I recently received an email from a friend of long standing, who is a woman whose commitment to the spiritual life is as long held and cherished as my own. In that communication she writes the following about an essay I have posted on my blog, it reads….
“For me . . . when one no longer identifies with one's self as a thinking, mental being, or Soul, one's reality of who one is shifts . . . it shifts to the level of Spirit, as in who are we? Spirit, Soul and Body. We are Spirit, having a Soul, or a Mind and a Physical Body. In the current reality shift into the realm of Spirit, (we already made the shift from body to mind) we ARE Spirit . . . I don't see us accessing Spirit, we are Spirit. The access of Spirit is simply becoming conscious of it as the constant flow of unfolding Spirit, or perfection (the idea of perfection requires non-judgment, of course,) as you so beautifully said, thinking expresses itself through adjectives which require judgment.” -Culliver Brookman
And my reply to her began an essay…
The distinctions you have so clearly illuminated are ones I am in complete agreement with...I have never thought of the "soul" as one's mind but now that you have said it to me, it seems so obvious that I am surprised I didn't realize that.
I am not sure which essay you are speaking to exactly, but if I alluded to the notion that we are somehow disconnected from Spirit, then I surely wrote something in which I do not believe. I have begun thinking of myself as a momentary, (tiny life span), expression in the heart or mind of a Being too infinite to understand. A kind of singular cellular and active pulse, of a Source, who for some reason unknown, values my smallest experiences and my tiniest gains. (Which are indeed tiny!!)
As such, I (we), might be likened to a cell in that large and creative heart, and if I Awaken then I beat to a rhythm that heals, unifies, and uplifts...and if I remain unconscious and selfish then my contribution is entirely lost...not just to me, but all those I might encounter...
Just now I am struggling in a way that I have not yet encountered in my life, prior to this point.
My new job places me in the burning center of a cauldron of competition. Competition is something our culture is particularly enchanted with, you need only watch the fans, who are themselves watching the modern day form of gladiators on the field of endeavor, to see how rabidly do we enjoy the processes and experiences that competition affords us.
My Teacher always counseled contribution over competition, and now I am very clear why that was, and is, true. To measure ourselves against another can do nothing but harm, if the other is “better” we are cast down, if the other is “worse” we are falsely lifted up, and more importantly we are set up for a most difficult fall, when the game changes or new players take the field.
The new environment I find myself in is fraught through and through with so much competition, I can barely find myself for the fog that it has thrown me into.
I will give you a few examples…
Once out of the insular training group where all the players were on a level field of abject confusion, and into the primary group where folks of long standing had been doing the same dosey doe with one another for years, the full weight of the experience of being an outsider was placed upon our shoulders.
One among us new folk, went round the room and introduced himself to the old timers and in one case the response he received was…”I don’t want to talk to you, so many people come through here I don’t want to waste my time until you’ve been here for three months or more.”
The Gladiator group, (the ten’s on the competition scale of one to ten), all sit at one table on the north side of the room…and if you accidently choose a seat at that table, it isn’t long before you realize how unwelcome you are, and move. Those folks have not spoken to me and made clear that they do not wish to either, and because I am no longer an individual who seeks the approval of others, I have therefore followed their lead and allowed them to be insulated against my intrusion into their world of “better than”.
That said, in a seizure of corporate political stupidity when required by my boss to publicly comment upon a “role play” that one of them gave - demonstrating her considerable competencies -AND being required by him to provide “constructive criticism”, (something I really dislike doing), I did as he bid… and you would have thought I shot the scared cow, in terms of the response it has engendered.
I have never been good at pretense, and I am even less good at with years of solitude under my belt.
The measure of covert ill will that competition is so good at generating, coupled with the land mines that are available to be stepped on at every turn, and the huge neediness of egos whose well being relies almost entirely upon their “winning” for the sustenance they demand, has literally made me emotionally ill.
I find myself in a swirl of home made, hand made, self-induced, self defined, loss of equilibrium….to such a degree that I feel somewhat seasick.
Because of my childhood, my observational skills are exquisitely finely tuned, and of course they are back in the saddle once more and allowing me to perceive, “through a glass darkly” which is to say to misperceive at every turn and with agonizing clarity, the fleeting face of disapproval as it passes over the “winners” in the room… and the boss whose income is tied directly and forcefully to keeping those winners doing the job they do, that disapproving gaze comes to rest in my direction casting me with a faintly greenish and sickly glow, and highlighting my “political” ineptitude.
I am once more an outsider…a role I am intimately familiar with, but one that I no longer challenge or attempt to “fix”.
I have so far, fought off the considerable urge to placate, restate, engage, mollify, or appease the opinions of others, and cast about for their approval and inclusion. (An historical character defect that I have spent a good deal of time and energy shedding).
The drain on my sense of well-being has been enormous, but even as I have seemingly misplaced my so very precious and high priced understanding, a part of me has the ballast and poise to see the larger picture, or the longer view.
I am not in this job just to pay my bills, nor am I in this body just to move from here to there, nor in this city just because I need to be somewhere after all…no, I am here - right here - by design, by intention, by the will that blew breath into my being and caused me to take up this task that I find before me.
As you know, if you have read any of my essays, I am not a “goal setter”…I frankly think the notion of goal setting is a quaint form of the expression of the desire to believe that we can control, something…anything…anywhere…anytime…at all….
I have become a pragmatist or perhaps, more accurately a realist, I don’t believe we can control anything at all and I am equally clear that hope holds no help in our lives, either - and in point of fact - is a potentially emotionally and spiritually dangerous activity in which to engage.
Please stay with me while I attempt to explain such outrageous, and against the popular grain statements as “goal setting doesn’t serve you”, and “hope can be a danger to you”.
Goal setting is one of the most favored pastimes of our conditioned or egoic mind. It is the voice in the head who promises the illusion of permanent happiness, or so much worse, permanent safety… if we can only get ourselves over “there”…wherever “there” may be. Goal setting is the active arm of desire, which you may remember the Buddha has so rightly sighted, as the very source of every moment’s worth of suffering, you and I, have ever experienced. Desire, masking itself as goal setting floods your conditioned mind with the promise of a better tomorrow, a field of greener grass, a mirage of an oasis…that once you arrive “there”, turns out to fill your mouth, belly, and throat with the dry dust of…”this can’t be all there is, can it?”
Whether your “there” consists of a different body, a higher income, a life of passionately pursuing your “dream”, (a most common synonym for “there”), a romantic relationship, or perhaps worst of all fame…all of these and any other you can think of, when finally obtained, will return to the dust out of which the mirage was originally created and from which it wafted into your view. This truth cannot be avoided, by anyone, even the most talented or capable among us…for the simple reason that the image you have in your mind, comes to you out of the shadow realms and as such, will not have a functioning relationship of any kind, to what you will find when you get “there”… which is… that your circumstances can have nothing to do with your happiness, safety, peace, or well being.
True happiness, safety, peace, and well being are sourced from deep inside us, from our connection to the divine that has breathed everything into existence and from which, we have been loaned the breath that animates us, there is nothing in the outer that can be substituted for that depth relationship, try though we might, all the long days of our lives.
So that brings me to the other sacred cow in our culture…Hope.
I was reminded by someone recently that Hope was in Pandora’s box…way at the bottom, beneath all the other evils when she opened the box and let evil, “which cannot be undone”, out into the world. Wikipedia goes on to tell me “all the evils were released upon the world, save one…”hope”.
The Ageless Wisdom Teachings are attempting, with Pandora’s parable, to alert us to the fact that the world cannot afford to have the evil of “hope” released upon it. Hope as practiced by every conditioned mind that has ever drawn breath, is a custom of enticing the mind away from the current moment… the only moment in which Life actually exists… and deep into the forever-unreachable future.
Hope is the Frankensteinian bride of goal setting, and together they can quite literally rob us of our entire lives, should we allow them to…
It is my experience that as Silence settles more deeply into a life… that the mirage of hoping gives way, finally, to the clearer, deeper, and measurably more real experience of Faith. I can “hope” until the breath leaves my body, for some outside source to rescue me from myself, or I can move with commitment, fierce dedication, total availability, absolute will, and perfected understanding into the mission to save myself from my own conditioned minds illusions…until I am finally and safely, on the “other side” of my self and have made contact with the Impersonal self that is the true face of the real me, and to whom Faith is the recognition that I cannot but finally and ultimately prevail. No matter how much time it will take, one day, someday, we will turn our attention inward and notice that all we want lays waiting at our feet for the mere bending over, and picking up. That the fountain of peace, for my life and yours, rests in the deep center of us all.
Here in the center, there is no need for hope…. as Faith has illuminated the truth that every tiny twist in the road we have taken has been for our highest good.
You see the conditioned mind keeps you seeking the things and experiences that serve the body (physical – emotional – mental bodies), the things that provide pleasure, or the illusionary promise of salvation from pain, these things do not serve you…the deep you. In fact they may prevent you from ever discovering your real self, and that - my friends, is the only tragedy that has ever befallen the son of man.
This job, this selling of mechanical equipment, is not in my life to pay my bills, (although it likely will), and it certainly is not in my life because it aligns itself with my “dreams” – something I am working quite diligently to shed myself of – but rather, because it is testing my resolve and pushing the envelope of my understanding. It is demanding me to put into active form, the deep experiences that have been bestowed upon me by a loving creator, through almost three years of spiritual retreat and near total silence.
My long time friend and her recent email, have brought me back to these pages… and through that, back to the ballast that had begun to inform my every waking moment whilst I was still cocooned in the loving embrace of outer and inner silence.
I had lost touch with the value this writing provides me…as I struggled so to learn something well outside my natural talents, and to do so with folk who are so very deeply entrenched in the poisons of competition. Here too, you can see the hand of a loving and infinitely patient provider… a friendship dormant for more than a decade, a slender electronic hello, and some time spent here at my keyboard, and once more my sanity is restored…
There is nothing in the outer that can rescue me…only my total reliance on the power of acceptance and through it the wonder of Faith…can and will be, my salvation.
I extend to you an invitation to give up seeking your goals, to trade in the evil of future oriented hope, in favor of the deep quenching of your thirst, the waters of which are available only in the present moment…and thereby come to…LIVE as if you MEAN it…
4/7/11
Adayre R. Miller
photo courtesy of Ed Schipul, you may see more of this artist’s work by following this link to Flickr photo sharing… www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/2371505523/
No comments:
Post a Comment