Caught...

I made the mistake of attempting to share my current experience with a couple of different people.  The first heard it incorrectly, took it personally, (even though I was not speaking about her), and rejected me in an old and familiar way.  The second wanted to fix me…always an unpleasant experience, no matter how well-intentioned the “fixer” is.

And so I thought perhaps I might write it down and come to some new understanding on my own.

I am Caught. 
  
Like fish trapped in a barrel I am easy pickin’s, you wouldn’t even need a hook to reel me in.

And I am caught in a place I haven’t ever been to before.

The two most important teachers in my life, have, through their peerless personal examples, convinced me of the Ageless Truth that steering one’s life by the light of a belief system, (any belief system), keeps you trapped in the world of conceptual thinking and thereby prevents your soul from breaking free of its prison.

I have come more fully into agreement with that notion than ever before, I was capable of, and instead of being greeted by bliss and joy…I feel dull and sad.  And in so doing, I reach, what is very probably, a completely erroneous conclusion and decide that I am doing it wrong.

At the same time as this is occurring, I have finally released an ages old “dream” that has had me in its grip for more than three decades… so, to dull and sad…add a heaping helping, of loss and grief.

The tool that was used by Universal Intelligence, to tear that “dream” from beneath my cold dead fingers, was a “friend” who ended our thirty years old relationship with an email.  It was precisely the right tool, as it caused such a breach of faith, due to the shear shock of the experience, that it turned my long held belief in a better life “out there somewhere” to dust.  Not just dust, but motes of dust so completely was it obliterated.

I know in my heart of hearts that one day I will be grateful for such a brutal awakening…that somehow the shock of it will be transmuted into sanity.  I know that, not because of some mystical feeling that I am conjuring up and soothing myself with the feel of, but rather, from a boots on the ground perspective that the general drift of my life has been toward greater and greater sanity.

In these rather dark times I am currently experiencing, that is the one thing that holds my hand as I walk this lonely path.  All the days of my life have held a general drift toward sanity, and I have learned to trust that the remaining days of my life will also drift, however erratically, toward greater and greater sanity.

Here is an email that my Beloved Teacher sent me on the 21^st day of September 2004.  I include it in total because it so reflects my current experience and his immense generosity…

“Dear Ronni

This is my first activity of the day, even before a drink of water.  I feel the life in you as it weaves its way through the pathway of obstacles.  What moves me most is the fact that you keep moving forward in spite of the blocks that loom before you (us).  I think you have found the way.  Your description of the path matches mine.  And I think you have learned that we travel alone when we pass through the valley.  Perhaps, when we no longer think of turning back, no longer waver in the lonely darkness, and nothing else matters except to go on, then we shall find beauty all around us.  I long for the day that you discover that you are really traveling the path for someone other than yourself.

George”

I have come to the place where I no “longer think of turning back”, even though I am still wavering in the lonely darkness…I have come to know, without doubt, that it is a journey that must be undertaken entirely alone.  What I have not discovered is the “finding of beauty all around”, nor the courage and strength required to make all of myself, the gift that my Teacher so assuredly was.

He would often teach a lesson that I have come to think of as “giver” v. “taker’. 

He would ask us at various points and in varied circumstances if we thought of ourselves as “givers or takers”.  It would always surprise me how simple we thought that question was.  Invariably most of us would translate that question Vis a Vis money, did we give to charities, the poor and impoverished, the helpless and weak, the downtrodden and lost…

Money, as a measuring stick, is of course, the thinnest of surface understandings, the grossest and least valuable way to interpret his question, and the most immature.  But, we his students, did not possess his great sensitivity to the unseen world and its many layers of great depth and reach.

For instance, every single time-without exception, you or anyone you know, attempts to convince you of something that they “believe” they are attempting to “take” something from you.  They take your attention, or your energy, or your money, or your gifts, or your influence, or your time….and they purport to give you something in return…healing, well being, hope, prayerful insight, or a host of other returns on your investment.  But what they really want is a selfish and entirely self-serving measure of your life’s energy stream.  Why?  Because they lack the courage to face life alone, naked, and undefended…the fully mature are those that no longer seek outside themselves, for some small scrap of hope that life will no longer be scary, brutal, or unjust.

The undeveloped want someone else, anyone else, to travel their path for them, they want someone else to make the path smooth, to unravel the knots, to find the doorway, to make good their escape.  The most deluded of all, are those who believe that they can indeed help another through life’s turbulent waters to the distant shore and the horizon of internal peace.

I do not mean to say, and would dishonor my Teachers memory, if you heard, that helping others is somehow a poor way to spend ones’ time.  It, most assuredly, is not.

However, it is a rare human indeed, who has crossed the great divide between being a “taker” and into being a living, breathing “giver”.

All the world’s religion, by whatever name they go by, are all constructed for the takers of this low plane of existence.  They are all carbon copies of one another…”heaven”, the place you will surely arrive at, may be named nirvana, bliss, joy, populated with virgins, or personal godheads, or a host of other images…if only you execute the steps correctly.  Genuflect, follow the rules, dance the dance, pray the right way, or think the right way, and eventually you will end up in your personal version of heaven.  This is the “takers” dream.  That somehow heaven will be the end result of all their efforts, and that, we, the takers of the world, will somehow be spared having to face life on life’s terms…naked, alone, defenseless.  Being spared this deep truth is the hope of a frightened child, the haven of the deeply immature, the cul-de-sac of those who have willfully chosen the sleep of “believing”, over the demands of awakening.

It cannot be so.

Only those willing to stand still, in the full gale force of their own fears, hurts, injustices, and injuries – and to do so alone, in the deep darkness – have the right to expect anything other than more of the same.

I suspect that beauty seen “all around us”, is a prize that is fully reserved, for only the truly brave, the truly willing, the truly capable.  

It makes sense doesn’t it?  Why would Universal Intelligence waste hidden-in-plain-sight-beauty, on those of us who are still hoping that some other day, some other place, some other time, will bring us the joy we say we are so hungry for?

The eyes with which to see Beauty’s grace, no longer see the “right” set of circumstances, or the “right” time, or the “right” place, or the “right” people.  No…those eyes take in everything that happens and see grace and beauty everywhere, and in every circumstance.

Since the day my Teacher exposed me to his lessons of “givers and takers”, I knew then, as I do now, that I am a “taker”.  What I did not know, is that being a taker is not a function of how little money, time, or energy, I give to the world of problems we imagine we live in, and that being a “giver” is not a function of how much I wish to help others heal.

No… I have come to see that plainly and simply, what makes me a taker is that I am still so immature that I spend my precious time on this planet, hoping for a better tomorrow.  I am a “taker”, because I lack the courage to stand still in the face of the deep unknowable, and not invent for myself a “heaven” somewhere off in the future, where I will be happy and content with my lot.

You can see how I am caught, can’t you?  

I have the courage to understand the hard truth, but lack the strength to live it…

Ronni Miller

12/21/12