Cause for Alarm

 Earlier this week, on a Monday morning, I heard a very strange sound outside, which I later discerned to be a burglar alarm or some home security system. By the time I had emerged from my apartment, the sound had subsided. I had many internal associations, however, including the sense of the natural world being disrupted by a deer hunter's call.  Somehow, the fact that my house is surrounded by a lot of forested areas seemed to make the sound of the alarm eerier and more foreboding. Yet, deeply embedded in the foreboding is also a sense of transformation and induction into mystery.
   What are alarms meant to do, after all, besides to wake people up? Alarms tend to remind me also of the chimes that we use in our meditation retreats and regular practices to signal the end of meditation practice, as well as to alert practitioners that we will be starting a new exercise in our practice. But if you listen very closely to alarms, they also point to realms that we have not faced: leaving behind the familiar in favor of something completely new and uncharted. Alongside the alarm comes a sense of both danger and excitement, as a person heeds the call and embarks on a new experience, which in turn opens their heart and mind into the unfamiliar, uncharted, and uncertain.
      I find that most alarms strike 'minor' chords: they are not the easy sounds that we hear with birds or other animals. Yet this 'off-ness' is precisely what makes an alarm into a potentially mind expanding, or mind-shattering experience. There is always this something-else, or this something-beyond, that off-chords can point to, while preserving a sense of relative order in the surroundings. It is a hint or an intimation that not everything is all completely in order, and that there is a small strip of chaos in the wallpaper that might threaten to strip away entire layers of taken-for-granted experiences and assumptions. Alarm bells are indeed a surrender into something unknowable and yet capable of a great deal of change and growth.