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/
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