A Wonder to Behold…

I can’t recall a time in my life when I felt more vulnerable than I do just now.

I suppose it sources from many different places, losing a job that I had no idea would disappear, watching a video of my just completed work with no mention of me or my contribution, going to the dentist – who is the best I have ever seen, and yet – the shock of the drill, and the scraping and the pressure, causing my heart to race and my nerves to fray…but I doubt that these are the real sources of the vulnerability of my experience.

I think it really comes from a new level of dismembering believing.

I remember when I first moved back here, and began again with my Teacher, how he spoke so often of the need to dismantle our beliefs, if we were to face and find the truth.

My new Teacher has a similar approach, he wonders aloud whether we would be so committed to our notion of God, or the Universe, or whatever name you like best…if we knew, really knew, that we might get nothing at all, from our fervent believing.

He uses the analogy of the Christ as an example, would we choose abandonment, torture, death and defeat?  Would we have the courage, the will, the fortitude, the commitment to stand alone at the precipice of annihilation, for the sake of devotion and service to others? Would there be a line for that outcome?  Would we clamor to have that “large” a life?  Would we, could we, choose starvation and a bullet, as the Mahatma did?  Or Joan of Arc, or the early Christians, or…so very many other examples of faith pressured right to the edge.

You wouldn’t find me there.

I can barely handle being dismissed, overlooked, unappreciated, poor, and scared.

I cried at the dentist, something I have never before done.  I think, in large part because they, she and her staff, are so compassionate and kind hearted.  And I have felt so very betrayed by my most recent experience.

The Bible says that faith without works is dead.  Most folk would interpret that to mean that activity in the outer must be accomplished, that we should pray and “row the boat” as well.  No doubt that is the easiest interpretation, but it is also the most surface one.  I am not disputing that action is necessary, nor that we should not be rowing our boats.  I, for one, am taking every action I can think of to mitigate the problem I am facing.  But I can see clearly it is not nearly enough, or even the best of choices.

Most of the action I take, if I watch closely and listen carefully, I can hear the hum of anxiety behind it.  Which is why a kind hearted dentist, and the sound of her drill can bring me to tears.

Does rowing my boat, as fast as I can pedal because I am scared, really have any deep resonance to it?

I am reminded of Byron Katie asking, in the nine-day workshop I attended with her, “can we just follow simple instruction?”

She talked about doing only what she was told by the requirements of the moment.  Answering the phone because it was ringing, opening the first piece of mail on an otherwise mountain of paper, doing the dishes because they had become a pile in the sink.  Simple steps, done with full commitment…

After shedding a few tears, in a chair tipped so far back my head was lower than my feet, almost unable to swallow, and with enough gear in my mouth to sustain a small army in wartime…I realized that the moment called for a couple of very simple actions.  I must trust this kind dentist, and her equally kind staff.  I must keep my mouth open and continue breathing.  I must welcome (as all thoughts and emotions must be welcome for balance and equilibrium to return), but not indulge, thoughts that spoke of the sensation of drowning, and I must be willing, for the greater good of my mouth and health, to allow her to demonstrate her considerable expertise and professionalism.

Here then a much deeper view.

Action born of the conditioned minds desire for escape, is only mindless and debilitating flapping about.  It hurts rather than helps.  It damages rather than succeeds.  It is a methodology meant to soothe the wounded aspects of ourselves, rather than build the raw courage, that truly living calls for.

I am drawn to a Facebook “friend” that contributes a lot of dog videos, and thus I scroll through all the opinions and advice and so on, looking for the four legged contributors.  As I do so, I am often impacted by all the talk about light filled, joy producing, hopeful advice, and beliefs, and opinions.  It seems that a staggering amount of information that surfaces on Facebook is meant to herald the great and coming awakening.  Pictures and text that produce images, both actual and mental, that promise so very much well being and bliss, that you would think that the world is on the very edge of everlasting joyous jubilation.

I have come to the place that it sets my newly filled teeth on edge.

There is such a quality of force to it.  A marketed form of deep manipulation, that put to the slightest test, reveals itself to be millimeters deep…if even that…nothing more than a really good sales strategy and profit builder, aimed at the weak of heart and the timid of mind, a clever sales person selling the newest forms of self indulgence.

The belief that we know how it all works, and can sell that knowledge to others is the very worst form of self-indulgence.

And self-indulgence is the source, the root, and the wheelhouse of the sense of separate self.

I hesitate to share this next piece with you, but it too, factors into the vulnerability that I am speaking of and about…and somehow it is a part of the need to drop to a deeper level of Not Knowing, over the indulgences of “believing”.

Last night at three in the morning, I got up and turned on the computer, rather than continue to toss and turn.  Intending to play some solitaire, I first surfed Facebook for a sweet dog playing with a cute kid video.  Scrolling through all the advice and such, I saw a post that stated that it included a video of a Chinese man skinning an animal alive.  I watched a portion of it, I think, largely because I did not believe it could be true.  He first clubbed and then beat a raccoon on the ground, hard enough to daze it, not hard enough to kill it.  As he began pulling the skin from its still alive and conscious body, watching its leg dance, was almost more than could be born and of course, I quickly turned it off.

The image would not leave me, still won’t.  I crawled back into my bed and pulled my beloved red-haired dog up next to my chest, and pulled gently on his soft and sweet ears, as I stroked his head and wondered to myself how such a thing could be done to another sentient being.

All of the Teachers that I admire, counsel the need and requirement of acceptance of what is so, because it is so…  None of them sell the idea that all should be sweetness and light.  They would not run from such an image, and the fact that because it exists, somewhere in the world, and because I encountered it…it is now mine to accept.

It took me ages and ages to understand the difference between acceptance and agreement. 

There is nothing that could or would cause me to agree with animal abuse, but because it exists, I must come to terms with it and accept that there is a place for such a thing as this.

I find it equally difficult, at this time in my life, to agree with the vulnerability that I am experiencing…but I must accept it, if I am to receive its gifts.  One day, I will be so vulnerable that I will be facing the death of my body, and I do not wish to wait until then, to cultivate the courage that may see me through to the other side.

The image of this poor thrashing creature echoed in my mind as though it was a loved one.  And I turned toward it over and over, how could I accept such a thing as this?  And…how can I live so close to the knife’s edge, as I am now required to do?  How can I earn the right to a deeper perspective, if I cannot open myself to the demands that life serves up to me?

When I was young, I managed my fear with frequent trips to the altar… where I cried and begged the Christ to save me.  When I grew older, and until very recently, I indulged in glorious images of me as a successful and admired human being, to manage the dark nights and the long absences of true faith.

When George invited me to lay down those indulgences I practically had to pry my fingers from around the neck of the sweet idea that one day I would be enlightened, and thereby “saved”, to live in bliss for the remainder of my life.

My new Teacher is even more direct, with his counsel that all the stories of bliss and everlasting joy are the indulgences of a mind to frightened to be willing to tell itself the truth.

It has taken me a very long time to understand that the notions of peace and light are the cries of the immature and the unwilling, unable to face the fact that we are living a life of the conditioned mind’s need for playing hide and seek.

You probably imagine, at this point, that I am the world’s most hardened cynic, that I have no kindness in me, if I wish to take away the illusions of success, and bliss, and everlasting joy.  But I do not wish these things for others…but rather, only for myself.

Seeking the bliss and the joy and the success, is a path that most of the world has chosen.  It is a very handy little tool.  Seeking, or as I have been calling it, indulgence, is a kind of opiate that sells really well.  And I have bought more than my share of its sweet, and entirely empty of nutrition, calories.

But it will not garner me the courage I wish to take with me, at the end of my life.

I will turn 58 in a little over two weeks.  If I live as long as my Mother, then 19 years will be all that is still available, and it has taken me so very long, to find such a small thimble’s worth of courage, that I doubt I will have much in my harvest come the reaping.

I have become so painfully clear recently; about all the many ways I practice indulgence, rather than courage.  All the ways I turn away, rather than have the courage to turn toward.  Lord… it’s a long climb…

Again the image of that poor animal moves into my mind.  Hopefully it had some measure of chemical concoction moving through its brain to shut down some of the pain receptors, but like all animals, its only real choice was surrender and endurance.

And here is the really hard truth…

Our only real choice is surrender and endurance as well.  We are not unlike our furred brethren; no matter how much we indulge the notion of some control over our lives…it simply is not true.  But unlike our four legged fellows, we can use the circumstances that enter our lives to drive us deeper into indulgences, or to lift us to the higher realms of acceptance and surrender, and there upon be given the gifts of endurance, grace, and courage.  When these gifts enter the life of a human being, they end the reliance on the self-indulgent lie of separation, and produce the sparkling qualities of Nobility of Spirit, Chastity of Soul, and Courage of Heart.  And these people are a wonder to behold…

Ronni Miller

8/21/2012

Photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and NoSha NaQi to see more of this artist work please follow this link 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nosha-q8/4144817629/