Still unwell, I have yet another gap of free time, and thus the opportunity to share with you my experience of allowing the personal self to die more fully.
My first Teacher, and my current teacher, both describe the revolutionary return to Emptiness as a “subtraction” rather than an addition. And now, I begin to experience that in more and more subtle forms.
The interpretations of the old religions, (despite the fact that Jesus said quite clearly and fairly frequently that you had to “die” to the self in order to be reborn), and the new religions are all characterized by how they intend to add something to who you are. In the old vernacular it is salvation. In the new religions they will help you add greatness, or manifestation, or prosperity, or showing up BIG. But without exception they are then and now, attempting to add something.
“Adding” is the struggle to be something other than what you are, other than where you are, other than what you currently have. That very struggle is the egoic mind; the self made mind, the conditioned one.
I once saw a quite lovely movie. Its title was “Benny and Joon” and it was a film about the experience of falling in love, between a young artistic and sensitive man, and a high functioning but schizophrenic, young woman. It was a touching and masterful movie, and in it Johnny Depp who played Benny was truly remarkable. He styled his portrayal with overtones of Charlie Chaplain and Buster Keaton. In one scene while in a park, he did a mime performance that was a tour de force. I think it was an homage to Chaplain as I have a vague memory of him doing something very similar.
He was attempting to retrieve his bowler hat from the ground, with each attempt the hat would mysteriously leap beyond his reach coming to land feet in front of his outstretched arm, and causing him both consternation and deep surprise. The delicate emotions that played across Johnny’s face, the eager reaching, stretching, and authentic attempts to secure his jumping bean of a hat were so well played, so real, so powerful that it took me several moments to realize that the hat was being popped forward by Johnny’s almost invisible footwork. His artistry kept me so focused on the beauty of his facial expressions, the earnestness of his struggle to regain his fleeing hat, the balletic quality of his movements…that I literally did not realize he was kicking the hat each time he approached it. (I had thought at first it was a movie trick of some sort.)
This is just the sort of trick the conditioned mind plays upon us; searching, seeking, adding, gaining, manifesting, goal-setting, greatness…all are names for the struggle to be somewhere other, someone other, some time other.
The struggle is the reach for something that the conditioned mind assures us will finally provide happiness, so we reach with all our hearts, while subtly and deftly kicking the goal from beneath our hands even as we approach it.
Conversely, allowing the death of both sides of that struggle, feels very much like actually dying. At least when it first begins, but as time, and help, and commitment, carry us forward… the dying becomes awakening, and the illusions drop away one after another until only harmony remains.
Yesterday, to ill to shop or cook I went to a diner for food. I sat in my booth and quietly watched the other diners. I felt a kinship and camaraderie that is difficult to express. The old ones, the loud ones, the lonely ones were all somehow me, while pretending not to be. And… I, them.
Giving up the personal self, puts the rightful self upon the center of the stage and into the light. I am nothing more, or less, than Awareness, “wrapped and packed” as a friend of mine is fond of saying.
Allowing Awareness to take complete charge of my life, my will, my journey, and my outcomes, means I am no longer lonely, no longer afraid, no longer engaged in the intrigues of the personal self.
At my job, I am working diligently and with great commitment to create an enviroment in which artists can be showcased and sold…a place that they can be discovered and honored, and yet, they are bit like herding cats. A few are contentious, entitled, demanding, and utterly unconcerned with how much effort, time and money is going into their support, these few pummel me with demanding emails. One in particular I hear from frequently. He never provides a salutation, as though my name has no consequence. His first ever email simply stated that he had been told many times that his work “should be in our gallery” and that I could find his image here and here, it had the tone of you are missing out not having my work and you need to fix that.
Then came increasingly demanding emails wondering when and where he could drop off the work, and so on. Yesterday’s was along that vein, and this time as resistance showed its face to me and rang its bell in my body, I remembered that I am only, and merely, and wonderfully, and gladly, and gratefully…just Awareness…and that Awareness has no argument with his style of communication, or his entitled behavior, or his need to be catered to.
Resistance evaporated, internal harmony was restored and my day brightened with both deeper understanding and deeper freedom.
I feel like shouting from the mountaintops. Like jumping up and down with joy, like you did when you were a kid.
My Beloved Teacher put the idea of Beingness into my troubled mind, several decades ago. But there was no home for it then. Gratefully, my heart could palpable feel his presence and despite the years of reaching for my bowler hat, while also kicking it from my grasp…I have finally come home to the felt realization that the “who” of me is pure Awareness.
I can no longer be emotionally reached by the drama of the game of “lets pretend”. Please do not misunderstand, I am not planting a victory flag here…I know my patterns much to well, to believe that I am done, or finished, or fully baked…but I do believe that I can never go back to the depth of sleep that once had me so completely, that I wanted to die.
It is all so very, shockingly simple.
The ground of Being is Awareness. Awareness makes no distinctions of any kind. If Awareness looks upon something “bad”, it is still functioning as the Greater Intelligence designed it to function – and thus – All is Well. If Awareness looks upon something “good”, it is not deceived into wanting more, or starting to activate the desire mechanism that has trapped every living human since the dawn of time, it merely sees as it was meant to…looking, always looking…and opening to greater and greater depths.
Consider the deep value of such a thing. Imagine knowing, fully and completely, that you will never have to suffer again…ever.
I do not mean, a life without pain. I have been in pain a good part of this week. I mean the futile suffering of the struggle to know, the struggle to become, the struggle to succeed, the struggle of wish fulfillment, the struggle to win. The craziness of reaching for your hat, while you are simultaneously kicking it away...there is an end to that struggle, and the suffering that goes with it.
I also don’t mean to imply that I believe grief or sadness or sorrow or any of the other emotions we so wish to avoid will disappear, rather I mean that suffering which is a mind created phenomena is no longer ruling my life. For instance, I grieved my mother’s death, but because we were so healed and complete and the total unconditional acceptance that surrounded the end of our relationship, which is now starting to bloom in my daily life, allowed my grief to be simple, clean, clear and over very quickly.
Does that mean that I will not ever fall back to sleep, and once more suffer the desire to have things other than they are? Probably not. I am slow, and sometimes thick. But even I, addicted to victim energy as I once was, even I, cannot deny the mountain of evidence that is building. Everywhere I look, the end of the self heralds the beginning of joy, ease, support, and well being.
It is the only thing that is real to me now…the looking…the seeing… free, finally, of the distortions of the conditioned mind.
Richard Rohr, a current day Catholic Christian Mystic, describes the no self in the language of the church when he says, “The saint is precisely one who has no “I” to protect or project. His or her “I” is in conscious union with the “I AM” of God, and that is more than enough.” He further states that you may know when the Impersonal Self begins to awaken in you…when, “Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have – right now, that this shift to true acceptance is the “litmus test” of whether you are dwelling in the Impersonal Self’s grace.
Bless you for journeying with me.
Adayre R. Miller
3/27/12
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