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/
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