An Ordinary Day….A Powerful Moment of Clarity

"The most significant thing that can happen to a human being [is] the separation process of thinking and awareness" - and the understanding that awareness is - "the space in which thoughts exist". – Eckhart Tolle

I do not disagree with Mr. Tolle but I would say that the separation of thinking and awareness is, along with being “significant”, the most healing thing that can happen to a human being.

When awareness becomes available as a silent spacious environment in which thoughts appear and disappear - without attachment - it gives the Observer, (that’s you and me), the space necessary to begin the process of disbelieving, or unraveling our thoughts….and with that comes freedom from fear, anxiety, suffering, and turbulence of all sorts and stripes.

The very first time I can remember my awareness separating from my thinking mind, was on the day of my mother’s death. As soon as I realized that the moment had come and her death was upon us, my mind became crystal clear and utterly silent. I remember afterwards trying to describe it to someone else and saying that I had never felt so alive in all my life…”that I felt like I had eyes in the back of my head, I was so present, conscious, and aware”.

Then about six years ago, it came again a moment of blinding clarity and total silence, this time I was standing in the grass looking down at my feet when suddenly my brain simply stopped speaking to me…it was electrifying and amazing.

Years passed, and then about 4 months ago a series of very distressing events, caused a kind of relapse into an old and torturous way of thinking… a pattern of thought I had not actively engaged in for more than 10 years. And I was flooded with suffering, anxiety, distress, anger, sadness and much, much more. But this flood was apparently the gateway, which stood between me and salvation, for at some point in this onslaught… I simply reached overload and had had, enough!!

Suddenly again the separation between awareness and thinking arrived, and this time it stayed…not all day and not every day. But some measure of every week there was a blissful, loving, and very silent space, or awareness, in my mind and heart. It was/is cooling, kind, loving, easy, simple and very, very, very desirable.

Soon I found that I could practice it - I needed solitude, of which I had plenty, quiet, of which I am fond…(the radio, TV, or CD’s are almost never on in my house, and never during the daylight hours), and with my eyes closed, I soon could enter this silent space at will.

With enough “practice” I no longer needed my eyes closed and then my attention could be directed to this quiet spaciousness even if I were moving about, or doing chores, or any of the many other things we are required to do in the unfolding of our day.

The best and most wonderful thing about the “separation process” of awareness and thinking, is that in this quiet space it is not possible for the conditioned mind to drag you into the future or the past, and thus the Timeless present becomes a real, full, and tangible experience.

I tell you all of this, so that I might more clearly describe for you how the wheels came off the wagon yesterday… and the difference between real, or primal, or authentic fear, and the fears born of the lies of the conditioned mind.

So let’s begin with the lie.

Yesterday, something triggered my conditioned minds habitual responses, and I was catapulted into a make-believe future of such dire circumstances, that before I could get a hold of myself…I was living in a cardboard box and eating out of cat food cans. I have no idea what the trigger was, writing checks for my monthly bills…checking my back account balance…listening to the news…I have no idea, but suddenly and quite viciously the conditioned mind had me by the throat and I was listening to myself describing quite vividly, the many ills and sorrows that were headed my way.

Because I have gone so long unable to find a job, so said my mind, “you will lose the house, not be capable of feeding yourself and your beloved animals, should anyone get sick, illness will surely turn to deadly circumstances, because there is no money for health care or medicine…and so on…and so on…and so on…

All projections into a non-existent future…and all lies…

The “What Is” truth of the moment was entirely obscured behind storm clouds that had rained in on me with the force of a hurricane. When late in the evening, I was finally able to get a hold of myself, I looked to find the What Is truth of the present moment, and once again recognized that I have all, and even more, than I need at this precise moment. More than enough to feed myself, my beloved’s, and more than enough to care for us all…

At the end of the day, I took inventory of the – now mostly unfamiliar – chemical impact of the storm that blew metaphorical trees down around my house/self. My brain felt sore and kind of stuck, my gut was upset and tight, my limbs felt heavy and hot, and I felt sticky all over, on the inside, like someone had opened up my carotid and poured molasses into my veins.

I was very tired and very listless and this is the condition in which I went to bed, for some much needed rest.

So this morning, just upon arising, I experienced the only form of fear that is truthful…or authentic.

It began with my cat, Sadie; she is a very eccentric cat.

She has a great fondness for dark and quiet spaces, no doubt the reason she chose me, to rescue her from starvation when she was a tiny and neglected and abandoned kitten. She has a strong preference for the cabinet under the sink in my master bath, but she also likes the linen closet, large drawers, and the master bedroom closet’s highest shelf. Sometimes, when I come home from being gone too long, it appears as though my house has been burgled… as every cupboard, door, and big drawer is standing open.

Believe me, the first time it happened I wanted to call strong, hairy, burly men with no necks, to search my home with flashlights before I would go in and settle down for the night. But one day, I watched her pulling on the levered door handles repeatedly, and finally successfully opening the closet door, and I realized then that the drawers and doors standing open were her doing. (She once locked me out of my house, by batting at the door handle, vigorously enough to turn the lock, while I was inside the garage using the utility sink to bathe my small dogs…she has major separation anxiety…and she wanted in that garage in the very worst way.)

I don’t know if her great fondness for us, (she loves my dogs as much as she loves me…perhaps even more…), is because she was a rescue or it’s just her native nature.

Along with her cupboard quirk, she hunts for us.

At least three times a month, and much more when she was younger, she brings her living prey into my home. In she comes with a bird, a salamander, a baby bunny rabbit, a mouse…and takes it from the dog door at the back of the house, all the way to the front of the house and into the dining room…because she knows that this is where I eat, and she wants my meal to be very, very, fresh….

From the moment she began this terribly distressing behavior, my second eldest dog, discovered that somewhere in his mixed up mutt of a gene pool…there was a grand, and commanding, and quite determined hunting dog.

And out of his mouth comes a bark that would be worthy of the hounds of hell. This bark exists at no other time and in no other circumstances, it has the quality of a drunken mountain of a man bellowing at a referee whose call he disagrees with, to the point of someone dying over it. It is throaty, harsh, insistent, demanding, and could wake the dead.

The first time I heard it, was three o’clock in the morning, and it nearly threw me bodily from my bed. At this stage in our family life, I am so conditioned to it, that I know if I get up immediately and run to the dining room…I can save whatever has been brought in. If I hesitate at all, my hound from hell, will have killed it before I can get there. (Apparently Sadie’s sensibilities are such, that she would rather the dog do the heavy lifting.)

So you can imagine, that this morning, when the bellowing began while I was having my morning constitutional and could not get up immediately to run to the dining room, that my long hesitation was somewhat disturbing. This “catch and release” program we have going on in my house, relies entirely on the speed with which I react…otherwise we are having a small funeral, rather than a…yippee!!! we got away clean, celebration.

So as soon as I was able, I went into the dining room to see what manner of small creature hopefully still needed my help…only to find…(please forgive the politically incorrect idiom), a Mexican standoff of Epic Proportions…

Sadie, in languid cat mode, stretched out to one side watching beloved dog…. And…. baby-brown-diamond-back-rattlesnake, standoff.

Yes, that’s right, I said……. OMG!!! SNAKE!!!!!!!!

COMPLETE WITH FANGS, COILING, HISSING, STRIKING, AND RATTLING….

I am sure my dog is not dead as I write this, because of the hissing and rattling…and maybe even the striking, because that was surely the most remarkable aspect of this tiny but furiously violent reptile. It was about the circumference of my little finger, and perhaps 14 inches long, new to the world without doubt, but not lacking in skill, or commitment, or aim, or determination…one tiny iota. (I have no explanation for how Sadie caught and transported this deeply upset baby into our home, while also successfully evading being bitten.)

The dog would bark and lunge, and the rattler would rear up and strike… hissing and rattling all the while…and fear overtook me like a bullet train.

I ran to the kitchen and came back with a pair of salad tongs…(!!!SALAD TONGS!!! really)…and each time I tried to reach out and grasp it’s head, it lunged and hissed and rattled at me. But better me, than my small dog, should those tiny fangs find purchase…I would get sick no doubt…but my beloved dog would most likely die.

By this point, real…not imagined…FEAR, had so overtaken me that my muscles began the Samba against my bones. I had no faith what-so-ever, that should I succeed in capturing his bobbing and weaving head, that I would be capable of hanging onto his 6 or 8 ounces of weight, successfully. And should he be dropped on the way out the door, and absent my noisy an determined dog keeping him corralled, and slither under the furniture…I would have to wear knee high boots the rest of my life…or sell the house, one of the two.

Just then my brain came back online, and I noticed a fairly large clear plastic lid sitting nearby…I grabbed it up and dropped it down on top of the weaving, coiled creature…I then placed a heavy weight onto the impromptu cage so that he would not be capable of slithering from underneath it, and went outside to look for a large, burly, hairy, no-neck MAN. Yes, ladies, I am not ashamed to admit it…I wanted some help…and I wanted it right now!!!

As I glanced around my cul-de-sac, I realized that it was too early to try that one and that one, and to late for that one and that one - who work nights. I then contemplated animal rescue, (the last time I called them for a dog I had rescued from the streets…they said, “sometime tomorrow…maybe”), so then I thought about those lovely men who reside just down the street from my subdivision who run into burning buildings, while everyone else is running out.

But finally, with breath returning to my body, and the Samba’s refrain not quite as determined…I decided to deal with this thing on my own. Back inside I went, and looking for something that would act as a carrying case, I found another clear plastic container - a juice pitcher - that I thought I could scoop him up in and use to toss him over the fence, and back into the desert with. The clear plastic part was essential, as every time I moved toward him, he struck his impromptu cage with such force that a small but clear thump could be heard, even over my still barking dog…and I wanted to see those strikes, not just hear them.

It took me several tries and a good deal of additional adrenaline, (the Samba had returned and brought with it several flamingo dancers - and a rumba for good measure), until finally, I was able to get him into the “carrier” and slap a lid on it. Once outside, I threw him over the fence, and into a freedom we both wanted with our whole heart and soul.

I had been preparing for my five-day-a-week-walking routine, when all this brouhaha had happened, and for some odd reason decided to continue with my plan before the day got to hot to do so. It took almost the entire 45 minutes, for the muscles in my legs to stop shivering, and calm down. The minute I made it back to my house, I went straight to bed…I did not collect 200 dollars, go to jail, or stop to buy a house for Park Place… in point-of-fact, I barely managed to unleash my dogs before I collapsed on my bed.

Here is what I discovered…real fear is hot, intense, clarifying, and in some strange way, I can’t really describe, it is also cleansing. It’s as if the adrenaline burns up carbon dioxide, as it courses thru your system, leaving behind very real exhaustion, of course, but no “stickiness” what-so-ever. It comes, serves, intensifies, clarifies the need for action, provides the tools by which that action can take place, (and the necessary courage I might add), and moves on and out. Leaving you weak and tired, but not sick and sad and haunted.

My conclusion…EVERY form of fear that is not occasioned by a real and intense threat to your in-the-moment-physical survival, or that of a loved one, is imagined, illusory, deceptive, false, erroneous and just a plain ole lie…

And here is the reason that awareness must separate from thinking if we are ever to overcome the imaginary fears, that fuel our wars, our discord, our dis-ease, our dissonance, and our discomfort.

We must then come to the place of inquiry…is it your responsibility to discover the space within? Does the very existence of humanity rely on your doing part of the “heavy lifting”? Do you want real change, or merely the continuing search for change? Or as the poet Rumi said, “Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.”

May you find your way to becoming the “space” in which your thoughts arise, rather than the deeply mistaken belief, that you are the thoughts that your conditioned mind throws up - to see if you will take the bait.

I wish you well on this journey of a lifetime…of the revelation of your one true and real self…the space from which all knowable things take their existence. May you find this space inside yourself before the crowded and conditioned mind, overtakes the flight of your soul and spirit, and may you be blessed by freedom.

(PS Out of curiosity, and to find out how much danger my dog had really been in…I asked this question of Wiki Answers: Is venom from a baby rattlesnake more poisonous than a mature rattlesnake?

The Answer:

The venom of a baby rattlesnake is the same as a full-grown rattlesnake. The reason it seems more "toxic" is because they can’t control the amount of venom they pump out, the way an adult snake can, actually all rattlesnakes have hemotoxin and neurotoxin included in their venom. Baby rattlesnakes, however, contains mostly neurotoxin, and little hemotoxin. It's the neurotoxin that can be fatal. Hemotoxin is used to break down tissue, and aids in the digestive process. Yes, the baby rattler has been equipped with a higher dose of venom because of its size for survival reasons.) ….Good Lord…

Adayre R. Miller

8/26/10

“If you can fill the unforgiving minutes…

With sixty seconds worth of distance run…” - Rudyard Kipling

Of all the tools Spirit delivered to you the day of your birth, the capacity to direct your attention may be the greatest of them all.

We pretend as adults that we are too sophisticated for something so basic and primal as Attention, we build worlds filled to the brim with the hunt for the illusive something that will finally give us rest, peace, tranquility and contentment. We seek to manipulate the outer world, until the world we live in is so fraught with dis-ease and discomfort from our manipulations, that she might just rise up one day and send a virus from which we cannot recover.

We search the length of our lives for security, comfort, power, and control…seemingly without the slightest awareness that nothing we can do will eliminate the fate that awaits us all. The “from dust and to dust” that is the outcome of every human Being’s great adventure.

Until now - in the modern world - we live bounded on all sides, by folks who lack the capacity to pay attention. We have alphabet soup names for it, and drugs to combat it, we lose our children to it, and our relationships suffer greatly, because we cannot slow down enough to regard one another at even the most basic level.

Yet, hidden…and quietly so…in the depths of this simple but godlike tool of Attention, is the key to freedom that ALL the world round is searching for.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, who was nominated in 1967 for a Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King and who has authored more than 30 books, writes of this most basic tool of Attention in one of his compelling but simple stories.

It seems he was hosting a group of students for a simple evening meal and with the meal concluded, and end-of-meal-tea yet to be offered, one of Hanh’s students volunteered to do the dinner dishes for the venerated and elderly monk.

The monk declined his students offer with this explanation…”no, I think not, for you do not have the will to do the dishes correctly”. The student, having the good sense to not take the Master’s rejection and it’s potential lesson personally, inquired as to how he could fail at such a simple and easy task. And the Master replied…”you will do the dishes so that you can finish them and move onto the after meal tea and conversation, I will do the dishes for the sake of doing the dishes.”

Here Hanh is attempting to teach his hurried and harried American student the value of being entirely involved with the current moment, no matter how mundane, how simple, how seemingly useless, or inconvenient.

In the monastery where Hanh took his early training he was required to carry the incense stick with both hands, while he ever so slowly approached the altar upon which he was to light the slender stick. An incense stick weighing hardly more than a paper clip, required the use of both his hands, so said his Master…”so that you will learn the proper method by which to honor and attend to the lighting of the incense”.

Nadia Boulanger describes the lack of Attention in this way…”Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.”

Life denied.

That is a harsh, demanding, and very accurate diagnosis…Life is denied, or becomes Anti-Life when we lack the will and the capacity to pay attention to the moment at hand. It isn’t easy, in the forgetfulness of adulthood; to train the Attention…I’ll give you that…

Rudyard Kipling, in his poem If, “If you can fill the unforgiving minutes with sixty seconds worth of distance run…”

It isn’t easy to fill the unrelenting minutes with sixty seconds of distance run, the distance Kipling is referring to cannot be found on any map, is not a part of some geographic location…but rather is the soul’s full involvement in the ordinariness of our daily life. The ego in us wants to live for tomorrow, and the imagined arriving of our greatness and with it the admiration of kings and commoners alike… but the Soul in us…wants attention paid to the dishes, and the window washing, and yes even the masterpiece writing.

Isaac Newton, who shaped our understanding of the physical world in which we live, said this about the extraordinary value of Attention… “If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent.”

For years I hung on ladders - in very uncomfortable circumstances - paying attention to the tiniest of details, while painting murals I had been commissioned to produce.

Occasionally I would have a client whose temperament or conditioning would cause them to find my slow and precise handling of their home’s or business’s a burden or a disturbance. “Hurry up” their energy or behavior would indicate, and I would feel compromised and pulled off center by their need for speed, and the cutting of corners.

I don’t know how or when my desire for paying attention began, but I know without equivocation that strengthening my commitment to paying attention and the excellence that results from it, was the only thing that kept me hanging on those ladders for so many uncomfortable years.

And I also know without doubt, that the newly discovered capacity for the Sweetness of Life that accompanies being fully present for window washing, dish cleaning, or the writing of masterpieces is a product of the increased Will to Attend, to the everyday and the ordinary.

Henry Miller said, “The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”

We live in a culture and a moment in history, where we have taken individuality to an extreme, and have come to think of our lives as having a great overreaching “purpose”. Finding one’s Purpose has become a new type of seeking that distracts and confounds us…it drags our attention into the future and turns the present moment into an obstacle to overcome, or in the worst of cases, an active enemy.

We live in a type of suspended animation, awaiting the arrival of some future moment, while all the days of our lives sift thru the hourglass one grain at a time… for which we not only are not present, but are actively resisting.

Here is where our suffering is manufactured, the clever egoic mind like a siren pulling sailors onto a rocky shore, sings the song of tomorrow…. while our hearts yearn and cry out for our Attention… to the ordinary, the mundane, the moment by moment life that is pulsing thru our veins and showing up disguised as boredom, “nothing to do”, “nowhere to go”, “nothing happening”.

It is only when you can enter the Silence, surround yourself in the welcome relief from the chattering mind, bathe yourself in the harmony of your own attention, that you can come to know the truth which William Blake writes so poignantly about, in his poem Auguries of Innocence…

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”

Your purpose?

You share the same one with every human ever born, or yet to be born…to develop and expand the capacity to become aware…not of angels or light-filled phenomena, that is just more of the clever ego’s doing, no – you are here to pay attention to wake up in your life, just as it is in this very moment. Imagine a world filled with Awakened mechanics, or waitresses, or bus drivers, politicians, or surgeons, or Teachers…a world where each one…gives and receives the boon of Attention. You can see it, can’t you? A world free of stress and pain, a world of kindness and care, of love and harmony.

Your reward?

Heaven, eternity, infinity, and grace beyond description, is hidden in plain sight. Right here, right now, in the midst of dishwashing, check writing, meal preparation, car-pooling, and corralling dust bunnies.

I know it is hard to believe…but that doesn’t prevent it from being True.

So take up your responsibility, shoulder your portion of the world’s salvation…do as Mary Oliver suggests, “To pay attention this is our endless and proper work.”

Adayre R. Miller

8/24/10

May you come to know that suffering has a cure…

There is a parable that the Buddha gave to his students more than two thousand years ago that resonates with me, in such a profound way that I feel the need to pass it on to you.

He was describing the need for, and will to, movement… psychological, emotional, spiritual and perhaps even actual. There are a good many scientists and philosophers who describe “movement” as the basis of Life itself… without vibration, say the scientists, energy is withdrawn and death occurs. Without “movement” of understanding, say the philosophers, spirit withdraws… and takes with it the soul and the heart.

The trick is to increase the activity of inner movement without expectation. To have no goal in mind, while also increasing one’s vibration, is the highest form of living possible for a human being.

Higher vibration when it moves thru our thinking creates clarity and understanding, when it moves thru our heart we enjoy peace and tranquility, when it moves thru our spirit we discover the rarefied air of true freedom. Not freedom from responsibility, (a deeply childish wish), but the freedom to discipline ourselves more completely and thereby to increase our value and worthiness, not just to ourselves, but to the whole of the Cosmos.

None of us; not you, not me, not the rich, famous, or great, among us are going anywhere…the reason is simple, there is nowhere to “go”, and there is nothing to “get” either. All of our living, every last drop of it, exists in the mind as vibration…as the Buddha’s “movement”.

To turn our attention to the inner life rather than continue the fixation on the outer manifestations or forms of life, is the first great movement of Being that we are required to make, if we are to be of any use what-so-ever. To pursue the outer, (form) to the exclusion of the primary-or most important-or most vital-or most real… Inner (formlessness)…is to build your “house upon sand” as the Bible says, or tragically, to end up “gaining the whole world while losing your own soul”.

So I hope I have made a case for movement as the primary activity of Spirit….and now to the Buddha’s allegory.

He described for his students the four types of horses, the Excellent Horse will move before the Master has finished grasping the whip…and already the horse has taken up the greater movement his Master desires from him.

The Good Horse moves into the canter or the trot the precise moment he feels the lightest touch of the whip upon his back, and his Master’s request for greater commitment.

The Bad Horse will not bend to his Master’s will until he feels pain in the whips command.

And here at the very bottom of the selection… we find The Worst Horse… he will not take direction and guidance from his Master, until he feels the pain in the “very marrow of his bone.”

The Buddha was trying to help his students to understand why the first noble truth is that Life is Suffering. All human beings, conditioned as we are, by the mind that separates itself from the vast interconnectedness of the Universe; by building a small, leaky, and unreliable dinghy of a personality, with which to navigate the Mighty and the Unknowable, requires “pain to the marrow of our bone” to incite us to movement, and the activity of Spirit... the increase in vibration... which will eliminate the pain we suffer so greatly from.

Our life condensed and contracted around what we don’t want, and continually striving for what we do want, is the source of all suffering. It is that contraction and constriction of the movement of mind, that causes the necessity of “pain in the marrow of our bone”, before we will seek the sheltering and healing activity of Spirit.

Paradoxically the first movement must always be toward what we don’t want. My Teacher said many times, in many different ways, “unlimited personal power is to be found in learning to like what we don’t like”.

I have come to see the deep wisdom in his lesson.

All the days of my life, until mercy made possible my escape, I wanted…no needed – and desperately so…the approval of others, because I was blessed/cursed with a strong intellect and an equally capable will, I fashioned a personality from the detritus and debris of my childhood, and went out into the world to “make people like me”. I got good enough at it to fill large rooms with admiring audiences, and with that capacity to excel at seeking approval, came a thirst to horrible to describe.

Soon the Universe in its mercy and kindness put me completely alone on a ladder, painting murals. And movement began in my heart and mind, as a tiny trickle to small to see…so small as to be almost invisible. Then the Universe brought me back to my Teacher and movement began in earnest, but still the thirst for approval and the desire for affirmation, created suffering and discord in my life and my Being.

Then the Universe placed me alone in my home, without work or distractions of any kind, requiring that I turn my efforts inward to work in my heart and mind, and movement became a flood…lifting, clarifying, deepening, and freeing me.

I began my journey as the “Worst Horse”…in truth; there should be a category under worst horse to describe the place I began. Maybe Horse About to Jump Off Cliff rather than move which would more accurately describe my level of unwillingness, in the beginning, to turn toward what I didn’t like/was afraid of…

But now in the bosom of Silence, I have moved up the ladder of Being, to the place where the Master needs only touch me with the whip to cause my attention to turn, and my will to bend. I do not possess the facile, tender, capable and compelling nature of my Teacher…a man whose Master need only think about reaching for the whip to cause him to move, this is an elegance that may not be possible in this lifetime for me, but to move beyond the necessity for pain is more than I could have hope for, or even imagined, in the depths out of which I have journeyed.

I have moved to the place where clarity and the right use of mind allows me to know that the Buddha’s promise is real…there is indeed a cure for suffering.

That cure can only be found in the Inner realms of existence, nothing you can win, achieve, acquire, own, nor even develop in the conceptual mind, can fund the freedom from suffering. Only the renunciation of desire and its many minions will make that freedom attainable….the wisest choice…begin with releasing the desire for your present moment to be anything other than what it is right now.

Too hot…good, too cold…good, too lonely…good, too unloved…good, too weak…good, too burdened…good, too poor…good, too fat...good, all of these and every other complaint you can muster, is merely the Master’s touch that YOU require to produce the movement toward the Invisible Light, that will release you from the Hell of the conditioned mind.

Here is the evidence and proof of a loving and compassionate Ground of Being, that the circumstances that you personally require, the ones that you find most distasteful, most disturbing, most painful, most unnerving, and even most terrifying are the very ones that hold the seeds of your personal freedom. The creativity and immense clarity that is required to orchestrate that very personal set of circumstances, is what compels me to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being.

C. G. Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imaging figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” The conditioned mind, the only hell there is, would have us believe that striving for the “good” or Jung’s “figures of light” is how we become Spiritually awakened, active and alive. But this is just one of the many ways in which the clever mind lies so effectively to us, and for us. We become “enlightened” by making the darkness conscious, or as my Teacher would say…”unlimited personal power (enlightenment), comes from learning to like, (making the darkness conscious), what we don’t like.”

If we do not bend our will to this Masterful Wisdom… this Ageless Wisdom Tradition… known the world over, and thru all of recorded time, then we face the consequences of our “sin” or missing the mark, and we pay the price as described again by Jung…”When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”

What counts in your life is not what happens to you externally but rather the upward movement of Being, expressed most clearly by the exhilarating and Life affirming journey of transformation that occurs, when one moves from being “Worst” Horse to becoming Most Wonderful and Wondrous, “Excellent” Horse.

Try to remember when you lose your way and start looking to the outer in your life for fulfillment, satisfaction, and purpose…that you are the “Horse” upon which the entire known and unknown Universe rides. Without you, you personally, the Universe would have no movement, (consciousness), and therefore no Life.

The only question…

Can you take the reins from your personality… your small self… your separate self…and instead, turn them over in complete trust and faith to the Mystery That Created All?

This is the only question worth your time. The only movement worth your energy. The only outcome your Heart will accept.

May God, the Buddha, the Christ, the Breath of Being lead you out of suffering and into obedience. May you come to know that suffering has a cure…

Adayre R. Miller

8/22/10

“Like Snowflakes Melting in the Sun”…

In the more than two and a half decades that I studied with my Spiritual Teacher, his presence affected me so profoundly in so many different ways, that I would not be capable of naming them much less describing them. But I attempt to none-the-less; his piercing intelligence, his complete commitment to us - his students - freedom, his total lack of interest in our approval or acceptance, his sweeping and awe inspiring generosity, the ringing bell of his authenticity…but most, foremost, and forever more… his humility.

It is the humility that affects me most deeply. His intelligence trained my capacity to understand, his precious presence kept me moving in the direction of ever deeper unfolding willingness, his authenticity was proven over and over for more than two decades, and his humility offered me a model to which I can only aspire.

Every time I would have even the smallest opportunity, I would attempt to extend my deep gratitude to him for providing me with such extraordinary nourishment and each time a cloud of displeasure would pass over his otherwise entirely peaceful countenance when I would attempt to praise him in my ham-fisted efforts to mumble out my gratefulness, while the tears filled my eyes and ran down my cheeks.

I understood his displeasure… as he gave many brilliant talks about the destructive forces of the “twins” has he called them, of Praise and Blame. The impact of taking our understanding of ourselves from another’s praising or blaming opinions, is to lose ourselves entirely, and travel a downward spiral of self-harm and self-denigration. So he chose as a matter of course, to accept neither our praise nor our blame. Something I am only now beginning to fully understand.

But here and now I feel the need to speak of his humility. He is most certainly humble in the way you and I are familiar with the word. He took no light for himself, needed no applause or recognition, had an absolute aversion to the concept of setting himself up as “great” and therefore separate from the All. He spoke often and quite convincingly of the deep and desperate hell that we will find ourselves in, when we conceive of ourselves as better than or lesser than any other. Giving up competition and comparisons were one of his favorite lessons, always driving home the necessity of “transcending” the need to define ourselves on a linear scale, that by its nature, puts one head higher than another’s and in the doing of so, sets us up for deep losses and agonies in the long run.

These are some of the surface ways in which I experienced his deep and abiding humility.

But now I have come to an entirely new addition to my favorite experience of him, and this ethereal quality of humility that wreathed his head like a garland of flowers. His humility was so complete it nearly had a fragrance, it certainly had a texture, and its depth was almost unfathomable.

This new definition includes the revelation that the depth of his humility came from the fact that he no longer lived thru any concepts of himself. He came to the current moment free of the conceptual mind, present in so complete a way as to be as available as a breath of air… and as nondescript as a dust mote.

I would often think of him out in the world, absent the startling blue carpet, of the room in which we all gathered to hear his lessons for all those years…and I would wonder if the folk just walking about in their day to day lives, had any experience of him. I would have given a great deal to watch him at the grocery store or in the dry cleaners or at the car wash. I have no doubt that he is as kind and caring to non-students as he is to us… it is not him I would want to watch, but them…to see his effect on them. In one brief story his caretaker, (he is ill now and in need of considerable attention), told us that she took him to the dentist, got him out of his wheel chair and into the dentist chair, saw to his comfort and then left the room. Upon the completion of his visit, she said, the Dentist would not let go of him. The Dentist took charge of getting him out of the dental chair and into the wheel chair, out of the office and into the car…all the while asking his caregiver…”who is his guy – what does he do?” (And we have got to assume it had NOTHING to do with what he said to the Dentist, I mean have you ever tried to talk around those fat little pillows they stuff into your mouth with such abandon?)

His presence was such a startling contradiction, at one and the same time he was the most powerful presence I have ever had the good fortune to encounter, and yet he was so nondescript it is difficult to adequately portray. I suppose the most striking physical feature was how very - very clean he looks to me, his hair what there is of it…and his beard are snow driven white, and quite sparkly, his skin has taken on the translucent quality of age and every tiny hair on his head and face is always perfectly in alignment with one another, as though they too had deep respect for the expression of Universal Intelligence which he has come so to embody, for me, and I suspect a large portion of the nearly 40,000 students who have found their way to him.

It is only now that I have become capable of setting aside the bondage of the “thinking mind”, that I can see the deeper aspects of his humility. To live, and express, and move about, in the world free of the conceptual mind… not only makes the world around you exquisitely beautiful, fresh, wondrous, and awe inspiring…but it removes the filters that stand between the Self and the Other.

When you can touch directly the awareness, or the Ground of Being, absent the speaking mind…all concepts of yourself, your personal history, your likes and dislikes, begin to melt away like snowflakes in the warming sun. Because he has years and years of the “direct experience” of life under his belt, this quality of true humility…or “living absent the conceptual self”, showed on him like a diamond. It practically sparkled thru his skin.

I sometimes shake my head in wonder at my good fortune to have encountered him, and more, to have avoided most of the spiritual promise makers in the marketplace, who make sweeping promises of more and better and wonderful, in favor of a simple man with a simple message of the work of Acceptance, and the Freedom of Being.

His birthday is today…and no doubt that is what has prompted this most personal of essay’s. Seventy-nine and in the slow decline of age, his essence is preparing to withdraw him from us, his loving and grateful students. It would not be an exaggeration to describe him as my spiritual father, although I hesitate to do so, as I doubt he would define me as a daughter. He often told us that he “served the deck, not the individual cards”; he meant by the use of the phrase, that his mandate was of service to Humanity and our evolution as a species and as Spiritual Beings. His task was no less than our salvation and his commitment was total. He was not my pastor, nor my guru, nor so simple a thing as a guide…I suppose in my constant desire for the poetry life has to offer, the Catholic notion of “Father” comes closest to describing his role in my life.

I am not so naïve as to believe that what the Buddhist’s call “shenpa”, or the experience of being hooked and dragged back into the drama of living out of the conceptual mind is over in my life. But I have had the Direct Experience of breathing in and out - entirely absent the thinking mind - and that deep experience will become the Teacher, in my life, that he once was. I can trust me now, to continue forging a path of clarity and wonder and beauty.

My Teacher/Father’s entire message could be summed up in the two phrases he used so very often, these 25 years passed. They were: “You must leave home, (the conceptual mind), you must find your own truth, (the thing only you can do), you must replace yourself, (guide and nurture the next generation who will carry the flame of understanding).

And the most profound:

“You must become your own Teacher, Teachings, and Student”.

Here on the day of his birth, I accept full responsibility for deepening my connection to the Silent Ground of Being, and for the legacy he has left behind in my heart, mind, and soul.

In Deepest Gratitude and with the Aspiration of Humility,

Adayre R. Miller

8/17/10

Just Enough...

Oryoki is a Japanese word that names both an item, a monk’s begging bowl, and an attitude or philosophy that of… “Just Enough”.

Just Enough is a concept foreign to Americans in almost every form. We supersize our food and subsequently our waistlines, our houses grow well beyond our needs, our schedules overwhelm us with busyness and activities beyond our ability to emotionally cope. We would not be satisfied with the simple bowl of the Japanese monk; even a tractor-trailer might cause us to still decry “NOT enough”, rather than the remarkable humility of Just Enough.

The concept of Oryoki is that the monk’s duty is to begin his day with an empty bowl, to set out into the world with only his faith and his small bowl…and to be grateful for what appears in his bowl or doesn’t, as the case may be, when the day is done. If for some reason the bowl is overfilled by some well meaning stranger, the commitment to Just Enough requires that the monk accept only what will gently fill his stomach and nothing more, there is no saving for tomorrow or the “rainy day” that might be headed his way. No hoarding, or controlling, or even evading the emptiness of the bowl.

Simple, humble, careful and care filled acceptance lies at the heart of Just Enough.

Just Enough cannot be accomplished by the mind that loses itself in an imaginary future running toward a goal or accomplishment where the illusory promise of satisfaction awaits, like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It is my belief that the oddly American disease of… WAY TOO MUCH… is born entirely of the lack of ease that prevents even the most basic recognition of satisfaction.

When the mind that devours us in it’s demands for more and ever more, is finally overcome, when the quiet can fill the pores of our skin like a soft spring rain shower. When we are so aware of the breath that it’s rhythms and movements are like a miracle of harmony and wonder. When the feel of the soft fur on the pink and downy underbelly of our companion animals tiny tummy, fills our hearts with gratitude and joy, we have come home to Just Enough.

My life has become a study in emptiness, I let go of more and more day after day, and yet each day my bowl threatens to be filled beyond measure with joy, ease, and a sweeping Gratitude that seems limitless to me. My Teacher says that Gratitude, one of the most valuable of the 24 virtues, is a “thought form of harmony that defies gravity and rises to the highest”.

I have often wondered if Gratitude is not some form of nourishment, that somewhere light-filled beings in some other vibration, are fed by our gratitude and its vibration of harmony…that their bowl of Just Enough is gently filled with our continuing awakening to simple and easy gratefulness.

I am grateful for the strangest things, the feel of my hips moving in their sockets as I walk across the room…my dogs limpid and liquid brown eyes following me, as they do, no matter where I move to or what I am doing. The sound of my air conditioner as it works to make my small world a comfort filled one. The loss of a job that has caused me to find a deeper version of myself and to finally meet the shared Oneself that lies at the Heart of the All.

This is of course my deepest most profound experience of gratitude. To know the Silence, to feel the Emptiness, to hold in my hand the wonder of Stillness, to discover that I exist beyond my thinking mind’s many voices. A discovery of such magnitude causes all else to pale by comparison.

Here in my small bowl is my offering to you, the wonder and miracle of Just Enough. Just Enough is the breath in your lungs, the warmth in your heart, the pulse in your veins, the strength in your sinew. The discovery that Just Enough is so extraordinarily simple, and more, that it is available for the taking to every human being on the planet is the Great Good News that all the world’s spiritual leaders have defined for millennia.

Nothing needs to be added to your life, not health, wealth, fame or fortune…indeed subtraction is the wisest course. From the right here and the right now of your life, you can find the doorway into the limitless Oneself. The No Thought mind has the love, the joy, the ease, the kindness, the acceptance and the wonder you have been searching for since the day you arrived.

Let go the demand for more. Give up the conceptual in favor of the simplified. Stop searching and start finding. Rid yourself of the competition and fever of “getting somewhere”. Relax and repose in the deep abiding arms of the Oneself.

Discover the beauty and abiding nature of Just Enough.

Adayre R. Miller

8/16/10