Blue Shirts…

In the aftermath of deciding to give up my home to protect my obligation to my sister, a good many changes have flowed from that decision point, to the one in which I sit now. I had no resistance to the idea of becoming homeless. Due in large part to the trust that I have uncovered, which lives beneath the mental chatter I once thought myself to be, and is, from my current level of investigation… absolute.

I find in the depth of my life, a worth that is not measureable. Not only is it too deep to determine, but beyond that… it is too vast. There are no boundaries or limits, no edges that can be discovered or discerned.

There is no longer any doubt about the path my life takes, no seeking or pursuits. I find no fault with the expression my life presents to the world. I find nothing to fix, or improve.

Not long ago, I rediscovered a small envelope that has sat beneath a pile of papers for more than nine years. It is one of those things that I touch occasionally, never open, and am unwilling to throw away.

It contains about 25 slips of paper, each with a hand written commentary about who I once appeared to be, in the world.

It came into being from a nine-day “School for the Work” that was meant to certify me in the use of Byron Katie’s four questions, and the freedom to be found in them. I have never used my certification, as I have very rarely taught since that long ago “School for the Work”.

In Katie’s workshop, after we had spent nine very intense days disclosing our fears, hurts, self-harm and emotional disturbances, we were asked to comment to each other, anonymously, about the perception the group had toward each of us.

Because I was – at that time – a very vocal participant, my small envelope filled up with comments that I have heard many times in my life. How articulate I was, how verbal, how courageous…but one opened and revealed itself as a harsh and demanding criticism.

It said, …”You make yourself ugly.”

I have no idea if the writer meant to comment upon my physical appearance, or my emotional displays. I have always assumed that it was meant to describe my physicality. I am obese. I have been for more than twenty years. I once felt a huge need to fix that condition, and did everything within my power to affect a difference, all to no avail. Now I no longer need to fix it, as I no longer need to fix my brushes with poverty, or failure, or my near miss with homelessness.

As the Silence in my life, broadens, deepens, and settles into my daily ordinary existence, less and less space is given to the mental concept that something…anything…about me, needs to change.

Just a few days ago, I found that envelope once again and read to myself the words that stung so much, all those years ago, the “you make yourself ugly” comment and my immediate response was the recognition that “ugly” no longer holds any sting for me.

If in fact I am, then…

I don’t mind being the ugly one, the one who failed, the poor one, the fat one. My life is no longer measured on a linear scale of success. My wrinkles, hips, empty bank account, lack of professional success and even the end of my dream to teach, and write professionally… none of these things define me, or limit me in any way.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb filled with the wisdom of the middle way, which seeks to invite us into the whole of our lives. It states, "One should not miss the flavor of being sick, nor the experience of being destitute"… and another equally sound wisdom, “brass shouts, gold hides”.

When you can walk free and unattached amidst the miasma that was once your hopes, dreams, and wishes…you have, finally and forever, found release.

I have come to the deep wisdom that my failures, my sorrows, the “flavor of my sicknesses” and “destitutions” are the very reason that the shouting of brass, has finally transformed itself into hidden gold.

I have made the perilous and demanding journey from the outside of myself to the deep interior of the No Self, and found a home, a welcoming, a healing that cannot be shaken, that carries no doubt, that abides in a place of such depth it cannot be disturb or dislodged.

Not long ago, someone I care for admonished me that I write and express myself in “absolutes”. She explained that she must “translate” what I write as she reads, so that she may find some form of inclusion in my writing and expression.

I am sorry for that, but I have no way of effecting a change in that experience. When Silence was revealed to me as the core of my Being, when it poured into my mind, eased its way into my muscles, made a home for itself in my beating heart, and took the reins of my life from the misguided hands of my thinking brain and into the ineffable Mystery of itself…doubt disappeared…

It is as though the nerves that controlled the musculature that tenses when doubt and uncertainty are present, were cut by the hand of a loving and attentive surgeon…I simply no longer possess the nervous system control that once allowed doubt to spew acid into my stomach, tighten the muscles of my limbs, and bind my heart into spasms of concern and wavering of purpose, for any persistent length of time. Doubt, uncertainty, anxiety, tension, all the various forms of self harm, that were once my moment-by-moment experience, do still occasionally arise, but herein is the great gift of moving from the personal self to the Impersonal Source, they melt away, if not immediately… then within a few hours. All the painful thoughts that arise within the context of the personal, no longer find purchase or footing in the landscape of vast interior that is Impersonal Being.

As a stressful thought arises, and with it an emotionally burdened experience, in a few moments…or at most a few hours, the thought is seen to be a form of lie, and drops away as though it were dead skin being shed from the body taking with it all emotional discomfort, and restoring peace and equanimity.

I discover, from the position of the Impersonal aspect of Being, that there is nowhere for me to go and nothing to accomplish. My role upon this earth is to bear witness, to notice, and to allow. I do not dismiss the deep seeking I see all around me, I do not wish to disturb anyone who believes, seeks, strives, or pursues. But, as they say in the Deep South…”I don’t have a horse in that race.”

Recently, a long-term friend gifted me with a job, a gift I am humbled by. Her concern and kindness has prevented the move to homelessness that was the next action preparing itself in the periphery of my world. I am grateful beyond measure, and yet I feel no sense of having been rescued… as there is nothing to be rescued from.

With the slow unwinding of the personal self, that was begun the very first time my mind touched Silence, I now understand that nothing I once feared can stand in the face of that Vast Expanse. Our true existence is in many ways beyond our perceptive capacity…and yet, when the end of the personal self is glimpsed even for a moment… Timeless Being fills the void vacated by the false, and ends the need for assurances, rescue, hope, and dreams.

Even a tiny glimpse, of the source of Being, changes forever the structures of unconscious neediness, which seem so important that we feel the desire to assign them personhood.

My Teacher, in his constant striving to explain how truly simple salvation really is, would often tell the story of his closet full of blue shirts.

He was a quiet, and by his own assessment, a shy man.

For me, he always seemed to be quietly shining, and until he first told the story of the blue shirts, I had never noticed the choice of color that predominated in his wardrobe.

He explained that no matter how committed he might be, to finally purchasing another color, he would almost always find himself having made the trip to the clothier’s only to return with some shade of blue. Whether that blue had another thread color as accent, or a subtle pattern of squares, or was mixed in its hue with a neighboring green, or a slight hint of red, he seemed always to end up with some, or other, shade of blue.

His teaching style held two primary components, and this simple story demonstrates one of those two deep styles.

First, and always, he was either subtly or directly asking our permission to “shock” us. This was his way of saying that the calcification of habitual mental patterns that we take to be us – (I most often describe that as the personal self) – needs some form of shock, to open a portal, so that fresh understanding may reach us and form a bridge upon which we may walk ourselves out of hell, and into the heaven of timeless and selfless Being. This “shock” may be provided by a gifted teacher, in a deeply loving and kind manner…or most frequently, and sadly, it will be provided by life, in the form of some deep loss, or deep suffering…but make no mistake, shock is entirely necessary.

His second most fundamental style was how simple he tried to make his lessons.

Like his story about his closet filled with blue shirts.

The essence of his story lies at the root of our misperceptions of ourselves. He chose blue, not out of desire, or need, or even preference. He chose blue because he had been habituated to it in some manner in his early life, and soon “blue” became a story about the “me” we miss-identify ourselves as. His attempt was to cause us to recognize that all the “choices” we make in our lives, until we are freed from the personal, are born out of the self same habituation as his oft repeated choice for blue.

To live under the blindness of the limited self is not to possess a mind… but to be possessed by one. There is no such thing as will, or choice, or freedom when we are living in, and through, a mind habituated to patterns of thoughts and the subsequent behaviors, that were born into us out of reactive childhood survival mechanisms.

Choice, in this state of mind, is a job of smoke and mirrors that gives us the illusion of forward and positive momentum while at the same time keeping us locked in the old familiar cycles of abandonment, pain, suffering, and the illusion of, and search for, positive change.

The old adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”, is born from this deep truth.

It never matters where we arrive, where we are going, who we are meeting, or what goals we have set…if we are locked in the habituated and identified role that we came up out of childhood with, for then, “the more things change, the more they will stay the same.”

It is as though we have become so comfortable with the prison of “self” hood, that we have begun to decorate our prison to make it more homey and welcoming. We seek out folk who enjoy the same view of the prison, and call it support. We pray to a god who never intended us to live in prison in the first place, and who has left the door standing wide open, hoping we might find the will to walk through its portal, and out, into the wide open spaces of selflessness and non-dual freedom.

Our immense desires, both spiritual and material, are primarily pursued to fill the hole that the story of “me” develops in the deep center of our despair. When we live, in and through, the story of “me” and “mine” there can never be enough to fill the cavernous longing that searches endlessly and mindlessly for more, and better, and different.

In these long and fruitful years since I left Byron Katie’s school for the Work, I find the greatest value in the commentary from the person who criticized, not the ones that praised. Not because criticism is inherently valuable, and in point of fact, the choice to criticize is one that bedevils the presenter much more powerfully than it haunts the receiver. No, it is not the criticism itself that provides the value…it is the realization that the desire to run from my ugliness has fallen away, as has the need to be praised and approved of, and so has the need to be sheltered from criticism.

Because there is no longer, a “self” that needs shoring up…both praise and condemnation have little to no effect.

I have found the Middle Way…on the deep inside…it is a place shown to me by a man who favors blue shirts, and a woman who asks four simple questions…

And you are there as well.

Adayre R. Miller

12/10/11

Photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Mag_Tags, if you wish to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link…http://www.flickr.com/photos/magstag/5315334251/in/photostream