I had one of those wonderfully unique experiences today, a confluence of events that was poetic by its very nature…a glimpse behind the curtain, to observe the great Oz pulling on levers and pushing buttons.
I was to have a follow-up cardiologist appointment today. I can’t quite say for what purpose, as it’s been confirmed that my veins are clear and that my heart palpation is born of an anomalous arrhythmia, that in no way seems to concern my physician.
Three times yesterday I sat down to cancel the appointment, feeling as I did, that it would be a waste of my time and the states reserves, to simply follow up for the sake of convention. I went so far as to find myself on telephonic hold and while waiting, decided that I might as well go, as it couldn’t hurt to be spared some more time to explore the Doctor’s desire to have me on medication and my resistance to that same medication.
Then this morning, the phone rang and I inadvertently hung it up while trying to answer it…a fumble of ill placed fingers, but I thought nothing of it, as the vast majority of calls to my home number are telemarketers. A few moments later the call came again, it was my Teacher’s caretaker offering me a very last minute opportunity to “sit” with him, at precisely the same moment that I would otherwise be sitting with the almost entirely emotionally and psychically absent physician…the disappointment I subsequently felt, at not having canceled that appointment yesterday, was a near physical feeling in the room with me. I am surprised my dogs did not begin baying, as they are wont to do, when the mere suggestion of change occurs in our enviroment.
I told his caretaker no, intent on honoring my commitment and keeping my integrity in tact, when I decided that it couldn’t hurt to call and see if I might renegotiate my obligation and cancel my now vastly under valued appointment to see a Doctor, when I could instead visit with Wisdom incarnated.
To my glad surprise the Doctor’s office was more than amenable, of course they said, no problem they said…
I leapt into the shower, fed my dogs in a flurry of activity, and found myself on the road speeding, something I almost never do. I was surprised at my eagerness, so clearly felt and so clearly evident in my having to repeatedly back off of eighty miles per hour, in the seemingly once a year rain storms we have here in the Valley.
The eagerness was somehow surprising to me, first because it has been a very long time since I was confused enough to need my Teacher, and second because I know that he is almost incapable of continuous coherent thought. But the mere prospect of the joy I felt last time I saw him, when I was able once more to support his return to the role of Teacher was compelling and powerful.
I imagine that should Shakespeare, or Michelangelo, or Da Vinci, suddenly in their aged infirmity be capable of picking up quill and parchment, or paint brush and palette knife, that those around them would rush to be able to aid the Master in expressing, once more, the great skill and wondrous depth of their gifts…so too, I wanted nothing more than to support and aid my Teacher, in teaching once more.
On the way there, I fabricated and discarded, half a dozen questions that I thought might stir him. Sophisticated or simple, I searched my mind for something that would serve to illuminate his thoughts and order his magnificent abilities. Having no personal needs, I was a tiny bit anxious that he would see through my ruse and know that I was merely searching for some way to reach thru his disease and help him to know himself, in the role of Teacher, once again.
When I arrived I was fully prepared to be turned away by his caregiver as I had told her I would not be coming, but she was gracious enough to allow me to participate even without formal plans to do so.
With him settled and his needs seen to, I proposed my fabricated question…one without the heart that is so necessary to the acquisition of learning and growing. I know, that were he in his right mind he would have known that I was presenting myself under false circumstances, that I was “intellectualizing” rather than truly questioning. And in truth, perhaps he did know…
He is thinner now; comprised of translucent skin, and bones that show thru his thick winter clothing like sticks poking up from winter’s dead leaves. His mind is even more occasional, as sentences were dropped in mid word and metaphors left dangling without their point, like jokes without a punch line.
Long silent stretches would be punctuated by his clear declaration and understanding, that he had not answered my question and his disappointment was plainly written upon his fine and skeletal features. At one point his eyes began to close and the exhaustion of working to see around his disease process, was clearly evident upon his countenance and slowly drooping head.
Whereupon, sitting silently and watching fatigue overtake him, I wondered at the wisdom and kindness of seeking his counsel when his energies are so limited, even as his will continues to spur him to serve.
I was just about to suggest we quit, when suddenly he asked me a question apropos of nothing and completely out of context. He said…”What would make you happy?”
I have struggled with this question all of my life, as the traditional societal meaning of happiness, almost always has a very strong external component to it, e.g. “it would make me happy to win the lottery, become famous, buy a new car, have a boyfriend”, etc. and so on, ad infinitum. It has been a very long time, since I defined happiness in so transitory and unsatisfying a manner as the above choices indicate. Knowing whom my Teacher is - knowing the man he became, and the divinity that so palpably expresses itself in him, I knew that he was not asking so superficial a question as what most people would be… when defining the notion of “happiness”.
If I had possessed the courage to come to see him personally, even as little as 8 years ago, the authentic answer to that question would have carried some deeply embarrassing combination of the desire to be special, the wish to be great, and the need to be approved of…but of course, I would not have had the capacity then to tell myself that truth, much less him.
So, you can imagine my surprise, when an answer bubbled up without the slightest hesitation.
“Useful”, I said…”It would make me happy to be useful”…
And right behind that answer, my heart opened up and tears began to stream from my eyes and into his brain, past his disease and into the fount of wisdom that he cultivated and served, for more than fifty years.
Right before my eyes, like a genie rubbed from a lamp, he became a masterful Teacher once more.
It was truly like watching divinity take flight.
His gaze focused and became clear. His eyes penetrated to my depths, as they once did when I was so afraid of being exposed for the shamefully needy soul I once was, under his righteous (right use of) clear seeing. His head came up, and his brain cleared a pathway for his Mind, to once more commence teaching and healing.
“Pray”, he said, “not so ‘they’ may have what they think they want…but so they might become clear. See them as capable of right thinking and thereby the elevation of the species, thru developing understanding and the capacity for poise and equanimity. Pick a group of people, or even just one and see them as finding clarity and sanity…not that there circumstances change, but rather, that their mind and perceptions do. Pray in this manner and you will not only be useful, but used in turn.”
This amazing return of his faculties, coupled with a so clearly felt yearning from my heart caused me to sniffle and tear my way thru his entire diagnosis and prescription.
I, long ago, stopped praying for what I thought people wanted or deemed good for themselves. I have traveled too far and seen too much, to believe for even a moment, that any “normal” human being knows what is best for them, or even what they really want.
For instance… I feel from deep inside myself that pleasure is pains cunning face turned backwards, that “fun” is just another way to avoid taking spiritual risks that would result in the reward of growth and maturation, that the need to be special and “great” is the need of a child who lacks the will to grow up and become a self sustaining adult, and that facing our suffering is the only way we can awaken the slumbering giant within us.
“Experiment with prayer in this fashion…and then come back and tell me about it, won’t you”?
His first great lesson to me, some twenty-five years ago was the lesson of integrity. To do, what I say I will do became the measurement against which all that has followed came to pass. It is rare indeed for me to make even simple promises, and not to keep them…so deeply ingrained were his first lessons in me. And I will not fail him in this one either…
I will pray, and for the first time, my prayers may have some usefulness in them.
I will pray for the confusion of wanting and longing to empty itself from the lives that I see around me, I will pray for clarity to restore sanity as it as gratefully done for me, I will pray for acceptance to sharpen and hone the will of those who seek out others to carry the burden of the “self” that they have unconsciously created, and I will pray that my efforts bear fruit on the tree of usefulness before my time on this planet has elapsed.
And like the metaphor, that my Teacher struggled so to describe, of a single grain of corn… carefully planted and dutifully watered, will in time, bear millions of its likeness and thereby ensure continuation…so too, I will plant a seed of “right seeing” and pray that the confusion of waking sleep lift from all those who labor under the deadness of illusion and desire.
In humility and mindfulness, I present this essay as the first prayer in many more to come…
Adayre R. Miller
12/29/10
photo courtesy of Ty Siscoe and Flickr photo sharing www.flickr.com/photos/fubuki/2601806/
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