can't settle over a price.  Another guy comes in with something to sell to the same man.  The cold-medicine-selling man retreats out of the store but soon returns for another attempt.  A blind man sits at the table next to me and drinks his coffee, his folded-up cane on the table in front of him.  I've lost sight of my purpose for being here.  It's time for me to go home.

I leave the Downtown Eastside without any attempt to talk to anyone.  On my way back through the city I come across a panhandler on his knees with a cap held out in one hand and a small, cardboard sign in the other that reads, "food".  Under the word food are three question marks.  I give him some change, squat down beside him and ask him how his night is going.  He says something that I can't understand.  Then he begins to talk nonstop and I catch very little of what he is saying.  He has a large black hole through the front of his lower teeth and a thick accent.  "We're the racists," is one part of his speech that I catch.  I don't argue with him.  Instead, I wish him well and continue on.

The next morning, during my meditation, I connect with some very marginalized parts of myself, parts that I had forgotten and left to fend for themselves, parts that thought they had to defend themselves from vulnerability in order to survive, parts that had hated themselves, sad and beaten parts that I had pushed into the corners of my inner world and forgotten.  I do my best to welcome these parts now, embrace them, and help them feel their pain.  That I'm a little surprised at the pain that is still there only proves how long I've tried to keep it hidden.  Of course, I hadn't completely lost sight of these painful parts.  I just hadn't allowed myself to look too closely.  Not unlike how driving through the Downtown Eastside instead of walking allowed me to not quite see what was really there.   

Writing this post has been at times a difficult journey.  My belly has been gripping and clenching after meals, resistant to digesting food and to digesting the old pain surfacing from my unconscious.  I had to take a short break from food in order to better digest the pain.  I'm grateful to have the had time, space, and support to get beneath the resistance to the feelings and needs.  And I'm grateful for the tears that have poured out and helped bring me closer to an undefended heart.  Happily, I finish this writing this with a relaxed belly.  It's becoming clear to me now that the freedom in my freedom-through-embracing-fear experiment is the freedom to love.  I know what you're thinking, "Duh-uh." 

"Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave."
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Eric Bowers

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