A Wonder to Behold…

I can’t recall a time in my life when I felt more vulnerable than I do just now.

I suppose it sources from many different places, losing a job that I had no idea would disappear, watching a video of my just completed work with no mention of me or my contribution, going to the dentist – who is the best I have ever seen, and yet – the shock of the drill, and the scraping and the pressure, causing my heart to race and my nerves to fray…but I doubt that these are the real sources of the vulnerability of my experience.

I think it really comes from a new level of dismembering believing.

I remember when I first moved back here, and began again with my Teacher, how he spoke so often of the need to dismantle our beliefs, if we were to face and find the truth.

My new Teacher has a similar approach, he wonders aloud whether we would be so committed to our notion of God, or the Universe, or whatever name you like best…if we knew, really knew, that we might get nothing at all, from our fervent believing.

He uses the analogy of the Christ as an example, would we choose abandonment, torture, death and defeat?  Would we have the courage, the will, the fortitude, the commitment to stand alone at the precipice of annihilation, for the sake of devotion and service to others? Would there be a line for that outcome?  Would we clamor to have that “large” a life?  Would we, could we, choose starvation and a bullet, as the Mahatma did?  Or Joan of Arc, or the early Christians, or…so very many other examples of faith pressured right to the edge.

You wouldn’t find me there.

I can barely handle being dismissed, overlooked, unappreciated, poor, and scared.

I cried at the dentist, something I have never before done.  I think, in large part because they, she and her staff, are so compassionate and kind hearted.  And I have felt so very betrayed by my most recent experience.

The Bible says that faith without works is dead.  Most folk would interpret that to mean that activity in the outer must be accomplished, that we should pray and “row the boat” as well.  No doubt that is the easiest interpretation, but it is also the most surface one.  I am not disputing that action is necessary, nor that we should not be rowing our boats.  I, for one, am taking every action I can think of to mitigate the problem I am facing.  But I can see clearly it is not nearly enough, or even the best of choices.

Most of the action I take, if I watch closely and listen carefully, I can hear the hum of anxiety behind it.  Which is why a kind hearted dentist, and the sound of her drill can bring me to tears.

Does rowing my boat, as fast as I can pedal because I am scared, really have any deep resonance to it?

I am reminded of Byron Katie asking, in the nine-day workshop I attended with her, “can we just follow simple instruction?”

She talked about doing only what she was told by the requirements of the moment.  Answering the phone because it was ringing, opening the first piece of mail on an otherwise mountain of paper, doing the dishes because they had become a pile in the sink.  Simple steps, done with full commitment…

After shedding a few tears, in a chair tipped so far back my head was lower than my feet, almost unable to swallow, and with enough gear in my mouth to sustain a small army in wartime…I realized that the moment called for a couple of very simple actions.  I must trust this kind dentist, and her equally kind staff.  I must keep my mouth open and continue breathing.  I must welcome (as all thoughts and emotions must be welcome for balance and equilibrium to return), but not indulge, thoughts that spoke of the sensation of drowning, and I must be willing, for the greater good of my mouth and health, to allow her to demonstrate her considerable expertise and professionalism.

Here then a much deeper view.

Action born of the conditioned minds desire for escape, is only mindless and debilitating flapping about.  It hurts rather than helps.  It damages rather than succeeds.  It is a methodology meant to soothe the wounded aspects of ourselves, rather than build the raw courage, that truly living calls for.

I am drawn to a Facebook “friend” that contributes a lot of dog videos, and thus I scroll through all the opinions and advice and so on, looking for the four legged contributors.  As I do so, I am often impacted by all the talk about light filled, joy producing, hopeful advice, and beliefs, and opinions.  It seems that a staggering amount of information that surfaces on Facebook is meant to herald the great and coming awakening.  Pictures and text that produce images, both actual and mental, that promise so very much well being and bliss, that you would think that the world is on the very edge of everlasting joyous jubilation.

I have come to the place that it sets my newly filled teeth on edge.

There is such a quality of force to it.  A marketed form of deep manipulation, that put to the slightest test, reveals itself to be millimeters deep…if even that…nothing more than a really good sales strategy and profit builder, aimed at the weak of heart and the timid of mind, a clever sales person selling the newest forms of self indulgence.

The belief that we know how it all works, and can sell that knowledge to others is the very worst form of self-indulgence.

And self-indulgence is the source, the root, and the wheelhouse of the sense of separate self.

I hesitate to share this next piece with you, but it too, factors into the vulnerability that I am speaking of and about…and somehow it is a part of the need to drop to a deeper level of Not Knowing, over the indulgences of “believing”.

Last night at three in the morning, I got up and turned on the computer, rather than continue to toss and turn.  Intending to play some solitaire, I first surfed Facebook for a sweet dog playing with a cute kid video.  Scrolling through all the advice and such, I saw a post that stated that it included a video of a Chinese man skinning an animal alive.  I watched a portion of it, I think, largely because I did not believe it could be true.  He first clubbed and then beat a raccoon on the ground, hard enough to daze it, not hard enough to kill it.  As he began pulling the skin from its still alive and conscious body, watching its leg dance, was almost more than could be born and of course, I quickly turned it off.

The image would not leave me, still won’t.  I crawled back into my bed and pulled my beloved red-haired dog up next to my chest, and pulled gently on his soft and sweet ears, as I stroked his head and wondered to myself how such a thing could be done to another sentient being.

All of the Teachers that I admire, counsel the need and requirement of acceptance of what is so, because it is so…  None of them sell the idea that all should be sweetness and light.  They would not run from such an image, and the fact that because it exists, somewhere in the world, and because I encountered it…it is now mine to accept.

It took me ages and ages to understand the difference between acceptance and agreement. 

There is nothing that could or would cause me to agree with animal abuse, but because it exists, I must come to terms with it and accept that there is a place for such a thing as this.

I find it equally difficult, at this time in my life, to agree with the vulnerability that I am experiencing…but I must accept it, if I am to receive its gifts.  One day, I will be so vulnerable that I will be facing the death of my body, and I do not wish to wait until then, to cultivate the courage that may see me through to the other side.

The image of this poor thrashing creature echoed in my mind as though it was a loved one.  And I turned toward it over and over, how could I accept such a thing as this?  And…how can I live so close to the knife’s edge, as I am now required to do?  How can I earn the right to a deeper perspective, if I cannot open myself to the demands that life serves up to me?

When I was young, I managed my fear with frequent trips to the altar… where I cried and begged the Christ to save me.  When I grew older, and until very recently, I indulged in glorious images of me as a successful and admired human being, to manage the dark nights and the long absences of true faith.

When George invited me to lay down those indulgences I practically had to pry my fingers from around the neck of the sweet idea that one day I would be enlightened, and thereby “saved”, to live in bliss for the remainder of my life.

My new Teacher is even more direct, with his counsel that all the stories of bliss and everlasting joy are the indulgences of a mind to frightened to be willing to tell itself the truth.

It has taken me a very long time to understand that the notions of peace and light are the cries of the immature and the unwilling, unable to face the fact that we are living a life of the conditioned mind’s need for playing hide and seek.

You probably imagine, at this point, that I am the world’s most hardened cynic, that I have no kindness in me, if I wish to take away the illusions of success, and bliss, and everlasting joy.  But I do not wish these things for others…but rather, only for myself.

Seeking the bliss and the joy and the success, is a path that most of the world has chosen.  It is a very handy little tool.  Seeking, or as I have been calling it, indulgence, is a kind of opiate that sells really well.  And I have bought more than my share of its sweet, and entirely empty of nutrition, calories.

But it will not garner me the courage I wish to take with me, at the end of my life.

I will turn 58 in a little over two weeks.  If I live as long as my Mother, then 19 years will be all that is still available, and it has taken me so very long, to find such a small thimble’s worth of courage, that I doubt I will have much in my harvest come the reaping.

I have become so painfully clear recently; about all the many ways I practice indulgence, rather than courage.  All the ways I turn away, rather than have the courage to turn toward.  Lord… it’s a long climb…

Again the image of that poor animal moves into my mind.  Hopefully it had some measure of chemical concoction moving through its brain to shut down some of the pain receptors, but like all animals, its only real choice was surrender and endurance.

And here is the really hard truth…

Our only real choice is surrender and endurance as well.  We are not unlike our furred brethren; no matter how much we indulge the notion of some control over our lives…it simply is not true.  But unlike our four legged fellows, we can use the circumstances that enter our lives to drive us deeper into indulgences, or to lift us to the higher realms of acceptance and surrender, and there upon be given the gifts of endurance, grace, and courage.  When these gifts enter the life of a human being, they end the reliance on the self-indulgent lie of separation, and produce the sparkling qualities of Nobility of Spirit, Chastity of Soul, and Courage of Heart.  And these people are a wonder to behold…

Ronni Miller

8/21/2012

Photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and NoSha NaQi to see more of this artist work please follow this link 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nosha-q8/4144817629/

One More Attempt To Tell The Truth…

I am, just now, so downcast that my body is actually pulling closer to the ground.  There are tears burning the back of my eyes and causing my jaws to feel like I am contemplating eating a lemon wedge.  My shoulders are curling a little more forward, and my heart feels sorrowful.

I had come up with an idea that I believed would set me on the path to creating financial salvation for myself.  I was moving boldly toward it, taking decisive action and preparing for a risk of monumental size.  A leap.  A leap that would free me from the total lack of financial safety, that has been my life, for more years than seems really fair.

And now…the venue that I was going to set up shop in, that I just knew would be the place where I could launch a financial turn around, using the talents I have developed over three decades, has a ten year waiting list…you-heard-me-right-ten-years…

Clunk.  And, full stop.

Once more, same tune different verse.  Even though I know that the sorrow and disappointment that I am feeling is interior based and has nothing to do with the information I have just received, and instead everything to do with how I am processing that information.  That “knowledge” does not seem to mitigate the twins from arriving.  The one who whispers fear, and the other who promises ruin.

Since being laid off this time, just after having completed the best work I have ever produced.  (Believe me when I tell you, that giving the best you are capable of, and having that met with an electronically delivered employment dismissal, is a shock of fairly substantial proportions.)  I put together in my mind’s eye, this small retail shop, in this astoundingly busy venue and not for a moment did I imagine that I could not get in.  The shear naïveté of that boggles the mind.  And the timing is not lost on me either…finding out about that, is the very first action I should have taken, rather than gearing up so much for something that turns out not to be possible.

Just yesterday, I wrote about not feeling sorry for myself…about not hiding from my own mind by slipping under the covers and fantasizing…and just now, that is the only thing I want to do.

I suspect they’re a hand full of folks alive on the planet at any given time that are actively telling the truth about life.  And I do mean a handful…

George, my beloved and now deceased teacher, was fond of attempting to get us to understand how very much we lie to ourselves, each other, and the world at large.  The Lie he said was the one unforgivable sin…the one choice that kills spirit, and loosens ones grip on reality.

And I am lying right this moment…

Let us look.  The truth is that I am sitting here, my fingers on my keyboard, comfortable from just having trimmed my nails, with my window air conditioner beating back the scorching Arizona sun, food is in my refrigerator, and my wee and furry companions are at my feet and breathing the breath of slumber.

In this moment, I am physically well and even cared for.  But my mind insists on commenting about how scary the future is, how little money I have, how little hope there is, how completely alone I am.

You will think me a bit of a monster for reporting what I am about to disclose…but…I am suddenly willing to risk everything.

I watched a YouTube video last night; it had been “shared” by someone who said that the viewing of it should include a box of Kleenex because, surely, tears would flow.

It showcased a young man, who reported himself to be 28.  He had been told a week or so earlier that the leukemia that he had been battling for ten years was no longer treatable.  That he would soon begin the process of dying, and that he was sitting down for the videotaping of his “last good bye”. 

I didn’t cry.

I am not saying that his conversation was not poignant, nor that his circumstance was not immediate.  I am only saying that it being honestly or accurately horribly unfair, was the type of lie that George tried so hard to get us to see.

If, and it seems it is so, that he is to die at 28, rather than the 88 I am sure he had hoped and prayed for…if that is to be, then it surely must be the will of the One.

We, the collective, since time immemorial… pray for what we want…when we should be praying to mold ourselves to accept the truth as it presents itself.  He is about to die.  I may come to the place where I cannot feed myself.

But here is the truth for both of us.  At this precise moment, he is, in all probability, alive and even relatively comfortable.  And I am certainly well fed.

We, both of us, are scaring ourselves only through the misuse of our minds.  He spoke at length about how scared he was, and I sat down at this computer because I was scared.  His circumstance is more probably going to happen than will mine.  The state will give me 200 dollars a month to feed myself, having tried it before, I know that 200 dollars doesn’t make it to the end of the month, but it could…if I were more conservative.  So my fear isn’t even real.  And as for the young man, he has no idea about what dying is, or what it might bring with it.  Perhaps he will feel so grateful that he was released from the prison of the flesh that he might metaphorically jump for Joy.  Perhaps he will discover that he is glad to be free once more.  Who is to say…but the real work is not in the outer world.  The real work is being capable of distinguishing the truth, from the lie.

I went to a group gathering a couple of nights ago.  It is a pleasant experience, a well cooked vegetarian dinner, followed by a video of Eckhart Tolle.  The price is paid in the “discussion” that follows the videos.  It is ostensibly a group participation, but in truth two or three of the older men use it as a platform to act out the fantasy of being a teacher and spiritual leader. (Something I am intimately familiar with…)  They discourse about their beliefs, providing opinion and statements of profundity, which they imagine are welcome and potent.  But what I hear is the same form of illusion that speaks through the voice of fear; only it is using the more clever disguise of positivity and certainty.  The same illusion which, in the beginning, drove these essays and my desire to be an “author”.

It seems most of us, and most assuredly myself, do not possess the strength of character necessary for the simple truth.

Listening to the older man pronounce us all “divine” and Beings of Light and Joy, had exactly the same effect on me, as listening to the young man speaking of dying.

That too, is a form of lying.

To counsel peace and joy, light and love, hope and dreams, is to deepen the trance…not awaken from it. I am not saying that joy and light and love and peace do not exist, far from it!  I am saying that discoursing about it with the intent and energy with which the older man spoke, is a form of self soothing, disguising itself as wonder and awe.  He tells himself, as I once did, that speaking in this manner serves others…when the truth is, that speaking in that manner, serves only the self made conceptual mind’s ability to keep us asleep and lost to the truth, which is always hiding behind the full vulnerability of the current moment.

We hide.  That is what we do.  We hide from the shear terror of the truth, that our lives are so fragile it cannot be born by the mind that was constructed out of our thoughts.  We are so vulnerable.  Soft. Ephemeral. Temporary.  A mist upon the breath, a mere hint of a moment of movement, a trembling quiver of energy lost amidst the galaxies.  We do not belong to ourselves, no matter how much we run from that truth.  We do not even truly exist…not in the manner our minds would have us believe.  We do not control anything, least of all our outcomes.

I am pretty sure we do not even control our thoughts.

As time has gone by and my mind has slowed down so very much, and is now capable of stopping altogether…I discover the most amazing thing.  A thought, (I hesitate to call them mine any longer), arises out of nowhere, like a cloud suddenly obscures the suns light and bringing the shadows of worry with it.  When a thought has no personal content to it, no emotional sensation of mineness attached… it merely surfaces like a dolphin breaking the surface of the sea.

I am not great at knowing that in the moment, but that is why I write it down.  So that I can see, for myself, the lie that is buried underneath the fear.  So that I can see, for myself, that I am believing something that is well outside the boundaries of actual reality.  Let’s revisit the urge that sat me down at this computer.  I got some information that my expectations and anticipations were not possible, that the hope I had pinned on my “solution” was in vain.  And that led to an emotional and body based sensation that nearly doubled me over with its weight and heft.  But let us check once more…am I starving in this moment?  No, I am not.  May I end up homeless and completely without resources?  That is entirely unknowable, and to labor under that fear is to lie to myself rather than to accept the truth that control over my life is not possible.

My current teacher, (yes I am aware that I said I was not going to talk about either of them – and yet, here I am), posits the notion that we cannot control any aspect of our lives.  George said that as well, in this form; “outer events are entirely karmicly delivered, inner experience is the only place where free will exists.”

My coach, a man I admire a great deal, supports the idea that we have “influence” over the direction of our lives.  Which is a way of saying that we do possess control.

So which is it…do we have some measure of control, or none whatsoever?

Am I in some way responsible for nearly thirty years of, almost to abject, poverty?  Have I done something wrong?  Missed a turn?  Spoke when I should have been silent?  Or silent when I should have spoken?  These are the types of answers the conditioned mind requires, and will gladly follow anyone who purports to have the answer.

The woman, for whom I was most recently working, told me on more than one occasion that she was “rescuing” me, by giving me a job.  I found that to be a bit offensive, given the profoundly positive change I produced to the appearance of her building…but I did not challenge her story of my neediness and her heroic action, mainly because it would not have done any good.

But I reflect back on it now, and realize that there is no one who can “rescue” another from the contents of their inner experience.

And so, I must join once more with the profound wisdom of my beloved Teacher.  Outer events are mine by virtue of my karmic load and accountabilities…inner experience and the wholesale freedom it can provide, can only be acquired by me, through my willingness to stand in the face of my own personal terrors.

Facing yourself, and not running through fantasy, busyness, goal acquisition, positive story telling, illusion, or just plain ole lying, I have found to be a bit like standing in the face of a gale force hurricane.  Everyone around you counsels that you run for safety, you personally would rather be anywhere, or anytime else…and yet, standing still is the only thing that will deliver true freedom, and even that… is not in our control.

I feel that I am getting closer to the time when the truth might find me, a little bit nearer to living with reality, rather than the distortions of my fears and anxieties…but who is to say? 

I suppose my reactions to the young man who is dying, and his assertions that it isn’t fair…and to the old man and his continuing need to feel important and special so that he too, may handle his fears about death and non-existence, is in some way a measure of the capacity to deal in truth rather than in lies.

The young man’s death, may turn out to be the best thing that has ever happened to him…and the old man’s “positive thinking”, may turn out to be the very worst choice he could be making.

Our conditioned minds are so very polluted with the illusions that were meant to stave off our existential fears, that we should not trust anything they have to say.  Or at least…that is my current commitment.

One more attempt to tell the truth rather than to soothe myself with a lie.

Right this moment; I am comfortable, fed, at ease, and alive…who is to say what will happen in the future?  That is not my business. 

My business is with this moment and uncovering the truth, rather than living with the lie…

Ronni Miller

Photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and rich wall – to see more of this artists work follow this link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richwall100/5786397319/

Better To Die With Your Blade In Your Hand…

It takes enormous courage for me to put one foot in front of the other, as I struggle toward this attempt to create an income stream.  It seems the list of things that must be accomplished grows exponentially each day, pushing the shore farther and farther away.

Tuesday I couldn’t get my camera to upload the pictures I need, to send to the auctioneer, who might consider buying my hand painted bedroom and dining room furniture.  I must get rid of these items, if I am to have the space in my house to go into production, and moving these heavy items by myself is not feasible.

So since the pictures would not load – I had to go to the Apple store, wait in line an hour, for them to show me something that took mere moments for them to fix.  Finally able to upload the pictures I lost an entire day of forward momentum, all because I do not understand my camera.

This morning, prepared to do battle with the upheaval that my house is now in, I opened my mail to find that the food stamps and unemployment that I am counting on to sustain me for at least the next six months, have been denied, because I didn’t get every form correctly processed.

I spent four hours waiting on hold, in three different phone calls to resolve the issue.

At every turn and in every way, I am invited to stumble and fall.

I compare my inner dialogue now, with even a year ago, and I find myself ever more capable of taking action without commentary or expectation.  But the seduction, for commentary and expectation are as potent and real as the breath that causes my chest to rise.

The desire to talk to myself about the potential for epic failure waits just beyond the capture of my peripheral vision.  It pauses, scents my anxiety, looking for a weak point, circling to see if there is blood in the water…and if I will give in, to the desire, to pull the covers up over my head.

At days end, if I have not been successful at continuous movement, then it catalogues my inactivity and whispers to me through the sane sounding voice of reason, while examining the probability of failure, due to how little I accomplished during the day.

Because I am alone with my mind, all day everyday, I am aware of its every nuance, its every subtle turn and its constant need for stimulation and attention.

It seems now, as though there is nothing in the world left to accomplish, save developing a working relationship to the mind I am the bearer of.  I still enjoy large time blocks of utter silence, but I have discovered that is not all that is called for.

The simple knowledge that I, and all others, are the not the chatter we hear in our minds is merely the threshold of wakefulness.  The first rung upon the ladder of escape…or perhaps not even that…perhaps it is only the first notable sense of direction, toward the first rung, on the first ladder, on the trip toward wakefulness.

This newest loss that was delivered with so little care, has awoken in me a type of negation.  A deeper bottom than has ever been felt before.

Oddly it brings to mind a scene from an otherwise completely forgettable film.  Our heroine has joined the Navy Seals and is expected to wash out of the program, as so many men have already done, while standing knee deep in mud and in pouring rain, the Staff Sergeant spits out this rage filled phrase…“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.  A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough, without ever once having felt sorry for itself.”

He is attempting to illuminate how useless feeling sorry for oneself is…how that only the human mind can even conceive of such a thing…how in the animal world the complication of feeling sorry for oneself is never even a potentiality.

I am coming into this kind of toughness.

I find in myself the willingness to simply move forward, no matter how frozen I feel, how alone I feel, or how scary are all the implications of the decisions I am making.

I can’t remember who said it, perhaps Thoreau or Emerson, but it goes something like this…boldness has genius and magic in it…

I don’t know…perhaps it does.  I only know that if I were a solider, I would know and understand the concept, that it is better to die with your blade in your hand and your boots on, than safely tucked in your bed.

More reports from the front soon…

Ronni

Photo courtesy of flickr photo and Rozanne Hakala to see more of this artist work please follow this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/40001315@N00/4045143898/

Faith is the Bridge...

“Faith is the bridge between where I am and the place God is taking me.” 

- Author Unknown

I am changing the focus of my essays, as they are needed now in ways that I could not have understood, when I began writing for the approval of others.  They will not be about my desire to understand, as currently understanding is quite low on my priority list.  They will not be about what I learned from my old teacher, or my new one.  They will be about the need to describe the bridge between “where I am and the place God is taking me”.

I have recently been laid off, again... 

My employer sent me an email offer to come in for a  “chat”; it had the tone and quality of a request for friendship, but instead it was to be a conversation about ending my employment and being laid off from her business. That chat never took place, as I was out of the office and unavailable when the request came in…so, much later that same day, I received an email that ended my employment and took with it my income stream.  And so, I am adrift again.  Pressured from all sides by poverty, and the need for the strength to face that poverty.

My feet feel like lead.  I am alone in new and much more provocative ways.

In days past, alone then as well, and even more frightened…I would soothe myself with images and internal visual movies, starring me as the returning hero.  Redemption, rescue, hope, help, the star of the show I envisioned all manner of positive outcomes.  What our culture calls, “following your dreams” and being “passionate” about your goals.

But now, older, wiser, more seasoned…I no longer rely on the capacity to visualize the future, as a means of dealing with the present.

Each day, I must rise and face myself anew.  I must discover within the will to tend to the days needs, while also feeling the anxiety that hums just below the surface, the quarter turn volume of the idea that the clock is ticking and time is running out on my capacity to feed myself, clothe myself, shelter and abide.

It is a reckless and potent choice I have made, to live in the face of my fears.  To honor the sorrow of the loss I have sustained, while deciding to cast my lot on one throw of the dice.

With the job market as bad, or worse, than it was the first time I was laid off, I have decided to shorten the trip to the cliff's edge by spending money I quite literally don’t have, to attempt a shot at the return to self-employment.

I did not succeed, financially at least, at being self employed the first 15 years I tried it.  I could attempt to parse out the reason…but why bother?  That is not what these pages are for.

If I am to be entirely alone, if I am to stand on the very precipice of the edge of a financial cliff…I might as well sing…

I have above my computer, a quote from a friend.  It is written next to a dancing woman drawn with such exuberance that she has six feet and four arms, to show the movement of her dance and the excitement of her joy.  The quote reads: 

She spoke in exclamations…now that she had found her voice.

I hope to move from the place of sorrow and anxiety that now populates my experience, to the one depicted by my many limbed and joyful dancer.

I intend to write about that journey, for my sake and mine alone…if it serves you to journey with me, I welcome the company.  If not, God Speed and Be Well.

Yours Truly,

Ronni

A Follow Up Conversation…

My friend and I anticipating a huge crowd arrived at my Beloved Teacher’s memorial, so early, no one else had even arrived at the building.  It is one of her passions to be early…we attended the last class my Teacher was able to be present for together, she was my “buddy” and we arrived very early for every break and every start time.  We remain close although we do not speak or see each other more than every year and a half, or so.  (She finds she is to busy for more.)

It was lovely to sit and talk with her about George, to reminisce and discover more deeply a shared experience of him.

When the service began it was more of what we had already shared, folk from far and wide, SRO in the “blue room”, describing the indescribable.  A man with so much humility, service, nobility, caring, and kindness that those who surrounded him for more than 30 years, had such a similar story to tell it might have been a zerox copy one to the other.

Some were more articulate than the next, more polished than another, funny or charming…but they all said almost the exact same thing.  “I watched/interacted with him for 30 (25, 28, 26, 24) years, he was unfailing committed, kind, potent, capable, giving… he changed my life, saved my life, purified my life.”

I marveled at the consistency of such a wide array of people, such a similar experience, such a shared understanding.

I realize the reason we all saw the same thing, felt the same thing, benefited from the same result, was and is, the total authenticity of the man.

Someone spoke of how he had once, two decades ago, succumb to considerable pressure and charged for an Omega training…it lasted one time, and was so disturbing to George he quit it forever.  I have always felt that he didn’t charge for three primary reasons, the first so that no one would be turned away because they could not afford the entrance price, the second so that we the graduate base, would need to shoulder the financial responsibilities as the program grew beyond his capacity to pay for it, and most importantly, so that the only relationship we would never share with him, was one of being his customer.

When a teacher’s financial well being is tied to a student’s expectations, there develops an almost inescapable need for the teacher to be “popular” or wanted and needed by that student.  And then, subtly or overtly, the teacher becomes incapable of providing the shocks that are so necessary to rid another of the trap of illusions.

I have met a good many folk who fancy themselves a spiritual teacher, myself included in that number, and it has only been in the last few weeks that I have come to see the shear hubris in such a desire.

I, and the great many others who I have witnessed, who desire such a place in another’s life are almost all frauds of one type or another.

A true teacher is not someone who comes to the position under the steam of their own desire, but rather one who is called to it by the students who gravitate toward them.  A true teacher will, if the student is ready, support that student in Awakening to the context of their mind…rather than its content.

So many who wish to be seen as a leader, a healer, a knower, a gifted one, are using their gifts in a deeply unconscious collusion with the waking sleep that is the condition of the common man.

To share with another the woe of their childhood harm, to reflect back to them an agreement that life should have been different/better/kinder is to trap them within the contents of a mind lost in a deep quagmire of how “it should have been”. 

It is not possible in the relative to disagree with the concept that children should not be beaten, raped, or abused.  But in the Absolute… it cannot be argued with.  For if it did happen, then it most assuredly should have happened, and now our only hope is to bring ourselves into alignment with the “What Is” of our past.  The other form of collusion that most teachers practice, is in the arena of wish fulfillment…the hope for a better/brighter/more wonderful tomorrow, here and in this manner, we are trapped in the illusion that somewhere else, sometime else, someplace else, life will bloom.  We will find our bliss, our peace, our home…a teacher colludes with illusion, each and every time they bless a notion that “the future is better than the here and now”.

We search and seek for the teacher, who sells the one-two-three formula, which will rid us of the very necessary pain of maturing beyond the childish notion that life is anything other than the current moment.

My Beloved Teacher never once engaged in such collusions with the waking sleep, that is normal and nominal consciousness.  He strode with all his considerable and authentic power, into the deep center of all our illusions and with his piercing blue gaze, required that we see the lie at the center of the notion that it “should have” been one iota different than it was, or that it “could be” one iota different than it is.

Here is the kernel of why we came together to celebrate his most amazing lifetime.  To shake our heads in amazement, and wonder aloud, at the power of his will to live and embody the Truth.

I have over time told you of the many ways in which I witnessed his remarkable lack of resistance, his constant willingness to allow himself to be taken to exactly the location that life required of him.  The time a sound so horrible pierced us all, and slipped through him like a whisper, the time he froze in mid motion attempting to turn a piece of paper over, and finally giving into our need for his being capable of continuing the lesson, and thus speaking aloud that he “had lost the battle with the page”.  He spoke that phrase and received the help he needed to continue to turn that page, not because he was uncomfortable, but rather because we needed his service.

His last audible sentence was…”do not stop improving”.

His only aim was to teach us how to die.  Die to the self, the content of our minds, that have convinced us we are some singular someone.  Die to the desires that populate our self-serving hopes.  Die to the illusion that we are somehow greater than any of the other expressions of life.  Die to the notion that we are important, or great, or necessary, or worthy of something other, than the Great What Is.  Die to our deep need for approval, applause, appearances, and the many ways in which we keep ourselves in the bondage of wanting it other than the way it is.

I have come to see how bad it would have been for me to get the dreams I had dreamed.  How much more lost I would have been, how much more poorly I would have been served.

I have come to see how tirelessly he served us.  How patient he was with the nonsense we brought to him, and the many ways we lied to ourselves.  I have come to see the great Emptiness he embodied, and the power to serve that it provided him with.

I have come, finally, by being his student…to want only what life wants for me, so that when my head is lain down for the last time, I can lay claim to some small portion of true service, and not the empty wishes of the contents of my conditioned mind.

Adayre R. Miller

7/4/2012

“Replace Yourself” - George Addair

I cried most of the day yesterday, and I am worn out by it.  I am, in some ways surprised by my reaction and its intensity, after all, those last two minutes at his eightieth birthday party – I knew beyond doubt, would be the last time I would ever see him.

In point of fact, I knew that the email I received yesterday announcing his death, would be the next communication regarding him that I would receive.  So surprise should not have been a factor in the grief that I feel, but it was and is, and I am allowing it to wash through me as it comes, in small waves of sadness.

I arrived at Omega, the teaching group he founded, about two years after its inception.  My heart was broken by the faith I had placed in “success” and the utter emptiness, I had discovered hiding underneath such a nonsensical term.  I had made more money that last year than my father had made in his entire career, I had driven a Mercedes convertible around town – even if it wasn’t mine – and had clearly seen how little those reactions I had expected, and occasionally received, did to help me run from the suffering that was a daily companion.  I even had a tiny brush with fame, I was the operations head of a recall campaign to oust the Governor of Arizona, Evan Mecham, and was on the news several times over a brief few months, and that too, showed itself as nonsense.  (Although it took me longer to get out from underneath that particular illusion.)

Perhaps one of my very few gifts is the clarity I possess, to see very quickly, the delusion in the offerings the culture assures us will be our salvation.  I am not one of those people who believes that if a Mercedes will not make me feel wealthy and desirable, then I must need to step up to a Rolls.  When I climbed the ladder of “success”, what I discovered, was that it was leaning against the wrong damn building.

And just as I had become entirely disillusioned with every single aspect of our cultures sales pitch, and my suffering had ratcheted up to my sitting on my bed holding a gun to my head most nights…

I found myself at Omega…with George.

From the very first moment, I could feel his sanity.  It was like the weight of a tool in my hand, or the feel of summer humidity in a southern coastal town.  It had presence, heft, weight, volume, and light…light, by which to see the truth even if I could not experience it for myself, I knew that he did…and in the beginning that was enough for me.

His workshops were almost entirely experiential.  He had the most amazing gift for bypassing the conditioned mind, and putting your heart in the direct path of an experience of facing your fear, or learning about the effects of cruelty.  Not as a concept, but rather as a direct, lived, experience.

By comparison, all the teachers who crowd the marketplace with their conceptual “technologies”, the seven habits of this and the path to manifestation of that, cannot even get my attention, much less move me to some deeper place of Awareness.

He knew then, and I know now…that adding additional conceptual notions, to an already over crowed and conditioned mind, will do nothing to support a person in approaching, experiencing, and gaining, sustainable freedom for themselves.

I am not saying that a good cathartic cry in the midst of kind hearted individuals does not provide some relief, as I know that it can and does…but it will not provide sustainable freedom, as it merely replaces one habitual need for another.  Sort of like giving methadone to heroin addicts, a place to shed some tears can loosen the grip of suffering but it can never resolve the suffering itself.  For that to happen, a stripping away must begin in earnest.  A “dying” so that you may live says the Bible, a complete and utter wasting away of all that you “believe” in, is the only open doorway through which the Unknowable can enter.

I began that stripping away with him.  I am sure there is not a person on the planet that I could have done that with, other than him…

The greatest damage I sustained from my pedophile uncle, and my raging mother was not the loss of my fertility due to the damage to my reproductive organs, or the nightly battle with horrific nightmares, or the daily drops into deep depressions.  It was the complete and utter, loss of trust.

I came into adulthood with no trust whatsoever.  It manifested as panic attacks, anxiety disorders, deep delusional fantasies, a near total rejection of the present moment, of the need for process and development, and a driving debilitating urge to be anywhere, any time, save the present.

Lost doesn’t begin to describe the nature of my internal experience.  Hopeless, helpless, stricken, broken, fractured, empty, wounded, drowning, sorrowful…I could go on, and on, and on.

And into this horrific darkness, stepped a small man with a Stillness the like of which I had never before experienced.

Over many multiple weekends, over nearly three decades, I watched him for some fault line, for some crack in the truth my heart knew, but my brain could not accept.

Is he real?  Can I trust him?  Will he fail me?  He is.  I could.  And he never, ever did…

Now I know that his Stillness came from the Universal, deeply buried within each of us, and from the truth that he had fully embodied… which is that all suffering is illusion, and can be stepped cleanly out of at any moment in time.

Despite the suffering that I, and others, routinely brought into the classroom there was not a single time that he demonstrated, in response to that suffering, any thing other than total Stillness.  He did not commiserate, provide a solution, attempt to fix, soften, or tweak it.  He merely sat, quietly, and listened.  When the story had spun itself out, he would provide an insight that could literally cause you to internally collapse with the shock of it…but otherwise, he was merely Still and Quiet, in the face of what often appeared to be immeasurable suffering.

Having seen entirely through his own suffering, and the many ways he manufactured it, he knew that we were all suffering only by our own hand…and nothing but our hand, could free us.

Over time, I began to trust him with such simple and complete dedication that it became an unshakeable constant in a life of near total turmoil.  It was the one thing that I knew would never change, and brick by brick; I rebuilt my life upon that trust.

Now I know, that what I was trusting, was not George specifically, but rather, the Universal aspect of the very nature of existence, which poured forth from him like water from a tap.  He once provided a lesson that led me to believe that he had trusted his teacher, in the same way and manner that I trusted him.  So I am, I suppose, a part of some ancestral lineage…going back who knows how long, and to who knows what, original source…each of us one thin page, in a book to voluminous to even contemplate.

I find now, that trust I saw in him, is a deeply felt and consistent aspect of my continuing sojourn.  I never lose it for long, and only when I am back in the personal, deeply engaged in wanting life to be other than it is appearing, just now in this tiny moment.

It built my business, and funds my current moment-by-moment experience.

I didn’t want my painting and design business.  Looking back, I realize that it was the active arm of the inspirational guidance that George had provided me with.

When it came and took me, all I could focus on was my desire to be a famous and rich, spiritual-rock-star-teacher, an affliction shared by a good many people – I might just mention – and one it took me a great many years to overcome.  (I mean no disrespect by sharing this tiny moment with you, but I encounter a good many people who share this same fantasy, and recently, a woman who was to speak at a Friday night event held at the school I work at, actually arrived with a tiny entourage.  Well within the halls of the building, she and her assistant were both wearing large dark sunglasses, and dressed in nearly matching black outfits, striding toward their destiny of being “special”, as though the paparazzi were about to jump from the non-existent shrubbery to steal a photograph of the angel whisperer.  It made me alternately amused by her great need, and saddened by her deep illusions.)  

So, as you might imagine, standing on a ladder all-day, silent and alone, was not my idea of the “right” use of my time, and I alternately resisted it, and resented it.  (One of the reasons I could not bear to “succeed” at it.)  But oddly, I suppose, I did exceptionally good work when I was called to it, and committed myself to it utterly.

What the work required of me more than any other thing, was complete trust in the unfolding process.  I never knew before hand any more than the very next step, which made working for people who need to control the outcome, a form of torture, and one that I was mostly spared.

I realize now, that the path George had sat my feet upon, which he might have called “trust only in the immanent arising moment, and look no further” was a thing that my work was requiring of me to become an expert in.  In the beginning I would stand on my ladder in desperate fear, worried that the action I was taking would result in disaster, only to be rewarded with the next right step the moment the need arrived.

George had a saying for it…”you will know what you need to know, the moment you need to know it, and not one moment sooner.”  It is a bold and daring way to live, and I spent twenty years working it into my muscle and sinew, and now I can even do my work when trust is entirely absent.

I know that I am rambling a bit, and you are kind to journey with me…if indeed you have come this far.  But this is my form of memorial service.  I will go on Tuesday, with my buddy, from the last Omega workshop we, she and I, and he attended.  I will sit with her, in front of his body, and we will weep together.  I will see some of the many faces that I have known over the years, in that room with the shockingly bright blue carpet, out of the – at last report – 32,000 people who have been exposed to his teachings.  We will formally say our goodbyes, in the company of one another, and I will mark his passing…but these essays I am writing are my real memorials.  And you are so kind to join me in it.

Perhaps everyone has some form of this type of relationship.  A schoolteacher, a neighbor, a stranger who changes the very fabric of your being.  Or perhaps it is entirely rare, and that is why people came from every corner of the globe to sit with him, to work with him.  He took a small measure of pride, the only pride I every saw him display, in the fact that Omega had never been marketed in any way whatsoever.  Yes, there was a simple and unsophisticated brochure, and later a website, but none did anything more than hand one out when it was requested.  And yet, workshop after workshop, (in the many months that I worked as a volunteer), we would play our ice breaker game of who came the shortest or farthest distance to be there, and we would always have someone from Europe or Asia, it was a marvel to me then…and now…32,000 folk and counting.

So I guess I will end this portion of my memorial with one of his many, short aphorisms.

“You must leave home.  You must discover your own truth.  You must replace yourself.”  - George Addair

I have always understood this to mean…you must leave behind the “home” of all that you were taught to believe in, and strike out naked and alone into the deep wildness of the unknown, you must discover there your own deep interior, where all streams meet and join the vast and unknowable ocean of experience, and finally you must replace your self.  Like the apple, which is the source not of food, but rather a carrier for “appleness” itself.  I am one tiny measurement of George having “replaced” himself, so that Stillness – however flawed I might still be at it – may continue on into the world, washing to unknown shores and bringing light to unknown darknesses.

To be Still is to know yourself, and your true nature, for the very first time.  There is nothing else but this Stilllness, and paradoxically…it is the only Movement possible.

In Loving Memoriam,

George Addair 1931 – 2012

Ronni Miller

6/30/12

The Things I Wish I Could Tell Him....

I don’t know how long that list would be.  Could it last the rest of my lifetime?  Those things I would tell him…

The things I would say that only he would truly understand.

My Beloved Teacher is dead. 

I am glad for him; I know that he has been released back into the freedom he so elegantly embodied.  But my body is grieving in a way that I did not grieve for either of my parents, whom I loved, but not in the way I love him.

I would start by saying that I have matured enough to know, in the depths of my heart, that my spiritual evolution has not been about me, or about my getting somewhere, or getting something I want, or need, or desire.  That I am finally in touch with the soft ordinariness that comes from the recognition, that my Awakening is not about my getting some form of approval or applause, and that it is not even about my getting some measure of relief from the life threatening suffering that led me to his doorstep.

My Awakening, such as it is – humble as it is, is not even fundamentally, or essentially, mine.

Whatever measure of clarity, honesty, and truthfulness that he made possible for me, by his life long service, now rests safely in my heart, but is not truly mine, in any way at all. 

I cannot begin to imagine the patience it must have taken to sit with me, and to give so selflessly to me, when I was buried in such a deep state of self-absorption.

He tried in so many ways to help us to see our selfish drives, our deep neediness, our broken, fractured, and conditioned views.  Once he spoke about an apple.  Red, firm, sweet…he talked about how we imagine the apple is there for our use and consumption, to meet our needs for nutrition, comfort, and desire fulfillment.

Try he said, to imagine the apple is not there for us…but rather, for the use of its species.  That the apple, however tasty and delicious we might experience it to be, is specifically designed so that the seeds of its species might travel into the ever unfolding Now, for the purpose of keeping “appleness” alive on the planet.

That Apples, and People, and Planets, and Dewdrops…are all an interconnected web of Oneness, and that “we” are not special, merely because we cognize and can speak.  And more, to view us as the pinnacle of creation is a misinterpretation of the vastness of the Creative pulse.  We are a single note, in a glorious symphony, to vast for us to even comprehend, and we would serve others and ourselves so much more effectively, if we can mature to the point of knowing this simple truth.

Here in this apple allegory is the deep blindness that I suffered from, that we suffer from, the same blindness that causes all the suffering that has ever been, or will ever be…the blindness of wanting life to be about us, about our desires, our needs, our wishes, our hopes and aspirations.

I would say to him, if I could, “George, I understand so much more now, that your investment did not fall on fallow ground, that your help and guidance and grace, will echo in my heart until my last breath…”

I finally can feel, deep in my heart, that my life is not for, or even about, me.  That I am useful and valuable only to the degree that I can break free from the selfishness of desire, and transcend the harm that I cause when I use my gifts for the purpose of satisfying impulsive wishes and wants.

I would say, certainly, “I love you, and deeply so.”

But, so much more importantly, “I trust you in a manner that cannot be defined.”

In the years that I was still attempting to hide behind pretense and artifice, still trying to become someone important, someone special, even as I would sit in front of him and burn with the shame and embarrassment of the recognition that he knew, and could deeply see, my pathetic screen of artificiality…even then…I trusted him completely.

Sometimes I could not lift my eyes to look into his, I came to a place that I would no longer speak in his presence, no longer ask the question that was unconsciously designed to make me seem knowledgeable and impressive…because he always knew the rabid nature of my neediness, and he never one time shielded me from that knowledge.

His was a hard grace, a knowing grace, and a grace of depth, breadth, and potency.  I could never successfully hide from him, and in truth, I probably did not really want to.

I came to him to learn to see. 

Not in that way that selects only the sights we prefer, or the ones that reflect us in a favorable light.  But rather, to well and truly see…to see without opinion, without grasping, without hope, without need, without desire.

Almost all of my best memories include him, or some measure of his influence. 

When my mother set us both forever free, by telling me of her brothers sexually molesting her, of her father’s wild rages…it was George… who had helped me to craft myself into a person, who could tolerate the transformation from her “innocent” victim, into her warrior forgiver and thereby, to become capable of loving her without conditions or expectations for the remainder of her life.  It was he, who gave me the foundation to open to my mother’s childhood, and allow it to require of me bone deep forgiveness for her, for us, for who we were together.

It was George who made it possible for me to end my need for self-flagellation and self-harm.  I can’t recall the last time I was truly critical of myself, not in that self-hating destructive way I was so deeply addicted to.

It was George, and his influence, that made it possible for me to save myself from myself.  He is the reason that I can glimpse the world of the Impersonal Self.

There is no contribution, now or in the future, that I might possibly make, that will not be a direct descendent of his all encompassing selfless grace and generosity.

I weep, this long sad day…not for him…but, selfishly, because he is no longer breathing the same air I breathe, and that I will never again be able to tell him of the gratitude that I carry in the very cells of my body, for having been gifted with the opportunity to meet him these three decades gone.

He told me, often, that I only saw his light, because I was capable of seeing it, that I was as much responsible for the depth of my salvation as he was.  And I have known for a very long time that the volume of my gratitude was a type of burden for him, but even so, he shouldered that burden with as much grace as he did every other need, his thousands of students brought to lie at his feet, over these last three decades.

I feel blessed to have known such a Being.

Blessed to have seen a one such as he, blessed to have not been lost to the pseudo teachers who promise wealth, ease, fame, and greatness, blessed to have been required, by him, to end my dependency on the world around me, and Awaken, instead, to the world within me.

He has helped me to balance my books, to become accountable, to enter adulthood, to have the potential to rise above the inherent selfishness of the conditioned mind.

To have someone freely give you the instruction, by which you might one day find your freedom, to ask nothing in return save honesty, commitment, and integrity, is in some ways too large a gift.  And I am ashamed and humbled, that I have not paid it forward in some more demonstrable way.

The last time I saw him, I was allowed two minutes to sit with him.  I looked at his impossibly shiny white hair, into his cerulean blue eyes, and touched, softly, with the tip of my index finger his nearly transparent skin on the arm above his hand…and I said, just one more time…”thank you, and thank you”…and….”I love you.” 

It will have to be enough, that last opportunity to thank him…it will have to last me… until I too, am released from this form into the Formlessness, from which, he had long ago begun living out of and teaching from.

I wish somehow to share him with you; I hope that is what I have done.

In Grief and Gratitude,

Rhonda Darlene Miller (Ronni)

6/29/12