The Belly Laugh...

I went to dinner recently; at the home of a couple of friends I haven’t seen for a good long while.

They had changed quite a bit since last we saw each other, gone entirely was the Buddha belly they both had begun to grow, and in its place the bantam weight flat surface of the high school years. They both had new hairstyles and new jobs, but the same kindness and care remained.

I remember remarking once, to some casual acquaintances, that there is no better friend for a single straight woman to have, than a gay man. I got a fairly threatened response from some of the straight men to whom I was speaking…but ya’ know…I’m just sayin…

So a pair, is of course, double the pleasure.

After dinner, which was lovely and yummy – as always, we settled down to some game playing fun and as the dominos were unpacked, one of my friends allowed as to how he was going to get his “hookah,” and have an after dinner smoke. For those of you who may not know, a hookah is not a gal with a skirt up to “there” wearing fish net stockings, but rather, it’s a water pipe used quite frequently in most middle-eastern countries for the smoking of tobacco. I have seen them in the movies and as objects in the hidden-object computer games I am fond of. But never in real life…

I knew the basic shape was large, bulbous, glass spheres stacked atop one another, the fattest one on the bottom and rising to a smallish one just beneath the reservoir for the tobacco, (or wacky weed - for those of us who came of age in the seventies - in my one year of “experimentation,” I smoked wacky weed out of reconfigured paper towel role cores, once a hollowed-out apple, and of course, a roll your own…but never the mother of all water pipes…a hookah…)

The ones I have seen pictures of, all appear to be in the 18 to 22 inch range, so try to imagine…if you can, the sheer visual surprise of a hookah nearly 3.5 half feet tall. I am 5’3”, and I just know if I had been standing beside it, it surely would have reached many inches above my waist. (Yes… it is possible I am exaggerating, but if it is not actually 3.5 half feet tall…it is most assuredly, visually 3.5 feet tall).

It was red…but let us not stop there…it was fire engine red, candy apple red, cherry bomb red, lit-from-within-fireball-red…I’m saying…it was RED!!

And as my friend un-ceremoniously plucked it from the standing broom closet, it surely has to be stored in, and set it down upon the countertop…. rising in all its red magnificence, as straight and true as the Red Suited Queen’s guard at Buckingham Palace, it landed with a thud… directly upon my funny bone.

I didn’t just laugh…I bellowed, guffawed, howled, slapped the table and rolled, almost - right off my chair.

I unconsciously risked offending both my friends, when I couldn’t stop laughing and then laughed the harder, when the one friend said his partner had purchased it for him as a present, and I of course, wit gone wild…made comment about how, he surely, had secured the most tasteful one to be had… in the entire metroplex, that is our fair conglomeration of cities.

… Did I mention how RED it is?....

And with gold filigree decoration, right round its Santa Belly.

But just then, my non-smoking friend – and purchaser of said implement, allowed as to how…if I thought this, was a funny sight…I should see his partner sitting naked with his “bits and bobs” in plain view, puffing away on the thing.

That is when I had to lay my head upon the table, and weep with mirth.

The kind of laughter, that fills up your chest cavity and rolls around your ribcage massaging your innards. The kind of laughter, you normally have to pay some very capable entertainers to procure for you. The kind of laughter, that increases your heart rate, depth of breath and sensitivity to, the wonder and beauty and humor, life has to offer at every turn. Dinner, and a show…what a treat!

Finally, mirth decreasing to just a Cheshire cat grin, I watched my friend prepare his smoke. There were tiny silver tongs with which to handle the teeny-tiny-Ken-and-Barbie-sized, charcoal briquettes. Which then must be burned to a smoldering red ash, in preparation for the application of specialty purchased aromatic tobacco, to be placed atop the now smoldering coals…and finally, the gurgling of smoke as it was pulled thru its water bath. Not the tap-one-out-of-the-package-and-fire-it-up-with-your-bic, ritual that accompanied the god-awful years when I smoked, no, this ritual was a 3.5 half foot sized, RED one…with tongs, hot plate, coiling smoking tube, and fruit flavored tobacco.

Long ago, in the eighties, I visited Tokyo for nearly a month. One of the most surprising things I noticed about the youth of Japan, at the time, was the near total commitment to smoking. Every club and restaurant I entered, was filled with young people puffing away and they seemed to all have one preferred brand….Marlboro red top. The distinctive half diamond lipstick-red-top, of the package was on display at nearly every table I passed. It seemed to me, that it was the same sort of status symbol there that a Mercedes Benz car key was, in the American clubs I attended back home. The distinctive black fob - positioned just so - on the table, declaring as it did, for all to see…”yes, I am very successful, and I have the Benz to prove it”…so too, the careful display of the Marlboro red top declared the Japanese desire for the wild and wooly American expressiveness and outrageousness, in a society governed by thousands of years of studied politeness.

The Marlboro red top has a long and storied history. The tougher than tough American cowboy, sporting a single smoke tucked behind his ear. The James Dean wanna be, oulaws-without-a-clue, with their redtop rolled into a white t-shirt sleeve, or the Rat Packer whose eyes are permanently squinted from the smoke swirling up around his head, while Jazz greats play mournfully on stage. (Just a tiny bit of interesting trivia here – the Marlboro brand was originally conceived as a woman’s brand, the filter paper as bright a red as the box top, so ladies of the fifties could smoke without leaving a telltale lipstick stain…it flopped, was brought back in house and reassigned a Cowboy as the advertising hook, and well, as they say…the rest is emphysema racked history).

I guess, we may rightly assume, the RED hookah will not become the status symbol that a Marlboro red top once was in Japan…for heaven’s sake… it would have to be carted around in a child’s red-flyer wagon, the one with the big fat rubber wheels.

Now, these essays are dedicated to my spiritual journey…and you may be thinking right about now…that I will be incapable of making the leap from hookah’s, cigarettes, and jazzy bad boys, to spiritual clarity and discernment. You may well have underestimated my commitment…

The whole of the Spiritual experience might well be encapsulated in the idea of the Present Moment, or the Eternal Now, or the Experience of Being, but what all these various names mean are one and the same thing…that your heart, mind, soul, and spirit are firmly aligned with the location of your body.

Most people do not fully understand the concept of The Now, it has moved into the lexicon of language and is now become a word similar to God, or Heaven, or Manifesting…lost is the vitality of the word - it having been replaced with a “concept,” for the mind to add to its’ inventory of concepts.

Living engaged with the Now means complete absorption in the experience currently expressing itself thru the body. Thoughts of the past, future, or indeed any thought that does not suit the current experience does not exist, nor does any other moment save the one just under your feet.

There are a handful of physiological conditions that by their very nature force a person into the Now. An orgasm, “or little death” as it was once called, primal fear as in a-snake-is-slithering-your-way-better-run-for-the-hills, and The Belly Laugh…

These three snap us immediately and firmly into our bodies where “thinking” cannot invade the moment with thoughts of past or future, to rob of us of the only moment we can actually live in.

Truly living it turns out, has nothing to do with how much you achieve, or how many experiences you get to pack into your allotted time. Truly living is measured by how many minutes you stay completely grounded within your body’s present moment experience…and by that measure a child who dies in utero, could potentially have “lived” longer than a man who dies on his eightieth birthday.

Here’s the most important point, true spiritual maturation or growth can only happen in the present moment. For every moment spent imagining you can manage the future, or reminiscing about the past, you have moved into the illusion and fallen into the deadly dull sleep of the unawakened, or what the Bible calls the Lost.

While asleep, the toxins of desire, needs, goals, planning, becoming, seeking, grasping for greatness, and all the various forms of searching outside oneself ripen and threaten the very life from which you are running. Your mind and heart sicken, even as the clever ego convinces you that what you are believing must be believed, that what you are doing must be done, that what you are afraid of must be defended against….

And happiness, well being, harmony and Joy slip by and become increasingly unattainable no matter how much you have, have done, are applauded for, or how great is your name.

Here is a masterful definition of Happiness, by an author whose name is no longer known to me…”Happiness is the condition that ensues when all seeking, grasping or desire for anything outside the immediate situation has stopped. It is the condition that exists when all feeling of poverty, need, insufficiency and comparison has stopped - a condition in which desire is absent. It is the mirror surface of a pond when no wind blows. This explains why it disappears, the moment we try to grasp it, by any effort of wish or will.

Happiness seeks nothing outside itself; pleasure seeks constant rewards and tidbits. Happiness simply is. It has no cause and does not depend on outside props to hold it up.” – Author Unknown

Pleasure seeks…happiness simply is…

The next time primal fear has you by the throat, or your loved one and you join in harmony, or a red hookah gives you the belly laughs…try to capture the experience of Beingness, the total cessation of the thinking mind and all its cleverness and craftiness, and you will be closer to the Eternal Truth than you have been at any other point in your life. Truth does not need you to “believe”… in point of fact… believing is one of the greatest stumbling blocks to understanding, if not the greatest.

And once you have experienced a moment free from the thinking mind, then I bid you…

Now that, “You have found the conditions in which the openness of your heart can become the reality of your being. Stay here, until you acquire a force in you that nothing can destroy.” G. I. Gurdjieff’s

photo courtesy of Susan Miller and flikr photo sharing

Listen To What You Can't Hear...

There is a tiny Chinese woman I cross paths with on the mountain, who has a decidedly grandmotherly feel to her patterns of conversation. She is 72 she tells me, and climbs the mountain…past the water tower, as often as I do, if not more.

She will chirp at me on hot days, if I am wearing a t-shirt with sleeves, that I shouldn’t be and should wear tank tops. If it is winter and I am not wearing a jacket then it is, “you should be bundled up, and not dress so simple in such cold!” she will say, while also almost audibly tsk tsking at me.

She is sprightly to say the least, carries a walking stick, sports huge and dark “Jackie O” sunglasses, and a large woven hat. Her tiny feet carry her with ease up the mountain, and I often find her walking backwards down it…”for my knees” she explains.

On some days she will impart knowledge that has a distinctly authoritarian ring to it, for instance upon hearing of the year of my birth she declared me a rat in the Chinese Zodiac, (although a quick peek with Google informs otherwise). And today upon hearing that I do not have either a husband or children she declared, with her quite charming self-defined authority and unmistakable accent…”Haaaa you live simple life, will live to be a hundred!”

I suspect that just because her “authoritative” conversation style is charming for me, a woman who sees her for 2 minutes, once or so a week… I would bet money, her kids don’t find it as charming as I do.

And then there was the young woman who ran the treadmill testing at the Doctors office, where I am now a regular.

She brought a very elderly gentleman to sit in the chair next to me to await a new cycle of testing; he was of eastern European decent with a very thick accent, if I were guessing I would say Polish. He resembled St. Nick in an uncanny way. Round and full was his belly, merrily blue were his eyes, and his hair a sparkling white…all that was missing was the long wavy beard. And of course the red suit, but he had chosen instead, a quite neutral beige and denim blue, plaid.

She sat him down and gave him very specific instructions to eat and drink the snacks she had provided.

Her voice was pitched upward of its normal range and considerably louder than, I am sure, is normal. The pattern was slow, clear, and careful as though speaking to a child of two or perhaps two and a half.

The assumption being that he couldn’t hear or perhaps was incapable of understanding her very specific direction. “Now… you must eat this,” she required, while opening a package of peanut butter crackers. “I-am-going-to-come-back-in-a-few-minutes-and-make-certain-you’ve-eaten-these.” I could feel in the air that sticky sweet mindset that is often found in “caregivers”…a combination of assumptive control; unconscious delight in that control, and a carefully crafted strategy of complete acquiescence to her plan for “helping”.

After she left, he turned to me, with his thick accent and impossibly smooth and jowly face and sighed with resignation while saying…”I am definitely not hungry”. I commiserated with him, but knew even as he did, that he would not get away with non-compliance. … Sure enough, she was back six minutes later to reassert her requirement to eat the whole package.

I share with you these two snapshots of well meaning, but somewhat manipulative ladies, not as a method by which to take them to task for their unconscious behavior patterns, but so that we may catch a glimpse, from the corner of our eye, of the mind that “knows”.

This is the mind that is sure of everything, or at the very least, absolutely, positively, without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt SURE, of at least one thing.

Our resident wise one, Winnie of the Pooh, describes this type of mind as a Brain. And goes on to clarify, “Those who are clever, who have a Brain, never understand anything.”

By the time you have fully developed a Brain, gone is the feasibility of staying in touch with the Mystery. The sheer mysterious impossibility of every single thing that surrounds us….the charming polka dots of the red and black lady bug, the crackling creakiness of a croaky frog, the smell of dust being spattered by a light summer sprinkle, the feel of the soft warm fur on your small dog and her white and pink ears.

The Pooh, who’s greatest asset is staying in touch with the Mystery, was heard to say to Piglet…”Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known”.

His attempt to help Piglet to understand, How The Nothing Becomes The Something Only to Return to The Nothing Again, unnerved Piglet who sidled up from behind. “Pooh,” he whispered. “Yes, Piglet?” “Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw, “I just wanted to be sure of you.”

For as you see by Piglet’s response, that staring into The Nothing – is not for the weak of Heart.

To see what is real, you must give up entirely, the Brain.

It is as if, suddenly, one fine day…Brain realizes that it knows nothing, that it is nothing and in the doing of that realization, sets itself free.

And then, you come to know that “it is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?”…a term Pooh is often heard to utter.

So if, “when late morning rolls around and you’re feeling a bit out of sorts, don’t worry; you’re probably a little eleven o’clockish”, and as Winnie of the Pooh would so lovingly remind you… “Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things that you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

Listen to what you can’t hear, and your heart will mend and your Spirit will soar…and soon… lunch will be served…

11/27/10

Adayre R. Miller

(Pooh quotations excerpted from the work of A.A. Milne, 1882 -1956 and his iconic Winnie the Pooh series, borrowed completely out of context… but interpreted with great respect and fondness.)

"Every Heart His Hand Created..."

Today the tests began in earnest. My heart was looked at in every way I can conceive of it being peered at, without the use and aid of a scalpel.

There was a big machine that tracked a radioactive isotope around and thru the cavities of my heart, a treadmill that forced my heart to gallop at breakneck speeds, and a machine that looked at my heart thru the miracle of sonar. The young woman in charge of the treadmill gave me a painstakingly thorough explanation, as though the device were beyond my comprehension, and I, with some small measure of pride…responded that “yes, despite my appearance to the contrary, I will be able to do 10 minutes on the treadmill…after all, I do 95 minutes on the mountains to and from the water tower four times every week”. Ten minutes later, with my self aggrandizing hubris laying shredded around my ankles like so many wisps of broken bumblebee wings, I understood just how slowly it is I make my way up that mountain….and how fast a treadmill, with consummate indifference, can force you to move.

This office with its, death defying treadmill, is 19 Doctors strong and so well functioning it moves you about their complex domain like pieces on a chessboard, being wielded by a Master chessman. Go here, do this, don’t do that, sit here, wait some more…

At one point in all the moving and testing and the many expectations that were required of me, I was positioned just so, for the sonar tech to be able to bounce sound off my heart and measure it’s many cavities and depths. The manner of my much-adjusted posture, allowed me to see the computer screen as clearly as she could, and thus, to watch my own beating heart.

I have seen this type of procedure many times on TV and in the movies, when the pediatrician peers at the baby’s tiny fluttering heart…and I can only imagine how that must feel, now that I have seen my beating heart as well.

The room was soothingly dark, the tech blessedly silent, and some form of opera, or choral music, was playing softly in the background as I watched my heart performing its rhythmical service.

As I lay there in the quiet and lyrical semi-darkness, I was overcome with gratitude for the service my heart has so committedly provided me, all these long years. It went to that depth of gratitude that is normally reserved for the presence of my Teacher and his great and deep calm. And that level of gratitude…always…makes me cry. Laying there in my twisted, posed, and uncomfortable posture, alone with my experience of the deepening expansion of gratitude, I felt tears gathering and spilling over the bridge of my nose to join the stream from my other eye as they both traveled toward my ear.

Somehow looking inside my body at my beating heart, gave me to know just how much service it has provided me. The long years of my private hell, the war of wars that waged in my broken mind for so many years, the active way in which I disregarded what would be best for my heart, in favor of what served my egoic mind’s neediness and the constant search for external approval…a mind at war with a heart, was the condition of almost three decades of my life.

Now that Silence has given me the continuing development of control, over my thinking mind and I am no longer flung about like a tiny rowboat tossed against deadly sea cliffs, I can see the source of Silent Service that was born with me into the world in the form of my Heart, drumming out its lifetime of service and care.

Wiki answers tells me that your heart can be seen beating when you are considerably smaller than a kidney bean, a mere five weeks beyond your conception.

I have always thought the Heart of Courage, or Caring, or Kindness was a metaphorical one…but now I think perhaps it is coded into our cellular structure.

I was born into the hellfire and damnation tradition of religion, by which all children are defined as condemned by the act of conception…the “Original Sin” that gives rise to beating children for their own betterment. That notion, along with virulent self-hatred, was left behind me long years ago, and its place taken by the Buddhist conception of “basic goodness”.

In the Buddhist tradition you, and I, and all of life… are defined as born good, and I saw today that the truth of basic goodness rests in the silent rhythms of your heart and mine. Protected from the confusion of a mind split asunder, your hearth, your haven, your hope and your help…is silently beating under your breastbone awaiting your awakening.

In the Buddhist tradition all beings are born good, and it is only the confusion of minds unraveling with self-inflicted illusions, that allow for “monsters” to walk among us. The rapists, murderers, child molesters and all forms of “evil” are merely now at to far a distance, warped by the confusion of the thinking mind, to hear the soft thrumming of their own heart.

“One learns through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect. God has put something noble and good in every heart his hand created.” – Mark Twain

Every heart that takes up the beating work of a lifetime has at it’s core, and perhaps even as the reason for which it beats, a noble and good thing… buried somewhere within.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” – C.G. Jung.

To stop searching among the rubble and debris of external circumstance for our purpose, our value, or our inherent goodness is the first step on the long journey home…it begins the transformation that allows us to know in the depths of our heart that the “descent is for the sake of the ascent.” – Ageless Wisdom Proverb

In the healed mind, the heart takes the lead and is transformed from unnoticed servant to its rightful position of supremacy and clarity…”who looks outside” creates for himself heart breaking and un-fulfillable longing, he “who looks inside” creates strength of will, character, clarity, and finally and truly… “A full heart with room enough for everything, or if not, an empty heart with room for nothing.” - Antonio Porchia

The Dark Heart of Loneliness...

The first blush of potential health problems have caused, as you might imagine, a life review. While walking the mountain this morning I traveled back over time and connected with the vast changes that have occurred in my life.

In my childhood, aside from my mother’s rages and my uncles misconduct, the central feature of my childhood was agonal loneliness.

It was the kind of loneliness that burns like fire, but ices your insides to the degree that paralysis sets in. It hollowed me out, and left me trembling with tension, fear, and anxiety. My father absent because of my mother’s rages, my mother in effect dead since she was three, and my sister’s gone the moment they had feet under them.

Thus I had no family connections to speak of. In all of my adulthood; I cannot recall my mother calling me even once, (and of course my Father never did). I know she must have, when my father had his heart surgery or when my sister announced she was going to marry a man she met five days previously…at some point she must have called me. But it was so rare an occurrence as to be virtually non-existent.

Thus all contact, connection, effort, and participation rested on my shoulders. (Something I no longer have the will for…)

In childhood, I can distinctly remember, how poor a job I did at attempting to “make” friends. Beverly, who lived across the street and two doors up, was a gangling and skinny kid with dark curly hair and large gaps between each of her front teeth. Her nose, short and upturned, was already - at six years old - sprinkled with freckles so liberally it looked like polka dots. I remember very clearly the breezy confidence she had in the arena of “friend making”. Easy to be with, goofy, and oddly cute she gathered up friends like daisies from a field. I yearned to be in her circle, but never fit, as I rarely fit anywhere.

Young adulthood arrived and I vowed to figure out what was wrong with me, correct it, and somehow learn to be “popular” and attractive to others.

I honed my innate intelligence, developed my wit, poured over magazine articles on the “how to’s” of everything from, yuppie- dressing-for-success-to-sculpting-your-features, with 2 hours worth of “natural looking” make-up application. I dropped, without consideration or application of thought, into an anorexic phase intended to keep me reasonably slender, to the degree that I once went three months without solid food. (This messes with your brain chemistry in such a profound way, I know that it was part of the reason I was so actively suicidal, throughout my entire twenties and some measure of my thirties as well.)

At one point in a bar with co-workers, I watched Robin, the only other woman on our team...surrounded by men three deep…her daisy cup filled to overflowing, and I ventured a question of Dave, a good looking and friendly teammate.

“Dave” I said, “In a very objective way, it is my belief that Robin is not more physically attractive than I am. We are similar in body type, level of facial attractiveness and care with appearance. So, tell me if you know, why she is so attractive to men and I might as well be wallpaper?” And he replied without the spoonful of sugar that would have helped so much…”easy”, he said…”you’re way to needy”.

As it turned out that was not the last time I was to hear that phrase, something that literally took my breath away each of the three times I have heard it.

…Meet my shadow; her name is “Miz Needy and Then Some, Daawlin”…

The other half of me. The dark side of the force. The danger in the pitch black. The boogey man under the bed. The hellhounds of the Baskervilles. (If sound effects could be added, you would be hearing the breathy, mechanical breathing of Darth Vader right now.)

The first two times I heard it, from dim but beautiful Dave, and from rich and successful Jim, I was not capable of putting the information to use. But finally my gifted, harmless, intuitive, and powerful Teacher said it to me, (who I would trust with my life), and the light dawned in my heart and mind.

As I write this, posted above my computer screen are these two quotes in bold 48 pt. typeface:

Rumi…writes of “night travelers who search the darkness instead of running from it, a companionship of people willing to know their own fear. “ ….and….

As Milarepa sang to the (emotional and spiritual) “monsters” he found in his cave, “It is wonderful you demons came today. You must come again tomorrow. From time to time, we should converse.”

These great and wise sages, attempt with all the graciousness and kindness that they possess, to lead us to the fracture that wounds our hearts and hamstrings our lives. Know your fear, converse with your demons….meet your dark side and liberate your life.

The agonal loneliness that was such a feature of my childhood, that motivated my every waking moment in early adulthood, the source of my desire to bury a bullet in my brain, was the loss of, the fear of, and the running from…my “other” half.

Now my other half and me are co-conspirators. Gone is the need to hide myself from myself, gone is the “I don’t know who I am blues”. Gone is the looking outside of myself for others to define me, describe me, or reflect me.

Just before my mother’s death, while I was walking behind her from the kitchen back to her bedroom making sure she didn’t fall along the way, she said, almost too quietly to hear and apropos of nothing and to no one, (I do not believe she was speaking to me), “I don’t think I even know who I am.” It was a moment of deep sadness for me, deeper even than the death that followed the very next day.

She didn’t “know” herself, as the vast majority of people do not, because she had spent a lifetime running from her fears…a lifetime not conversing with her demons.

It is my experience that the meeting of one’s other half is a prerequisite to the capacity to leave behind both halves in favor of the higher realms of understanding. The United Me’s that have no “self” in them.

Here is my entire definition and understanding, of all the variations the spiritual path has to offer: Pre-thought – Trapped in Thinking – Post Thought, this is my church, my doctrine, my liturgy, and my high holy days. (Although there is not a great deal of pomp and circumstance as you might imagine…and membership is quite low as well).

Pre-thought: this is the realm of the animals, minerals, and vegetation in the higher orders of the animal kingdom we see emotion, but no thought as such. For instance, when my dog was attacked by a pit bull and his over large incisor bit into her flesh just next to her spine, she screamed and ran, but as soon as the danger had passed and she was safely away there was never another moment from that day to this that she “relived” her near death. No fear of that particular corner as we passed it each day, no trauma around pit bills in general, no upset at all…even as the wound was still fresh in her back. ---No thought, no suffering---

Trapped in Thinking: as consciousness develops, as it has in humans, the capacity to think brings both gifts and hugely difficult challenges. On the first day that Og named a tree, a tree…limitation began. As the mind settled, by naming, on what a thing is - hardly ever again searches for greater depth. Then Og developed aesthetics and called the tree “beautiful”, and Bog disagreed…and thus conflict was born into the Mind of Man. Then Og reached a new level of “thinking” and discovered the concept of mine, as in, my rabbit for dinner…and Bog wished him dead over it. And this is where we get nuclear proliferation; we have Bog and Og to thank for WMD’s…

(My Teacher first introduced me to Og and Bog and I, in turn, introduce them to you.)

But let us not forget, the “trapped” portion of this hugely painful and deeply suffering second level. The trapped comes from not being willing to embrace the all of you. The ugly, maimed, lonely, hurting, deformed mess that came up out of childhood, in response to which, you created an identity you would now die to protect. An identity entirely false and with no basis in Being, but which none-the-less has caused billions over millennia to die unrealized and separated, both from themselves and from the One.

OK, here’s where it gets good…

Post Thought: Beyond thought… Like dolphins leaping from a silvery break in the water, joy-filled, free, easy, calm, quiet, lovely, capable, powerful, wonderful, delightfully simple.

To discover that the who of you, is not your thinking - as an actual lived experience and not a concept others have told you - which has merely been added to your thinking mind’s inventory, is miraculous beyond the capacity for words.

One tiny crack is all that is necessary. The first time your mind is silent puts you in touch with Silence, and awakens the desire to abide there. It ends the fear of death both the real one and the unreal one, (the death of that hobbled together childhood created “identity” – which must die if Silence is to be fully engaged.)

Post Thought, makes it possible to control thought. In time, with commitment and concentration, thought will still bubble up from wherever it bubbles up from, but the moment it is recognized as being detrimental to your well being you can drop it like a hot rock. Thoughts like, “I don’t like this or that”, or “She shouldn’t have done this or that”, or “No one loves me”, or “I am unwanted”, or any other variation on the theme of pain and suffering can be dropped off at the curb like just so much refuse. Sure it takes practice, but learning to disbelieve a thought is easy, once you come to know - Post Thought - that they aren’t even real.

Post Thought will end all conflict, all limitations and all seeking. It is the very center of the great Mystery, and yet the need to understand what cannot be understood is left sitting on the shelf gathering the dust it should be gathering. Where did we come from? Don’t know, doesn’t matter. Where are we going? Don’t know, doesn’t matter. Will anybody be there when we get there? Don’t know, doesn’t matter.

Why doesn’t it matter…because Post Thought brings with it a feeling tone of open spaciousness so delicious, so wonderful, so captivating that not knowing is truly a wonderful, glorious experience. But the best thing is that it ends fear and anxiety. Don’t enjoy being afraid, drop that thought…

In a Post Thought World…thinking will be what it was meant to be, a tool for exploration, creation, communication, and delight. And it will no longer be, the source of such horrific agony that a young woman sits alone on the side of her bed, night after night, holding her father’s twenty-two and wishing she had the will to shoot those thoughts right out of her brain.

To be capable of stopping your thoughts, is like manna from heaven…it soothes, nourishes, liberates, fuels and frees the Heart and Soul.

The Post Thought World comes into existence the moment a single individual crosses the gulf of fear, and releases the need for “me”… a need born in the dark heart of a lonely little girl, and released into the waiting arms of A Woman of Substance….

Adayre R. Miller

11/22/10

Do You Trust....?

In preparation for my cardiologist appointment, I have had several contacts with his multiple Doctor practice, beginning with their “customer service” and scheduling arm. They were without fail, kind, enthusiastic, eager to serve, capable, and as I shared with the departing scheduler…”a-very-well-oiled-machine”.

It was the kind of service that was once ubiquitous in America and immortalized in the early TV advertisements of the “Men from Texaco”… for those of who may be to young to remember the dark ages of television when everything was in black, white and infinite shades of gray… the Men from Texaco were well dressed, eager, handsome, young men who serviced every inch of your car with a glowing smile and a winning personality, and a red-only-in-your-imagination-star, emblazoned on their crisp uniforms.

So too, the large and busy and effective, Cardiologist practice I have become a small moving piece in. The first scheduler asked me a very surprising question…”what kind of personality did I want in my Doctor”. It was so surprising, I practically wanted to swivel my head to and fro, about my empty office, to see if anyone else had overheard such an astonishing question with respect to the medical community - particularly the head of the community - the revered and removed, DOCTORS… boy, the times they are a changing…

Well…I ruminated, yes; I would like one who has the patience and the will to LISTEN to me. Someone who unlike my primary care Doctor has the sensitivity to pause after delivering news like…”you may have had a heart attack” and allow me a moment to gather my wits and ask a question or two. “Do you have one like that?” I queried…

“Oh yes”, she warmly responded. “We have one just like that, his name is ‘Dr. O’ and he is the MOST patient and attentive Doctor in our practice”.

So prepped in this manner, I met with Dr. O.

I told him of the day in early June, when my heart beat out of rhythm for an entire day. I told him of how it caused me to get back out on the mountain, and slowly regain the capacity to make it all the way up to the water tower. I told him of how I had not seen a physician in almost three decades, save the broken arm five years ago, I told him of my fathers heart bypass surgery and my grandfather’s sudden heart attack death in his thirties.

And please believe me…I do not exaggerate…for every piece of information I shared with him, he asked me - not once but twice - about whatever I had just said, as though it had never been uttered before. Some of the information had a third repeat query, this after ostensibly having heard it twice already. It caused me to smile to myself, at the assurances that this was the most effective listener, this busy and successful practice had to offer.

He seemed like a good enough guy. And I was not put out with him at his intense lack of presence, as I once would have been. Instead I felt a kind of sadness for him. If this is typical behavior in his role as physician, and I suspect it is, then his life is spent in a kind of one-eighth presence while his mind is absent and “busy” with more pressing matters.

He appeared to be in his late sixties, so the vast majority of his waking hours have been spent in this deep fissure of being somewhere else, while his body is in the present moment. A condition that has become epidemic in this century, and a condition that disallows entirely, the possibility of finding and connecting with the Internal Real.

Because there are no “authority” figures in my life, which is to say, I hold no one above me as being capable of fixing the life that is mine to lead, I do not have great expectations or needs of the people who pass thru my life who are successful, or educated, or powerful in the external definition of that word.

I am moved only by those who have demonstrated the capacity to embrace the “Don’t Know Mind” the wisdom of the sages and saints…those that have moved beyond thought, to the realm of Silence that connects one to the pulses and energies of the Formless Now.

In the Ageless Wisdom traditions that is often defined as Being vs. Doing or as Lao-tzu defined it “wei wu wei” which literally translated means “doing, not-doing”. This Being vs. Doing construct is often confused with not taking action, but nothing could be further from the truth. Lao-Tzu’s definition of Being as “non-doing” is more clearly understood, in this manner…”Nothing is done because the doer has wholeheartedly vanished into the deed; the fuel has been completely transformed into flame. This nothing is, in fact, everything. It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body.” (Quoted from the work of Stephen Mitchell)

To become one with the present moment, no matter what it’s apparent content may be, is the essence of Being. When the mind is elsewhere, while the body is here…the Being is tragically halved in two, and both the mind and body suffer greatly. The soul cannot shine in a mind/body so badly spilt, nor can it grow, express, motivate, or truly inspire.

In the work of Eric Fromm a much admired and brilliantly spiritualized psychiatrist of the late sixties, comes the definition of the split between Being and Doing as one of Being and “Having”. His explanation has so much more resonance for me that I have abandoned the Ancient Chinese metaphor in favor of Fromm’s as it is so relevant to the world we live in.

Fromm holds to the standard definition of Being, which is to say, that he agrees with The Buddha, Christ, Lao-tzu and others when he describes the “Orientation toward Being” as he calls it, as the alignment of the mind, body and spirit fully available in the Eternal Present. Where he differs is in his definition of the Doing, or as he calls it the “Orientation toward Having”. Here we see the plight of humanity in the 21^st century. The accumulation of things, people, relationships, experiences, and events as a substitute for finding the deep center of your life, and of Life itself.

He was writing in a time, the early sixties, when the public storage phenomenon was not yet a glimmer in some future entrepreneur’s eye. And yet he predicated a consumer society so out of control that buying, owning, and having things would someday swallow us whole. In his era not one square foot of commercial space was allocated for “public storage”, now forty years later we have some 6 million square feet devoted to the storage of our “stuff” and “Hoarding” has become an exploding and debilitating national mental disorder.

Fromm goes on to say that the “Having” mode of life is not relegated to just the accumulation of property, but spills over into accumulating relationships, over stuffing ourselves with experience, belonging to every organization we can fit into our over stressed and over scheduled lives, and all other more hidden forms of hoarding…(face book alone gives one pause, as countless numbers of people acquire “friendships” that have no depth, no cause, no participation save the scroll of mostly useless facts and the mechanical counter attached to how many “friends” one has.)

It is the “Having orientation” that drives all the commercialization of the…”you’ve only got one life to live you need to live it with gusto”, grab for greatness, fame, and fortune that so drives and infuses our society. Fromm postulates that the acquisition of things, particularly personal property which is a relatively recent phenomenon, is a bid for immortality…”If myself is constituted by what I have, then I am immortal if the things I have are indestructible”.

In contrast, Karl Marx, left behind this most powerful idea…”The less you are and the less you express of your life – the more you have and the greater is your alienated life”.

An “alienated life” could almost describe the average 21^st centuries normal day to day experience. And thus the overwhelming amount of dissatisfaction, disquiet, disturbed, disenfranchised, and like my new acquaintance Dr. O, disconnected lives that are the norm in every western culture the world round.

My Teacher’s lessons often involved what he called “pruning”, to remove from the out of balance and Having orientated life the weights and additions that keep the Soul from having preeminence, that keep the person always “seeking” and never finding. To let go the many distractions and disturbances, in favor of the cultivation of Silence and with it the full realization of harmony and Joy.

As Meister Eckhart once said…”People should not consider so much what they do, as what they are.”

I share with you here, in conclusion, the only prayer that I have any interest in praying…it comes down to us from Brother Lawrence a 13^th century mystic and monk…

“Lord I know not what to ask of thee. Thou only knowest what I need. Thou lovest me better than I know how to love myself. Father, give to thy child that which he himself knows not how to ask. Smite or heal, depress me or raise me up: I adore all thy purposes without knowing them. I am silent; I offer myself up in a sacrifice; I yield myself to Thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy will. Teach me to pray. Pray Thyself in me.”

This “not knowing” lights my way…and I too, wish the One to “Pray Thyself in me….”

There is only, and ever, one question…do you Trust the Universe in which your life is unfolding?

Adayre R. Miller

11/16/10

Peace is the Product of Acceptance…

In preparation for my visit with the Cardiologist, I was required to go to a lab and present my veins for a little fluid harvesting. For me that is easier said than done, unlike my mother who had large and powerful hands, mapped all over by bluish purple veins that stood up like small dunes in an African desert, and which travelled just as pronouncedly thru the curve of her inner elbow….mine run and hide at the mere suggestion of a needle.

My veins were once described to me as rolling… I don’t know exactly what that means, from the perspective of someone who must capture and rope them into submission…but I do know it is not good.

In my twenties - on the eve of a hysterectomy - the doctors had ordered an IV to be inserted, a thing done the world round, generally without too much difficulty. Mine took five nurses, one anesthesiologist, four hours, both arms, both hands, and four blown veins. Nearing the end of the fourth hour when all hands on deck had exhausted their skills and left me in tears, they – four of the nurses and the Doctor – had a caucus and decided that we needed “Lucille”. A cardiac care nurse, who apparently had a reputation somewhat akin to a miracle worker…by this time I was so spent and beat up, that I would have happily traveled the halls with my buttocks exposed in that split-up-the-back-gown, plaintively calling out Lucille’s name. Hope, help, freedom from being poked by amateurs…I wanted, no, I yearned for “Lucille”, and an end to my suffering…

It would not be possible for me to adequately convey my surprise when “Lucille” turned out to be older than dirt, with palsied hands that shook like leaves in a high wind. But true to her reputation, when she picked up the needle her hands obeyed her years, and years, and years, of experience and the needle slid home as easily as a warm knife slicing thru “budder”. Hooray for Lucille’s everywhere…

So with this history, I presented myself to the young women at the Sonora Quest Laboratories.

The first to try was a waif of a thing, hair neither brown nor gray, but some sad hue in between. She was painfully thin and utterly shapeless in her plain white lab coat. Her spare shoulders rounded forward as though to protect her heart, from some oft repeated pain. I felt for her. She placed the tourniquet, rubbed to feel the vein and inserted the needle into an entirely dry well. She then pulled it halfway out of the twelve o’clock position, and tried again at ten and two swinging both right and left under the skin of my arm, it reminded me of slapping windshield wipers on the old fifties Ford my father once had.

After she completed the two-step on my right arm, she tried again on my left…same dry well.

At this point, as the members of the first team had done… those many years ago… she called for reinforcements. Next to arrive was a strikingly tall and leggy blonde, in a coat of many colors - it seemed to me to be some sort of stylized flower motif - but it was so loud in color that I am not entirely certain. She couldn’t have been more different that her co-worker. She strode so purposefully into the room, sorted thru her various vials and needles with such practiced hands and such obvious self assurance, that I truly could not resist… as my wit took hold of my tongue… and caused me to say just before she slid the needle into my flesh…”Oh, my goodness…you are so amazingly confident!!”

And of course, she hit the same dry well as Ms. Sad and Barely Brown.

Once more the windshield wiping two-step, in-at-twelve-halfway-out-in-again-at-ten-and-two…both arms. I sat watching her excavation with interest and serenity, as her confidence melted like chocolate in the summer sun. She said, “You are just sitting there watching me plunge the needle in and out”…she was clearly surprised by such a mild response to her metaphorical digging to China. I said, “darlin’ this isn’t my first rodeo”…

And then I told her the story of Lucille, and I queried might they have a “Lucille”? As she ruminated on whether or not they indeed did have a Lucille, I made a small joke and said…”well, at least it prevented me from ever becoming a drug addict”, and while saying it, I made a general stabbing motion at my arm indicating the futility of trying to get heroin on board with veins as shy as mine. It caused her to laugh and before you know it we were giggling like two young girls passing dirty notes, in the back of Sister Elisabeth’s religious studies class. It was such a lovely and intimate moment, filled with merriment and ease, and the humor relieved her sense of failure and distress at poking me with a needle so many times.

It was of course not the right time or place to discuss with her the freedom that acceptance brings to every situation, and how ending resistance ends suffering. It was enough to enjoy the moment and share with her the ease with which you can face every invasion with equanimity when you have given up the notion of “how things should be”. Miss Long and Leggy wanted to quit by that time and roam the building seeking her Lucille, but I allowed as to how she should try one more time and then we would seek out the big guns. She did…well, still dry as bone dust…

Next came a diminutive dark haired elf of a woman, barley five feet tall. She, having been alerted by Miss Long and Leggy, that my veins appeared to be MIA had no confidence but a strong will to try. Which is something I always appreciate. She did the windshield slap – two step, to both inner arms as well… the count now being 7 attempts… and on her third go round she caught what must have been the edge of a shy vein and captured mere drops of what was necessary. So she began exploring my hands, something I prefer not to do as it physically hurts so much more than arms…but we were at that point. And finally, painfully, success!!

I tell you this personal story, not to explore my own experience, but rather to mine the gold of understanding that suffering is absolutely optional. Pain is a physical phenomena, but even it… will dial down its impact on the mind with which it is communicating, provided that mind has made the decision to surrender to the moment, and give up resistance.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of Spiritual Paths in the world, those that follow some kind of Form or Content and those that embrace Formlessness or Emptiness. A teacher of Content may bring you images of Angels, or work to heal you, or attempt to serve your desire for greatness, or fulfillment. There will be goals, and road maps, and seeking, and action of all sorts and stripes as they seek to replace the “negative” or suffering content of your mind with a positive or “loving” content. I have no argument with this form of religious activity, it has been practiced the world round since the dawn of time. And it can and does, provide religious fervor…which in its turn does provide some relief and an elevation of mood.

But it cannot and does not provide an end to suffering.

For many - maybe even most - of humanity, replacing deeply negative mental “content” with a lighter, easier content is the sum total of their expectations from whatever forms their religion takes. From the old time religions to the New Age smorgasbord, making it all a little less dark is the “good enough” hope of the majority of humanity.

Yet, up ahead, in the pre-dawn grayness there is always one or two who beckon us, beyond content, into the realm of Formlessness. Come they say, do not stop with merely manageable pain, keep traveling… move beyond the content of mind, the small self, the narrow view, the personal opinion, the little me, in favor of the wide open spaciousness of your True Nature.

Acceptance is the name and shape of this most high of Spiritual activity…acceptance of the mundane and the monstrous, of the easy and the difficult unto death, of the beautiful and the hideous. Or if you like your spirituality couched in non-existent terms as do the Buddhist’s, then Acceptance could well be called the End of Resistance…they are of course one and the same.

The egoic mind structure, the mind that knows itself thru thinking, sets up enormous resistance to the idea that Acceptance is all there is. A great hew and cry will poor forth…”accept child abuse, murder of the innocent, betrayals, and horrors…NEVER!!”

And of course, this is one of the many ways in which the Ancient Egoic Mind causes us to turn away from the open door of our prison, and return instead to the endless cycles of searching and seeking outside ourselves, that will eventually leave even the strongest among us spent and destitute.

When the Egoic Mind hears the term Acceptance it always hears agreement instead. And of course it is not possible for anyone, with any measure of kindness to “agree” with abuse, mayhem, or harm.

Acceptance, or No Resistance is not about agreement of any kind. Acceptance is the will to see the truth of any given moment and to bend to the supremacy of the Now. If harm, hurt, abuse, or mayhem is, or has, or will, occur it is by the very nature of its existence a part of the Reality of Truth. No amount of internal disagreement with the various circumstances, in which Reality presents itself to us, will change the facts. The dead are still dead, the harmed and the hurt are still harmed and hurt.

A teacher of Content or Form, will… in all probability… offer some modality by which they can hold the space, or heal the response, or change the circumstance, that has caused the harm…they will attempt, in all good intention, to right the wrong or make some change in the outer aspect of the world, to insure that no other will be harmed in this way…and in so doing they miss the doorway into the Eternal and Internal Formless Now.

Mahatma Gandhi, a leader who championed and won - perhaps the only bloodless “war” that has ever been fought - said this about the External unreality, or the world of form, and the Internal Real or the world of Formlessness…

“The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.”

He said, in effect, if we wish to bring down the British Empire and its unfair rule of our country…spend the most of your energy on the interior realms.

When your mind has sufficiently turned inward, when enough Acceptance has bloomed in your Being…suffering gives way to wide open spaciousness, the Emptiness of the Buddha, the return of Innocence, the Glory of Eden and the capacity to bring Heaven into the realms of Earth.

The Philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville describes this way of Being in this poetic and lovely manner…”The simple person lives the way he breathes, with no more effort or glory, with no more affectation and without shame. Simplicity is freedom, buoyancy, transparency. As simple as the air, as free as the air. The simple person does not take himself too seriously or too tragically. He goes on his merry way, his heart light, his soul at peace, without a goal, without nostalgia, without impatience. The world is his kingdom, and suffices him. The present is his eternity, and delights him. He has nothing to prove, since he has no appearances to keep up, and nothing to seek, since everything is before him. What is more simple than simplicity? What lighter? It is the virtue of wise men and the wisdom of saints.”

He goes on to say…” The wise man, (healed mind), has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy.

Peace is the product of Acceptance, and can be acquired in no other way…

Adayre R. Miller

11/15/10

One Taste….One Sight…

A couple of days ago, I went to see my Beloved Teacher…and took with me several ideas/questions that I had long wanted to discuss with him. Yet because of the disease process that is robbing his mind of lucid thought, we became bound in a conversational circle, by the first thing I had brought to his attention. In his great wisdom and clarity, he could feel the bondage and he asked more than once if he were “on topic”… realizing his desire to be of service, as always, I slid the paper I had prepared across the desk to him, so that he might read the words he had once written in a lesson that has stayed in my mind and heart for years now. I gave him back his words as I thought that if he read what I was asking clarity about, perhaps it would help to anchor him in a new train of thought.

These are his words…”Do not try to make things happen, if you do, nothing will happen. If you try to force things to happen, nothing will happen. If you do nothing, nothing will happen. You must find the solutions to this riddle.”

This paragraph is almost a portrait of the man as a Teacher and as a Being. It is deceptively simple, while also actually simple. It is clear, but demanding. It is helpful, but enigmatic. And most importantly it conveys entirely his near magical capacity to set the bar just inches above the grasp of your fingers, while you stretch ever upward on your toes… knowing, feeling the worth and value of what he has set just beyond your reach.

And if this were a visual portrait, a likeness of a Great and Still Impersonal Being…the last line would be the twinkle of light in his cornflower blue eyes. “You must find the solutions to this riddle…”

Never in all the years that I sat as his student, and in all the years I watched others sitting to absorb his lessons, did I ever see him give someone a solution to a problem. Not once, not ever.

And yet he would be the very definition of a Healer, a Giver, an Agape Lover…no less an authority than the Bible admonishes us not to give a fish, but to teach the hungry to fish for themselves. It takes great clarity, strength of will, kindness and compassion to resist the temptation to feed others. Few among us have the strength for such an astonishing ability.

The very best part of the hours long and circuitous conversation came when I handed him back his words. He read them out load, once and then again. He tested their heft and weighed their significance…and then once more he spoke them aloud. This time with a number 2 unsharpened pencil in his hand, he used the eraser to travel along the page underlining each word as he read…carefully enunciating each and every one.

He then began attempting to puzzle out the meaning of such an enigmatic paragraph; I could only assume that its original meaning was now lost to his mind…and yet he was like a child with a box and a simple locking mechanism. Fingers not yet agile enough, the lid could not be pried open, but his enthusiasm for learning their meaning and deciphering their riddle was as fresh and youthful as any child’s might have been. He turned it this way and that, picking up and putting down his eraser/marker and pondering the words, searching for their depths.

And in his enthusiastic search, I saw the Soul… that gave birth to the man…that became The Teacher…who is soon to return to his home, and the bosom of the Oneself.

The Buddhist call this phenomena “One Taste”, it is the eager willingness of the unified mind to know, to touch, to taste all that Life offers…no withholds, no parsing, no divisions, no dualities. In the mind of the healed there is no such thing as Good and Evil, no such thing as right and wrong, no such thing as pleasure and pain. Instead there is only the Joy of the One Taste. The wonder of the Mystery, the magnificence of Unity, Harmony, Nobility…in short…Eden…and constant communion with the Almighty.

I have noticed for myself a series of tests that seem to be presenting themselves to me, a kind of report card - if you will - whereby I can see more clearly the willingness that has become stronger and clearer with each passing day, to let go the self that is so constricting, in favor of the Impersonal Self that has for thirty years been the lighthouse by which I have been traveling toward shore.

The first came when my cat brought a baby diamond-back rattler into my house, and my dog’s life and my health were put at risk. The fear that rattled my teeth and shook my bones, also…oddly, had a fearlessness quality deep in the midst of it. Even as I was terrified, I was also active, calm, careful, mindful and capable…and a new level of self-trust bloomed like a wild rose in the desert…beautiful, tough, rare.

The second came when my neighbor presented her diagnosis, and the realization that Death was hovering. I felt no pressure to flee death’s presence, no need to problem solve her life, no desire to take from her what her soul so clearly was guiding her toward. And in that, I came to know my own poise and calm acceptance, the sweet nectar of receptivity and openness to all of Life’s twists and turns.

The most important test arrived yesterday…on quiet little cat feet…so unexpected was it’s arrival.

I have for long years now, been unable to go to Doctors. Self-employed, or under employed, most of my adulthood has been spent with no access to health insurance and thus no capacity to pursue health modalities. But now, by virtue of having been laid off and existing well below poverty levels, the State of Arizona graciously provided the opportunity and the means to “get my health checked”. I had been experiencing some symptomatic issues, but all of them seemed to resolve themselves, as I returned with renewed vigor and enthusiasm to hiking the hills near my home.

The Doctor, (aghast at my reporting that my last physical had been more than twenty years ago), decided to run an EKG…and much to both of our surprises, it seems I may have had a heart attack.

Her exact words were something along these lines…”you have a bundle of blood vessels near a valve in your heart, that we only ever see in someone who has had a heart attack”. She then promptly left the room, leaving behind orders for Cardiologist’s and blood panels, and et. al. (It took the kind woman at the Cardiologist’s office, that has scheduled my upcoming appointment, to explain to me that women often have no symptoms or pain at all, while experiencing a heart attack….who knew?)

Left to dress and remove myself from my “primary” Doctor’s office, I was surprised… no doubt about it…but I was NOT scared, suffering, wobbling, or even overly concerned.

I finished up the various forms and paperwork that will place me in the stream of the health care community, and went outside to my car.

Outside, hanging above the Eastern ridges of mountains that back my home, was a monstrously large and dark rain cloud…a lovely rainbow hanging in front of it, mildly crooked, like some carpenter had hung it in haste and didn’t take the time to level it properly.

In climates that boast actual rainfall, I suppose a cloud of that color and volume might be considered somewhat threatening, but here in the Valley of the SUN it looked as bountiful and welcome, as an overripe woman’s cleavage, hugged and wrapped in dove gray velvet.

As I gazed up at such a welcome sight…I felt a nearly overwhelming rush of such unbridled Joy, that it nearly took my breath away.

The joy of the presence of One Taste.

Here in the eleventh hour of my Teacher’s life, I have come into my own sanctuary…I have solved the riddle of my own existence and that of all that surrounds me…I am home…I am well…I am humbled…and I am grateful…

May the One Taste, of all that is, find you and an open doorway into the depth of your Being….may you come to know the freedom, safety, security, and Joy of the One.

Amen.

Adayre R. Miller

11/12/10

Understanding Higher Compassion

A few days ago, my neighbor from across the street, came over to share with me that her cancer had returned and that it was “now all over her body”. She is a woman who rarely questions authority, much like my mother, and so she had no idea what that meant in terms of prognosis or long-term outcome.

As she told me the news of her test results a tear slid down her cheek, and I became extremely aware of the process we were engaged in…and the potential of the experience we were sharing.

I felt no emotional surge, nor did I experience the desire to offer solutions, manage her problem, or become involved in her affairs. I merely watched with interest and acuity as the conversation unfolded… looked to see if I could serve her… or if she needed me in a way that I could cleanly participate in.

It was a moment of great volume and clarity for me. A test if you will, to allow me to know how truly and deeply felt, has become my understanding that all events are neutral in their very essence…not some, not just the ones we approve of or like…but rather ALL events, in their fundamental nature are without the “good” and “bad” that we, in our ignorance, project outward upon them.

I knew as a direct understanding that the cancer’s return was not inherently “bad”, nor was it necessarily, a lesson that would/should be put to “good” use….as only she can make that determination.

I simply waited and breathed.

Not fearing the cancer, nor laying claim to healing potions and emergency responses on her behalf to “do battle”, with this, the next “event” of her life, left me with little to give - in the way of traditional responses. It surprised us both.

Instinctively, or perhaps intuitively, I knew that to move against the cancer, or toward her desire for comfort would in some way be an unclean action…a way of deepening the schism of “good” vs. “bad” that so inflicts, affects, and infects our divided, and thus deeply suffering minds.

And so, I waited… while quietly breathing.

Days later, turning the event over to peer at it from first this side, and then that, I came to wonder about the concept of our societies understanding of “compassion”, and the methodology of it’s use and delivery.

And so, I did as I have done for more than two decades…I went to see my Teacher.

I took with me more than just the central question of “compassion”, and what is compassionate action - when you have come to see and to know - that events of all types are neutral, as this might be the last time I have the privilege to speak with him.

I briefly described the conversation between my neighbor and myself. Framing the question of what compassion looks like, if it is not sympathetic and shared-sorrowful-suffering, or aggressively active problem solving… as is the way, most people, express compassion.

As he began to formulate his answer…the route took many halting and wayward motions, as his Parkinson’s impeded his capacity to recall and to shape his thoughts, so long moments of silence would be interspersed with clarity and cohesion. A kind of soft rocking motion or rhythm, began to hold sway over our shared moments. Silence and the search for clarity, coupled with will and the desire to serve, hung in the air like a fragrance. I sat in my chair with my hands lightly holding each other, watching the beauty of his countenance, and sharing in the rhythms of his search for lucidity.

He talked of the theft that we can and do, perpetrate on others, when we “problem solve” for them. How aggressive and ego driven is our need for satisfying their reliance upon us, and how we weaken and destroy their will with our “good” works. He talked of how necessary, valiant, and important, it is to do nothing more than turn them back upon themselves, pointing toward the in-most self as the only salvation that is ever possible.

I expected to be with him for somewhere near 20 minutes, the natural conclusion of our conversation took more than 2 hours…so indirect was the route.

Although I had several questions, points of clarity that I had long wanted to deepen, he returned over and over to the one I had begun with. “You do not serve others when you attempt to rob, (“heal”) them of the suffering their mind creates”.

As we fell more deeply into the rhythms of his search for methods by which he could move around, beneath, beyond the limitations of his brain’s circuitry…I experienced moments of breathtaking beauty and deep joy. Nowhere in my heart or mind was any withhold, sorrow, or regret, at the loss of the magnificent tool his mind once was.

Instead… as he searched and prodded, repeated and circulated… around an answer that had been already given not once but thrice, I sat bathed in wonder at the love, generosity, authenticity…the “tone” of his soul, and the deep reservoirs of his presence.

At one point, he asked was he “on topic”. Was he talking about what I had been questioning…and yes, I could truthfully respond, even though that question was many minutes in the past…I could still answer in the affirmative, because it was soon apparent that his presence was in tact, even as his mind has begun to dissolve.

Toward the end, he gave me a practical experience of true detached compassion. After a long, and by now familiar pause, he expressed his admiration that I did not try to “help” him find and use his words, his understanding, or his skills. He spoke about the losses that Parkinson’s has imposed upon his mind, his speed, and his capacities and he noted that allowing these changes, being still with them, accepting the rhythms and demands they place upon him and all who love and respect him, was the very nature and content of composed and non-involved compassion.

And thus…once more, he took his rightful place as my Teacher and Master.

Even as the light begins to fade from his mind and the wonder of his intuitive skills diminish, he conveys the Ageless Wisdom Teachings with Mastery and delicate finesse, using his own disease process with which to do so.

For the first time in the twenty-five years I have known him, I told him, today, how much I love him. Always in the past, I talked of my respect, gratitude, warmth, and many other euphemisms for the Agape Love I feel for him. I don’t really know why I have always felt so shy about saying out loud the L word. I suppose in some way it didn’t feel proper, or appropriate. And only now, when he is not as sharp or clear as he once was, did I have the courage to say so boldly what he has meant to me…and given to me.

He is the reason, I was available for my mother’s last breath…the reason I could forgive my uncle’s abuses, the light-bearer who made it possible for me to find my way home…to the depth of my interior…to the heart of my heart.

He would chastise me for characterizing it that way, he would say that only I can find my interior…and of course that is true, and I am being sentimental. But I ask you, who among you could be so clear as to not sentimentalize, at least a little, the man who gave you the tools to save your own life?

Adayre R. Miller

11/10/10