…The Sun Just Had Better Things to Do That Day…

I thought perhaps you might have some interest in a follow up report on Caleb, my young leaf picker upper…

On the day, last Monday, as I waited for him to arrive, (he was 17 minutes late – I know this having just checked the time), and I had already begun the odious task of doing for myself what I had contracted with him to do for me, when he almost arrived. I just happened to be standing in the front “yard” of my home, with leaves blown out into the cul de sac, like a semi circle of debris swept outward by the hand of the wind god, when around the corner he came on his trusty bicycle. He got far enough to see the leaves and old, aching-back me, and turned around in a large spin and headed off in the direction he had come.

As he moved away into the low sun, of the soon to be fading light, I felt a sum of melancholy for him…and even, a little, for me…

I had truly thought Caleb would prove to be a young boy, who was maturing into the role of manhood, and the demands of keeping your word.

A demand my father was never really capable of keeping, at least with me…

I loved my Father, and never really understood why he did not exercise some measure of control over the fits of rage that my Mother was so prone to, after all - he was a cop, sworn to “serve and protect”… but even though I loved and valued him, the single most memorable aspect of his character was how entirely you could not trust his word about anything at all. I often wondered how a man could be so untrustworthy, and yet successfully rise in the ranks of a law enforcement department, with many men under his command and at his disposal.

I suppose it had a great deal to do with his relationship with my mother, and that maybe he was a different man at work than he was at home. I remember quite distinctly at nine years of age, turning off – like you might turn the spigot of a water faucet off – the con-siderable and very painful, disappointment I felt every time he promised me something that turned out not to be fulfilled, when the piper was done playing.

When I met my Teacher and began this now 28 year old relationship, he was the first person I had ever encountered who not only could be totally trusted, but who knew how trust was produced and how I could learn to be that way myself.

He talked at length about how the “Universe works by agreement”, he spoke in metaphor, (although I could easily see it as being somehow actually true), that the “sun agrees to shine” and that the “stars agree to orbit” and that the Creator agreed to breathe life into us. And, further, that we owe that creative system our allegiance and loyalty, by learning to abide by our agreements, even down to the smallest detail.

It was, and remains, a study in meditation for me. To this day I watch every agreement that I utter…and in point-of-fact, turned down an opportunity to trade our companys Monday “day off” sales coverage – and with it the potential to earn a commission – which I sorely need, because I had no way of contacting Caleb to renegotiate our agreement, and would have had to simply ignore him, as he sadly chose to do to me….

I do not take his choice personally, but I know the road it has potentially set his path upon, and I am sad for him that something he saw, whatever it might have been, caused him to go back on his word and begin, or possibly add to, a process that will have a calamitous harvest later in life.

There are three parts to “agreements” and becoming a trustworthy human being. First, you must actually know…or pay attention, to the promises you are making. (It might sound crazy that some people wouldn’t know they have promised something, but I have dealt with a good many folk who are so absent from their lives, in terms of their attention, that they do not even know they have offered a promise.) Secondly, you must of course follow through, and following through means showing up at 5, if that had been your agreement and not at 5:17. And third, be willing to truly, if the need arises, renegotiate your agreements, giving the person with whom you have made an agreement, the real opportunity to say “no” to your desire for an alteration…if they so choose, and thus binding you back to your original word.

An agreement then, is a “completed” circle, in which a promise has been offered, fulfilled, counted on, and counted - as in tallied - and will be remembered in the long journey that faces us in this life and the life to come. In this way, a human doing begins the long journey toward becoming a Human Being.

I suppose it was because my thirst for trustworthiness was so great, and because the welcome rain of my Teacher’s total trustworthiness cooled my burning skin, like the touch of a loved one after a long absence, that his lessons regarding “agreements” and “completion” are as alive in my heart today as they were 28 years ago.

My Teacher taught the magnitude of Spiritual Completion in this way…

Say you are on a plane that is heading from Boston to San Francisco, and it fails to “complete” its intended route by crashing into the Rocky Mountains, due to engine failure, killing all aboard. Then let us say that Bob promises to meet Bill for lunch this next Tuesday and fails to arrive, or is even just late - without calling Bob to renegotiate - and thereby does not “complete” his agreement.

The spiritual concept regarding completion is that this failure to complete, of the plane heading west - which took physical lives with it, is not nearly as tragic as when Bob makes plans with Bill, who also fails to complete, by breaking his word. (This presupposes that you can agree with my Teacher and me, that what happens to your body is not nearly as important as what can happen to your, soul and spirit.)

Bill is merely inconvenienced, irritated, and maybe begins to back away from his relationship with Bob. But Bob is spiritually sickened by his failure to complete, and that failure will reverberate for ages going forward in Bill’s life, future, and destiny.

Suppose for a moment that the Universe does work by “agreement” as my Teacher proposed…and one day the Sun just had better things to do, and failed to show up and clock in one Tuesday morning, or the Moon decided it had better things to accomplish than the gravitational pull it exerts on the oceans tide and was an hour or two late next full moon…our world, and everything we know, would be utterly destroyed by this “failure to complete.”

Our every breath is drawn inside a tightly woven tapestry of reliance upon another. There is nothing you can possibly do, or should even attempt to do, to escape this interwoven intra-dependency. The only freedom that is possible in a human life is derived directly, and proportionately, from the obedience you demonstrate in the care you give to “completing” your promises and keeping a watchful eye upon the quality of your character, and in so doing, honor the many layers of agreements that make our life on this planet possible.

I am always mildly taken aback when the new age community talks so much and so frequently about, “aligning themselves with the flow of the Universe”, and in the doing of same, expecting great rewards, manifestations, and recognitions…while also, often, being completely out of integrity with respect to their agreements, and the growing number of non-completions that are the result of broken agreements.

Fame, fortune, accomplishments, and financial rewards…cannot and surely will not, move with us, from this life into the next. But who could possible argue with the notion that the careful building up and clarifying of your moral, ethical, and spiritual character, will set the stage for whatever may come in this Life and, in the Life beyond this one.

Standing, rake in hand, facing the setting sun, and watching as Caleb unconsciously chose to create upon his tally sheet a “non-completion”, I felt for him…a sadness, and a longing.

I have, many times throughout my life, been accused of being “too intense”, or “too much”, or “too serious”, and I do not deny any of these allegations, they are perhaps all quite true…but I can tell you that I have only one driving aspiration… to slowly, over-what-no- doubt will take eons, grow into the shoes of the first person I have ever experienced as truly trustworthy, (at least in the flesh, I have read about a good many dead ones).

I have seen what true character looks like, and it is beautiful beyond compare.

I am not popular, or sought after, or often even well liked…I do not have external goals and I am often an outsider, in a world that favors flash over substance. I have no idea if anyone will remember me when I am gone, or if it even matters…but I can tell you truly… that every time I break my word, every time I hear myself lie to save face or cover some flaw in my character, I feel a sting in my heart that rings a bell in my mind, and allows me to know that I am serving myself and the gift I have been given poorly, by not facing squarely the obligations that came with the first breath I ever took, and the right to the aspiration of becoming a human Being.

I long to one day lay claim to some measure of depth, that is so beautifully described in the this poem by William Ernest Hemley England 1846 – 1901:

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeoning of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

To become the “captain of one’s soul” is an achievement, the worth of which cannot be measured, the depth of which cannot be defined, the value of which is to high to count, the measure of which will shape our destiny, and the acquiring of which will shine back upon all of creation. And only then… will we truly be in “alignment with the Universe.”

4/14/2011

Adayre R. Miller

Photo courtesy of Zen Roxy and flickr photo sharing, to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link…www.flickr.com/photos/nordrum/2114564479/