Ice Cream And Cake...

I don’t enjoy shopping and I do as little of it as possible.  So today when I found myself in a crowed isle, jam-packed with bargain hunters, I encountered a woman whose behavior and expression I judged to be rude.

First let me say that defining her behavior as rude, in the first place, meant that I had gone unconscious and dropped back into a limited personal self.  Her posture, facial expressions, and behavior were just enough to send me backwards into being a “me”. 

At first I did not notice that I had been re-engaged in the lost self that processes the world through personal opinion, and personal likes and dislikes…I merely went there, through habit and well worn grooves.

Then she upped the ante, so to speak, by “excusing” herself in a way, and with a tone of voice, that clearly held me in the wrong for being in her way.  (Please note, that I am deeply aware that “she” did nothing to me, whatsoever, but rather her patterns of behavior, interpreted by the habitual ways in which I once regularly defended myself, were the reason I went “unconscious”.  But it is hard to tell a story without the use of personal pronouns…so I use them, even though it is not at all accurate.)

I moved, but I did not acknowledge her having spoken to me.

As I left the isle and went about my business, a nagging feeling began to overtake me.  A deconstruction of our exchange left me with the clear realization that I had interacted with her from a personal self, who requires that life be tilted just the right way for that “self’s” world to be OK.

As I stood silent as the grave, two isles beyond where our exchange had taken place, I recognized yet another opportunity to “expose” myself.

This was one of my Beloved Teacher’s very best lessons.  He would often say to us that he would welcome us “exposing” him if we could, (although we were never able to), and in turn he asked us to give him permission to “shock us”.  It took me a long time to understand what he meant by “exposure and shock”.

Exposure is the means by which you are able to see the limiting and limited nature of the personal self.  All at once, like a global perspective from high atop a mountain peak, you can see the damage that believing you are a someone with needs, wants, desires, plans, a future and a past, can have on your life, the lives of those around you, and the planet as a whole.  “Shock” is the skillful means by which a “Grounded-in-Being” teacher, can utilize exposure, as a means to shock your system enough for the light to creep in around the edges.

As I stood there, having returned to the Impersonal self, I understood how impotent and useless had been my response to her “rudeness”.  As the equipoise of the Impersonal self returned to me, I was flooded with the awareness that I had just created a karmic load that I would have to balance if I were to continue abiding in this most wonderful experience of “no” self that has, of late, become so much more stable, than it was in the many months, since I first became aware of the Silent Mind as the source of my being.

A kind of “what-can-I-do” urgency took hold of me.  Standing there with my hand draped over the smooth coolness of the chrome clothes rack, my other hand curled around the top of my shopping cart, my vision began to pull deep within me.  How could I deal with this?  How might I correct the flow of ill will that is already rising up around me?  “What-can-I-do?”

My Teacher’s lessons of exposure and shock did not come back to me in a language format.  But as surely as I stood there rooted in the knowledge that I had misused the great gift of life, as I had “defended” a self that does not even exist…I viscerally knew that shock and exposure, were the ways and means, by which I could balance the opportunity for karmic equilibrium that was presenting itself.

I realized that I could apologize to her. 

The moment that I made this seemingly simple-minded realization, my body was flooded with the potential for embarrassment that was physically singing along my veins.  The vulnerability necessary to apologize to a stranger, to allow myself to be seen as “being in the wrong”, the ability to put my behavior to the test and dismiss hers as irrelevant to the situation, created a full measure of nervous system tremor.  And of course, that was my cue that I could risk “exposing” myself and “shock” my system into greater growth, flexibility, and a return to the engaging innocence, that is the main characteristic, of living in and through the Impersonal Self.

It took me a few moments to garner the push necessary to approach her.  Wait said my nerves, not while she is standing next to someone who may overhear, and thus I would have an audience for my “exposure”…wait…

So I waited and followed her for a few moments.  When at last she was alone, and I approached her and apologized for my rudeness and unkind behavior, “exposure and shock” played itself across her features as well.  Tsk, tsk, she uttered…”no need to apologize, no need to address it, I was fine, there was no problem”…all the things we say when we are caught flat footed and shocked, by a turn of events that are unanticipated and unique.

As she tried to sweep away my apology, primarily because it caused her to feel her own defended and contracted experience, I left her to it and finished my shopping excursion.

Later in the car, as I pulled from my parking spot, the purest river of joy flowed over and through my viscera.  It was simple, soft, subtle, and somehow self congratulatory.  “It” was somehow so deeply pleased for me, that I had leaned into life in a way that developed, deepened, and fueled the bloom, of the Impersonal life that is now enveloping me.

I further realized, as this joy sang its song over my nervous system, that this is what life is for.  There are no achievements, or goals, or external powers, which could come close to the value of this type of simple moment, simply shared.

“Exposure and Shock” like ice cream and cake, they go together, and they make life more valuable than I could have ever imagined when I was following the wide way of seeking, dreaming, and acquiring.

Adayre R. Miller

3/28/13

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

http://www.flickr.com/photos/utishpenguin/1305386317/

What Surprises Me Most…

What surprises me most about consistently living in, and through, the Impersonal Self, is the radical nature of the awareness of the common and everyday.

It seems, as I follow where my attention leads, that it is invested in the most seemingly absurd and unimportant details, of my day-to-day existence.  The difference in the way light shines on the white hairs on my head, or the still brown ones, as they lift themselves on the breeze.

The way my bedroom carpet feels under my feet, as opposed to the cold and hard surface of the living room floor.  Oddly, I particularly like the sound differences between the soft shushing of the carpet and the, by comparison, loud slapping of the concrete.

The color of coffee grounds as they swirl in the hot water that is brewing my single cup of the day.

The smell of jasmine from the bush that lives near my backdoor, and how subtly it creeps its way to my nostrils inviting me to drink in the full volume of its beauty.

The way my upper arms rest in the hollow of my shoulder sockets catches my attention a great deal.  I sit, quietly feeling their smooth and harmonious connection, and it bathes me in quiet gratitude.  My shoulder socket gathers my attention to itself a great deal.  I cannot say, nor even imagine, why my soul likes the feel of my shoulder joints so much…but I feel it often, and for great periods of time, and it never fails to soothe and stroke me with gentle and tender kindness.

I could go on and on, reporting the ways and means by which the inner silence allows me to know that I am fully alive, fully engaged, fully present…but how could that serve this conversation?  The list would be endless and endlessly repetitive, and yet, for the Impersonal self that has taken up full time residence inside my deepest being…the color of my coffee strikes me anew, each and every day.

When I believed in thinking as the modality by which life was led, understood, and experienced – I could never have lived such simple and uncomplicated joy – it plainly would not have been possible.

When the schemes of the thinking mind, with its insistent that my dreams were valid and my fears even more so, ran my life, there was no room, nor any patience for the tiny moments that truly make up a-life-well-lived.

I understand now in a way that I could not have imagined possible, that the actions I take, the results that come, and the outcomes that are garnered from the life I am leading, are fundamentally not my business.

It is the sway that my attention is allowed to hold over me that can bring me to my highest good, my deepest peace, and my most available usefulness.  I have, and so do you, a place to strengthen.  A place that only I can serve in, only I have the correct combinations of strengths, weaknesses, kindnesses, and capacities for this most unique of places. 

I cannot, nor can you, choose this authentic place. 

If we are plotting, planning, dreaming, scheming, or in any way attempting to control, then we are,  – so slowly that it cannot be perceived – building for ourselves a prison, that presents itself as a mirage of hope…but will eventually manifest as the very worst form of disappointed despair… and it will only take the ever turning wheel of time, for this truth to be bitterly felt.

If, on the other hand, we can live through the courage of the heart, trust the unfolding of all that is, lean into the ground of being, and surrender ourselves fully and completely, to the unique path of our attention… we will be led to the place that is ours to uphold, purify, cleanse, and heal.

There may be nothing there that the thinking mind will recognize.  It may present as so absurdly simple as to be laughable, and yet, the proof of the clarified attentions gaze, makes real the need that the Impersonal self has, to know, this or that, particular thing.

I imagine that the feel of my shoulders as they sit inside their sockets is somehow a need that the Universe has, else why would my attention be so directed?  That I write to you about it, that too, may fill a need that I cannot know, see, or intuit.  But yet, here we are, me describing it and you taking it in…

I shudder, now, at the grandiosity, neediness, and self-violence, of the conditioned minds demands about how my life should look, how it should feel, and how it should unfold.  If I had lived the whole of my life, following these drives born of my neediness and lost-ness, I would never have found the grace that makes sweet jasmine, coffee colors, shiny white hairs, and the quiet sureness of my shoulder sockets, as valuable as the recognition and applause, I once thought would allay my fears and take away my loneliness.

Now, here, this moment, there is no room for fear or loneliness.  No space for it to take up residence, as the fullness of my ever moving attention and its impersonal delight, is too vital for something as non-existent as fear or loneliness to become the focus of my days.

I have become so simple minded, that I am no longer recognizable as the busy brain who wanted my dreams fulfilled, with a fierceness that could, now, only be defined as cruelly brutal.  All the desires that once ran my every breath have faded, or are in the process, of fading away.  Now, my only interest is in following this serene path of the unfolding of my attention, and the way it drinks in everything and everyone.

This morning, coming home from walking my dogs, they were pulled to a light post sitting on the corner of the small bit of grass, by the first house in my subdivision.  The post, of course, was thickly covered in the liquid leavings of the many dogs, which are walked past the opening to my community.  The aroma too delicious to be ignored drew them up and onto my neighbor’s grass, to circle around the lamps base and receive its olfactory bloom, from the choicest of locations.

As they performed their search for the best and brightest of the smells, my neighbor came home.  His slow drive around us, and his glowering face, as he pulled into his drive-way upset by the fact that my dogs were walking on his lawn was plainly visible to me…but oddly, I could not feel it.

Always before, when I have been the subject of someone’s irritation, angst, upset, or demands that I do it differently, I have had a keen reaction.  Some combination of indignation, answering upset, embarrassment, or even anger…would greet my accuser.  And I would experience a sometimes piercing need, to respond in some form…but today, there was only calm awareness.

I could see, and quite plainly, that he was upset with me, my dogs, and their sniffing…but I could not feel it in any form.  I saw it with the same attention to detail that I notice the color of my brewing coffee, but I could not react to it.  I hold this to be one of the highest things that has ever happened to me…this blooming and stabilization of the Impersonal self…

Adayre R. Miller

3/26/13

photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and CappiT, to see more of this aritist’s work, please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34637679@N04/4177654100/

An Open Letter Of Apology…

If you are guilty because of ignorance…is it still guilt? 

If you do not know that you are lost in the miasma of a conditioned mind, a mind seduced by its capacity to speak language, and to further shape that language, into concepts that are tortured and torturing, are you then free of the price that must be paid for those that are guilty?

It seems that Universal law is similar to human law, in that ignorance of the law is not a mitigating factor.

I am such a one that was guilty, without full knowledge of my guilt or the price that it was exacting on my life.  When I lived the life of a victim, my only hope was to find another to help me carry the load of suffering, that once bent my knees to the floor and had me begging God for mercy, on a sometimes, nightly basis.  I once used and consumed everyone within my reach, to help me manage the load that I did not know I was self creating.  And now that I am awake to that self creation, now that I am not only capable of stopping it, but growing into the depths of its antidote, and my salvation, that growth has now become my life’s only goal…and… I feel the need to apologize to everyone and everything that has ever existed, on this blue and green globe.

As I sit at this computer I am nearly struck dumb by the beauty of the lively little birds that whistle outside my window.  They are high up in the tall tree in my neighbors’ back yard, thus I cannot see them, but I now spend some portion of every day sitting silently inside myself and listening to their songs.  They are so very unique, subtle, and beautiful.  There is the one who sounds as though he is arguing with everyone and everything, he spits out his sound – shrill and discordantly – and I imagine him laying claim to some bit of fluff, or some small territory on the branch that he has staked out as his own, and bossily won’t share.

There is one who trills so beautifully that he surely must be wooing a lover.  There is the one who sounds like he his pumping a car horn, waiting impatiently for someone to hurry up and get out the door.  There is the soft one, the soothing one, the tinkling one, and the bright one, all having gone entirely unnoticed by me for years and years.  It now seems a crime to me…my lack of involvement in the natural world around me, as I settled for the poverty of the anxiety warped and sorrow filled world, which my thinking mind created to fill the void.

My Teacher told me what the problem was many years ago. 

I went to see him, personally, only twice in my life.  There was no need for a long and drawn out story telling process, wherein I shared the victimization of my childhood, and he held my hand and assuaged my fears.  That kind of relationship was not available with my Teacher.  Primarily because Silence had arisen in his heart, matured in his life, and deepened his capacity for “whole seeing” and thus Absolute Truth, rather than the relative truth of “who did what to whom”, was the only process he dealt in.

At the end of that first hour… after a long, winding, and very emotional explanation of my current distress, my Beloved Teacher said these four words to me: 

“You are very needy”.

I remember quite clearly the physical sensation those words brought on.  I felt as though he had reached inside my chest, and touched my still beating heart…causing it to tremble and hesitate.  I was so shocked I could not breathe, and so astounded that I could say nothing more.  After a few moments of silence, I got up, slowly, and backed out of the door.  I cannot remember if I said goodbye to him, or spoke to him at all.  I sat, outside in my car, for many pain filled minutes crying and stunned into inaction.  I knew that driving would be dangerous, and thus I sat…stunned and shocked, waiting for my vision to clear and my heart rhythms to regain some semblance of sustainability.

It is not that I had not heard that before.  No, indeed, several people had told me that exact same phrase on many different occasions.  And if they did not have the courage to call it, as accurately as did my teacher, then they said it through action or behaviors.

The difference between them and him was two fold.  First he did it out of deep and abiding Agape love.  Not the sentimental behaviors that pass for love, the Eros driven soothing and petting that many people mistake for kindness, when it really is manipulation driven attempts to make you do what they want or need.

Agape, or unconditional love, does the thing that will set you free.

Eros, or instinct-for-self-preservation-love, puts you into bondage for all time and eternity.

The second and most important difference was, that I was not then nor had I even been, armored against my teacher.  The times I had heard that phrase from others, I was, for sure, hurt by it…but I did not allow it in.  I built a story about how unkind they were, how untrustworthy and I cut them out of my life. 

I attempted to do that with my teacher, I spent three weeks in various stages of anger, hurt, deep sorrow and martyred suffering, attempting to turn him into a bad person, in my mind and my heart.

It simply wasn’t possible…

I had trusted him with my life from the very day I met him.  A condition that was antithetical to my very existence, as the root of all the suffering that has ever entered my life, did so, because I trusted nothing and no one for the first 28 years of my life.

On the day I met him, trust bloomed; pure, real, potent, and tangible, and for the very first time I knew that healing was possible.

I met him when I was 28, it took until I was nearly 50, to be capable of sitting with him and hearing those four words, without closing myself off to them and to him.

I tell you this so that I might describe the full circle end of that moment in his office, when he diagnosed, in four simple words, the depth and breadth of the conditioned and fixated mind I had mistaken for my identity, for the first five decades of my life.

The reason he dedicated his life to the service of teaching all those that arrived on his doorstep, free of charge, and for more than 30 years, was so that we might become capable of being “self-reliant”.  I understand now, that what he meant by that phrase, was that we develop the capacity to enter fully and rely only, upon the Stillness of Being and the Silence of Mind, that is the authentic Oneself of all life.

From that Ground of Silent Being, I am now capable of seeing that like the AA’ers, it is possible that I may need to apologize to everyone I have ever known, for the ways and means by which I attempted to consume them, rather than to face the unknown by myself, naked and true. 

The truth of his diagnosis is only just now come to full fruition, and it is bringing with it a living experience of his definition of forgiveness.

He described forgiveness as: “To forgive someone, you must sacrifice your own suffering”.

The years of hardness of heart, the resentment of mind, the blame and fault finding that I lavished upon those I was waiting on for their attention, time, and companionship, is the suffering that I am now able and willing to sacrifice.

I can feel that there will never be an end to the developing Silence that now underscores my existence.  There will never come a time when I will be done exploring it, learning from it, leaning into it, or being healed by it…and it has indeed, crafted me into a “self-reliant” individual.

With nothing to fear, trust in every corner of my life, and an open hearted yielding to the circumstances I find myself in, I am finally capable of wanting for others, only and always, what they want for themselves.

More than that, I am finally capable of interacting with the blue and green world I find myself in, with my full and unaltered attention.

To sit with the world, and the people who pass through my experience, without wanting or needing anything from them, or it, is a revelation in relaxation, joy, and calm Beingness.

To see my life, its circumstances and situations, through a lens that is no longer darkened by opinions, neediness, desires, or internal conversation, is to be set free in a way that is unnamable and indescribable.

Aldous Huxley defined genius as “supreme usefulness”, I have never known anyone more “useful” than my Beloved Teacher.  I share with you again, my favorite quote that sourced from his deep internal stillness and his entirely open heart…”We travel alone when we pass through the valley.  Perhaps, when we no longer think of turning back, no longer waiver in the lonely darkness, and nothing else matters except to go on, then we shall find beauty all around us…”

So I sacrifice whatever suffering had remained, from the day that my Teacher showed me my self-created sorrow and allowed me to open the door to my personal prison, allowing me the decision to walk out of it, and I ask you humbly and with gratitude, to forgive the ways and means by which I may have served you poorly.

I do so…because Beauty has found me, opened me, and is now sustaining me…

(I feel certain that some of you may find this essay stimulates a need, in you, to assure me that I am OK, and have done you no such harm.  I ask that you to resist that temptation, and to further understand that this essay was written with a poet’s heart.  It is both true and lyrical in nature.  Both real and somewhat effusive, in that it attempts to examine the nature and the very real losses that are sustained when one lives in and through the conditioned mind, we are all deeply wounded by the conditioned mind – the planet most especially – and the conditioning, whether “positive” or “negative” is the real culprit.  You are under no obligation to respond to this essay, as once again, it is a prose writer’s attempt at poetry, stored in a heart that is only just now beginning to be set free.  I hope this finds you well.)

Adayre R. Miller

3/25/12

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

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38046782@N02/5940608894/

Freedom From The Desire For Freedom…

 

I had once imagined that these pages would one day turn into a book that I would then send into the world and it would return to me a stream of income and companionship, that would end the loneliness and financial struggle, that has characterized much of my adult life.

That was largely wishful thinking…

Then they became a type of confessional, and now, they are a way of describing the ongoing swings of the pendulum, that rock me between the thinking mind’s hold on my life, and the liberating experience of freedom from the desire for freedom.

Freedom from the desire for freedom is – I have come to see – the only real freedom that exists.  

It cannot be acquired through the thoughts that travel the electric impulse highways, of our conditioned minds, the thoughts that if we are asleep enough, we imagine them to be our "self”.

As the Silence in me grows and matures, the distance between thoughts stretches to longer and longer periods, and when thought returns it cannot do so, at least for long, without me noticing its reappearance.

The most interesting thing about the reappearance of thinking is a kind of slyness that really gets my attention.  Now that I am, to-the-bone-sure, that my authentic self is not the conditioned mind and its many streams of thought, I have a kind of distance or elevation, on the thoughts that pour into my mind when they do reappear.  This distance allows me to see things, about the stream of thinking that are quite revelatory and very arresting.  The most important by far is the slyness, born of ignorance, that I have already mentioned.

It is as though the thinking mind has a kind of survival at all cost quality that attempts to reacquire me, in ways that are so below the radar, that unconsciousness overtakes me before I even notice, that I am gone from the present moment.

The moment I notice that I am gone from the here and now, and have fallen once again down the rabbit hole, the stream of thought will change its direction or content.  In other words, if mundane and “mindless” thoughts will not keep me anchored in the past or the future, then the conditioning of my “thinking” mind will up the ante and begin pouring thoughts of a charged or emotional nature through my system.

They take hold of the ancient limbic system at the base of my brain…and, we are off to the races…

Once some cocktail mix of an adrenalized and blended thought/emotion stream is afoot, returning to silence requires focus and commitment.  I cannot begin to tell you how seductive the choices that the conditioned mind can make.  From absurdly unimportant nonsense, to a volley of life threatening story making, in the span of a single heartbeat. 

A good long while ago, sitting with my teacher in a Monday night workshop, a middle age man asked George if he had come to the Impersonal self all at once, in a blinding flash, a moment of pure illumination, or had it been somehow different for him?

There are stories going back as old as time, about the moment of illumination.  My personal favorite is Saul who was so transformed on the road to Damascus that he converted from the zealous and avenging prosecutor of the early Christians, into a follower of Jesus.  So complete was his conversion that he was re-christened Paul.  It is said, “The accounts of Paul's conversion experience are described as miraculous, supernatural, or otherwise revelatory in nature.”

My Teacher’s response to the question of the timing of his illumination was a simple one…”No,” …he said…”I had to grow into it.”

There were many things, too numerous to count, that were of great value in being his student, but this may have been the best of them all.

He never put forth the notion that some supernatural event was the explanation for his eternal stillness, for his overwhelming internal Silence, for his palpable dignity, nobility, and grace.  It was something he had “grown into”…

I like that best about him.  He grew one small measure at a time, into his ability to see the veil of illusion that is the story-making and conditioned mind.  I am sure his strides were longer by far than the ones I am capable of, but like me, he took one small step at a time – toward the depth understanding that what we say to ourselves, what we believe about life, how we use the gift of the capacity for thinking to trap ourselves in a lifetime of suffering, is a self created prison.

It seems a kind of jacked up system.  The very thinking that makes the “civilized” world possible must then be entirely released, if we are to save our world and ourselves.

I have heard a great many different spiritual teachers, George included, who describe it in this manner:  “the natural world, is below the thinking mind, while the awakened human being has risen above thinking”.

This is not a condition that the thinking mind can truly understand.  I have spent more of my time on this planet, “thinking” about these ideas than any other single activity.  The suffering of my early life was so desperate, so ugly, so painful and so demanding, that the desire for freedom was my singular and driving influence.  I have given everything to this desire, like an avowed lover I have given my all.  

Freedom from the horrible panic attacks that once governed my day to day existence, freedom from the fear that I could not hide from, freedom from the loneliness that kept me sleepless and pacing the floor night after night, freedom from the desire to kill myself to end the terror.

The desire to be free, however, could only take me so far.  It guided me to first one spiritual source, and then another.  It led me, finally, when I was mature enough, back to my Beloved Teacher, and demanded that I be faithful to his teaching, to the degree that I could not entertain other teachers or other forms of teaching.  It required that I remain chastened and pure in my allegiances, and in the ways and means by which I used my otherworldly capacity for directing my attention.  If my life’s habits have given me even one gift, it is the gift for directing my attention.

Now that I am capable of understanding that the “self”, cannot and does not awaken…but rather…we awaken from the self, I now discover within, the willingness to become free from the desire for freedom.

Once Silence begins slowly growing, or like Saul you are blinded by its sudden and overwhelming appearance, the kernel of willingness necessary to lean into the ability to give up the desire for freedom, begins to really take hold.  It is a very subtle thing, so quiet you have to listen with your ear to the ground, so delicate it is more the whiff of a fragrance rather than an outright smell, so restrained it can’t be touched without it dissolving like the gossamer wings of a moth, so fine that its presence soothes the fevered brow and heals the broken heart.

Giving up the desire for freedom means giving up the personal will, not an idea that any mind-generated “self” could even come to terms with…much less pursue.

Unless you have discovered the Impersonal Self, or are in the process of discovering it, then your life is guided by the personal will.  The personal will can best be defined by the, I-want-it-I-don’t-want-it, pendulum of personal desires.

Here is the tricky part, what we want or don’t want is entirely driven by unconscious patterns, born of the conditioned mind and its deep desires for imagined freedom.  Fixations that masquerade as deeply held dreams, or deep longings, for a different life than the one we believe we “should be” leading.

We blindly follow these impulses as though they are real, or have some form of intrinsic meaning.  We want to be great, or to have whatever good we imagine is out there, in some other place and in some other time, than the place and time we currently find ourselves in.  Often the drive is to find ourselves free of some imagined constraint, the bad marriage, the boring job, the unwanted weight, or the uncaring relationships…whether we are running toward some imagined goal, or running from some believed in constriction…the result is the same, we find ourselves in a form of hell that cannot be escaped from.

The name of that hell, is what I am calling, the “desire for freedom”.

And that is a dog that just won’t hunt…

The development of the desire for freedom is the very bedrock of the conditioned mind.  It is upon this desire and the attraction of personal preferences, that the “self” is born, and grows into the monster that now threatens the very survival of our species.

Conversely, the oh-so-delicate and very ethereal willingness to free oneself from the desire for freedom, is the always-open doorway out of the self-constructed prison of the thinking mind.

It is as though the heart of us, the soft and yielding true nature of the awakened being that we may return to, does not have a horse in the race to “save” us.

It seems an odd system to me… the dominant mind, the one that can prattle about nothing all the live long day, or so much worse, cause us to live the hell of a panic disordered life, has a grip of iron and the strength of legions.  While the eternally still, utterly relaxed, joyfully attentive, true nature… is fully content to merely watch what unfolds, ever yielding to the Presence of Now.

What a lark!!??!!  How amazing…

Adayre R. Miller

3/17/13

photo courtesy of flikr photo sharing and tim phillips photos, to see more of this artist’s work, please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyrephotographyaustralia/7140266451/

Who Could Possibly Want More Than This…?

When Arthur, King of the Realm, sent his knights out to find the holy grail he bade them to enter the forest, not where the path was well worn and well used, but rather where the forest itself was darkest, deepest, densest, and least hospitable.  He instructed them in this manner, because nothing of any real or lasting value, can be found where we are merely comfortable, safe, secure, and at ease. 

The Toa Te Ching, offers the same wisdom in this way:

Free from desire, you realize the mystery. 

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations

arise from the same source. 

This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness. 

The gateway to all understanding.

In this day of the spiritual marketplace, bulging as it does, with promises of wealth, health, eternal growth, happiness and “greatness” there are, sadly, so very few voices speaking this Ageless Wisdom Truth. 

The truth that the best of you is not in your “light”, but rather in the darkest part of your soul’s shame.

My shame was and remains, that I am not loveable.   

(It is highly likely that your shame is of a similar nature, no matter how it might dress itself up, or what costume it might wear.)

Over the course of a long lifetime of courageous commitment, I have grown increasingly capable of sitting with myself, as I touch the periphery of this deep shame.

In years gone by, I needed and used others, not out of care or concern or kindness, but rather based on how well, how often, and how much, they were willing to keep me from having to touch this deeply horrifying place inside myself.  Nowadays this is called “holding the space” for another.  It is a lauded and valued skill…being capable of holding the space for another’s fear, or at least we imagine it to be of value…

What if this imagination is directly opposite the truth?  What if the highest and best one human being could do for another, is to afford them no shelter from the storm of the conditioned mind?

This is what my Teacher did for me.

Not only did he offer no “help” from the fear I lived in, but he did all that he could to expose me to it, in greater depth, with greater weight, and more compelling insistence.

And now, thanks in large part to his service… I am capable of sitting still with my shame.

It no longer takes the form and shape that it once did.  There is no longer any drama, emotional hysterics, or colorful external expressions…now it is a whisper, a soft seduction that calls me back to a belief in the future, and the desire to be seen as important, valuable, worthy.

Just as Silence becomes a presence in my life that I can count upon, I find hiding beneath my interest in its appearance, an ugly motivation.

I still need, and want to be “special”.  I cannot say if I will ever be free of this desire…I can say, with absolute certainty, that whatever measure of suffering lies before me, it will spring from this timeworn place in me.

I recognized within myself, just today, the desire to make use of the great gift of Silence, that has opened in me, as a means by which I can finally procure the long sought pleasure of being worthy and valuable.

Please…before you “tsk-tsk” at me, and before you express the desire that I should not be “so hard” on myself.  Sit quietly for a moment and see if it is not your primary motivation as well, and thus it is hard to hear it from me. 

One of the conditioned minds favorite games is the game of comparison.  For you to be “great”, to win, to achieve, to be better than, someone lower on the scale, must be the measuring stick by which you assert this claim.  Or conversely for you to be the victim, the sufferer, the wounded one, and in that way to be worthy of anothers time, attention, and “space holding”, this too, requires the game of comparison.  To compare and compete is to be lost inside a child’s mind and a child’s will, to keep you blind and broken and tethered to the search for your “good”… as the greatest good of all… goes unseen and under experienced.

The greater good is available only to those that come fully and cleanly into the felt sense of the higher truth which deeply understands that, “good and bad” arise together and thus must be wholly and holy embraced.

The Tao:

When people see some things as beautiful,

then others things become ugly. 

When people see some things as good,

other things become bad.

To seek specialness, to follow those who offer it, is to abandon oneself in the futile search for our “light filled greatness.” It is to shackle ourselves forever, to the nightmare of Samsara, while Nirvana waits unseen and unfelt all around us.

As I bear witness to this seductive whisper, in myself, of the hope for a better tomorrow… at least now I well and truly know… that it comes not from the source of me, but rather from the still broken font of the internal shame of feeling unwanted.  The prostrated and hopeless child, who still cannot feel the love of the One.

My Teacher’s body is no longer available…but the memory of his deep humility, his total absence of neediness, his palpable capacity for non-resistance, and his deep presence…guides me still.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I can feel inside myself, the alchemical turning of the iron ore of neediness, into the gold of self-reliance.

Also from the Tao:

When you realize where you come from,

you naturally become tolerant,

disinterested, amused,

kindhearted as a grandmother,

dignified as a king. 

Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,

you can deal with whatever life brings you,

and when death comes, you are ready.

This is an accurate portrait of the One, absent any need for specialness, for winning, for needing, for hoping and for wishing…

Who could possible want more than this…?

Adayre R. Miller

3/12/13

photo courtesy of flick photo sharing and Sara Spildener, to see more of this artist’s work, please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/saraspildener/4639944155/