May you come to know that suffering has a cure…

There is a parable that the Buddha gave to his students more than two thousand years ago that resonates with me, in such a profound way that I feel the need to pass it on to you.

He was describing the need for, and will to, movement… psychological, emotional, spiritual and perhaps even actual. There are a good many scientists and philosophers who describe “movement” as the basis of Life itself… without vibration, say the scientists, energy is withdrawn and death occurs. Without “movement” of understanding, say the philosophers, spirit withdraws… and takes with it the soul and the heart.

The trick is to increase the activity of inner movement without expectation. To have no goal in mind, while also increasing one’s vibration, is the highest form of living possible for a human being.

Higher vibration when it moves thru our thinking creates clarity and understanding, when it moves thru our heart we enjoy peace and tranquility, when it moves thru our spirit we discover the rarefied air of true freedom. Not freedom from responsibility, (a deeply childish wish), but the freedom to discipline ourselves more completely and thereby to increase our value and worthiness, not just to ourselves, but to the whole of the Cosmos.

None of us; not you, not me, not the rich, famous, or great, among us are going anywhere…the reason is simple, there is nowhere to “go”, and there is nothing to “get” either. All of our living, every last drop of it, exists in the mind as vibration…as the Buddha’s “movement”.

To turn our attention to the inner life rather than continue the fixation on the outer manifestations or forms of life, is the first great movement of Being that we are required to make, if we are to be of any use what-so-ever. To pursue the outer, (form) to the exclusion of the primary-or most important-or most vital-or most real… Inner (formlessness)…is to build your “house upon sand” as the Bible says, or tragically, to end up “gaining the whole world while losing your own soul”.

So I hope I have made a case for movement as the primary activity of Spirit….and now to the Buddha’s allegory.

He described for his students the four types of horses, the Excellent Horse will move before the Master has finished grasping the whip…and already the horse has taken up the greater movement his Master desires from him.

The Good Horse moves into the canter or the trot the precise moment he feels the lightest touch of the whip upon his back, and his Master’s request for greater commitment.

The Bad Horse will not bend to his Master’s will until he feels pain in the whips command.

And here at the very bottom of the selection… we find The Worst Horse… he will not take direction and guidance from his Master, until he feels the pain in the “very marrow of his bone.”

The Buddha was trying to help his students to understand why the first noble truth is that Life is Suffering. All human beings, conditioned as we are, by the mind that separates itself from the vast interconnectedness of the Universe; by building a small, leaky, and unreliable dinghy of a personality, with which to navigate the Mighty and the Unknowable, requires “pain to the marrow of our bone” to incite us to movement, and the activity of Spirit... the increase in vibration... which will eliminate the pain we suffer so greatly from.

Our life condensed and contracted around what we don’t want, and continually striving for what we do want, is the source of all suffering. It is that contraction and constriction of the movement of mind, that causes the necessity of “pain in the marrow of our bone”, before we will seek the sheltering and healing activity of Spirit.

Paradoxically the first movement must always be toward what we don’t want. My Teacher said many times, in many different ways, “unlimited personal power is to be found in learning to like what we don’t like”.

I have come to see the deep wisdom in his lesson.

All the days of my life, until mercy made possible my escape, I wanted…no needed – and desperately so…the approval of others, because I was blessed/cursed with a strong intellect and an equally capable will, I fashioned a personality from the detritus and debris of my childhood, and went out into the world to “make people like me”. I got good enough at it to fill large rooms with admiring audiences, and with that capacity to excel at seeking approval, came a thirst to horrible to describe.

Soon the Universe in its mercy and kindness put me completely alone on a ladder, painting murals. And movement began in my heart and mind, as a tiny trickle to small to see…so small as to be almost invisible. Then the Universe brought me back to my Teacher and movement began in earnest, but still the thirst for approval and the desire for affirmation, created suffering and discord in my life and my Being.

Then the Universe placed me alone in my home, without work or distractions of any kind, requiring that I turn my efforts inward to work in my heart and mind, and movement became a flood…lifting, clarifying, deepening, and freeing me.

I began my journey as the “Worst Horse”…in truth; there should be a category under worst horse to describe the place I began. Maybe Horse About to Jump Off Cliff rather than move which would more accurately describe my level of unwillingness, in the beginning, to turn toward what I didn’t like/was afraid of…

But now in the bosom of Silence, I have moved up the ladder of Being, to the place where the Master needs only touch me with the whip to cause my attention to turn, and my will to bend. I do not possess the facile, tender, capable and compelling nature of my Teacher…a man whose Master need only think about reaching for the whip to cause him to move, this is an elegance that may not be possible in this lifetime for me, but to move beyond the necessity for pain is more than I could have hope for, or even imagined, in the depths out of which I have journeyed.

I have moved to the place where clarity and the right use of mind allows me to know that the Buddha’s promise is real…there is indeed a cure for suffering.

That cure can only be found in the Inner realms of existence, nothing you can win, achieve, acquire, own, nor even develop in the conceptual mind, can fund the freedom from suffering. Only the renunciation of desire and its many minions will make that freedom attainable….the wisest choice…begin with releasing the desire for your present moment to be anything other than what it is right now.

Too hot…good, too cold…good, too lonely…good, too unloved…good, too weak…good, too burdened…good, too poor…good, too fat...good, all of these and every other complaint you can muster, is merely the Master’s touch that YOU require to produce the movement toward the Invisible Light, that will release you from the Hell of the conditioned mind.

Here is the evidence and proof of a loving and compassionate Ground of Being, that the circumstances that you personally require, the ones that you find most distasteful, most disturbing, most painful, most unnerving, and even most terrifying are the very ones that hold the seeds of your personal freedom. The creativity and immense clarity that is required to orchestrate that very personal set of circumstances, is what compels me to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being.

C. G. Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imaging figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” The conditioned mind, the only hell there is, would have us believe that striving for the “good” or Jung’s “figures of light” is how we become Spiritually awakened, active and alive. But this is just one of the many ways in which the clever mind lies so effectively to us, and for us. We become “enlightened” by making the darkness conscious, or as my Teacher would say…”unlimited personal power (enlightenment), comes from learning to like, (making the darkness conscious), what we don’t like.”

If we do not bend our will to this Masterful Wisdom… this Ageless Wisdom Tradition… known the world over, and thru all of recorded time, then we face the consequences of our “sin” or missing the mark, and we pay the price as described again by Jung…”When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”

What counts in your life is not what happens to you externally but rather the upward movement of Being, expressed most clearly by the exhilarating and Life affirming journey of transformation that occurs, when one moves from being “Worst” Horse to becoming Most Wonderful and Wondrous, “Excellent” Horse.

Try to remember when you lose your way and start looking to the outer in your life for fulfillment, satisfaction, and purpose…that you are the “Horse” upon which the entire known and unknown Universe rides. Without you, you personally, the Universe would have no movement, (consciousness), and therefore no Life.

The only question…

Can you take the reins from your personality… your small self… your separate self…and instead, turn them over in complete trust and faith to the Mystery That Created All?

This is the only question worth your time. The only movement worth your energy. The only outcome your Heart will accept.

May God, the Buddha, the Christ, the Breath of Being lead you out of suffering and into obedience. May you come to know that suffering has a cure…

Adayre R. Miller

8/22/10

“Like Snowflakes Melting in the Sun”…

In the more than two and a half decades that I studied with my Spiritual Teacher, his presence affected me so profoundly in so many different ways, that I would not be capable of naming them much less describing them. But I attempt to none-the-less; his piercing intelligence, his complete commitment to us - his students - freedom, his total lack of interest in our approval or acceptance, his sweeping and awe inspiring generosity, the ringing bell of his authenticity…but most, foremost, and forever more… his humility.

It is the humility that affects me most deeply. His intelligence trained my capacity to understand, his precious presence kept me moving in the direction of ever deeper unfolding willingness, his authenticity was proven over and over for more than two decades, and his humility offered me a model to which I can only aspire.

Every time I would have even the smallest opportunity, I would attempt to extend my deep gratitude to him for providing me with such extraordinary nourishment and each time a cloud of displeasure would pass over his otherwise entirely peaceful countenance when I would attempt to praise him in my ham-fisted efforts to mumble out my gratefulness, while the tears filled my eyes and ran down my cheeks.

I understood his displeasure… as he gave many brilliant talks about the destructive forces of the “twins” has he called them, of Praise and Blame. The impact of taking our understanding of ourselves from another’s praising or blaming opinions, is to lose ourselves entirely, and travel a downward spiral of self-harm and self-denigration. So he chose as a matter of course, to accept neither our praise nor our blame. Something I am only now beginning to fully understand.

But here and now I feel the need to speak of his humility. He is most certainly humble in the way you and I are familiar with the word. He took no light for himself, needed no applause or recognition, had an absolute aversion to the concept of setting himself up as “great” and therefore separate from the All. He spoke often and quite convincingly of the deep and desperate hell that we will find ourselves in, when we conceive of ourselves as better than or lesser than any other. Giving up competition and comparisons were one of his favorite lessons, always driving home the necessity of “transcending” the need to define ourselves on a linear scale, that by its nature, puts one head higher than another’s and in the doing of so, sets us up for deep losses and agonies in the long run.

These are some of the surface ways in which I experienced his deep and abiding humility.

But now I have come to an entirely new addition to my favorite experience of him, and this ethereal quality of humility that wreathed his head like a garland of flowers. His humility was so complete it nearly had a fragrance, it certainly had a texture, and its depth was almost unfathomable.

This new definition includes the revelation that the depth of his humility came from the fact that he no longer lived thru any concepts of himself. He came to the current moment free of the conceptual mind, present in so complete a way as to be as available as a breath of air… and as nondescript as a dust mote.

I would often think of him out in the world, absent the startling blue carpet, of the room in which we all gathered to hear his lessons for all those years…and I would wonder if the folk just walking about in their day to day lives, had any experience of him. I would have given a great deal to watch him at the grocery store or in the dry cleaners or at the car wash. I have no doubt that he is as kind and caring to non-students as he is to us… it is not him I would want to watch, but them…to see his effect on them. In one brief story his caretaker, (he is ill now and in need of considerable attention), told us that she took him to the dentist, got him out of his wheel chair and into the dentist chair, saw to his comfort and then left the room. Upon the completion of his visit, she said, the Dentist would not let go of him. The Dentist took charge of getting him out of the dental chair and into the wheel chair, out of the office and into the car…all the while asking his caregiver…”who is his guy – what does he do?” (And we have got to assume it had NOTHING to do with what he said to the Dentist, I mean have you ever tried to talk around those fat little pillows they stuff into your mouth with such abandon?)

His presence was such a startling contradiction, at one and the same time he was the most powerful presence I have ever had the good fortune to encounter, and yet he was so nondescript it is difficult to adequately portray. I suppose the most striking physical feature was how very - very clean he looks to me, his hair what there is of it…and his beard are snow driven white, and quite sparkly, his skin has taken on the translucent quality of age and every tiny hair on his head and face is always perfectly in alignment with one another, as though they too had deep respect for the expression of Universal Intelligence which he has come so to embody, for me, and I suspect a large portion of the nearly 40,000 students who have found their way to him.

It is only now that I have become capable of setting aside the bondage of the “thinking mind”, that I can see the deeper aspects of his humility. To live, and express, and move about, in the world free of the conceptual mind… not only makes the world around you exquisitely beautiful, fresh, wondrous, and awe inspiring…but it removes the filters that stand between the Self and the Other.

When you can touch directly the awareness, or the Ground of Being, absent the speaking mind…all concepts of yourself, your personal history, your likes and dislikes, begin to melt away like snowflakes in the warming sun. Because he has years and years of the “direct experience” of life under his belt, this quality of true humility…or “living absent the conceptual self”, showed on him like a diamond. It practically sparkled thru his skin.

I sometimes shake my head in wonder at my good fortune to have encountered him, and more, to have avoided most of the spiritual promise makers in the marketplace, who make sweeping promises of more and better and wonderful, in favor of a simple man with a simple message of the work of Acceptance, and the Freedom of Being.

His birthday is today…and no doubt that is what has prompted this most personal of essay’s. Seventy-nine and in the slow decline of age, his essence is preparing to withdraw him from us, his loving and grateful students. It would not be an exaggeration to describe him as my spiritual father, although I hesitate to do so, as I doubt he would define me as a daughter. He often told us that he “served the deck, not the individual cards”; he meant by the use of the phrase, that his mandate was of service to Humanity and our evolution as a species and as Spiritual Beings. His task was no less than our salvation and his commitment was total. He was not my pastor, nor my guru, nor so simple a thing as a guide…I suppose in my constant desire for the poetry life has to offer, the Catholic notion of “Father” comes closest to describing his role in my life.

I am not so naïve as to believe that what the Buddhist’s call “shenpa”, or the experience of being hooked and dragged back into the drama of living out of the conceptual mind is over in my life. But I have had the Direct Experience of breathing in and out - entirely absent the thinking mind - and that deep experience will become the Teacher, in my life, that he once was. I can trust me now, to continue forging a path of clarity and wonder and beauty.

My Teacher/Father’s entire message could be summed up in the two phrases he used so very often, these 25 years passed. They were: “You must leave home, (the conceptual mind), you must find your own truth, (the thing only you can do), you must replace yourself, (guide and nurture the next generation who will carry the flame of understanding).

And the most profound:

“You must become your own Teacher, Teachings, and Student”.

Here on the day of his birth, I accept full responsibility for deepening my connection to the Silent Ground of Being, and for the legacy he has left behind in my heart, mind, and soul.

In Deepest Gratitude and with the Aspiration of Humility,

Adayre R. Miller

8/17/10

Just Enough...

Oryoki is a Japanese word that names both an item, a monk’s begging bowl, and an attitude or philosophy that of… “Just Enough”.

Just Enough is a concept foreign to Americans in almost every form. We supersize our food and subsequently our waistlines, our houses grow well beyond our needs, our schedules overwhelm us with busyness and activities beyond our ability to emotionally cope. We would not be satisfied with the simple bowl of the Japanese monk; even a tractor-trailer might cause us to still decry “NOT enough”, rather than the remarkable humility of Just Enough.

The concept of Oryoki is that the monk’s duty is to begin his day with an empty bowl, to set out into the world with only his faith and his small bowl…and to be grateful for what appears in his bowl or doesn’t, as the case may be, when the day is done. If for some reason the bowl is overfilled by some well meaning stranger, the commitment to Just Enough requires that the monk accept only what will gently fill his stomach and nothing more, there is no saving for tomorrow or the “rainy day” that might be headed his way. No hoarding, or controlling, or even evading the emptiness of the bowl.

Simple, humble, careful and care filled acceptance lies at the heart of Just Enough.

Just Enough cannot be accomplished by the mind that loses itself in an imaginary future running toward a goal or accomplishment where the illusory promise of satisfaction awaits, like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It is my belief that the oddly American disease of… WAY TOO MUCH… is born entirely of the lack of ease that prevents even the most basic recognition of satisfaction.

When the mind that devours us in it’s demands for more and ever more, is finally overcome, when the quiet can fill the pores of our skin like a soft spring rain shower. When we are so aware of the breath that it’s rhythms and movements are like a miracle of harmony and wonder. When the feel of the soft fur on the pink and downy underbelly of our companion animals tiny tummy, fills our hearts with gratitude and joy, we have come home to Just Enough.

My life has become a study in emptiness, I let go of more and more day after day, and yet each day my bowl threatens to be filled beyond measure with joy, ease, and a sweeping Gratitude that seems limitless to me. My Teacher says that Gratitude, one of the most valuable of the 24 virtues, is a “thought form of harmony that defies gravity and rises to the highest”.

I have often wondered if Gratitude is not some form of nourishment, that somewhere light-filled beings in some other vibration, are fed by our gratitude and its vibration of harmony…that their bowl of Just Enough is gently filled with our continuing awakening to simple and easy gratefulness.

I am grateful for the strangest things, the feel of my hips moving in their sockets as I walk across the room…my dogs limpid and liquid brown eyes following me, as they do, no matter where I move to or what I am doing. The sound of my air conditioner as it works to make my small world a comfort filled one. The loss of a job that has caused me to find a deeper version of myself and to finally meet the shared Oneself that lies at the Heart of the All.

This is of course my deepest most profound experience of gratitude. To know the Silence, to feel the Emptiness, to hold in my hand the wonder of Stillness, to discover that I exist beyond my thinking mind’s many voices. A discovery of such magnitude causes all else to pale by comparison.

Here in my small bowl is my offering to you, the wonder and miracle of Just Enough. Just Enough is the breath in your lungs, the warmth in your heart, the pulse in your veins, the strength in your sinew. The discovery that Just Enough is so extraordinarily simple, and more, that it is available for the taking to every human being on the planet is the Great Good News that all the world’s spiritual leaders have defined for millennia.

Nothing needs to be added to your life, not health, wealth, fame or fortune…indeed subtraction is the wisest course. From the right here and the right now of your life, you can find the doorway into the limitless Oneself. The No Thought mind has the love, the joy, the ease, the kindness, the acceptance and the wonder you have been searching for since the day you arrived.

Let go the demand for more. Give up the conceptual in favor of the simplified. Stop searching and start finding. Rid yourself of the competition and fever of “getting somewhere”. Relax and repose in the deep abiding arms of the Oneself.

Discover the beauty and abiding nature of Just Enough.

Adayre R. Miller

8/16/10

Clean Hands and a Pure Heart…

I am sure a good many of you have heard of the story of the “100^th Monkey”, a long used metaphor, for depicting the notion that our biology is somehow connected and that when a certain level of critical mass is achieved, evolutionary leaps are possible.

For those of you who may need a refresher, the story goes, that monkey’s of the same species but isolated from one another on a tiny island chain, were discovered by researchers to be engaged in some interesting behavior. Some small number on one of the islands began to wash his fruit in the stream prior to eating it and his companions began to do the same…when the critical mass level was reached or the metaphoric 100^th monkey joined in, suddenly all the monkeys on all the islands were washing their fruit in harmony with their unseen and unknown brethren. A leap into the possible from an unseen and unknowable source.

The reason this old story came to my mind is that I have noticed a relatively new behavior in myself. I have always been a regular hand washer, before meals, after gardening, and of course after the use of the “facilities”. But just recently I have noticed a measureable increase in the frequency of, and time spent, lathering my hands in the warm water of bathing them…and I wondered…is this new attention to detail mine? Or is it that I am merely one of the 100 or so, monkeys in the chain of humans, who are overly concerned with germs and cleansing every surface of every nook and every cranny.

In other words a shared, non-attached participation in the concerns that populate the focus of my brethren on our string of separate islands…floating in the vastness of space.

I really do think that is the case, germs have become a focus of the collective egoic mind, and so each of us feels the pull in some way or another, and thus commercials for every conceivable form of germ chasing pop up by the score, grocery stores provide germ wipes at every entrance, and we all think twice about taking peanuts from the open bowl on a bar top.

Here is just one small and arguably somewhat innocuous example of the shared nature of our deep connection. Beneath what our eyes can perceive we are all One Being, and what affects me impacts you.

In the new Stillness that is slowly growing in my heart and mind I come to realize that my “purpose” in life is not what I am doing, or achieving, or becoming, or able to sell, nor is it how I am perceived, received or recognized. My impact on Life, the human family and the return on investment that life has made in me is not to be found in some Great Calling in the outer world, running to and fro like a lost soul…searching out acceptance and approval, but rather the moments of increasing depth of commitment to acceptance of the current moment.

In other words can I wash my hands, and be awake to it, at the same time? Can I know the where, when, how and wherefores of my moment-by-moment experience? Can I stay right here, focused on the singularity of the current moment as it unveils itself to me, completely and fully invested in the expression of the self… as It washes hands, palms, fingers, and wrists…in the smooth glide of bubble oiled movement of hand to hand service.

That is my Calling and it is yours too…

The egoic mind would have you believe that monuments to your greatness/specialness/uniqueness need to be built in your honor, labored over, sold in the marketplace, and chiseled into the cornerstones of great buildings…and all that might in fact may become true about you, thru the generations and beyond, they will study the greatness of Einstein, Emerson, Lao Tzu and Buddha. But each of these men said plainly, often, clearly, and with commitment that there contribution arose from the capacity they had developed to stand in the stillness, to focus the whole of themselves on the singular moment of the current experience.

For the world to experience the phenomena of the 100^th monkey, the evolutionary leap into a higher order of existence, greatness is not required…simplicity is. Can you back away from the convolutions of the story telling mind of illusion, in favor of the groundedness of Being? Can you know yourself in suds and warm water? Can you open yourself to the deep peace hard-wired in your right brains hemisphere? Can you live, move and have your Being, in the calm center of the timeless Now?

If you can, then you are doing the heavy lifting the world is so desperate for. If you can’t, you are part of the problem…no matter how spiritual you may hold yourself to be. I know that sounds harsh, but we must awaken from the dreaming of becoming “light-bearers” that has so captivated so many good minds, sending them seeking after a new brand of illusion and misperception. Spiritual materialism is just as deadly and deadening as is the more regular brand of materialism.

I have a friend who is fond of quoting the words of the I Ching when he says to me, “prior to enlightenment I chopped wood and carried water…and after enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water”. Here is the truth of the thing, enlightenment does not move in the world of Form… it is the Ground of Being, the Formless - Nameless - Selfless - Suchness out of which we came, and to which we will return…and in the meantime… if you cannot find your God in the chopping of wood or the washing of hands, then it is you who are lost and in need of purification, not the world.

Our contribution lies not in the outer, but in the Deep Center. Einstein said his only desire was to “know the mind of God”; he traveled that pathway thru the austerity and singularity of numbers and their abiding mystery. Anything, anywhere, at any time…numbers, the chopping of wood, or the washing of hands…can carry you to the Deep Center.

When the Deep Center is finally accessed everything else the world has to offer loses its color and appeal, nothing has a greater value than the peace so freely given at the Deep Center of things. Even small moments, or tiny breaks in the perceptions of the egoic mind provide enough tinder to flame the fire of warmth and welcome, that burns so brightly at the Deep Center of things.

Fear evaporates in the Deep Center and home becomes a place of arrival…rather than a constant seeking.

From an author, whose name has escaped me, comes this description of the Deep Center…”a few times in my life, I’ve had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think. These times are so clear…the world seems so fresh, as though it all just came into existence.”

The Silence can drown out the noise, and Feeling can heal the obsession of thinking and free us all from the madness of the lost self.

My prayer for us all…May you make your small contribution of Silence, which is so necessary for the 100^th Monkey to appear. May you choose the quiet of contemplation over the drama of appearances, so that the birth of a new order may arise and fill the hearts and minds of all who are to come…this is both your duty and your freedom, your mandate and your gift, your obligation and your ease.

Clean hands and a pure heart, this is all that Life asks of us. May all of your doing be clean of the needs of the egoic mind, and may your heart return to the purity that so aches for you, the lost one, the wayward son, the homeless self….

And So It Is…

Adayre R. Miller

8/10/10

The Practical side of Spirituality…

Although I have tried to develop an “impersonal” voice for use in writing these essays today I must speak with you from the personal, as my experience is to fresh and to vital for the distance needed to adopt the voice of “we”.

Years ago I was an associate minister for a Unity church in California, which was founded by the Fillmore’s and was original called Unity Church of Practical Christianity. That name, the Practical Christianity part has always held deep appeal for me. I have family members who claim to have received visitations of all sorts and stripes, spoken in tongues, experienced ephemeral phenomena, have laid on hands and been to the mountaintop, and although I do not discount any of these out of the ordinary spiritual phenomena, for me… it is the Practical side of the equation that most deeply attracts me.

Spirituality needs to function for me to be interested, not just in the pew, or in the crowd…not just demonstrations, manifestations, and spiritual fireworks…but in the day to day grind of my life.

I suppose that is why I gravitated so strongly to my Spiritual Teacher, he too, is a nuts and bolts kind of guy. I don’t recall him having ever used the word “enlightenment”, yet he is the most enlightened person I have ever met, heard about, and even read of. His presence calms, persuades, pries open the locked and burdened heart and sets the Soul free. His entire message could be summed up in one small phrase, a phrase he has used many different times in the 25 years I have been his student, which is…

Self Mastery, is Mastery of One’s Thinking.

To be Masterful, is to be capable of the control of thoughts that flood our mind and capture it’s focus. In New Age circles, it is my opinion, that most folks would translate that Idea to mean that we take control of our thoughts and bend them to the “positive” pole for use in the bringing about of the “manifestation” of our goals and dreams. I have no disagreement with this translation of Mastery, provided that it recognizes that the use of the Mind for this purpose, buries the Soul as deeply into Form as does the negative pole. The negative and the positive are as truly wedded to each other as the two sides of a coin, or the two sides of a road, or the up and down of this versus that. You cannot have one without the other, it isn’t possible, thus the having of “Form”…even if it is “positive” is not enough for me and only sets a person up for the transformation of the positive into its other nature the “negative”, as surely as the rising and setting of the sun.

What is possible is to transcend the yin and yang of it all, by virtue of the Middle Road of the Buddha, or the “Mastery of One’s Thinking”.

Here is where the game gets Practical.

The attempt to “think positive” is still a prison; it merely has a different flavor. But to free oneself from thinking entirely, is to stop allowing the tail to wag the dog. Practicality at its finest.

For many months now, I have been experiencing tiny…but astoundingly clear moments of the absolute cessation of thought. I recently wrote about them as my “Seven Precious” moments. The experience of these moments of acute, intense, alert, aliveness – ABSENT thought of any kind, has been the greatest experience of my life. As impossible to describe as it would be to describe, the magnificence of a ripe peach to a person who has never eaten one. The bloom, the taste, the ripeness, the sweetness, the glory…the wonder…of the No Thought mind is very much like being let out of a hole in the ground, into a dewy morning of sunshine, that you didn’t even know you had been imprisoned by.

That experience replaces the desire for Form entirely. To know that it is possible to be free from the thinking mind brings into clear focus the old spiritual story of the beggar sitting on a box of wealth that he had never had the foresight to open. A treasure trove of Formless Wealth beyond measuring, a gift beyond the capacity to describe, a wonder that no amount of seeking could hold a candle to, right there under your own rump…all along.

This is a phrase from the great work of Emerson my favorite author, all of his essay’s and poems carry with them the resonance of the Formless No Thought mind, you can hear the vibration as it travels thru his person, out of his hand and onto the paper. He writes of the making of poetry in this manner… “For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down…”

“Where the air is music”, this is the dwelling place of the Formless No Thought Mind…musical air…. A restoration of the lost innocence of the age before reason, when merely breathing in and out suffused us with the Joy of Being.

Last night, just before bedtime, I received some news that would normally produce a mountain of anxiety and concern. A disturbance and a detonation of my well being…lying alone in the dark quiet of my bedroom…the thinking mind attempted its long standing hijacking of my self, my soul, my heart, and my will. And for the first time in my entire lifetime, the mind of the personal was utterly undone. Undone in the midst of emotional upheaval, undone in the face of fear and anxiety, undone in the desire to spin a story of impending doom and potential suffering. Undone.

A heretofore unknown and very-hard-to-believe ability, to transcend the thinking minds control, was bestowed upon me like the cool hand of a Beloved. Acute, alert, awake, aware, Formless No Thought Aliveness won out over the story streaming in from the personal mind. Triumph was had…Self Mastery has begun.

I can no see no other reason for living save this one.

Eckhart Tolle says that the Universe has two movements. “The movement of Form into manifestation and the return movement back to Formlessness.” The Journey of Undone. Thinking is “Forms” greatest disguise…No Thought Mind is Formlessness restrained to a singularity, to a body, to a Being.

There is no way in which to describe my gratitude. No way to compel you to understand the relief, the freedom, the sanctity, the Beauty…the Glory. To say that I would give up everything I have, including my life, to pay for this most amazing experience would not come close to conveying the priceless value of the welcome experience of Formless No Thought, in the midst of the well worn road of personal suffering that “thinking” has delivered, all of the days of my life.

The promise of Salvation that populated my childhood fundamental religion has been received, in the most unexpected and surprising manner I could never have dreamed up on my own. Once more from Emerson… “All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the Great Soul have its way through us; in other words to engage us to obey.” Obedience, in a word, is the foundation of Self Mastery… the thinking mind and its many personalities, behaviors, quirks and idiosyncrasies has finally been made obedient to the Formless No Thought Mind that bathes in the wonder of Being, for the exquisitely simple reward of noticing the breath moving thru the body. Nothing else can be added, nothing else can be gained, nowhere to go, nothing to get, nothing to have…all desire and yearning laid aside, cast off like the beggars they are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson…“He must embrace solitude as a bride. He must have his glees and his gloom’s alone. His own estimate must be measure enough, his own praise reward enough for him. And why must the student be solitary and silent? That he may become acquainted with his thoughts. If he pines in a lonely place, hankering for the crowd, for display, he is not in the lonely place; his heart is in the market; he does not see; he does not hear; he does not think. But go cherish your soul; expel companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then, will the (silent) faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers; you will have results, which, when you meet your fellow-men, you can communicate, and they will gladly receive.”

…the silent faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers…a cherished Soul…a life reclaimed…

If my heart were to give up its cadence, this day, this very moment…I would journey forward knowing I had found the only thing worth having. God… I am so very grateful…

Adayre R. Miller

8/8/2010

Homeward Bound…

It has been a very long time since I believed in the pass/fail religious notions of my hell fire and brimstone Baptist upbringing whereon the Day of Judgment, the Book of Life would be opened, and I would discover my everlasting fate.

I am now of the opinion that destiny is a self creation, that hell and heaven are here on earth and that the only judging being done by anyone, is the limited and self created personality that walks around on my legs as if it were who I am.

But if there were a judgment day, and if I were to be charged with presenting evidence for my pass/fail examination, I would have one small accomplishment and seven precious moments, to add to the pass side of the equation…not much for 55 years worth of living.

Not much…and yet… Everything.

My small accomplishment would be the day that my mother trusted me enough to tell me the truth of her childhood, a moment that stands in my memory with the same clarity and recall that one associates with moments extreme in nature, like the day we all watched a plane fly into a building, or John-John salute his flag- draped-father’s-coffin. That day, of my mother’s truth telling, will travel with me for as long as memory lasts.

The seven precious moments, I would place on the scale weighing my life’s outcome have mostly happened within the last year - one of them last night - after a cleansing talk with my good friend and fellow Sojourner, Tom. I thought perhaps you might have some interest in learning of them…since, as they do, hold the fate of my destiny by their weight and value. These precious moments are my contribution to the development, evolution, and destiny of the family of Man, of which I, like you – am a contributing member.

To fully describe them, we must begin with the wherefore and whatnot of my development as a personal self. From the moment that I could speak, from the moment that my left-brain language center “came online” as Jill Bolte-Taylor describes it, my personality developed itself around a single note of self-hatred. I cannot remember a time, going deep into the reaches of my childhood, that I did not virulently hate myself. One assumes there must have been such a time, either that, or I came in with a Karmic debt of undeniably large proportions…but it cannot be brought into recall.

This self-hatred led to a very lonely and isolating childhood. I felt like I was encased in a clear box that only I knew was present, a container that made it impossible to reach beyond the confines of it’s control to find solace and succor in the company of others.

Alone.

It was to become the hallmark of my life. But now, in my fifth decade, that aloneness has turned into these seven precious moments that make my breathing on this planet not only valuable… but also necessary. A good distance traveled, wouldn’t you agree?

Except for a brief period in my twenties when I learned how to charm others into befriending me, and another equally brief period in my forties when I learned to charm large groups of audiences into falling in love with my ability to tell stories…I have lived and worked essentially alone.

I have come to see that my seven precious moments would not have come to me, were it not for this very unusual level of aloneness. Make no mistake I have had, and continue to have, extraordinary fellow travelers… mostly in the form of Spiritual Teachers and Supporters whose fellowship is equally responsible for my small cache of Seven. They too, hold as much honor and as much responsibility, for my small gift as I do. I wonder, would you allow me a tiny and selfish moment to name them? A public acknowledgment of a debt so large it will never be repaid. They are: Rev. Joyce who helped me to begin the long journey home, Rosa Glen who helped me win the battle over the desire to end my life, Byron Katie who placed in my hands a tool of incalculable value, Eckhart Tolle whose books convinced me beyond doubt, Tom Owens who stands shoulder to shoulder with me even to this day, and of course…my beloved and wise beyond words, Spiritual Teacher George Addair. Seven of us, (if you include me and I do), and seven precious moments…it has a kind of poetry wouldn’t you agree?

Long before I heard of Jill Bolte-Taylor and her astounding book, “My Stroke of Insight”, or saw her most amazing talk on the TED conference series, (please do get her book, or watch her lecture at www.TED.com and enter her name in the search field), I learned of the left brain/right brain split from my astoundingly capable Teacher George Addair.

He and Jill, both teach that the left brain is the seat of language and the self creation we human beings always mistake for the “who” of who we are, George came to the understanding thru Spiritual intuitiveness and personal experience. Jill, a Harvard trained brain scientist, came to it thru the impact of a life-threatening stroke to her left hemisphere. She describes in her talk, the moment at which her “left brain went offline”…and of finding herself wholly incapable of speech and bathed in the peace, beauty, wonder, and awe of her right hemisphere. George describes the right hemisphere as the seat of the divine in us, the connection to and interface with, the Impersonal Oneself Mind. Jill says, from her perspective as a Neuroanatomist, that we are “hard wired” for peace…if we can only overcome the dominant and dominating left brain, then we too, can partake of the wonder and awe of the Impersonal Self’s right to the “miracle of miracles”.

Here is where fifty-five years of aloneness gave way to seven precious moments.

The extreme nature of my long endurance of being alone with my thoughts, made it possible for me to eventually bend them to my will. First I became capable of stopping the flow of the desire for self destruction, then over time I became capable of slowing them down to the point that I could hear and recognize - each and every one of them - no matter how much outside distraction there was, then came the capacity to stop them entirely. Flowing out of the capacity to stop thinking came the soft assurance and presence of my right hemisphere. My “seven precious moments”…

To find your way into your “right” mind, nothing short of the sacrifice of the personal self is required. George, the Buddha, Christ, Eckhart Tolle and Jill all confirm that the hold the left, or “personal” self has on our hearts and minds must be either consciously dispensed with, or as in Jill’s case, be abruptly ended thru the drama and impact of disease. Jill speaks quite eloquently of her decision in her eight year convalescence to “reboot” her left brain, that it was a choice of great cost to her and was done in service to others, because bringing back “online” the left brain meant the interruption of a level of peace and tranquility that anyone would envy. Read her book and it will end any pity you might have had, for someone who has had a severe stroke. My father had a left hemisphere stroke and although the doctors said he could have returned to language, he chose not to do the necessary work, and thanks to Jill’s book, I now realize that my father had found a place to precious to leave behind.

These moments, in which I have been gifted with the cessation of thought, the experience of my “right” mind has been the revelation of a lifetime.

They have lasted only brief moments for me, two or three minutes each of complete internal silence wherein the lyricism of my right hemisphere and it’s connection to all that is…can be felt, texturally as well as poetically. A soft, welcoming, return home. A Love of such purity and ease, it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the romantic nonsense that passes for love in our modern day culture. A peace of such a profound nature, that it causes tears of gratitude to flow down my face and drop gently upon my breast. A “rightness” that speaks to a level of perfection only wistfully imagined, and hopefully wished for. A tenderness that travels well beyond, the realms of expression. A completeness that dissuades entirely the notion that anything that can be “done” or achieved, in the realm of the material, has any solidity or meaning whatsoever. A fluidity that causes the boundaries of the “self” to expand large enough to encompass all that has been, or ever will be… An in-habitation of my body that fills me with wonder and awe at the mere movement of air across my skin. The CERTAIN knowledge that I am not alone… that The Witness, The Observer, The Impersonal Oneself is as near as the right hemisphere of my own self’s brain.

If the left brain/egoic mind could be convinced of the wealth of the right mind, we would all leave behind the personal self like the fairy tales of our youth. After all, the left-brain’s so-called “personality”, is exactly the same construct as the imaginary beanstalk’s and witches of our childhoods. It’s only hold on us, is that it is a personal story that we constructed out of the hills and valleys of our childhood, and one that we have become convinced that we would not survive without.

I say… give up the imposter!! Throw the personal self right out the window; give up the make-believe, in favor of the wonder of reality. (This sentiment is of course, poetic license.) It is not possible to throw out the left-brain language based self, not that is, without the scalpel or the disease that Jill suffered from. To survive, the family of Man’s childhood, we will be required to transcend the linearly sequentially driven - competitive and comparing left mind. We humans are in our infancy, and the left brain, without which trains would jump their tracks, buildings would fail to stand in their footprints, and boats would sink in their harbors, is meant to be the handmaiden to the more egalitarian and utopian right brain. The right brain includes - the left brain excludes, the right brain is global - the left brain is tribal, the right brain takes events and experiences transpersonally, (above the personal) - the left brain takes EVERYTHING personally. It is not only possible to transcend the left brain... it is our only hope.

These small visits to the wealth and wonder of my “right” mind are not a “doing” sort of thing. We cannot stake our claim to the right mind; it comes as a gift of grace. We can encourage that gift by the emptying out of the self, and in no other way. It takes enormous courage, will, resolve, and perseverance to release oneself from the grip of the language driven, competitive, comparing, self-harming left mind. But once empty, the miracle takes place…the gift arrives even if it stays only for a moment or two, as is the case in my experience.

I know by the reports of other sojourners that it is possible to actually live in the right mind, and I have set my sail…trimmed my mainsail and hoisted up my anchor. I am bound for the shores of the Impersonal Self, I take as my mate the Great Presence of The Witness and I thank you Seven who have made my journey possible from the very depths of my Being. My very DNA is grateful to you… for your help, support, kindness, steadfastness, commitment, constancy, and en-courage-ment. Joyce, Rosa, Byron, Eckhart, Tom, and George…may you be blessed evermore, for all eternity, for the gifts you so freely gave….

Consider me Homeward Bound.

Adayre R. Miller

8/4/10

May You Discover Where You Are Empty...

“I interact with the world around me…not so I can change it, but so it can change me”. –Unknown

Try to imagine that this notion is true, that you are here not to make your mark…but rather to receive, (or perhaps more accurately to reveal) your mark. How different would your world be, if this idea had even the merest foothold in your reality?

Gone would be the demand to be recognized as great. Gone also the goals, ambitions, achievements and demands you place upon your life, its directions and outcomes. In place of these outer directed drives, could it be that the authentic nature of your Being would show itself?

Emerson once queried…” Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”

In this culture in which we are all instructed, enchanted, goaded and pressured into discovering and claiming our “greatness”, I am always looking the other way…wondering who exactly is going to populate the unwashed masses, the adoring fans, the collective group that will make our greatness possible. When we measure ourselves along a linear scale of greatness, by that scale’s very nature we are required to place others below us to achieve our deeply valued “greatness”. What we fail to realize is that if we are on the 10 side of the scale by which we are currently evaluating ourselves, then with out fail we will be on the 1 side of some other scale, some other circumstance…”for if you live by the sword, you shall also die by the sword”.

Currently, I live in a world of little or no distractions; there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide from my mind, and its every small nuance. I live in a world in which there are no scales by which to measure myself, no better no worse by which to buoy or berate myself, no comparisons to make, no opportunities to evaluate my worthiness.

And here in the void of the continuing stream of comparisons that make up our modern day culture, I discover the extreme demands that giving up weighing yourself against others, places upon your heart and soul.

I don’t believe that I am moving forward gracefully or with aplomb, there is no ease in my jerky desire to deepen my understanding. I have such a slim hold on my ability to think critically and to determine the path of the “middle way” that I have almost no right to speak with you about it.

Yet speak, I must.

We, each of us, are living two different lives. The world of the invisible is not awaiting our deaths, it is here and now, traveling silently inside us…one breath away, one small incline of the head toward the center of our Being, one small decision away…nearer even than that.

On the day of our death, at the last exhale, all that you have achieved shall pass away, “dust to dust” it will go, even if your name adorns street signs, libraries, or children’s school books…only the interior world will travel with you into the Great Beyond.

And that world is populated not by what you gained, but by what you gave. And not even by that, as it is so easy to delude ourselves into believing that we are giving, when in reality our gifts are tainted with the desire for approval and love from others, making of them not gifts…but manipulations and machinations. Only when your gifts have no attachments, no self-serving agendas, no hidden desires are they really of service to others.

I am put in mind of a story I recently heard about a Chinese man by the name of Hiao-Tsiun Ma, he was born in the tiny village of Ningpo China on July 11, 1911. In 1936 he moved to France and eventually earned a doctorate in musicology at the Sorbonne.

His son tells the story that Ma lived in a small garret apartment during the Nazi invasion of Paris, enduring the daily bombings that nearly brought the city to its knees. During the day, while the bombs fell, he would memorize Bach and at night… when the bombing had mercifully ceased, he would play the sweet refrains of classical music on his violin to comfort his neighbors, and himself. The sound of his gift wafting thru the night air, surrounding and soothing his battered and deeply fearful companions in the daily struggle for survival and endurance.

He eventually moved to America and here brought up his young son Yo-Yo Ma, a renowned American cellist. In Yo-Yo, Ma’s gift continues to develop and move, to inhabit the night air, to soothe and to serve.

The single greatest gift that can be bestowed upon a laboring and labored humanity is the gift of Acceptance. Christ in his humility and agony embodied this most amazing of capacities…”forgive them Father, for they know not what they do…”

Buddha when asked if he was a God replied, “No, I am merely awake”.

Lao-Tzu reminds us…

“Mastering others is strength:

Mastering yourself is true power.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.

The utility of a house depends on the empty spaces. Thus, while the existence of things may be good, it is the non-existent in them which makes them serviceable.”

True also of us, the utility of our deeds may be good…but it is the empty spaces in us that has the potential to create our true service.

May you find within yourself some measure of Emptiness.

Adayre R. Miller

8/2/2010