A Shared History…A Moment of Sorrowful Reverence…

I wanted to share with you the story of Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac, not for prurient reasons and not in an effort to expose her, or increase her families grief…but rather to examine the potential outcome of the lack of self-knowledge that so dominates our collective and shared human experience…and because… I so relate to Dr. Kotarac’s dilemma and circumstances.

So out of respect for her and an exquisite sensitivity to her circum-stances, decisions, and the results of her ordeal… that has so fired my imagination and caused so much retrospective gratitude on my behalf, I begin with my part of our shared history.

Like Dr. Kotarac, I have above average intelligence, capacity, talent and commitment…but, similar to her, it did not save me from a long and heated battle with self-hatred. Sourcing from my childhood I lived so far outside of myself, that no amount of external gratification could undo what I was doing to myself, in the quiet hours I spent alone. The murdering, soul crushing sound of my self-hatred was so loud, so overbearing, so deceiving, so committed and so constant that it drove me to decisions, behaviors, and outcomes that were much deeper than merely self destructive…destruction was self evident…but the desire for humiliation and self-denigration, was also a potent and very visible result.

Even though I do not know Dr. Kotarac personally, I believe in my heart of hearts that I could speak with some authority on the state of mind, which emptied her spirit in such a touching and poetically painful way. No matter the amount and quality of professional education, acumen, and intellectual ability that she possessed… or that I was fortunate enough to have, the lack of self-knowledge and self-understanding and self-connection drove us both past the brink.

For myself, it manifested in much the same way as it did for Dr. Kotarac. The need for male companionship was more than a biological drive, it was a soul deep hunger…a kind of imperative that fueled my mistaken beliefs that if loved, wanted, desired and valued by a man in some magical and mysterious way, I would stop wanting to kill myself…somehow…someway…if a man could love me, then finally and surely I would/could be saved.

And thus, like Dr. Kotarac, my focus landed on one such man. His name was Rick Craig, and I thought him an exquisite example of male beauty, and valor, and spirit. His heritage was “Black Irish”… dark hair, high cheekbones, exquisitely carved features and the most amazing icy gray...not pale blue…but pure gray eyes, which I have never seen the like of since. (Not all my friends agreed, it must be noted…he was quite short – but I have always preferred short men). I loved him fierce, but mostly…I wanted him to love me.

I had no shame when it came to seeking his attention. When we fought and he threatened to leave me, I begged, cajoled, pleaded, pushed, or prodded…whatever seemed like it might work, or stem the tide of rising fear and anxiety I felt, at the thought of having to live without the warmth of his embrace.

One particularly harsh fight, after a night of legal and illegal substance intake, led to his storming off and canceling my hopes for the future with an off-handed and very abrupt….”That’s it, I have had enough…it’s OVER.”

I left… streaming tears, driving erratically, desperate for some other outcome…some other potential than to face the loss of my savior, my lover, and my hope for a future. I began calling him the moment I got home, midnight…1am…2am…3am, he wouldn’t pick up the phone and I just knew, he knew it was me. Desperate for him to change his mind, desperate for one more opportunity to be whatever it was he wanted me to be. Desperate in every way, that desperation can take hold of you, I was twenty-three years old and not sure I could survive the loss… given the state of mind in which I hid the resounding insanity that populated my life, when I was not in the company of others. (Now in the sober light of retrospection, I am sure he had merely turned off the phone…having been the recipient of my desperate phone calls before this, he probably had just unplugged and hit the sack.)

By 4am I’d worked myself into such an aggrieved and grieving state of mind, that the only course of action that seemed open to me and therefore quite reasonable, was to go over and make him talk to me. I pounded on every door, window, bedroom window and shouted his name, crying and hysterical…and finally…I broke into his house destroying a window screen and finding entry thru a small crack he’d left open for ventilation.

He was passed out on his bed, and when I joined him there…he was not even surprised…

We broke up finally and forever a few weeks later, and this, along with many other very painful episodes is what started my spiritual journey and the lifelong commitment that has resulted in a sane, settled, quiet, silent, self-kind, and harmonious internal reality. Somewhere along this path, I unknowingly and unwittingly chose celibacy, which is now more than two decades old, and like a nun who has entered a cloister… I dedicated my life, my path, and my journey to the Inner Realities. I became committed to the healing that was necessary to save my sanity, and to add my small contribution to the movement of sanity, that may well, one day save us all.

Dr. Kotarac, was forty nine and still adrift in the belief that “a man…the right man” could save her and give meaning to a life that was clearly not satisfying or meaningful, despite the fact that she was lauded by her colleagues and a much sought after Internist. The hole in her soul was a pounding and dramatically real emptiness… and she believed, as I once had, that finding romantic love was the only source by which she could find the happiness she so clearly must have yearned for.

The newspaper story that brought her to my attention included a picture of a lovely blonde woman, aging well, and clearly comfortable in her role as a physician, caregiver, and healer. In her picture she wore the ubiquitous stethoscope round her neck, which for her was as common an accessory, as is a hammer for a carpenter. She appeared relaxed, comfortable, and capable…and like many appearances…it was entirely deceptive. With that picture, a reporter logged this story…

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (Aug. 31) -- ”A doctor involved in an on-again, off-again relationship with a Bakersfield man, tried to force her way into his home with a shovel, and he not wanting to engage in a confrontation left by the back door, unbeknownst to the Doctor. She then climbed a ladder to the roof last Wednesday night, removed the chimney cap and slid feet first down the flue, Bakersfield police Sgt. Mary DeGeare said. Her decomposing body was found there three days later. No foul play is suspected.”

I cannot begin to imagine the suffering and difficulty of Dr. Kotarac’s final hours. At first - she surely must have wiggled to free herself from the confinement, she had unwittingly caused, she must have felt very foolish, sheepish, and embarrassed…but not overly concerned, not at first…

Perhaps it took many minutes or even hours to understand that no amount of calling out, pulling with her fingertips and pushing with the tips of her toes, was going to dislodge her body from the encapsulating brick. It must have been dark, dank, and smelly in the chimney… and overhead… a tantalizingly bright rectangle of blue with perhaps wispy white clouds, so close and yet worlds away.

When her rash decision, and the weight of its horrible consequences fully presented itself to her mind and heart, I can’t help but imagine, that she saw and felt the absurdity of needing or wanting companionship, to the degree that she would surrender her life for it. No doubt with her life on the line, the confusion that so many of us carry around our necks, like that ubiquitous stethoscope she wore in her last portrait, lifted… and clarity came rushing in.

He could not have been that special or important for her to lose her life over him, in such a sad and sorrowful way. Of course the physical suffering, before the final release came, must have been agonizing and horrible. One can only hope that unconsciousness found her relatively quickly, and spared her the worst of it.

I remember - very clearly - the quality and thickness of that type of confusion, like seeing thru coke bottle bottoms and moving thru gelatin. A kind of befuddlement that belies the intelligence, necessary to master eight years of higher education and three years spent in residency and internship. Higher education, valuable as it may be, for preparing us to master and excel in the world of achievement and accomplishment, provides absolutely nothing, to prepare us for the only achievement that matters…namely Self Understanding, and Self Awareness.

It may even be a strong and damaging deterrent to the flowering of Consciousness given the number of years necessary to accomplish a higher University degree, and the very strong way in which formal education shapes and contours a world-view. I remember Eckhart Tolle’s description, in the Power of Now, of his University mentor whose intelligence and philosophical acumen was the pinnacle of achievement, as far as the young Tolle could see…only to be deeply challenged as the saving grace he hoped it could be, upon hearing of his mentor’s suicide, over a long weekend break in his class schedule.

There is a vast difference between education and wisdom.

Wisdom requires of us a willingness to find and follow the darker, frightening depths of our being. We will not find wisdom along the light-filled trail of goodness that so captures and enchants us. It is not to be found in the desire to do good, or even the desire to be seen as being good, that is so alluring and beguiling to those of us on the Spiritual Path.

Wisdom is a product of facing ourselves…of transcending ourselves…of aligning ourselves, with the willingness to drain the pus and cauterize the inherited wounds, of being born into the human condition. It is found in the capacity and ability to lift ourselves above the confusion…the mesmerizing complexity of the conditioned mind… and find for ourselves, and by ourselves, the pure stream of non-thinking, intuitive existence, that predates our birth and will survive our death.

Blaise Pascal 1623 – 1662, French Philosopher and Mathematician, said…”All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”

There is no doubt what-so-ever, that Dr. Kotarac would be alive today if she had been capable of “sitting in a quiet room alone.”

The interior movement toward the deepest Self is one that brings with it the sacrifice of some, or perhaps even all, of our most cherished beliefs. The unconscious beliefs that charter our course and choose our decisions…ones like, tomorrow will be a better day, or if someone love’s me then I will be okay, or if I am “good” then I will be protected. All of these and more than I can describe or contain herein, are the unwise, sentimental, and superstitious blind alleys that hem in a Mind and with it, close off a Universe.

It is true that in the beginning of self discovery, you must have a Teacher, a being whose commitment is not to self gain or self display…but one who is willing to set your sights on a higher and more righteous - (right-use-ness) - horizon, than the one you are capable of seeing for yourself. But soon, and decidedly, you must strike out upon the dark sea for yourself…and by yourself. There is only one person who could have saved Dr. Kotarac from that chimney; it is my fervent hope that she met that person there in that dark and confining prison. For to meet the Self, for even a few hours or even a few precious moments, is to have lived well and truly…

Length of stay is not the important or salient point, but rather depth of Being, wins the day.

May you find in yourself the courage to meet your destiny prior to the Death that will eventually come for you, as well. May you live as though that day may be today. May you do so, for the benefit of all that share the same air you breathe… and are waiting so patiently for you to Awaken.

Adayre R. Miller

9/6/10

A Cat – A Snake – And A Redheaded Dog….

It has been six days since my dog unwittingly faced his potential death, and I strove to save him in a manner that belies my age, weight, and natural tendency toward non-competitive activities.

I think about that snake some portion of every day. It’s weaving; coiled body, and its small mouth, open wider than could be imagined – given the size of the neck that supported it.

Along side the memory of the fear that it induced in me, and the emergency response necessary to save my animal, is an extremely odd fondness. I assume it comes primarily from the gratitude that I feel due to the fact that the snake chose to issue warnings, rather than seriously attempting to kill my dog… who was left alone and entirely vulnerable, for the two or three minutes it took me to get to the dining room.

As with all near misses, I am more aware of my lovely red dog than I am normally…I pull on his soft ears and move my fingers thru his copper colored fur, much more than I did seven days ago. I notice his brown eyes, and I am so glad for the way they are still able to follow me around the room.

The moment of entry that morning, when I came around the corner of the dining room wall and found that most arresting tableau, is etched in my memory as clearly as the one that houses the death of my parents. Looking back in review, it is almost comical how unconcerned and utterly relaxed the cat, who started all this trouble was. She was interested… certainly… alert, focused and quiet…but utterly and completely relaxed, there was nothing in her demeanor, stance, or posture that suggested anything at all was occurring, much less the threat of mortal peril. It must be noted that she was as close to the snake as was the dog, perhaps even a little closer…but the snake’s entire attention was riveted first on the dog and then on me, both of us aggressors to the snake’s point of view. I point that out because I believe it is relevant for the manner in which we deal with the difficult and demanding people in our lives, the ones who we do not trust or understand well… as always, all things return back to us and our reactions to events rather than the event itself.

The cat got a collar today…one with extra bells. I am not sure that snakes can hear, but I am sure they are sensitive to vibration and I am hoping that her hunting days are behind us. The very next day she brought a salamander into the house, and I knew that I could no longer allow her native instincts to rule. I am sorry for the bell, and the irritation it will cause her… but restrictions must be placed on behavior that has gone from being a nuisance, to being a threat to survival.

I have been very interested in the responses I have received from relating the story to various folk. My next door neighbor’s wife allowed as how her husband was home and still up, and that I should have come and got him because “he would have killed it”…and more than that…”why did you put it over the fence? It will grow up over there”, she said… and was clearly upset by the idea.

I can’t imagine choosing to kill it, and never once entertained the idea…even in the midst of the five-alarm fire it sent rocketing thru my veins.

It’s not just that the snake was minding it’s own, very primitive business, when my cat stole it from under whatever rock it had been quietly slithering beneath. And it isn’t just that I am eternally grateful, and I am, that it merely warned my dog rather than seeking to kill it. The very notion of killing it - just because a person - in this case my neighbor’s wife, is uncomfortable with even the concept of a snake who lives in the field next door, seems unconscionable to me.

Here is one of the most fundamental errors that human beings continue to make, no matter the mounting evidence to the contrary. We are not the pinnacle of creation…we are merely the first self conscious beings to arise, and we have almost entirely lost our way in the back waters of this magnificent tool we have been given, that of the thinking mind, to the degree that all else seems subservient to our needs, wishes, wants, desires and decisions.

We are entirely out of harmony with the rest of creation, when we use, misuse, and even abuse all other sentient beings and the earth herself for our immediate and selfish gain.

I reflect on my encounter with the snake, some portion of every day, because it so potently brought my spiritual understanding to a new and much deeper level. For many months now, I have been working to deepen my commitment to the Inner Realities. I have stepped out on faith, sealing myself to the notion that my work here on earth needs to focus on my reactions to life just as it arrives, rather than the constant and fruitless search to change life to suit my personal and quite flawed desires.

I am put in mind of a Buddhist story that speaks so eloquently to this notion. (I may have already shared this with you, and if I did, please forgive… but it bears repeating none-the-less.)

It seems that the villagers gathered in front of the elder leadership, complaining of the rough ground they must walk about upon. They vividly and vocally, described the many stickers and tiny rocks that made their daily travels uncomfortable and unpleasant, and they wanted…no demanded something be done about it. So after much scholarly thought, debate, and long-candle-burning-nights…a plan was devised to ease the villagers’ discontent. The elders had decided to cover the whole world round, with leather…every where the villagers were required to trod, from work, to home, to social gatherings, their feet would be protected and cared for by a leather clad world.

Happening into the village, just as work was begun on the elders’ plan…was a shoemaker and a Teacher of the Ageless Wisdom Traditions. He gathered the complaining and childlike villagers, the leadership and all those concerned, and explained to them the value, simplicity, and wonder of…shoes…

We are in a very damaging, and desperate, and lost, frame of mind when we are attempting to cover our world with leather. When we hear it this way, in the form of a parable…we think…could the villagers really be that stupid and clueless, that they didn’t understand the concept of shoes? Could they really endorse an idea costing huge sums of wasted economic power and human potential, as to cover the world with leather…rather than fashion shoes for themselves?

But the truth of the matter is…we do the same thing almost everyday.

Each and every time you believe that some change in your outer world, if some goal or other can only be achieved, some magical summit reached, that then…oh praise god…then, you will be safe, secure, happy, content, and finally satisfied. Every time you move in that direction you are exhorting someone or something, to cover your world in leather… an entirely unrealistic and unachievable desire….whose only possible outcome is a broken heart, an exhausted will, and a mind filled with sorrows and regrets.

Unfortunately we do not live in a culture that supports the fashioning of shoes. We live in a culture that thrives on consumption, and consumption requires need, and need requires fear…and thus we are pulled away from the Internal Wisdom and rhythms, and cast out rudderless and alone… in the world of illusions, with only hyperbolic and entirely false promises to guide our way.

Marcus Aurelius, philosopher-king, who ruled the Roman Empire in the first century was one of the clearest and most astute voices for the undiscovered truth that we all must eventually come to, if we are to free ourselves from the tyranny of the conditioned mind…and become capable of making for ourselves a worthy pair of shoes. He wrote almost two thousand years ago…” You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” (Emphasis mine)

You do not shape external reality, no matter how many Secrets may be shared with you in books and CD’s, or if we do shape external reality…it is at best, a shared and collaborative creation. I am not speaking of the Quantum Mechanics discoveries that allow us to know that our simple observation coupled with expectation, can change a wave into a particle or a particle into a wave. This Idea is one of the great Mysteries, and as such is well above the purposes of this essay. I am speaking of the notion that we affect outer reality so dramatically that we can manifest parking places, wink clouds out of existence with our minds, and various other types of wishful thinking ideas. It is the undisciplined mind that wants only to experience what it perceives as “good” to which I address these remarks. At the level of undeveloped mind and heart that actively engages in illusion and fantasies of every type, we are not capable of knowing what is truly “good or bad” for us, or for anyone else.

We are fundamentally meant to be receivers, you need only look to your own body to understand that…sight, sound, touch, taste, hearing…all come to us born by the Creator’s decisions and delivered without haste, efforting, or difficulty. We are meant to take in the world around us, and to use that experience, as the mechanism by which we learn to craft shoes.

My cat was the very embodiment of that notion. She lay there spread out on the carpet, as only a cat can do, appearing to have no bones in her body…yet somehow keeping her head erect. Her ears were pointed toward the hissing sound and her citrine yellow eyes were focused on every tiny movement. She could not have appeared more relaxed and yet more alert, at the exact same moment.

By contrast, my dog was vigorously protesting the creature who had entered his domain…barking and lunging and barking some more. Only good sense made him stay out of reach, and therefore out of terrible danger.

And as I look back on the moment…I know in my heart of hearts, it is possible to react as my cat did…languid, composed, aware and alive…but utterly unthreatened. I know, because I have seen someone who can…and I know, because I have read about the Great Beings who have realized the truth for themselves and shod their feet, even as all others around them, cry and lament and continue to believe that changing the world is the answer… rather than changing ourselves and cultivating a disciplined mind and heart.

C. G. Jung said, “The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” No matter how long you have searched, no matter how lost you may feel, no matter how close you may be to the end…and no matter how discouraged you find yourself to be. You can take heart in the knowledge that the human mind is forever oscillating between sense and non-sense. And it is therefore possible, for you to find and follow the senses’, back to the grounded and whole human being you were designed to be.

Dr. Jung was, as Marcus Aurelius before him, trying to draw our attention away from outer phenomena and the moralistic approaches to life that lead us to be endlessly mired in right and wrong or “good and bad”, and instead moves us back to our senses and a world experienced without filters and erroneous judgments. No matter how lost you may feel, somewhere inside your heart and soul the voice of sense calls out for you, attempting to turn your attention away from the outer and into the deep reaches of the heart, that knows life lived for the acquisition of outer, material gains only, is a life spent entirely in the pursuit of Jung’s “non-sense”.

The Buddha knew almost 3 thousand years ago, the true nature of the mind… “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” Uncaused Joy is the gift received by all who follow the inner path to the deep dwelling place of the Oneself, to the shared domain in which all life takes on the hues and colors of the Family of One. Where all sentient beings are brother, sister, son and daughter, the place where, should we so commit ourselves to discovering our most important journey, we will benefit all who have lived, will live, or have already departed.

It begins with so simple a thing as can be accomplished by a cat.

Alert, intense wakefulness, non-judgmental and uncensored witnessing, a relaxed yet head up posture that keeps us ever available and ever present. A simple non-reactivity that is so powerful as to be staggering, and a calm and peaceful acceptance of the What Is of any given moment.

If a cat can do it…you can rest assured I am willing to spend the rest of my days on planet earth practicing it….

I have already glimpsed the Buddha’s promise, that uncaused Joy will shadow my every step…a disciplined mind seems like a very small price to pay indeed…

These essays are a part of that discipline.

In Gratitude.

Adayre R. Miller

9/1/10

An Ordinary Day….A Powerful Moment of Clarity

"The most significant thing that can happen to a human being [is] the separation process of thinking and awareness" - and the understanding that awareness is - "the space in which thoughts exist". – Eckhart Tolle

I do not disagree with Mr. Tolle but I would say that the separation of thinking and awareness is, along with being “significant”, the most healing thing that can happen to a human being.

When awareness becomes available as a silent spacious environment in which thoughts appear and disappear - without attachment - it gives the Observer, (that’s you and me), the space necessary to begin the process of disbelieving, or unraveling our thoughts….and with that comes freedom from fear, anxiety, suffering, and turbulence of all sorts and stripes.

The very first time I can remember my awareness separating from my thinking mind, was on the day of my mother’s death. As soon as I realized that the moment had come and her death was upon us, my mind became crystal clear and utterly silent. I remember afterwards trying to describe it to someone else and saying that I had never felt so alive in all my life…”that I felt like I had eyes in the back of my head, I was so present, conscious, and aware”.

Then about six years ago, it came again a moment of blinding clarity and total silence, this time I was standing in the grass looking down at my feet when suddenly my brain simply stopped speaking to me…it was electrifying and amazing.

Years passed, and then about 4 months ago a series of very distressing events, caused a kind of relapse into an old and torturous way of thinking… a pattern of thought I had not actively engaged in for more than 10 years. And I was flooded with suffering, anxiety, distress, anger, sadness and much, much more. But this flood was apparently the gateway, which stood between me and salvation, for at some point in this onslaught… I simply reached overload and had had, enough!!

Suddenly again the separation between awareness and thinking arrived, and this time it stayed…not all day and not every day. But some measure of every week there was a blissful, loving, and very silent space, or awareness, in my mind and heart. It was/is cooling, kind, loving, easy, simple and very, very, very desirable.

Soon I found that I could practice it - I needed solitude, of which I had plenty, quiet, of which I am fond…(the radio, TV, or CD’s are almost never on in my house, and never during the daylight hours), and with my eyes closed, I soon could enter this silent space at will.

With enough “practice” I no longer needed my eyes closed and then my attention could be directed to this quiet spaciousness even if I were moving about, or doing chores, or any of the many other things we are required to do in the unfolding of our day.

The best and most wonderful thing about the “separation process” of awareness and thinking, is that in this quiet space it is not possible for the conditioned mind to drag you into the future or the past, and thus the Timeless present becomes a real, full, and tangible experience.

I tell you all of this, so that I might more clearly describe for you how the wheels came off the wagon yesterday… and the difference between real, or primal, or authentic fear, and the fears born of the lies of the conditioned mind.

So let’s begin with the lie.

Yesterday, something triggered my conditioned minds habitual responses, and I was catapulted into a make-believe future of such dire circumstances, that before I could get a hold of myself…I was living in a cardboard box and eating out of cat food cans. I have no idea what the trigger was, writing checks for my monthly bills…checking my back account balance…listening to the news…I have no idea, but suddenly and quite viciously the conditioned mind had me by the throat and I was listening to myself describing quite vividly, the many ills and sorrows that were headed my way.

Because I have gone so long unable to find a job, so said my mind, “you will lose the house, not be capable of feeding yourself and your beloved animals, should anyone get sick, illness will surely turn to deadly circumstances, because there is no money for health care or medicine…and so on…and so on…and so on…

All projections into a non-existent future…and all lies…

The “What Is” truth of the moment was entirely obscured behind storm clouds that had rained in on me with the force of a hurricane. When late in the evening, I was finally able to get a hold of myself, I looked to find the What Is truth of the present moment, and once again recognized that I have all, and even more, than I need at this precise moment. More than enough to feed myself, my beloved’s, and more than enough to care for us all…

At the end of the day, I took inventory of the – now mostly unfamiliar – chemical impact of the storm that blew metaphorical trees down around my house/self. My brain felt sore and kind of stuck, my gut was upset and tight, my limbs felt heavy and hot, and I felt sticky all over, on the inside, like someone had opened up my carotid and poured molasses into my veins.

I was very tired and very listless and this is the condition in which I went to bed, for some much needed rest.

So this morning, just upon arising, I experienced the only form of fear that is truthful…or authentic.

It began with my cat, Sadie; she is a very eccentric cat.

She has a great fondness for dark and quiet spaces, no doubt the reason she chose me, to rescue her from starvation when she was a tiny and neglected and abandoned kitten. She has a strong preference for the cabinet under the sink in my master bath, but she also likes the linen closet, large drawers, and the master bedroom closet’s highest shelf. Sometimes, when I come home from being gone too long, it appears as though my house has been burgled… as every cupboard, door, and big drawer is standing open.

Believe me, the first time it happened I wanted to call strong, hairy, burly men with no necks, to search my home with flashlights before I would go in and settle down for the night. But one day, I watched her pulling on the levered door handles repeatedly, and finally successfully opening the closet door, and I realized then that the drawers and doors standing open were her doing. (She once locked me out of my house, by batting at the door handle, vigorously enough to turn the lock, while I was inside the garage using the utility sink to bathe my small dogs…she has major separation anxiety…and she wanted in that garage in the very worst way.)

I don’t know if her great fondness for us, (she loves my dogs as much as she loves me…perhaps even more…), is because she was a rescue or it’s just her native nature.

Along with her cupboard quirk, she hunts for us.

At least three times a month, and much more when she was younger, she brings her living prey into my home. In she comes with a bird, a salamander, a baby bunny rabbit, a mouse…and takes it from the dog door at the back of the house, all the way to the front of the house and into the dining room…because she knows that this is where I eat, and she wants my meal to be very, very, fresh….

From the moment she began this terribly distressing behavior, my second eldest dog, discovered that somewhere in his mixed up mutt of a gene pool…there was a grand, and commanding, and quite determined hunting dog.

And out of his mouth comes a bark that would be worthy of the hounds of hell. This bark exists at no other time and in no other circumstances, it has the quality of a drunken mountain of a man bellowing at a referee whose call he disagrees with, to the point of someone dying over it. It is throaty, harsh, insistent, demanding, and could wake the dead.

The first time I heard it, was three o’clock in the morning, and it nearly threw me bodily from my bed. At this stage in our family life, I am so conditioned to it, that I know if I get up immediately and run to the dining room…I can save whatever has been brought in. If I hesitate at all, my hound from hell, will have killed it before I can get there. (Apparently Sadie’s sensibilities are such, that she would rather the dog do the heavy lifting.)

So you can imagine, that this morning, when the bellowing began while I was having my morning constitutional and could not get up immediately to run to the dining room, that my long hesitation was somewhat disturbing. This “catch and release” program we have going on in my house, relies entirely on the speed with which I react…otherwise we are having a small funeral, rather than a…yippee!!! we got away clean, celebration.

So as soon as I was able, I went into the dining room to see what manner of small creature hopefully still needed my help…only to find…(please forgive the politically incorrect idiom), a Mexican standoff of Epic Proportions…

Sadie, in languid cat mode, stretched out to one side watching beloved dog…. And…. baby-brown-diamond-back-rattlesnake, standoff.

Yes, that’s right, I said……. OMG!!! SNAKE!!!!!!!!

COMPLETE WITH FANGS, COILING, HISSING, STRIKING, AND RATTLING….

I am sure my dog is not dead as I write this, because of the hissing and rattling…and maybe even the striking, because that was surely the most remarkable aspect of this tiny but furiously violent reptile. It was about the circumference of my little finger, and perhaps 14 inches long, new to the world without doubt, but not lacking in skill, or commitment, or aim, or determination…one tiny iota. (I have no explanation for how Sadie caught and transported this deeply upset baby into our home, while also successfully evading being bitten.)

The dog would bark and lunge, and the rattler would rear up and strike… hissing and rattling all the while…and fear overtook me like a bullet train.

I ran to the kitchen and came back with a pair of salad tongs…(!!!SALAD TONGS!!! really)…and each time I tried to reach out and grasp it’s head, it lunged and hissed and rattled at me. But better me, than my small dog, should those tiny fangs find purchase…I would get sick no doubt…but my beloved dog would most likely die.

By this point, real…not imagined…FEAR, had so overtaken me that my muscles began the Samba against my bones. I had no faith what-so-ever, that should I succeed in capturing his bobbing and weaving head, that I would be capable of hanging onto his 6 or 8 ounces of weight, successfully. And should he be dropped on the way out the door, and absent my noisy an determined dog keeping him corralled, and slither under the furniture…I would have to wear knee high boots the rest of my life…or sell the house, one of the two.

Just then my brain came back online, and I noticed a fairly large clear plastic lid sitting nearby…I grabbed it up and dropped it down on top of the weaving, coiled creature…I then placed a heavy weight onto the impromptu cage so that he would not be capable of slithering from underneath it, and went outside to look for a large, burly, hairy, no-neck MAN. Yes, ladies, I am not ashamed to admit it…I wanted some help…and I wanted it right now!!!

As I glanced around my cul-de-sac, I realized that it was too early to try that one and that one, and to late for that one and that one - who work nights. I then contemplated animal rescue, (the last time I called them for a dog I had rescued from the streets…they said, “sometime tomorrow…maybe”), so then I thought about those lovely men who reside just down the street from my subdivision who run into burning buildings, while everyone else is running out.

But finally, with breath returning to my body, and the Samba’s refrain not quite as determined…I decided to deal with this thing on my own. Back inside I went, and looking for something that would act as a carrying case, I found another clear plastic container - a juice pitcher - that I thought I could scoop him up in and use to toss him over the fence, and back into the desert with. The clear plastic part was essential, as every time I moved toward him, he struck his impromptu cage with such force that a small but clear thump could be heard, even over my still barking dog…and I wanted to see those strikes, not just hear them.

It took me several tries and a good deal of additional adrenaline, (the Samba had returned and brought with it several flamingo dancers - and a rumba for good measure), until finally, I was able to get him into the “carrier” and slap a lid on it. Once outside, I threw him over the fence, and into a freedom we both wanted with our whole heart and soul.

I had been preparing for my five-day-a-week-walking routine, when all this brouhaha had happened, and for some odd reason decided to continue with my plan before the day got to hot to do so. It took almost the entire 45 minutes, for the muscles in my legs to stop shivering, and calm down. The minute I made it back to my house, I went straight to bed…I did not collect 200 dollars, go to jail, or stop to buy a house for Park Place… in point-of-fact, I barely managed to unleash my dogs before I collapsed on my bed.

Here is what I discovered…real fear is hot, intense, clarifying, and in some strange way, I can’t really describe, it is also cleansing. It’s as if the adrenaline burns up carbon dioxide, as it courses thru your system, leaving behind very real exhaustion, of course, but no “stickiness” what-so-ever. It comes, serves, intensifies, clarifies the need for action, provides the tools by which that action can take place, (and the necessary courage I might add), and moves on and out. Leaving you weak and tired, but not sick and sad and haunted.

My conclusion…EVERY form of fear that is not occasioned by a real and intense threat to your in-the-moment-physical survival, or that of a loved one, is imagined, illusory, deceptive, false, erroneous and just a plain ole lie…

And here is the reason that awareness must separate from thinking if we are ever to overcome the imaginary fears, that fuel our wars, our discord, our dis-ease, our dissonance, and our discomfort.

We must then come to the place of inquiry…is it your responsibility to discover the space within? Does the very existence of humanity rely on your doing part of the “heavy lifting”? Do you want real change, or merely the continuing search for change? Or as the poet Rumi said, “Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.”

May you find your way to becoming the “space” in which your thoughts arise, rather than the deeply mistaken belief, that you are the thoughts that your conditioned mind throws up - to see if you will take the bait.

I wish you well on this journey of a lifetime…of the revelation of your one true and real self…the space from which all knowable things take their existence. May you find this space inside yourself before the crowded and conditioned mind, overtakes the flight of your soul and spirit, and may you be blessed by freedom.

(PS Out of curiosity, and to find out how much danger my dog had really been in…I asked this question of Wiki Answers: Is venom from a baby rattlesnake more poisonous than a mature rattlesnake?

The Answer:

The venom of a baby rattlesnake is the same as a full-grown rattlesnake. The reason it seems more "toxic" is because they can’t control the amount of venom they pump out, the way an adult snake can, actually all rattlesnakes have hemotoxin and neurotoxin included in their venom. Baby rattlesnakes, however, contains mostly neurotoxin, and little hemotoxin. It's the neurotoxin that can be fatal. Hemotoxin is used to break down tissue, and aids in the digestive process. Yes, the baby rattler has been equipped with a higher dose of venom because of its size for survival reasons.) ….Good Lord…

Adayre R. Miller

8/26/10

“If you can fill the unforgiving minutes…

With sixty seconds worth of distance run…” - Rudyard Kipling

Of all the tools Spirit delivered to you the day of your birth, the capacity to direct your attention may be the greatest of them all.

We pretend as adults that we are too sophisticated for something so basic and primal as Attention, we build worlds filled to the brim with the hunt for the illusive something that will finally give us rest, peace, tranquility and contentment. We seek to manipulate the outer world, until the world we live in is so fraught with dis-ease and discomfort from our manipulations, that she might just rise up one day and send a virus from which we cannot recover.

We search the length of our lives for security, comfort, power, and control…seemingly without the slightest awareness that nothing we can do will eliminate the fate that awaits us all. The “from dust and to dust” that is the outcome of every human Being’s great adventure.

Until now - in the modern world - we live bounded on all sides, by folks who lack the capacity to pay attention. We have alphabet soup names for it, and drugs to combat it, we lose our children to it, and our relationships suffer greatly, because we cannot slow down enough to regard one another at even the most basic level.

Yet, hidden…and quietly so…in the depths of this simple but godlike tool of Attention, is the key to freedom that ALL the world round is searching for.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, who was nominated in 1967 for a Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King and who has authored more than 30 books, writes of this most basic tool of Attention in one of his compelling but simple stories.

It seems he was hosting a group of students for a simple evening meal and with the meal concluded, and end-of-meal-tea yet to be offered, one of Hanh’s students volunteered to do the dinner dishes for the venerated and elderly monk.

The monk declined his students offer with this explanation…”no, I think not, for you do not have the will to do the dishes correctly”. The student, having the good sense to not take the Master’s rejection and it’s potential lesson personally, inquired as to how he could fail at such a simple and easy task. And the Master replied…”you will do the dishes so that you can finish them and move onto the after meal tea and conversation, I will do the dishes for the sake of doing the dishes.”

Here Hanh is attempting to teach his hurried and harried American student the value of being entirely involved with the current moment, no matter how mundane, how simple, how seemingly useless, or inconvenient.

In the monastery where Hanh took his early training he was required to carry the incense stick with both hands, while he ever so slowly approached the altar upon which he was to light the slender stick. An incense stick weighing hardly more than a paper clip, required the use of both his hands, so said his Master…”so that you will learn the proper method by which to honor and attend to the lighting of the incense”.

Nadia Boulanger describes the lack of Attention in this way…”Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.”

Life denied.

That is a harsh, demanding, and very accurate diagnosis…Life is denied, or becomes Anti-Life when we lack the will and the capacity to pay attention to the moment at hand. It isn’t easy, in the forgetfulness of adulthood; to train the Attention…I’ll give you that…

Rudyard Kipling, in his poem If, “If you can fill the unforgiving minutes with sixty seconds worth of distance run…”

It isn’t easy to fill the unrelenting minutes with sixty seconds of distance run, the distance Kipling is referring to cannot be found on any map, is not a part of some geographic location…but rather is the soul’s full involvement in the ordinariness of our daily life. The ego in us wants to live for tomorrow, and the imagined arriving of our greatness and with it the admiration of kings and commoners alike… but the Soul in us…wants attention paid to the dishes, and the window washing, and yes even the masterpiece writing.

Isaac Newton, who shaped our understanding of the physical world in which we live, said this about the extraordinary value of Attention… “If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent.”

For years I hung on ladders - in very uncomfortable circumstances - paying attention to the tiniest of details, while painting murals I had been commissioned to produce.

Occasionally I would have a client whose temperament or conditioning would cause them to find my slow and precise handling of their home’s or business’s a burden or a disturbance. “Hurry up” their energy or behavior would indicate, and I would feel compromised and pulled off center by their need for speed, and the cutting of corners.

I don’t know how or when my desire for paying attention began, but I know without equivocation that strengthening my commitment to paying attention and the excellence that results from it, was the only thing that kept me hanging on those ladders for so many uncomfortable years.

And I also know without doubt, that the newly discovered capacity for the Sweetness of Life that accompanies being fully present for window washing, dish cleaning, or the writing of masterpieces is a product of the increased Will to Attend, to the everyday and the ordinary.

Henry Miller said, “The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”

We live in a culture and a moment in history, where we have taken individuality to an extreme, and have come to think of our lives as having a great overreaching “purpose”. Finding one’s Purpose has become a new type of seeking that distracts and confounds us…it drags our attention into the future and turns the present moment into an obstacle to overcome, or in the worst of cases, an active enemy.

We live in a type of suspended animation, awaiting the arrival of some future moment, while all the days of our lives sift thru the hourglass one grain at a time… for which we not only are not present, but are actively resisting.

Here is where our suffering is manufactured, the clever egoic mind like a siren pulling sailors onto a rocky shore, sings the song of tomorrow…. while our hearts yearn and cry out for our Attention… to the ordinary, the mundane, the moment by moment life that is pulsing thru our veins and showing up disguised as boredom, “nothing to do”, “nowhere to go”, “nothing happening”.

It is only when you can enter the Silence, surround yourself in the welcome relief from the chattering mind, bathe yourself in the harmony of your own attention, that you can come to know the truth which William Blake writes so poignantly about, in his poem Auguries of Innocence…

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”

Your purpose?

You share the same one with every human ever born, or yet to be born…to develop and expand the capacity to become aware…not of angels or light-filled phenomena, that is just more of the clever ego’s doing, no – you are here to pay attention to wake up in your life, just as it is in this very moment. Imagine a world filled with Awakened mechanics, or waitresses, or bus drivers, politicians, or surgeons, or Teachers…a world where each one…gives and receives the boon of Attention. You can see it, can’t you? A world free of stress and pain, a world of kindness and care, of love and harmony.

Your reward?

Heaven, eternity, infinity, and grace beyond description, is hidden in plain sight. Right here, right now, in the midst of dishwashing, check writing, meal preparation, car-pooling, and corralling dust bunnies.

I know it is hard to believe…but that doesn’t prevent it from being True.

So take up your responsibility, shoulder your portion of the world’s salvation…do as Mary Oliver suggests, “To pay attention this is our endless and proper work.”

Adayre R. Miller

8/24/10