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
No comments:
Post a Comment