A Good Pair of Boots…

As you know, by now, from reading my essays…that I am not a global thinker. I cannot deal in large themes or views that are so clear that they can see the arc of human development over centuries or, even millennia. It would be grand, I imagine, to be that kind of visionary. An Albert Einstein, a Ralph Waldo Emerson, or my Teacher who often said he was serving the “deck and not the individual cards.”

But I am not capable of that kind of stratospheric living. I am a simple storyteller, attempting to tell stories that have a purpose greater than entertainment.

Essays ~ a simple story, with a moral. Toward that end, I must share my life with you, in the hope of sharing the lessons I learn.

This last Thursday was a doozy.

I am not sure that I completely understand, but I trust that by the time we have finished this conversation…that I may, end up knowing more about what happened, what it means, and how I can use it to become more expanded.

As the Queen of Hearts told Alice, begin at the beginning and when you come to the end stop.

My story begins with a woman I had not yet met. Ms. Darci Nivas, came to my company’s owner with a request. She had come up with a genius of an idea, to support the educational process she is engaged in. She took eighteen canvases, drew a large tree upon them and then distributed them to the homeless she was working with and instructed them to “do as you will”. Paint whatever, in whatever way you choose. “Try any medium, paints, collage, beads, scraps of paper…whatever”…and when they were finished, and hung, and viewed, there appears a tree… a quite wonderfully eclectic, diverse, and very recognizable tree. She then imagined, that she could produce a forest in exactly the same manner. So she began distributing the trees to many different groups of folk, who share some form of communal experience to create her forest.

You can see the genius of this idea, can’t you?

Lots of people, and lots of different kinds of people, get to show up and play. No one person is too exposed. The groups bond, much as we used to bond around camp fires, sharing our lives with one another, before we got too busy and self important to sit down and breathe with each other, and look one another in the eye.

And there’s more…she is going to have a reception so that all the unknown tree makers will get to see her forest. I can’t wait to see the quilter’s tree, and the version the art students are going to make combining photography and painting.

When my employer put this idea in my hands, and asked me to execute it, I don’t really know that she was expecting the commitment I was willing to make to it. But I know the power of shared creative expression, and I am a “get on board” kind of gal, when it comes to anything creative.

Back in the day when I first began painting at seven years of age, my parents would line my works up on the couch to show them off to neighbors, and aunts, and uncles, and folk… just wandering down our street… anybody and everybody, was welcome to join the viewing. It was the yang to my mother’s rages, the full ripeness and flowering of her loving attention, while the yin of her rage eventually became our shared journey into unshakeable and enduring unconditional love, understanding, and forgiveness.

We in the west, imagine that yin and yang, are polar opposites and on one level they are, but from a much deeper and therefore from a truer place, they are not really opposites, but rather, complimentary energies.

For instance, dropping a stone in a calm pool of water, will simultaneously raise waves and lower troughs between them, and this alternation of high and low points in the water will radiate outward until the movement dissipates and the pool is calm once more. Thus, yin and yang are always complimentary opposites, but equal qualities. Further, whenever one quality reaches its peak, it will naturally begin to transform into the opposite quality: for example, grain that reaches its full height in summer (fully yang) will produce seeds and die back in winter (fully yin) in an endless, and quite natural cycle.

It is impossible to talk about yin or yang without some reference to the opposite, since yin and yang are bound together as parts of a mutual whole (e.g. you cannot have the back of a hand without the front).

That said, and so that you do not get lost in my round-about story, please allow me to recap so far. Darci went to KC and asked for a company tree. KC, who has more on her plate than the law should allow, handed it to me. I saw the jewel in it and caught fire with the idea….and here is where the yin and yang dance began.

It started with me writing emails to our community to get them to join in the tree idea. The first one was professional, and I thought fairly clear. It got a teeny tiny response of three – already creative individuals – eighteen needed, so I tried again.

The next email I sent was folksy, newsy, and witty. The responses started flooding in, not only did I have to ask Darci for another tree, but I got a fair amount of praise and appreciation for my written explanation, from the troops.

It was very much like my mother lining my paintings up on the couch for all to see. It fed the creative spirit in me, it caused joy to bloom in a very vivid way…so much so, that a dear friend who works right beside me said he experienced me as a little giddy, that day.

Fully yang.

And becoming fully yang, caused me to lose touch with the only goal in my life… that of releasing myself from identification with form, (egoic thinking mind), in favor of the rising above yin and yang to the place that my teacher embodied so elegantly…where yin and yang are resolved in a unified wholeness and total harmony.

Now you can guess the rest right? Yin made an appearance.

It came in two forms. First a coworker I hardly know rained on my parade when I asked him if he had read the emails, hoping to invite the group of folk that he shepherds through him, to the creative party, and he said “no he had not… they were way too long”, and no he wouldn’t give me access to his group, full stop. Ouch.

I am still a very sensitive writer, even though I have been doing it for almost 12 years. Whereas my hide is as tough as nails when it comes to painting, but of course, I’ve been engaged in that for fifty years. It took me three years to be able to re-read what I wrote before I destroyed it, another three years to offer it to someone to read – and then only to my coach, whom I would trust with my life – another couple of years to decided to publish them in some form, and finally a blog, and an email blast list…thank you, from the bottom of my heart… you, tender readers…

But the real yin showed up in my immediate supervisor, who just cannot tolerate my artistic ways.

When I want a red sharpie, rather than a black one, she thinks I am coloring outside the lines. When I did my first exit interview with the students I am charged with caring about…she didn’t like how descriptive and “adjective” filled my language was. When I wrote the second of my emails about the tree project, I chose to include a reference to the “no child left behind” campaign that Laura Bush spearheaded into existence on a national basis, but I couldn’t remember if it was Laura, or Barbara, or Hilary…so I asked aloud, the co-worker who sits on the other side of me, who he thought it was, and my supervisor turned the answer into a competition between herself and him. “No, that’s not right it wasn’t her”…and so on, and so on.

By the time my creative joy had reached bursting yang and I was… in-point-of-fact… a little giddy, her yin energy was reaching a full roil.

I won’t describe, any further, the way it manifested… mostly because that isn’t the point and that would only serve to make you lose sight of what is important, just as I did.

I have worked for her, now, for about six weeks. She is as yin as my mother was. Although I often feel quite dull around her, her yin energy has not caused me any real discomfort until this event. Mostly because my mother and I had traveled that ground and healed that wound, with such commitment, dedication, and obedience – which had subsequently resulted in such a wonder of healing and miraculous release.

We, the western world, believe with our whole hearts that we can shape a destiny in which yang is ever present, and yin doesn’t darken our doorstep…we believe that, because we are young, still powerful, and quite immature.

Older cultures than ours, having already watched Rome burn, are wise enough to know, (or at least experientially understand), that yin and yang are as yoked as night and day.

There is, however, a wisdom path that can take you above the wild swings of living in the turbulence of yin and yang. I know because my Teacher is a living, breathing example of it.

I have had moments of rising above the polarized energies of yin and yang; I have done, in my mind, remarkably well working for such a yin supervisor…until my yang energy, pushed us both over the edge.

I am as much to blame for her severely delivered criticism, as she is, not because I am wrong and not because she is wrong…but because yang will never exist without yin. I completely lost sight of that, and moved back into a victim space when I perceived her displeasure costing me my much valued yang energy.

With my joy tattered, I lost my equilibrium and became really angry.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I moved cleanly and easily back into the child that had once cowered in fear or burned in resentment when my mother beat me, I gave myself to the egoic mind structure that I have spent so very long attempting to mature beyond.

There is a Zen story that talks about forgiveness, as being the perfume that a flower sends forth into the world, even as the heel of a boot is crushing it.

We don’t like that idea.

We want other people to make us feel comfortable, welcomed, included, and to provide us with the experience of being loved and appreciated.

I am not looking for that kind of service. My Teacher never once provided that kind of teaching.

He lived, and taught, the non dual principles depicted in the ancient wisdom parable that if you are walking the world barefoot and your feet hurt because of the brambles, stickers, and stones…do not seek your comfort in covering the earth with leather, but rather, sit down and craft for yourself a pair of boots, no matter how long it takes and no matter what it costs you.

My immediate supervisor with her near total yin energy is my latest opportunity to continue crafting, for myself, a pair of boots. I spectacularly failed at it, on the day in question, but I will not fail in the long run… because my eye is fixed upon the horizon.

Having come to the experience of total, unmovable, and complete peace with my mother for the last seven years of her life… I will have nothing less than a sturdy, functioning, and effective pair of boots to wear. So that all those who are required, by virtue of unconsciousness, to carry the yin energy…for those of us, who so much prefer the yang… can be blessed for their service. (It is my belief that is why our prison system is larger than any other westernized country, they are carrying the yin energy, we, the larger population will not deal with.) Until the fine day arrives… the one day ~ some day… when I am grown well beyond the reach of my personalities preferences, and my boots are worn and entirely broken in.

If that day ever arrives ~ I will upon that day ~ like my Teacher, be capable of sending forth a fragrance even as I am crushed by the heel of the necessity for the existence of yin. Death will call us all, destruction will find us all, disease will rob us all, the only thing that matters is if it will find us wearing a self constructed, sturdy, and well worn pair of boots. It all boils down to one simple question…will we, at the end of days, be shod? Or, like a small child, will we still be looking for someone else to cover the earth with leather?

Adayre R. Miller

1/28/12

photo courtesy of Matt Osborne and flickr photo sharing, to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link… http://www.flickr.com/photos/32681588@N03/4752299027/

To Role Over…or Under…That is the Question…

Let’s start this conversation with the notion that there are only two states of Being. Only two. Real Simple.

Contracted or expanded.

Nothing else, no big deal…

Here’s the thing. “Expanded” provides relief from the confinement of the personal self and its many minions of suffering. “Contracted” makes suffering such a ubiquitous experience that sometimes you don’t even know you are suffering.

Let me give you an example or two…

My supervisor is contracted much of the time. She suffers much of the time, sometimes I can tell by watching her that she does not think of it as suffering. The reason she does not view this sometimes suffering, as suffering, is because it arises out of the field of “being absolutely sure of what is the right thing to do”. I am deeply familiar with that particular set of belief systems.

I was very often the recipient of my mother’s rage, which was entirely driven by what was “right”. If I cleaned under the bed on any given Saturday, (which was my all day task – if it were done correctly), then she would check the top of the refrigerator find it dirty, and I would get my ritualized Saturday beating for not having done the job in the right way. If the next week I got a ladder, scrubbed the refrigerator to within an inch of its life…that week she would check the baseboards…and… I would get my Saturday beating. The target was always moving and “right” was a thing that could barely be discovered, much less understood.

I remember once, after having studied with my Teacher for many years, attempting to describe the concept of this type of “rightness” and its deadly effects, to my sister, versus the much more subtle and appears to be, but really isn’t at all, similar “agreements” that have been a staple of my Teacher’s process for more than thirty years.

My sister who had also, somewhat surprisingly, attended George’s workshops and had been exposed to his foundational lesson which is the necessity of keeping ones “agreements” and thereby, becoming what is defined in the larger world, as a person of character. This lesson of George’s was not hard for me, or my sister to incorporate, and abide by. We were, after all, both daughters of a mother who required strict adherence to the rules; we had no difficulty what so ever, abiding by whatever was perceived by us, as the “right” thing. But living based upon doing what is the right thing, and keeping ones agreements, are very different experiences. They are both limitations, to be sure, the first born of a totally unconscious need to adhere to militaristic style rules, and the illusory safety it promises. The second; a mature, conscious, and measured decision, to accept self-chosen limitations for the purpose of becoming an honorable, dependable person, of great depth and moral fiber.

In an attempt to describe that difference, to my sister, I told her of the time a roommate questioned me about why exactly…did the toilet paper HAVE to roll off the handle, top over, instead of bottom under. I patiently explained, again, to my roommate, how that was the way it was done, must be done, couldn’t be done otherwise…because it was the RIGHT way.

She looked at me like I was crazy.

And right there and then, I began questioning everything I had ever been taught about what was right. As I told my sister this story, she had a deeply confused look on her face. “So you see”, I said, “this is why it is that George, our teacher, is forever reiterating the need to undo our unconscious beliefs about what is right or true, not just some of them…but all of them”. Her puzzled look did not abate.

Long pause.

“But…the toilet paper should come off the roll, top over – rather than bottom under…that is the right way…I don’t get it….”

This world of knowing what is “right” is where my supervisor lives, the water she swims through, the lens she sees through.

She told me not long ago, a procedure that I must follow when a student comes in to drop off a final project…she was very specific, must be this way and no other way…y’up say I, no problem. The very next time I did it that way, she nearly jumped over the desk divider that segments our offices, to prevent me from doing it that way.

Seems that moving target, is still on the move.

Or yesterday, I asked if she had a red sharpie and could I borrow it? The near total exasperation on her face was very sad to witness, no she said…”black is standard, we all use black”…(toilet paper, simply must come off the role top over, not bottom under…).

By and large, I do not react to her, as she is nowhere near as good at it as my mother was, and I came to total and unshakeable peace with my mother before she passed. But I do feel considerable sorrow for my supervisor, as she has no idea that the suffering she endures is because she holds so very many beliefs about what is “right”, and how everything must be done.

It was my Teacher who freed me from the belief that I knew what was “right”.

The genius of my Teacher was that he never lectured, and instead, always put us in experiential situations which, if we truly showed up – and believe me when I tell you that I showed up – we would encounter our unconsciousness in a direct and lived way, and thereby have a deeper and more impactful chance of waking up. I have rarely shared those experiences with anyone, because we were asked not to. But now that he is no longer teaching, I feel that I can at least describe the lessons I learned, if not the process.

In the early years of attending my Teachers workshops, I was partnered with a very “spiritual” young man who was very ungrounded and airy. We were given a task to accomplish and it was weighted with the very clear, and very direct information that if we did not do it as instructed, we would be asked to leave the training. Further, if our partner did not follow the simple guidelines, and they were agonizingly simple, then both partners would lose the opportunity to attend. The instructions were given, and being my mother’s daughter…I not only heard them, I committed them to memory. As the activity began, it was clear almost immediately that my partner was not doing it correctly. I began by trying to coach him, I soon moved to insistence; anger followed, and finally a few bitter tears… as I knew that his actions would put me out of the training. And somewhat surprisingly, for all his “love” and “light”…he could not be budged a millimeter, with respect to doing the activity in a manner that I knew was correct.

After the activity concluded and we were once more seated in a circle. George asked that everyone who had completed the assignment correctly to stand. Everyone stood, no exceptions. Then George began to reissue the instructions, one at a time, and directed that if they had not been completed correctly that the person in question should sit, and that they were consequently out of the training, having broken their agreement to follow some very simple rules. (The reason this exercise worked so very well, to expose us to our unconsciousness, was because he used a tool that everyone had been using since grade school, and we had all been taught the “right” use of this ubiquitous tool to the degree that it made many of us blind to what he had instructed, thus most of us could not even hear his instructions, much less complete them accurately.) Slowly, everyone dropped into their chair… amazed and realizing, hopefully, how entirely unconscious they had been.

Everyone save me.

Don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t conscious in any expanded way, rather I was merely exhibiting my childhood training, the futile pursuit to get it “right”, to hit that ever moving target …you remember… toilet paper must come off the role, top over, not bottom under.

Finally, as I became the sole standing participant, George turned those entirely impersonal, blazingly blue eyes upon me…and asked in that incredibly non-judgmental and utterly uninvolved way, (which is the hallmark of the awakened), why…he asked, did I need to be perfect so very, very, badly.

I began to silently weep.

I sat, and wordlessly so.

And for the first time, and by far not the last time, a surge of energy started in my coccyx and blasted its way to the top of my skull, leaving my legs paralyzed. It is a sensation that cannot be adequately described, and it is very disturbing – or it was that very first time – because I truly could not move my legs for several seconds, and that is a very scary thing.

I was about twenty-eight at that event, and it took me nearly two decades, but slowly over time, I undid every shred of “rightness” that has come up from that day to this.

While also, paradoxically, becoming more and more willing to live by the rules, or the “agreements”, my Teacher taught me to honor. A great many of the agreements I am bound by, are simply because I was born here, in this particular culture. To this day I am never late with credit card payments because when they gave me a card, I have “agreed” to pay them on a timely basis. I haven’t been stopped for speeding in over a decade, because as a citizen of this state, I am bound by an “agreement” to the road rules that were set in place by my states lawmakers. I do these things, and many many more, not because they are “right”, but rather because I have an agreement to uphold. And yet, there are occasions were agreements must be broken…

I am privileged to have a coach, in my life, who is a very bright guy. I have learned a great deal from him. He defined the need to occasionally break our agreements as “situational ethics” and illuminated it with this simple analogy…if the SS is at the door and demands to know if you are hiding Jews in the basement, then lying becomes the bravest and “rightest” thing you can do. (Even though it breaks your agreement with your countries authorities, and lets be clear… there can be a terrible price to pay for breaking agreements… telling that particular lie would take enormous courage, as you would be putting your life in the balance).

Tom, my coach, tells me that situational ethics has a dark side and a light side. I stole a dog because I was compelled to put the morality of theft aside, for the purpose of saving the animal, which would be a light side example of situational ethics, in my opinion. The dark side of situational ethics allows for doing the “wrong” and often expedient thing, for the bottom line or for some other profitable outcome, or “right” result.

George also addressed this issue of “situational ethics” and of course with him it was not a conceptual lesson, but rather a lived event. It stands as one of the most profound of my life.

In this training, we were again partnered; again our fates were tied together. This time my partner was an older man who was going through a very rough patch in his life. We were given a good amount of time to come to know and care about our partners, and then we were put into an exercise and told to express to one another how much we wanted to be in the training. I was so glad to have my particular partner, as he was as committed and emotionally invested as I was.

Then we began an exercise that was dreadfully painful.

We, as a group, were told that fifteen of us had to be chosen to be designated as “lost”. I will not disclose how that was undertaken, but it was deeply sad. My partner was one of the ones lost; someone I had begun to invest in, someone I knew wanted to be in that room as much as I did, someone whose life was already in terrible turmoil.

Then the fifteen were removed from the room, truly lost to us.

As the door closed on the last of them, George said, “You may save them…if you choose to… they are in the building.” And then he sat. Giving us no more guidance. No matter how we tried to get him to…he would merely repeat, “they can be saved…”

At first the discussion on how to accomplish such a feat, was civil and reasoned. After all, we were “loving” individuals committed to one another’s growth. But we were also caught in an unwinnable trap, we had all signed the agreement that required we not leave the room for any reason, during the training. We had all been through two other, earlier levels of training where we had learned the vital, earth shattering, importance of integrity in the life of the very cosmos. Give your word, keep your word…or renegotiate…no exceptions.

In the first few moments several of the more verbal among us, attempted to renegotiate with George. He absolutely refused. “You have an agreement with me…and you may save them, if you choose to…”, was his only response.

As the participant discussions moved ever more resolutely toward letting our partners go, in order to preserve our agreement with George… I began to feel a measure of dissidence that was so ugly it tied my guts into knots. “We can’t, I kept saying. We simply can’t. My partner needs this training I won’t let him go. I just won’t.”

I have, in my lifetime, never before or since… experienced such a driving, demanding, searing, and tearing conflict. As it became increasingly clear to me, that I was going to have to choose between keeping my agreement with the most important, loved, and valued human being that I have ever had the privilege of knowing… or let my partner slip away…my heart beat reached code blue levels of trip hammering. My palms began to sweat, I had a stress response need to urinate that was nearly driving me crazy, half the room had begun almost shouting at me, and George refused even the tiniest indication of having any interest at all in the outcome, much less the will to direct it.

(Do not imagine that George’s uninvolved stance was a matter of lack of caring. Enlightened Beings care enough to literally give their lives to the education and evolution of the human family, but they do so with such total trust, that the outcome is never a consideration. Complete faith in the moment-by-moment unfolding of any given event, coupled with a uni-polar view, where “right and wrong” are no longer concepts they deal in, allow these rare individuals the total comfort of detached acceptance. They, therefore, have little to no emotional investment in the outcome of things. As an example, Jesus cried out in anguish that he had to sacrifice his mortal life, the Christ he became… accepted the sacrifice with total trust and faith.)

Finally after what must have been two hours, or maybe two years…I stood, and with tears flooding my face I marched toward the door.

Four other people followed me.

I put my hand on that handle, and I swear to Almighty God, I thought I might pass out. Somewhere in my heart of hearts my emotional response was that I believed that I was choosing, in that moment, between a man who had provided me with the tools to save my own life, and a man I barely knew, but to whom I felt a commitment that I couldn’t even understand.

As I pulled open that door, thereby breaking my agreement with my beloved Teacher, the need to urinate became so intense I knew I couldn’t go looking for my partner without first addressing that need. While I was in the bathroom, now unable to urinate, the four people who had followed me out of the room went in search of, and found, our partners. They had been in a room, beside the one we were in, behind a two-way mirror that we had no idea was anything more than a mirror…watching and listening… to the microphones that were feeding our struggle to them via a sound system. Most of them had been crying, for much of the two hours, while we struggled with this moral conflict.

My partner felt almost the same level of pain I was feeling…not for himself… but for the overwhelming struggle I was engaged in – attempting to save him – by casting asunder my moral compass.

Stealing that dog, in the real world, rather than the utterly safe world of George’s training room, removing it from harm’s way… was the full circle moment of learning that sometimes agreements and rules must be broken, with the full knowledge and acceptance that there may be consequences to bear.

George often told us… that someday… we would have to become our own Teacher, Teachings, and Student. That seeking outside ourselves would have to end, if we were to find the freedom we sought.

I have come to that day.

I can sit beside my supervisor, unengaged and unenageable, and deal with her moving the target and her need to control even the color of Sharpie that I choose to use, and have no resistance rise up in me. I feel nothing toward her save compassion; I know what it feels like to live under that many rules and regulations. I know how painful and demanding is such a life.

I do not know what lies behind the Mystery of my life and yours. I do not need to know. I know only, that I am grateful in my DNA for having encountered George, for having learned that nothing outside the impersonal awareness that I am, has any lasting value. Grateful beyond measure for having come to the capacity to turn my attention away from goals, outcomes, ambitions, and the right/wrong, good/bad dualities.

The parable in the Bible, of Lot and his wives, being told to leave Sodom and Gomorrah and the admonition to not look back, as they would be turned into pillars of salt for the doing of it, has always meant to me that when we are given the opportunity to walk through the threshold of the personal, into the expansive freedom of The Impersonal Ground of Being…that we dare not look back… yearning for a time when life was juicer and more dramatic. If we don’t turn back, we will be gifted with the ability to live the fluid life of the awakened one’s. If we begin to yearn for the days of good and bad, of goals and achievements, of dreams fulfilled and desires satiated…then we, most certainly will, turn into the bitter salt of unshed tears.

Giving up rules in favor of agreements, relinquishing desire in favor of acceptance, letting go of all but what is underneath our fingers at this precise moment, is the doorway into peace of mind, serenity, tranquility, and well being. This is a place where rolling top over, or bottom under, or red vs. black, is without merit. This is a place where must haves, and even mild preferences, dissolve. A place where safety and security is an internal experience, rather than an external event.

This place is our rightful home.

Adayre R. Miller

1/21/12

Photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Elyce Feliz to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link… http://www.flickr.com/photos/elycefeliz/4638361635/

The Search For My Absurd Wisdom...

It has taken me a very long time to recognize what I really want. Not what I once imagined I wanted…not what the culture trained me to want…not what my parents wanted for me…but what I truly, really, want.

And I am not talking about your garden-variety desire, the stuff that the Buddha claimed all suffering sources out of. Stuff like the desire for money, recognition, power, fame, or the most common desire, which is as ubiquitous as the UV radiation in which we are immersed, the desire for things to be other than they are.

This “want” seems to come from beneath me it is so deep inside.

It is the desire to live a natural life, the desire to live in accordance with the wordless, seamless, flowing source. To do only what is truly mine to do, to live only as I can live, to step out of the shadow of the personal self and keep my focus, and therefore my direction, on the Impersonal Ground of Being.

Safe from the shifting tides of the personal will, I want to turn my life over to the “something greater”, than that which can be imagined by the personalities conditioned mind.

Just last week, I overheard a conversation between a student and her advisor. The student said in a somewhat shy manner, that she wanted to take the skills she had learned in energy work “around the world”. The translation for that sentiment is that she wants to become famous for her capacity to “heal” others.

I wanted that too, once.

I am so grateful I didn’t get it.

I have, it seems, gone through a kind of right of passage. Having discovered inside myself the ability to stop my thoughts, and much more importantly than that, the ability to free myself from the beliefs that robbed me of the potential for naturalness…I had begun to wonder how one might make decisions, if not by being guided by a “belief/value system”.

Two fairly extreme situations have now answered that question, in an experiential and “lived” way.

The first was the moment when I came around my dining room wall, to find my favorite dog squared off against a hissing and striking diamondback baby rattler, which my cat had brought in on one of her many prey excursions.

I realized then, the truth that my Teacher had always assured me was so.

That if I trusted myself enough… if I learned to trust life enough…that action would source out of an entirely silent mind, and much more importantly, that I would have no need of plans, or goals, or knowledge. He was correct, of course.

When push came to shove. When leather and road met. When the crows came home to roost…my mind had nothing to say, and my body or some higher intelligence that was using my body, saved my dog, the cat, injury to myself, and even the snake. Action was smooth, effortless, simple, effective, and of course highly adrenalized, and therefore extremely exhausting, once the moment had passed. But I didn’t need to know a single solitary thing.

Next came an event that happened just last week. If you had asked me anytime prior to this event, if I would have taken the action that unfolded…I would have been very, absolutely, certainly, completely, totally, without-question-positive, that I would NOT have done as I did, in fact, do.

It seems I stole a dog.

The dog was in harms way, and had been, on many more times than just this occasion. He was underfed and under groomed. But mostly his life was at real risk, and his “owners” were the reason his life was at risk. I had spoken to them the last time I had saved the dog from being run over, I had asked that they make more responsible choices, I had hoped for the best and wished that there were some way in which I could avoid what seemed inevitable…his death, or profound bodily harm. (These were the actions I that I knew to be appropriate ones.)

This time, it was me that nearly ran over him.

This time…I didn’t have my dogs with me, and when jumping from my car to make certain he was not hurt…he came to me, joyfully, when I called to him.

He came home with me gladly, playing and snuggling most of the way. He was possessed of an amazingly wonderful temperament, happy, loving, open, extremely friendly, playful like a puppy.

Without a moments thought, or even the tiniest tinge of conflict…I found him another home.

It happened without effort or stress. I merely called the person whose image popped into my head, and minutes later they were in agreement that the dog’s life was in peril, and had taken him home with them. They found a home for him the very next day.

No doubt, there are some of you who are reading this, who will think I have done the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, or the right thing the wrong way, or the right thing the right way…or some other combination of personal “opinion”.

In fact, an old friend of mine says that I experienced no conflict because the action I took was so completely in accordance with my “value system”, that it created no dissidence within me.

I disagree with that notion…

I have spent the better part of three decades dismantling my “belief and valuing systems”, and my very personal “opinions”.

My teacher was very fond of saying, ”show me a belief and I will show you… where a mind has stopped growing”. We are all familiar with the “beliefs” of generations gone by, we smile knowingly at the terrible ignorance that once allowed people to believe that the world was flat, or that surgeons need not wash their hands between operations, or the horror of believing that Jews, could and should, be eliminated because they were not quite human.

But we think that our beliefs about “manifesting” or about our inherent right to prosperity, or about how we need to pursue and develop our “greatness” are “good” beliefs. This is a terrible type of blindness… the inability to pierce the veil of the egoic minds capacity to lure us to sleep, with notions that cause us to pursue outer directed illusory goals, projected into an entirely illusory future.

So how does corralling and capturing a snake, and stealing a dog in harm’s way, afford me a “right of passage”.

Both of these actions, in their own way, were extreme. The first a socially sanctioned action, which no one would have disagreed with, although most would have wanted someone else to do the heavy lifting – as did I, at first blush. The second was questionable, at best, to those who “believe” that ownership has its privileges and its inalienable rights, or that I should have reported it and left the decision in the hands of the authorities.

But here is the thing…my thinking mind, laden as it is with all the beliefs, notions, ideas, ideologies, and dogmas, that I have ever learned or unconsciously taken in…was no more present in the taking of the dog, than it was in the capturing of the snake.

“I” was not involved in either of these experiences.

There has been a hand-full of moments in my life, when “I” was not there. When my Mother took her last breath. When she told me her darkest secret. When my Teacher told me the truth about my self-constructed, self-perpetuating, self chosen mask. When I captured a snake, and when I stole a dog…

There are a few others, but you get the idea. And these small moments in time, are some of the best moments I have ever experienced. They are the ones that will pass before me on my deathbed; I have no doubt about that.

The ones that predated the stealing of the dog were moments that were in some manner thrust upon me.

Taking the dog was a moment free of the extreme needs of the experiences that preceded it. And yet, it was just as entirely “self”-less, as the moments that led up to it.

Here, I see, is how life is supposed to be led. One moment at a time, grounded totally in the present, compellingly empty of a self, where decision/action/result are one smooth effortless and wonderful expression, of the deeper source of Impersonal Being who is guiding and directing the outcome.

I asked my Teacher how to live in the world without a “self” guiding the way, a very long time ago. I share it with you, because keeping something this valuable only to myself is a poor choice. So I include an email exchange we had in early September of 2004…

“Dear George:

I have a question regarding giving.

Aldous Huxley provided this most satisfying quote defining genius, as “supreme usefulness”. And you have provided the understanding that “what injures essence enhances personality, what embarrasses personality heals essence.”

So in light of Huxley’s definition, that to find ones genius is to provide a supreme level of usefulness to the human family and in light of your assertion that what gives to essence will be the polar opposite of what gives to personality, I am looking for a deeper level of understanding with respect to giving.

For instance, my neighbor has inoperable cancer. He is frightened, desperate, lonely and very needy. If I give him my time and attention in the manner, which is customary, (and in which I am currently most aware of, and the way he is most desirous of), I would commiserate, calm, and soothe him…keeping an eye to “giving” him comfort and succor.

However, using Mr. Huxley’s definition and your direction, that action would be neither supremely useful, nor serving his essence. I understand that the supreme level of usefulness is what you have always demonstrated, which is to “shock” people’s personality in favor of awakening their essence. Of course, that would not be appropriate in such a situation as my example.

So not having the forum or the skills you possess, how does a person go about being useful to essence in the everyday personality world? I am trying to grasp this concept under the assumption that “giving” to another’s personality has just about as much value, as does “giving” from one’s personality…namely, little to none.

I hope that I have asked this question in a clear fashion and that you can provide some additional clarity at some future Monday meeting.”

Here was his response:

Ronni –

“Your question is very clear, and your response, or direction, to resolving the example is also very clear.

If we follow tradition, we would feed the hungry, and they would never learn to fish. But we would be hallowed for the feeding. If we don’t feed them, and teach them to fish instead, we secure their future, but the present generation would consider this insensitive. In any polarized situation there is both praise and judgment. So what do we do?

We must develop whole seeing, where uni-polar exists. We find it in the idea world, (his term for Universal Source beyond the mind), not in the thinking world. When Jesus asked a man to follow him, the man said, “First let me bury my father.” Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead.” (In another lesson he used this parable to describe the need to step out of the deadening world of self generated conceptual understanding, or the “thinking” world…or as Jesus put it…let the dead bury the deadened.) When Aldous Huxley was dying, they say he asked for LSD so he could die alone, conscious and aware. Georg Groddeck said that we should go to bed and be alone when we are ill, to listen to the sickness and learn from it.

It seems to me that I relate to these examples. And for me, to nurture the sick and dying is to meddle in the same way that I would be meddling if a person inherited a fortune and I stepped in to help them spend it. Yet there are times where both are appropriate. (Emphasis mine.)

I personally think rules are polarized, and not only should each event be considered in the present moment, I may change my response from moment to moment. No two moments call for exactly the same response, in the same way that no two moments are alike.”

George

~~~~~

Here is my right of passage.

I once believed that stealing was wrong, no matter the motivation. In this way, I was laboring under a “believed” value system that was deeply inhibiting, and would not have allowed me to take the action that has resulted in the animal’s salvation.

In the moments leading up to taking the dog; those of decision, action, and outcome, there was no conflict what-so-ever…the next few days brought a great deal of conflict. I did not sleep for almost three days, wondering how I came to do the thing done. I worried about the potential effects on me, what if I was found out? What if my “bad” behavior was discovered? What if I am judged, blamed, harmed in some way…?

Surely you can see the difference between the essence in me, and the personality in me. The two sides of me, the one willing to face any measure of censure or harmful outcome in the service and action of a will higher than my own. The other, worried and sleepless, wondering if I had done the “right” thing.

I am fifty-six years old. Before I die…I “want” from some place deeper than my physical existence to live as fluidly, quietly, creatively, and instinctually active, as I saw my Teacher do…time and time again.

I want the “uni-polar, whole seeing” that allows me to serve essence and not personality…I want to be strong enough to do as the moment calls me to do, despite how “wrong” it may appear on the surface.

Allan Watts said of Georg Groddeck 1866-1934, "He was a completely wonderful man because everybody felt calmed by him. They felt an atmosphere of implicit faith, in nature and especially in the individual’s own inner nature. No matter what, Groddeck taught, there is a wisdom inside you which may seem absurd, but you have to trust it."

My particular brand of “absurd wisdom”…that is what I want…

Adayre R. Miller

Photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing