Buried Alive...

“Police in Florida, found a one week old puppy buried alive” reads a post on the face book scrawl that travels past my awareness.  It’s eyes were not even open yet, an officer had heard its cries, followed the sound and revealed the newborn, who is now being fed with a baby bottle and is expected to thrive.

Having had the companionship of intensely loving and loyal animals for the majority of my life, I am always deeply affected by these stories. 

I wonder at the madness that produces such behavior, until I remember that I once carried self harm born of suffering.  Having been born in a female body, with the less aggressive effects of estrogen, I did not act out upon others…would not have considered doing that.  But I treated myself to such poor experience, that madness would have been the only way to describe it.

I don’t value telling the stories anymore, of the many ways in which I acted out my self hatred.   They are so irrelevant to the life I lead now; it might as well have been an entirely different one…(perhaps this is the meaning of reincarnation?)

I include it here, only so that there is some hint for you to follow of the deep freedom that is possible, when the life in question is no longer being lived from the limited and limiting perspective of the personal self.

We imagine that the full embrace of the Universal, within each of us, will some how bleed life of its hum.  And I must admit that there were stages I went through, that did indeed; drain the hum right out of things.  I suppose that is the fundamental value of a teacher – they possess the direct experience to support you, in the continuation of self-discovery, by telling you about how it was for them.  The rare teachers of true freedom, (anyone who promises you greatness, wealth, happiness, any other form of marketing hype, or is going to “teach” you anything is someone who has not touched the Universal within), must be discerned by what they do not promise.

In today’s environment, these teachers are often called non-duality teachers.  My Beloved Teacher, active well before non-duality came into vogue called it “Whole Seeing”, to quote from the Tao Te Ching: 

“Free from desire, you realize the mystery. 

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.”  

A non-duality teacher is someone freed from the desire to have life be any other way than what the current moment experience presents itself as, and in that deep acceptance, they realize the deep mystery that all things are in harmony in the Tao.  A-L-L things…

Even…puppies buried alive…

You will miss the mark by a mile, if you confuse acceptance with approval.

Acceptance is the strongest force on the planet, there is quite literally nothing that can overcome it, nothing can capture it, force its hand, restrain it, coral it, or win over it.  Nothing…anywhere…ever…

The conditioned mind is forever confusing acceptance with approval.  It is one of the many ways that the conditioned mind holds sway over our lives and keeps us imprisoned in suffering.  Approval is the active form of liking something.  It isn’t possible for the average person to “like” discovering that a puppy has been buried alive, there is no place inside the average person’s lexicon, that an act of such cruelty, perpetrated on such innocence, could ever be liked.  (Even those made mad by their minds, in all likelihood do not “like” it.)  But it can be accepted.

Why?

Because it is already so, and being so, it exists in the world, and existing in the world, means it is a part of the tapestry that weaves itself into this beautiful/horrible world in which we find ourselves.  When we argue against what has already arrived we lose our capacity to stay grounded and whole.

And that… is “whole seeing”.   When whole seeing has been arrived at, action is guided and directed by the Source, and thus becomes healing rather than divisive.  Thus one can work tirelessly on behalf of abused animals, in this case, while still feeling deep acceptance for the fact that there exists in the world a thing such as this.

Your life and mine are beautiful/horrible.  Your life and mine are good/awful, sweet/sad, wonderful/nasty, and if you bring a full measure of acceptance to that truth, it will set you free, and potentially everyone you meet.

Acceptance is a life long process.  I find that my capacity to accept my life grows daily, or perhaps even hourly.  Sometimes I can watch its head stretching toward the sun, seizing the moment and growing toward the light.  Here is the true meaning of “carpe deim”.  That term is almost always used in conjunction with outer achievement, to win the race, or the war, or the prize.  But I have come to see that “seizing the day” is about a moment-by-moment acceptance of the current experience in which I find myself.

I remember quite clearly when I first began to understand what acceptance meant, and how it is the means by which we stay in the “Now” to quote the most well-known non-duality teacher.

Deeply addicted to my own thinking, when my mind first began to slow down and I could manage a few moments of clear awareness, I was alternately baffled and angry, “there is nothing going on in the here and now”, I thought to myself…and certainly nothing of any real interest.

Bored up to my eyeballs, absent the drama that I was so attenuated to by my internal story telling of she did this, and he did that dialogue…I could find no value in the here and now, and the quiet solitude that was knocking at my door.

But as my capacity to live in a quiet mind began to grow, I have discovered it is even possible to dwell in silence even when my mind is speaking to me, I don’t know quite how to describe that, but it is a form of rest, or relaxation, even as my mind is burbling about something or other, there is a soft yielding in the background.  A sense of home, or safety, or sanctuary…a quiet stillness that defies explanation, exits under or behind the volume of thinking.

This sanctuary allows me to accept, never approve, but rather accept, the truth that we live in a world where lovely, innocent, loyalty, can be brutalized in an entirely uncivilized manner.  A world where deep pain breaks the surface of a mind, which it has possessed and forces an action of such intensity, and such madness.

Again from the Tao:  

“Know the personal,

yet keep to the impersonal: 

accept the world as it is. 

If you accept the world,

the Tao will be luminous inside you

and you will return to your primal self.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. 

When goodness is lost, there is morality. 

When morality is lost, there is ritual. 

Ritual is the husk of true faith,

the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself

with the depths and not the surface,

with the fruit and not the flower. 

He has no will of his own. 

He dwells in reality,

and lets all illusions go.”

The primal illusion is that a thing that does exist, should not exist.  This is the foundation upon which the conditioned mind is born.  We suffer when we are possessed by a belief that a thing that exists should not, in fact, be so.  Thus our primary spiritual motivation, if we are intent on ridding ourselves of suffering, should be to unlearn all of our beliefs.  What is so, is already so, learning to lean into that fact, frees us from judgement, self-harm, criticism, and comparison...freed from these we become supple, open, clear, and whole.

“When the Tao is lost, there is goodness”, the Tao, or the unified whole, when broken apart by the perceiving, conditioned, and judging mind begins to break apart reality into relative conditions.  Good and bad, ugly and beautiful, poor and rich, sickness and heath, this relative existence is fraught with suffering and homesickness as the deep unitive whole, from which we source, knows no such relativity.

Again from the Tao:

“What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear? 

Hope and fear are both phantoms

that arise from thinking of the self. 

When we don’t see the self as self,

what do we have to fear?

Stop thinking, and end your problems. 

What difference between yes and no? 

What difference between success and failure? 

Must you value what others value,

avoid what others avoid? 

How ridiculous!”

The Tao gives birth to all beings,

nourishes them, maintains them,

cares for them, comforts them, protects them,

takes them back to itself,

creating without possessing,

acting without expecting,

guiding without interfering. 

That is why love of the Tao

is in the very nature of things.”

 - Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation.

The Tao, “takes all things back to itself”, herein is our comfort, our home, our salvation, our redemption.  The Tao is capable of embracing a mind so dark that it is intent on killing innocence, this is the meaning, action, and activity of the true way, the deep path, the ageless wisdom, the Masters who have walked among us…

“Other people have what they need;

I alone possess nothing. 

I alone drift about,

like someone without a home. 

I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.

I alone don’t know. 

I drift like a wave on the ocean,

I blow as aimless as the wind.”  -Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching. Stephen Mitchell translation.

It is my great good fortune that I have begun to “blow as aimless as the wind”,  and to come into a fuller measure of “not knowing”, here is my fortune, my rest, my home, my wealth.  I am so glad that you journey with me through these pages, that we share this aimlessness for so brief a moment…

Adayre R. Miller

9/29/12

photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Peter Hulance to see more of this artists work please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterhules/7876464188/

These Tiny Moments Of Pure Awareness…

The Teachers that have truly captured my attention, as I have unraveled the conditioned mind’s hold on me, all shared a similar idea with me – gave of their experiences in a similar way – talked and taught that the way out – is by slowing bringing myself to the awareness that the mindstream moving through my life is not me, but rather a complicated amalgam of the stories I told myself in childhood in a deeply misguided attempt to allay my fears.  The “voice” inside my head, and the way it disguises itself as the story of me…is not me, but rather, a deadly imposter.

Most of my teachers spoke about the “heaven” that awaited a person on the other side of salvation or redemption, when the end of the self made mind is finally reached.  There was only one, in my life, who almost never spoke to me of the other side and its many blessings.

My Beloved Teacher almost never spoke about the deep beauty, of the quiet mind.

Instead he spoke about the Impersonal self, the capacity to transcend, the willingness to give up comparison, the poison of “improvement”, the value of the 24 virtues.

I have never, until today, given that much thought. 

My Teacher’s “presence” was such a palpable felt experience that being near him was all the convincing a mind, (open to his expression), could have ever needed of the wonder of, to use his term, the Impersonal Self.  Having the privilege of watching him moving through this daily life was what it must have been like for Peter or Paul.  Watching him teach was like being present at the discovery of E=MC2, or the light bulb, the combustion engine, or gravity, or that the earth travels round the sun.  It was such a miracle to witness an authentic expression of Stillness that it never occurred to me, that he rarely spoke of the benefits of a Silent mind.

I wonder about that now.  Now that he is gone from sight, and I am left only with the perfume of his memory and the deep swath of change, that he wrought upon the landscape of my life.

I look back in memory and I cannot find a single moment in my experience where he taught benefit over commitment.  I suppose he did not tell us of the wonder of Silence, because he did not wish to support a new form of searching or seeking.

But he did speak, and write, and teach, a great deal about “Availability”, something I am only just now, beginning to fully understand.

The very first time my mind went silent was while I was watching my mother take in her last breath.  It electrified me.  I have never before, or since, felt more alive.  Every neuron in my brain was so laser focused on my optic nerves, that I truly felt as though I could see out the back of my head.  The air seemed to crackle with electricity, and I was flooded with a pervasive sense of absolute well-being.  (I did eventually grieve her passing, but that grief was simple, swift, and deeply impersonal.  And it could not hold a single candle against the overwhelming sense, of the rightness, of the moment of her death.)

It was, however, in some way I cannot describe an unbidden moment.  I did not choose the silence that emptied my mind of the capacity to think, it chose me…the moment was so intensely sacred, that I could naught but respond to it in silent wonder.

Finding the snake in my dining room had a very similar effect.  I could not possibly have had a single thought while I worked to save the life of my best friend, my lovely red haired shadow, my favorite companion.  While he was the focus of the snake’s hissing and striking,  (but also having the good sense to stay far enough away from the death dealing venom, that he was still alive when I finally made my way into the dining room) my thinking mind was entirely stopped …yet… effective, and even, elegant action was arrived at creating safety for all concerned.  I had no interest in killing the rattler, no interest in running from the situation despite the surging adrenalin that took three full days to recover from, only a driving and insistent and entirely wordless willingness for immediate and potent action.  Here again, the Silence found me…not the other way around.

During my mother’s death, Silence brought me wonder.  During the struggle to save my animal, Silence brought me absolute and total trust.

Then one day about three years ago now, I found a simple entrance into Silence that I had not known was even there.  A doorway, a threshold, a jumping off place opened and I knew I could walk through it if I chose to.  I remember being quite frightened for just a few moments, “what if I slip beneath this sea of Silent darkness and never return?”  I wondered to myself.  “What if there is no form of existence beyond the threshold of my speaking mind…like Dorothy, what if I can never get back home?”  I do not know how or why, I could hear these fears and feel the anxiety and let go into the silence anyway.  I think it probably has to do with the experience with my mother’s death and with the snake, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.

Instead of pulling back, I stepped forward and found myself in such an ocean of relief that I cannot accurately describe it.  You have heard the words from others “oceanic bliss”, heaven, redemption, relief, salvation…I could go on and on and on.  This experience lasted about three weeks or so, and to say that it was good does not even get close to the truth.   Delicious might help describe it, as it was such a tangible and palpable wonder.

But then it closed back up, and the thinking mind returned, and I went in search of the wonder I had lost.  I took a job that was deeply stressful and once again, became lost in the productions of mind.

So now, seven weeks back into the quietness of no job and no where to go… Silence has returned to my mind and with it a maturity that I did not possess, with the previous experiences of the cessation of thinking.

I understand, now, why my Beloved Teacher did not speak of “bliss” or heaven or wonder.

The reason is because they are states of mind, forms that appear and disappear, in the Emptiness that is the real self.  They are subtle, but still quite tangible; productions of mind…a mind relieved to be sure, but productions of mind, none-the-less.  (How can I say this with such assurance? …because they came, and they went… whereas the environment in which they arose, (awareness or consciousness) remains forever constant.

This brings me, finally, back to my imagined reason for why my Beloved Teacher never spoke to of us of the many wonders that can be felt, and touched, and experienced, out of a Silent mind.

I looked and looked in my memory for what he did speak of, what he did say about the gifts of the Impersonal Self? of transcending separation? of ending the pursuits of seeking? 

And I can come up with only one answer to this curiosity.

He spoke of Availability.

No bells and whistles here.  No blissed out, mind bending, waves of rainbow colored goodies to be found in …“Availability”…!??!

I smile now, to think of how subtle was his great gift.  He never gave us anything that could be lusted after, pursued, desired, or manipulated.  It was one of his greatest wisdoms.  Even as his presence was so intense that I needed to bow my head in humility, (I regularly felt a keen desire to lower my head whenever he was in the room it was an expression of the reverence I felt when I was in his presence, although I resisted the need because it would have been read wrong by anyone watching me), but what kept me in my chair for those nearly three decades, was the palpable presence of fearlessness, he exuded.   And for someone who had experienced everything from acute terror in childhood to daily grinding anxiety in adulthood…the need to be near someone who was fearless, was an ache in my bones.

He never spoke of fearlessness that I can recall.  He never made promises of any kind, his focus was always and only on service.  Not what we could get out of our spiritual depths, but rather, what we could give from it.

Now that I have chosen a silent mind over the productions of my vivid imagination, now that I have matured enough to understand that bliss 24/7 is not a permanent state, now that I am ready to shoulder a greater responsibility for the many gifts that have brought me to this quiet interior…now…finally, I have the first glimmerings of the notion of Availability, and the service it can provide.

You can see Availability quite easily, it is visible everywhere.

The next time you see a child, or a dog, or almost any mammal, watch very closely and you will see the origins of availability.  It is a type of innocence, a willingness to be fully present, a giving over of oneself to the fill the shape of a present moment, no matter what shape it may take.  When a child is happy, they are happy right down to the cellular level. 

I am fond of watching YouTube videos of babies laughing, they laugh with their toenails and fingernails, with their eyeballs and knuckles, with their mouth and with their breath.  And they cry the very same way…  deeply, potently, available.

When this capacity has passed through the horrors of the conditioned mind and come out the other side, it becomes the spiritual power of Availability.

George was so completely available; it was very much like watching a baby laugh, or a loyal dog’s gaze following its loved companion with unblinking constancy.  In his later years, he sat in his chair bounded by his disease process and gave himself fully to the moment in which he found himself.  He took its shape, and filled out its contours, like water seeking every crevice of a vessel it has been poured into.

He never once claimed anything for himself, he only gave…and with a commitment that was truly staggering.

His intelligent presence was so blindingly simple that the complexities of the conditioned mind of his students, were stunned into uselessness by him, which is why I felt the need to bow my head when he was near. 

When I first met him I was a very clever, but horribly broken girl.  I had a facile and agile mind, bent on “understanding” and quite capable of keeping me in prison for a lifetime.  He cut cleanly through that cleverness and made possible my escape.

And the only reasonable and possible return on his investment, is for me, to become as “Available” as is possible.  I did not know that until just now…you might well be questioning my claim to intelligence, if it has taken me this long to come to the realization that being Available is the one, and perhaps only, way that I can truly honor all that he poured forth on my behalf.

But I beg your indulgence as I examine why it took me so long to come to such a stunningly simple realization…

Availability, in its fullness, means that I do not get to shape the moment I find myself in, in any way.  And believe me when I tell you that the thinking mind is a subtle and cunningly clever master thief, whose only goal is the insane illusion of control.  It can, and will, steal the breath right out of your lungs.  Even after so much exposure to the relief of Silence I went willingly back into slavery, merely because there was not enough “juice” in silence to keep me satisfied, present, and available.  I went right back to approval seeking, desire, future orientation, the poison of self-improvement – a drug of the first order – and listening to the crafty and clever manipulations of my thinking mind. 

Please understand that it is not my intention to denigrate the capacity to think.  Everything that we enjoy, from flushable toilets to space ships, comes to fruition by virtue of thought.  When thought is in service to, the follower of, a tool for … a clarified, simplified, clean and spacious mind, it is genius made visible.

When thought leads, only war is possible. 

The internal war of self-hatred has claimed more victims than all the wars the world over, since the beginning of time.

More mature now, I understand and fully accept, that vigilance is necessary all the days of our lives.  A watchful, wakeful, conscious recognition of when the preciousness of thought, becomes the repetitive and insane slave master of useless and dangerous thinking.  And much more, that vigilance is the ground upon which Availability stands.

Only I can vigilantly safeguard against the sweet seduction of the repetitive thinking minds veil of illusion – the sleep of unconsciousness – and only I can make myself available to the present moment to take the shape it wants, and not the one I choose.

I remember now…

My mother’s last breath, the coiled and striking snake, the pure brilliant and empty presence of a gifted and giving teacher, these are the reminders I have been given, of the presence of heaven here on earth.  These tiny moments of pure Awareness…

I share them with you in great humility, gratitude, and the will to become ever more Available.

Adayre R. Miller (Ronni)

9/23/12

photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Parkbes, to see more of this artists work please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/parkbes/4015327738/

What Matters, And What Doesn’t…

I have reached a new level of vulnerability that has never before been felt or experienced.  I would have to be very sick or very weak for it to get deeper, than this.

It is born of a few different things… an interview that went badly right from hello.  She was a young woman with the speed disease that is now so prevalent in our culture, and I of course, am slow.  I thought I was answering a question she didn’t feel was being answered, so as the third pass, of my apparent non-answer – (I really did believe I was answering her question, I wasn’t being obtuse for the sake of it) – approached, we both knew I would not get the job.

Then there was the moment my coach pointed out to me that my deeply pleasurable response to a moment of shared conversation, was the expression of my intensely felt emotional commitment to my “belief system”…and I knew in an instant he was right, it was true, I had been duped by my own mind into believing once again.

After that coaching session, I went to a meeting I attend somewhat sporadically in the home of some lovely older folk, who provide a vegetarian meal and a video of Eckhart Tolle.  We eat dinner, watch the video, and then have a “discussion”, about the ideas that are presented.  I have noticed, that although the attendance is evenly split between men and women, only the men “discuss” and they, to a man, sound like they are teaching, lecturing, or are “leading” the group toward some horizon that pulls at them.

I recognize that pull. 

It is the desire to be identified as special, or important, or valuable.  It hides itself beneath the banner of spirituality, and growth…but it is the age-old need to be included and approved of.  It was made more difficult to sit through, because of my coach having unmasked its presence hiding under my pleasurable experience of being listened to, and valued, by some younger people at a recent gathering I attended.

One man at the Tolle meeting, in particular, was so intense in his conversation, that if you could have somehow removed the words and left the emotional tone on which they were carried, he would have sounded just like any Ku Klux Klan, Nazi, or fundamentalist that ever drew breath.  Pounding away at his non-dual, you are divine; all is Universal Love, rhetoric until I felt as though I had been beaten about the head and shoulders.

I came away defeated by the realization that my deep exploration of all things “spiritual” is merely the old desire to find some safe haven in a world rocking with insecurity.

I get a quote a week from Pema Chodron, one of the very few teachers I allow into my head, and this week’s went like this:

THE DREAM OF CONSTANT OKAYNESS

It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness. When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. Another word for that is freedom—freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.

“Fundamental ambiguity”, constant doubt, hazy uncertainty, vague indistinctness…this is the human condition.  No one escapes it, none are ever free of it, there is no hope of being released from its grip.

I get the sense that the ones I have known that are so very remarkable, my Beloved Teacher, my new teacher, Pema, Gangaji, Emerson, are all folk who have learned some how to remain constantly present with themselves, while being crushed just like the rest of us, by the “fundamental ambiguity” of being human.

It is the full embrace of our hazy uncertainty that is called for, not the search for bliss or an altered state of mind that cannot be sustained.

You would think I would be a bit better at that than I am; after all, I have lived with financial uncertainty for more than two decades.  I “died” when I was seventeen, and again at fifty-two, I have watched a few other folk actually die, and I have explored the experience of my mind going silent.  Which I might add, scared the loving bejesus out of me when it happened, or more accurately when I noticed it for the first time.  I was deeply afraid if I let go and surfed the silence that I knew was within reach, that I would not return from it, and would sink beneath the surface never to be seen or heard from again.  Now that I know as a felt experience, that who I am is not the sound of the voice in my head, silence is a welcome respite rather than a feared companion.

But still, with all of that experience, I unconsciously am still seeking “ground beneath my feet”, and sought that ground, dressed up in a non-dual belief system.  Good lord…

It makes my teeth ache to know this about myself.  To know that I am a fundamentalist as well, demanding recognition wherever I can find it, nursing a deeply unconscious need to be special…as though it might somehow fend off the ambiguity that Pema so adroitly points out.

I can no longer be enchanted by the busyness, goal setting, achievement orientation, of the culture into which I was born.  I no longer nurse fantasies that I will “someday” be well off, or well known, or bigger than life, or divinely great.  I have come into the full willingness to be ordinary and invisible…and therefore potentially useful…but I still want, somehow, to be spared the rocking wildness of vague uncertainty.

I want to know what to do about my shrinking resources, how I will feed myself when the end of them is reached, or where I will turn when I am sick and old.  These desires are not at the forefront any longer, but they are old and deep and dangerous.  And my first impulse is to struggle against them…precisely what Pema counsels against.

I know, to an incontrovertible certainty, (paradoxical isn’t it?), that the only way to traverse this dangerous shore, is deep stillness.  To sit with myself, by myself, and let it have me, to pour myself directly into the path of the one and only thing, that I definitely do not want to experience.

My Beloved Teacher’s stories were as scarce as hen’s teeth.  He so radically preferred to teach through the medium of experience, that I could probably count his stories on the digits of my own two hands and feet.  But he did occasionally tell a story to illustrate a point, and once he shared the story of his great fear of flying.  It was during a period in which Omega, the organization he founded, was at its peak in growth and influence.  He had trainings in California and Canada that he was routinely forced to fly for, and he related that this fear of flying was so intense that he imagined death and destruction as a result.  Each time that the fear would come upon him, so his story went, rather than turn away from it, he would engage it on all levels.  He imagined and embraced a fiery death for himself, shrieking from the sky like a falling bomb.  And in this way, in very short order, he became a comfortable and confident flyer.

This was his great and open secret.  Just like the famous Buddhist teacher, (whose name I cannot currently remember), who when asked for his “secret” stated simply…”I don’t mind”. 

That’s it…I don’t mind, I don’t mind the fundamental ambiguity of being human.  I don’t mind the groundless nature of living and breathing.  I don’t mind the possibility of dying in a fiery airplane crash.

I – Don’t – Mind.

What if that is all there is?

What if that is all that can be known by us?

What if, all our running around, and inventing belief systems, and hoping and praying and wishing and wanting, all boils down to that one simple phrase and its full embrace or its unconscious rejection?

What if “Not Minding” is the very pinnacle of achievement?

What if “Not Minding” is a state of restful awareness in which our true nature is revealed to be all that really exists? 

Restful awareness, or “not minding” might then be the only thing that captures our attention…and what if, it costs us everything we have, to discover its peaceful presence in our lives?

I am getting closer to being willing to pay the price.  Perhaps I will never have the courage to fully know the depths of the Oneself, to discover myself as the ground of being and the enveloping ever constant nature of pure awareness…but at the very least…I finally know what matters, and what doesn’t…

Adayre R. Miller

(Ronni)

9/21/12

photo courtesy of flick photo sharing and “gentletouches” to see more of this artist work please follow this link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gentletouches/5665399190/

A Birthday Gift for You…

A good friend of mine in her birthday greeting to me, describes our lifetimes as a “parenthesis in eternity”.

It is a good phrase, so evocative of the truth of the nature of our short appearance, our swift ride, and our small expression in a sea of foreverness.

I do not experience my birthdays, (or any holiday type day), in a sentimental way.  I don’t bemoan the lack of festivities, no Christmas tree, no family turkey dinners…I have long ago accepted the solitary nature of my journey, and have come to see my life’s structure as quite necessary to the pattern.

For many years now, I have been professionally engaged in the development of the interior design of homes and businesses.  I have coaxed and pulled and nudged them into existence, caretaking and harmonizing the outcomes, careful of the edge between true beauty and the overwrought nature of too much design.

I never planned this profession for myself, didn’t choose it, never yearned for it.  It came and got me.  And as I look back over the years of my life, I find that is true in almost ever dimension of my being, the most important of which is the freedom that came to find me.

A book that bounced off a shelf at me, a therapist whose presence would not leave my attention, a mother who suddenly out of the blue unlocked the suffering of my childhood with the story of her own imprisonment, a Beloved Teacher who gave more than can even be described, a Coach who has never let me down, and finally a heart strong enough to bear it.

There is nothing about my life that speaks of conventional achievement.  I have spent many decades on the very edge of penury, and now I am once again on food stamps, unsure if there will be an income to keep myself and my dogs fed.

I live on the edge…I have for a long, long time.

And on this, the day of my birth, 58 years gone, I discover the truest measure of the intimate nature of the “success” of my life.

I have traveled from abject terror, a condition that populated almost all of my days and nights, in the form of night terrors so potent that I could not be alone, to the courage to face my fears, which was lent to me by my Beloved Teacher, to this day, a day in which I understand the very nature of fearlessness.

I have crossed over.

I cannot say that it will be permanent, that I will always have access to such a startling state of mind.  I dare not whisper the hope that it will last, this capacity for meeting myself, for holding my fears, in such a way that they dissipate like fog with the rising sun.

But for now, it is a grace that is as welcome as mountain air breezes.

Having lived 28 years in some form of terror, 26 years in courage – (the activity of taking action in the face of fear), and now a somewhat steady experience of fearlessness…  I feel the desire to share with you exactly how that journey is accomplished, consider it a reverse birthday gift, it is the very best of what I have to offer you, and I offer it with the greatest humility that I have ever felt.  The process is such a simple one that it could be laughable, were it not for being so deadly serious.

I became suicidal well before my teen years.  I prayed often and hard to be delivered from life.  I could not bear the terror and the hardship my mind placed upon me, born out of a reaction to my mother’s intense and unpredictable rages and my uncle’s sexual assaults.  The fear, which enrobed me like a death shroud in a tomb of pain, could not be managed on my own.  I began to need others in a way that was off putting, and intensely draining, to those few who were willing to try caring for me.

I trusted nothing and no one…ever…

Into that worldview walked a small white haired man, who had traveled a very similar path.  He was never one to “share” his story, so it took almost thirty years to piece together the full nature of his equanimity and for me to arrive at the very surprising awareness that he shared many of the same experiences, and reactions to the those experiences as I did, and best of all that he had grown entirely beyond their reach, here was a man that not only walked his talk…he embodied it.  I suppose that is why I trusted him so completely from the moment I laid my eyes upon him.  He held no space inside himself for me to indulge in my fears, his brand of help was a ruthless and rigorous one; do not leap to the assumption that he was in any way unkind.  He was kindness personified, but he had no time, nor any interest in indulging my fears.  If I were to become his student, the clearly defined price, was unfailing courage.  His mission…

Never, ever, stop embracing the fear.

I did has he bid.  I never stopped moving toward it.  While under his tutelage, and with the help of my coach, I accepted over and over again, the hard truth that every fear I had ever experienced was a product of my own mind.  Yes, my mother beat me until my sister feared it would kill me…yes, my uncle raped me and destroyed my reproductive system, but the fear… that was my doing. 

I was too young, too unformed, and too unschooled to challenge the productions of my mind in my youth.  But when I found my Beloved Teacher, his tireless and relentless communication, that all of my suffering was entirely self-induced, was absolute.  He did not ever focus on the “perpetrator”, there was no warm embrace for what I had suffered, only a rigorous examination of the ways and means by which I had colluded with my abusers to create my own victimhood. 

“No one can harm you but yourself”, was his constant refrain. 

I was so disassociated when I first met him, that I often felt like he was speaking a different language.  I could understand nothing he said, I could not grasp the simplest of concepts, I could not gain the slightest foothold on the idea that the harm I was so desperately suffering from was on the inside, and not from the tragedies of my past.  I sat, and watched his mouth moving, completely incapable of understanding him for years and years.  I sat there, unmoving, because my heart knew, could feel, could discern and intuitively understand, that here was a man who had crossed the great divide.  A Being entirely free of fear, a being of such transparency that he was almost invisible.  He did not exude the deeply narcissistic desire for greatness; he did not embody the grasping for external power that characterizes so many  “leaders”.  His was a humility, a simplicity, a character of such pristine spaciousness that his mere presence humbled me.  And so I sat, waited, hoped, and feared, that I might never be capable of truly accepting his great gift, of opening to his deepest guidance, of following the path he had so miraculously illuminated.  He passed into the ether, the unknowable realms, a mere twelve weeks ago and in his passing came the final piece of the puzzle of self reliance, sourced from a deep well of self trust.

So…I promised you an examination, a prescription of sorts, for the state of mind that was so stable in my Teacher that it was as palpable and perceivable as his blindingly white, and meticulously groomed beard.

It will surprise you, it might even disappoint you…

Stand still.  Don’t move.  Stop your search.

Let the fear have you, but don’t let it inform you.  Let it rake itself through your system, causing your bowels to clench and your throat to ache.  Let it tighten your lungs and feed on your nerves, let it cause your joints to lock up and your insides to hum, with the vibration of its coming…and most importantly with its leaving.  And I promise you, I promise you with my hand held above the certificate that heralds my arrival, this day, 58 years hence…that it will miraculously pass into nothingness if it is truly met, honestly embraced, authentically invited into the heart.  In this, you will discover, much to your never-ending delight…that “No one can harm you but yourself”.  And so much more importantly, you will come fully, completely, compellingly, into the self-reliance that was the cornerstone of my Beloved Teachers message.

You can be trusted, or perhaps more accurately, the heart of you can be trusted, can bear it, can illuminate it, can seize the moment, proclaim the hour, be witness to the resurrection, and will be able to transcend your fears and awaken in a fearless place, where all are welcome, and all can be met.

My experience of fearlessness is not stable, as it was for my teacher.  My most recent loss of a job I gave my very best to, has, (after the shock abated), served to increase my access to fearlessness, by forcing me to face the myriad of fears that arise when income is not available.  Having a flow of money in ones’ life helps to allay the overwhelming nature of our fragile lives.  It serves as a bulwark, a rampart against the threatening seas of instability that threaten us at every turn.  And not having it, demands that we either run deeper into denial and thus travel more damningly toward slavery, or turn and face the inherent nature of the chaos of living and in the doing, win for ourselves the potential to live fearlessly in the face of all that life can serve up.

I am often amused by the all the hawkers of spiritual commercialism, who seek to sell the idea of bliss 24/7, or the promise of greatness, or the healing of our lives, none of which would even have a place on your shelf, much less a space in your heart, if you knew in your depths that your life can be trusted…just exactly as it is.  As my Beloved Teacher was always counseling, “There is nothing to fix.”

He said that “whole seeing” was necessary to truly come to realize the truth of that.  And even without access to his great gifts, I know in my heart that it is true.  There are no circumstances that need  trance inducing solutions… nothing in your life needs to change, for you to step cleanly into the heart of your life.  You only need to discover the willingness to stop the search for more, better, different.  The driving force of your particular brand of fear that causes you to believe the lie, that some future experience will bring the release your heart cries out for.

So pucker up and blow, gently, on the false light from the candles of deception that drives your seeking.  Stop, stand still, become quiet, and your freedom will become a self-evident fact of the very foundation of your nature.  You are already home.  You are already safe.  You are already free.

Freedom and fearlessness are your birthright.  My prayer is that today on the day of my birth, that I have passed along to you some small measure of the deep goodness of the gift that my Teacher gave to me.  I invite you to hear, through my simple words, his profound availability, his great gift, his deep wisdom, his uncompromising precision, and his deep compassion. 

But mostly I invite you to stop the search…

Adayre R. Miller

(Ronni)

9/14/12

photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Enjuliee.  To see more fo this artists’ work, please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/enjulie/3091389556/

A Carrot Juice Toast, To You…My Friend

Shortly after I was laid off for the second time, I went to the cardiologist for a follow up visit and to get the results of tests taken a few weeks previous, and he provided some bad news, in a singularly flat and uninvolved way.

My poor choices and decisions with respect to food had finally caught up with more than just my appearance, and the words “pre-diabetic”, “high cholesterol”, and oh, the reason your heart is behaving so badly, ”uber high blood pressure”… floated around the room like clouds of diesel exhaust.

He, the cardiologist, is a peculiarly poor communicator.  I can tell he is smart as a whip, but his emotional intelligence hovers somewhere beneath the tile floor our chairs were standing on.  He delivers his communication with as much flair as road kill, and I received it with the same lack of emoting.  I think he was somewhat surprised by my lack of reaction, but he soldiered on anyway, and made his escape in way less than ten minutes.

And I walked out of his door completely changed.

I did not know that I had changed; I did not make a conscious decision to change.  There was no effort involved.  I merely was changed.  Gone immediately were the cookies and candy that I had attempted to use to handle the incredibly high stress, of working for someone that I could not please.  Gone were the fast food meals, and the using food to put myself to sleep…just like that…gone.

I did not even know it was gone.  That fact argues more than any other for the notion that we, “the conditioned mind’s self”, are not the ones in the drivers seat…no matter how many times we tell ourselves that we are.

Right after the heart doctor visit, I found the cook.  A doctor, a cook, a candlestick maker, it sounds like the start of a children’s book.

I am in the middle of my third week with her, and I can’t tell you what a difference it has made to my well-being.  I buy one item per day from her, (no job – must use food stamps), and then I supplement it with something I have made.  In this way I am assured that at least one thing on my plate will indeed move all the way past edible to the land of palatable, a large distance traveled, I can assure you. 

(I point to the case of the rainbow chard I cooked, and subsequently had to eat for three full days, as an example of how poorly I cook).  I rinsed, I thought, fairly well, and then sautéed with golden raisins, onions, and garlic, sounds fine until you realize that just rinsing rainbow chard is not sufficiently clean enough to make it edible.  (My new cook tells me it must be soaked, at least three times before cooking – who knew?)  So even though it tasted pretty OK, every time I had to chew through a gritty, sandy, mouthful it made me want to gag. 

And no, I did not throw it away, I am my mother’s daughter, I am without income, I may well run completely out of money this time…and so, I ate every mouthful…it wasn’t easy…

And then there was the great butternut squash debacle.

I roasted it, (a new way of cooking – entirely, heretofore, unknown to me – a bit like Columbus discovering the new world), and what should have been a creamy, soft, and slightly sweet vegetable turned out to be entirely without flavor.  So off to Google it, and discovered that nutmeg is one of butternut squash’s favorite flavorings…so a little nutmeg, powered chicken stock – eeeh gods, a vegan with chicken stock powder??!!?? – say it isn’t so…try to remember I am a vegan by choice of my body not my belief system, and a dash of the cream I use for my coffee…yes I know… but please refer back to: vegan by request of body, not by “believing”…and, voila, a really tasty vegetable.  (Does this confession bar me from describing myself as a vegan, or should I make a distinction like this one: Vegan – the tried and true believers, vegan – just somebody whose body decided it would prefer this eating style.)

Oddly this is not what I sat down to report, but I don’t control the writing any more than I do anything else, however, I do think it is relevant to the rest of my story.

Once before, my body suddenly decided on being vegan, it was about 3.5 years ago when my Teacher was still able to teach, and I suddenly dropped all animal products from my diet.  Then, like now, I could not possibly tell you why.  I just did.  After about six months or so, (it was not nearly as successful as this time, because the Cook was not in my life and lord knows the best I can do is hot and filling, or, alternately, cool and filling, but flavor is a nuance that seems forever beyond my grasp.)  But there I was, animal free, and sitting in the same chair I almost always sat in, and George said… can’t remember what…but it so invaded my system, that it opened up a power grid in my head, that sourced an energy down my spine, that caused my legs to momentarily stop working.

This had happened to me on two other occasions, while with George, and it feels like a locomotive is charging down my spinal column, and each time it left me with a large headache and a powerful experience of being hewn out, hollow as an old Indian hand made canoe.

I tell you this, to tell you that something very similar is happening now.

I have no way of knowing if the lack of animal products is really such a strong part of my current experience, (note: that the first two energy blasts with George, I was a card carrying carnivore), or if it is merely coincidental.  But I can tell you that this turn of events is just as significant.

I am being hollowed out.

Hollow.  Empty.  Unfilled.  Vacant.  Unoccupied.  Crater like. Concaved.  Excavated.  Scooped out.  Dug out.  Tunneled out.  Burrowed out.  Carved out.  Inside out.

It is grace filled. 

Kind.  Elegant.  Polished.  Poised.  A blessing.  An adornment.  A deep and inspiring dignity…

When I was first laid off, the shock of it sent me into spasms of problem solving, and a deep desire to “fix” my life.  The very behaviors and attitudes that I have been resolutely moving away from for almost thirty years, (my thirty-year anniversary is this month…isn’t that amazing?!? – I met my Beloved Teacher thirty years ago, this month.)

Newly unemployed, I instantly began looking for a way out of this new confinement, this new reduction, this new loss.  I returned to the very foundation of my conditioned minds origins, and began to beat upon myself with the ages old question…”what is wrong with me?!?!”

I bemoaned my current state of circumstances to my coach, a man I love and respect, who did as all the good and wise do – he shocked and confronted me. 

Our relationship, strong though it is, does not provide the kind of shocks that were so artfully provided by my Beloved Teacher…but, it seems, a mini shock was all I needed to set my feet, once more, on solid ground.

I have dropped into a new dimension of un-belief.  I wish the heavens would open up, so that you could hear a choir of angels singing.

Socrates was quoted as having said, “I am considered among the wisest of men.”  “I am so,” he said, “because I am among the very few, who know…that they do not know.”

He is one of my favorite unbelievers.  The Don’t Know Gang: my Beloved Teacher, my new teacher, Buddha, Jesus, Socrates, Emerson, Lao Tse, Byron Katie, Gangaji, Rosa, Tom.  I am sure there are a host of others, but these are the ones whose path-less-traveled I have followed, and taken great comfort in.

But, one and all, they have stepped over the invisible and entirely illusory threshold that separates the blessed from the cursed.

That threshold is within my line of sight.

I think the hollowing out is the current test that must be endured, before a greater accessibility is granted.  I have learned to live inside a silent mind.  I have encouraged the truth as much as I am currently capable of.  I have come to be able to bless and honor, for the most part, those that deal the harshest with me.  I have opened myself and become as transparent as possible.  I have stopped looking for good outside myself, and I have become capable of some small measure of humility.  But most importantly, I have stopped believing in believing.

I have my recent employer/friend to thank for my greatest gains in learning to live without belief.

Her capacity to weave a dreamscape is almost unparalleled.  She is so very gifted with gaining your commitment, in exchange for a seat at the table.  It is truly magical the way in which she can keep a person believing, and she has done so with hundreds of folk.  I am glad for her, it is her wish and aspiration to provide just such a service to others.  She works at it, is good at it, and has talent to spare.

For me, her gift was detrimental.

It kept me from giving up the last vestiges of hope, the last kernel of belief, the last wisps of the notion of a better tomorrow, of goals achieved, and wins collected, and races accomplished.

And that kept me shackled to the unwillingness to step fully and cleanly into the unknown.

So, I said all that, to say this:  fear came to rest upon me this week.  It sat in my belly like a coiled snake; it slithered up my arms, slowly consuming my nervous system like an unwelcome gluttonous guest at a banquet.  It rang in my ears, and constricted my breathing, it caused my scalp to tighten up and begin itching.  It harmed me, and sought an even greater access to my life’s vital forces and the nutrients that fuel my brain, my synapses, my capacity for self-reflection.  

… I am trying to make you understand…it was rough, and old, and familiar, and oddly desirable.

And instead of running from it, by disappearing into my conditioned mind – and in the deepest way I have ever been capable of – I let it in.

I accepted it, honored it, owned it, cherished it, nurtured it, took care of it as though it were a young thing, and let it have me.

What I did not do…was let it explain itself to me.

I don’t know where the strength came from to disavow the fear to begin speaking to me, perhaps it is in the vegetables - literally, or the thirty years I have worked and labored to awaken from the mind made self, who knows…and it does not matter. 

What does matter, is that feeling the physical sensations of fear, without allowing it to set up camp and create a belief in your mind, is the open doorway through which paradise enters the realm of the human.

I floated around on a cloud for days afterwards.

I have painted on the doorway above my front door, this phrase:

Fear only… the failure to experience your true nature.

I have, for perhaps the first time in my life, “experienced my true nature”.  The fearlessness that has occasionally visited me in the past seems a great deal more accessible to me now.  Now that I know, not believe, but have really experienced that imagined fear without the articulated story that we attach to it, is at its absolute worst, merely and only, an uncomfortable sensation.  A bit like an itch you can’t reach, or a rash you would rather not have.

I wanted to share this with you, in the hope that it encourages you to step forward and pull your imagined fears upon your lap.  Let them visit you, honor them, and they, in turn, will free you as nothing else can.

…And raise a glass of carrot juice to toast a new days dawning...

Adayre R. Miller

(Ronni)

9/7/2012

Photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Adventuress Heart, to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adventuressheart/5037557147/