Lost Too Soon...

 

 

I continue to think about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death.  I know in part, it is because I always tried to see every movie he was in.  His depth of talent, capable expression of that talent, and artistic sensitivity was all so compelling.  And yet, as one critic pointed out, he never once tried to make you like him.  That takes courage and real spirit, to not pander to an audience for a need they cannot fulfill.

I work with a woman who does that.  We photograph folk for churches and church directories.  As you attempt to get people to smile for you, (you would surely be shocked to find out just how hard that it is to accomplish), we, the photographers, must put on a type of show.  Engage them, encourage them, seduce a smile or some form of expression and find a moment that can then be frozen in time for the lens.  It is exhausting work.

Working with her makes it even more exhausting.  Her need to be liked is so overwhelming that just being near her is hard work.   She is loud, constant, seeking, and her attempts at humor and the necessary intimacy between photographer and subject, are a bit like nails on a chalkboard.  I have, on more than one occasion, had the person sitting in front of me tell me how glad they are they did not end up in front of her.  That is not a testament to me, as much as it is an expression that they escaped her neediness.

She, of course, has no awareness whatsoever of the emotional drive that creates such a desperate desire to please.

I suppose, Philip had no awareness of the emotional drives that caused him to purchase more than 70 small bags of heroin either.  The police reports indicate he was alone, and therefore we can assume it was not a night of “partying”, or the frenzy of fun that caused him to accidentally take his life.

To be so clear a vessel for so much talent, and to know so little about yourself, is a shock to me.

I do not know when I made the transition from pursuing outer goals to the deep inner journey that has become my home.  I know only, that I encountered others who had something that I knew I could not continue to live without.

At first that “something” was so far beyond my reach that I felt it was magical.  It confused and confounded me, I could not think about it, understand it, or come even close to achieving it.  But I could, and did hold on.  It took stamina, grit, commitment, constancy, courage, and will.  The deep mystery of it beckoned me, like nothing has before or since.  I gave myself to it; with ever greater and greater willingness…and over time the door began to open for me.

When that door did open two things struck me nearly blind.  The first was that the “something” my Teacher had in abundance was already within me, and had always been.  The second was the sheer simplicity of it.  I marveled that I could ever have been confused or confounded by something so startlingly simple, so beautifully elegant, so whisper soft.

I remain on the threshold of that door.  I have not gone into the realms that my teachers describe, nor do I know if ever I will.  But the view from this place is worthy of the lifetime of dedication that I have given it.

This hunger, to know by virtue of experience, these simple realms of pure being must have been what drove Philip to his untimely death.

I used to be filled to the brim with that hunger and nothing could satiate it.  Not food, money, sex, achievement, accomplishments, or any form of external experience, not winning, admiration, respect from others, recognitions or awards…nothing could make that ache go away.  I was sad, lonely, hurt, frightened beyond description, and yearning for the release, I imagined death would bring.

It is good to look back and remember from whence I have come, and just how far I have traveled.

As I view that long and winding trail, I see that the only thing that I brought to bear on the path, as it wound its way into the dark…was courage.

As fear rattled my teeth, cooled my bone marrow, made jelly of my knees, I kept moving into its embrace.

Now it is my only advice.

Stand still.  Do not run.  Do not hide.  Do not hope.

The tyranny of the constant search for self improvement, for the fulfillment of goals, for the hope of a better tomorrow, is the very thing that prevents you from falling into the depths of fear that are at the foundation of a life lived in sorrow and pain.

If you will only let go, and surrender…the fear itself will carry you home.

Rest In Peace, Philip.

Adayre R. Miller

2/5/14

I Must Go On, Because Going On is the Only Thing Left…

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I have been watching a video entitled “The Dark Ages: An Age of Light”, its central focus is the development of the arts through the period of time that is largely known as the “dark ages”.

This time frame is roughly the third century to the 11^th, and is the time during which Christianity truly takes root and displaces the many gods of paganism with the “One God” theory.

The most interesting aspect of the video so far, is the slow development of Christ’s visage.  In the earliest works of art he is depicted by symbol only, an X with a key symbol, shaped much like a capital P overlaid on top of it.  It is well into the fifth century before he is depicted, by artists of the time, with a face.  That face is the countenance of a cherubic boy, tender, young, even slightly female, and always jovial.  It not for another couple of hundred years, and they, the artists, have borrowed Isis from the Pagan’s lexicon to develop the face of Mary that he becomes the Christ in Agony, that we know today.

What I find so useful in this exploration of the slow development, of the arts expression of the divine, is the light it casts on “believing”.  The Christ we know today would be unrecognizable to the Christ from the earliest days of Christianity.

I have stepped cleanly free of the role of “believer”.  I no longer live in a world where the context of my mind’s theories is invisible.  I can see, and see clearly, the role of my mind’s imagination as it plays out in my experience of life.

As each new vista is breached, I can ask myself, with ever-greater clarity…”where does this idea come from?  Am I only believing, or more truthfully experiencing?

To believe is to be lost in a pretend role of the mass mind’s dedication to the facades of life.  It seems to me, as I gain greater and greater clarity, that there is an energy or stream of thought patterns that becomes attached to us, which engages us in its current forms of deceit.  I assume this is what Shakespeare and Emerson meant when they wrote of the need to “rise above the times to which we are born”.

Where I stall out is in the arena of full freedom and realization that my Teachers have both expressed.  The full surrender to “NOT knowing” that they so eloquently lived…to not know is to completely surrender to the fact that we can know nothing through the limited perspective of the individuated mind.

I return, so often, to that moment in class when my Beloved Teacher had no reaction at all to a feedback loop in the old sound system that caused three hundred people to have extreme reactions.  The surprise of it, the pain of the sound, the piercing quality of the decibel level…caused all of us to react in some very negative ways…save one person.

He had no reaction whatsoever.

None.

Nothing.

Nada.

Here then, is a person so relaxed, so in tune with the natural waves of inner stillness, so “surrendered” that even the base of his brain, his reptilian brain, had given itself over to the higher energies of Sacred Emptiness.

This is what I want for my life.

And I have no way of knowing if I even have the slightest hope of that type of realization.  I know, now, that the spiritual candy of finding myself alive, and inside a silent mind, is just that…candy.  Sweet, but of very little lasting value.

The discovery of inner silence, inner stillness, inner emptiness, is merely the first step…if even that much.  I have been there, I have drunk from that cup, and it largely cured me of the ills of my times, but it has not released me into the sweet abyss of sustainable peace.

I no longer yearn for the spoiled fruit of the imagination.  I am no longer in bondage to the dictates of my culture.  I no longer breathe the fetid air of imaginary fullfillments.  But…I am also not truly liberated.

I am very discriminating when it comes to teachers.  If I can discern even the smallest flavor of formula, of “how to's”, I run the other direction as fast as my feet can carry me.  Thus I have only found three, in a lifetime of looking, that I can say meet my criteria.  They must be capable of demonstrating to me a type of liberation and freedom so rare as to be almost unbelievable.  I patiently sift the wheat from the grass, and have found the value in these three that allows me to follow them.  Each in their own unique way, advise and quite strongly so, against seeking anything.  Stop they say, as though one voice.  Stop, and know that you are free.

I have stopped.  I am not yet free.

The hubris that has dogged all the days of my life, (as I was born with both a deeply vivid imagination, and a facile and agile intelligence), has kept me from becoming sufficiently humble enough, to deeply understand, that the gifts I came with, cannot be brought to bear upon my current circumstances.

There is no “solution” to the problem of being a lost soul.  There is only surrender.

I find myself praying quite a bit these days.  My prayers have no direction, I do not pray to a “god” that is beyond my capacity to understand.  I do not pray out of sentimentality, or superstition, or even need.

I pray, because I can do no more than pray.

Standing here, on the razor’s edge, I can no more return to the land of the “believers” than I could unlearn how to swallow.  Knowing, through experience, that my life is not a personal one…disallows the veil to be redrawn.  I cannot go back to the sleep of desire, to the land of wanting, and goals, and being driven by needs I do not understand.  Those days are over for me, they have blown away like so much ash, from a fire so cold, even memory can no longer bring the blaze to mind.

But…I also cannot seem to go forward, into the deep milk of total surrender.  The evidence, of which, my Teachers so deeply display.

At the very end of his life, my Most Beloved Teacher cried a good deal of the time.  He could no longer teach, his body was so blighted by disease.  But his mind was still opening, still stretching toward the sun, still giving itself to the Great Unknowable.  He was positioned, by his caretakers, near the back of the room and in his wheel chair and I always found a seat near him that would allow me to watch him.

He was so still, so pale, so translucent.  His soft and aging face would run like a river with his unfettered tears.  He would begin crying early, and he would cry throughout.  Fortunately, he did not cry as I do, with a good deal of the salty moisture finding its way out of my body by the pathway of my nostrils, thus making snot a significant feature of my tears.  His tears merely fell from his cheeks, upon his now hollowed out chest.

When asked about his tears, he would often say that they came from his experience of our Nobility.  That he could see and feel the goodness in us did not surprise me in the least.  But I have often felt, that those tears were the manifestations of his deep embrace of the eternal moment.  He lived so fully in the present moment that his connection to the True and the Real, could be felt by anyone with even a smidgeon of sense in them.  And there, at the end, he was rewarded for his many years of selfless service, with the tender heart of a newborn.

I miss him so much.

He once told me that he “felt movement in me”.  I assume he meant that the hardened shell of the “believer” was glacially slowly sloughing off of me, and might yet, make of me an “available” person.

I hope that is true…but I no longer yearn for it.

These next steps in my journey are entirely unknowable.  I must find my way in the darkness, toward the deep.  I must not rest, nor want, nor hope, nor weep.

I must go on, because going on is the only thing left…

Adayre R. Miller

2/2/14

The photo that accompanies this essay was shared by flickr photo sharing and  Pavla Hajek, to see more of this artists work follow this link: www.flickr.com/photos/31008322@N05/6187670086/in/photolis...