The Waiting Is Over, I Am Gone From This Place…

I have entered an entirely new realm of being, a place I have never been before, a place that makes me – in equal measure, uncom-fortable and pleased – an odd combination to be sure.

I didn’t even know what it was until I spoke with an old and very wise friend, and in attempting to tell him the feel and texture of this new place…I stumbled, literally fell over, the awareness of what has changed so dramatically.

I have stopped waiting.

After such a build up, you may be thinking…”girlfriend, that doesn’t seem like to big a deal to me.” I submit you may not fully grasp the reach, of such a potent change.

We are, all of us, waiting for something. When we are young we wait for summer, or prom, or the car keys, or that first date night kiss. When we get a bit older, we wait to get out of college, or to find prince charming, or the mother of our children. At some point we start to wait for some understanding to bloom, some method by which we can find ourselves, some form of help, some source of well being, some-one-thing-place-event or experience, to give meaning and purpose to lives, long surrendered, to the sad awareness that the outer realms with all their apparent glow have nothing of any real value to provide us.

We can, and do, wait for love, or hope, or peace, or comfort, all the days of our lives - unaware of how much damage and loss the waiting produces in our minds, and in our spirits.

Waiting is a form of evasion, a very effective, potent, and captivating one. It calls on us to “hold onto our dreams”, to “make a plan and set a goal”, to “believe”, and to “seek” but never to find.

Waiting is the illusion of a future, in which the conflicts of the present are resolved and we find ourselves in a “heaven” with no impact of the demands and difficulties, that are inherent in living in a mind created and formed from the duality that seems to exist everywhere we look.

To end waiting is to liberate the mind from the pull of the fantasy of a “better tomorrow”.

I am not suggesting that it is easy or even smooth; in fact I am experiencing what I would define as a form of grief. I feel a kind of loss and a type of drain from the end of waiting, but I have chosen freedom over illusion and I made that choice so long ago it can no longer even be recalled from memory.

Recently a conflict brewed up in my workplace, a conflict involving a coworker and me. It had all the just right components, he attacked me for not making his job easier, he blamed me for not helping him in just the right way, at just the right time…etc. and so on. It boiled over and produced a great deal of impact; both my bosses took the opportunity to tell me where and how, and in exactly the specific form in which I am disappointing them. One accused me of not being interested enough in heating and cooling, the other defined me as a perfectionist, and too black and white. From every corner and in many different ways, I was treated to the understanding that I am not measuring up.

And of course, they closed ranks around the other man – as men often do, and he was treated to commiseration because I did not serve him well enough.

In the midst of all this righting and wronging, all this blame and finger pointing, all this conflict and disturbance. I found the where-with-all to remember that nothing can take root in my mind and heart, until and unless, I allow it to.

Inside it was like watching a ping-pong match. My conditioned egoic, “sense of separate self” mind, would begin a type of singing…a lyrical way of describing the conflict in ways that painted me as entirely right. Things along this line…”the misinformation was right there on the appointment sheet – the address and map they provided didn’t match. I found my way to the appointment, corrected the mistake, took the necessary action to discover there was a problem and fixed it for myself. Why am I responsible for the fact that he didn’t do the same? Why am I to blame because he does his job poorly?” And so on, and so forth.

These lobs over the net were strong, fierce, addictive, oddly pleasurable, and deeply effective, the aim true, the follow thru powerful…and yet, from the other side of the net came a clear, soft, whisper.

When I could listen, it said things like this…”this is why my Teacher always counseled that the things we don’t like, that disturb us, that we don’t want, are our greatest opportunities.” And…”you can transcend this if you choose, there is no reason to take this personally, to experience this in any other way than as the observer. It is possible to step away from this conflict provided you are willing to give up the position of being ‘right’ in favor of being well, and whole.” And most importantly came the gentle reminder that while I was choosing to be “right”, I was living in the lie rather than honoring the What Is truth, and so, listening carefully enough, I could hear that as well. And it sounded like this…”my co-worker has an opinion that differs from my own. My bosses appear to agree with him. Neither of these appearances say anything at all about me, the inside me.”

The best though, came when I began to unravel the dire circumstances that the egoic mind brought forward by the bushel barrel full. It said things like, “your boss hasn’t called you back for the last three messages you left him, they are punishing you for not doing what they all agreed was the right thing to do”, or, “you are going to lose this job, and you must keep this job because of the need to refinance the house”, things of that type bubbled up to the surface in mighty waves of frothy, slimy, overkill. And still the small whisper, made its way to my inner ear…

“You are telling yourself lies about a future that does not exist, and a trouble that is only in your own mind. You are scaring yourself because you still want to be liked and included and valued, things that can only truly come from inside. You are wanting, from others, what can only be had by coming to the deep interior…by rediscovering the sanity, that sits with great stillness, beneath the dancing surface… waiting for you to turn your attention away from the outer and toward the depth of Being.

Listening to the lie, attempting to prove its rightness is the only sin that has ever existed, or will ever exist. It is the only hell that is possible, the only harm that can ever come your way, and the only way you can lose, is in its unconscious embrace. Turn away from the siren call, turn your attention to unraveling the mind with which you learned to become a victim, and set yourself free forever.”

I have come, finally, to see that there is no need to wait for some better circumstance, some better life, some better experience. That the very best that can be, or has ever been, offered any human being is waiting for me with open arms. The choice to live in sanity, rather than the hell of right and wrong, has at some point in the last one, three, five (?) years become available to me. (Am I capable of always choosing the sane thing? No I am not. But now, finally, the choice is at least available to me).

Some how and in some way, my Teacher’s great wisdom is becoming mine…to live wholly inside oneself, to give up the need to be right, to stop having “opinions” about how the world “should” work and instead, interacting honestly and truthfully with how the world actually is. To never expect more than what is directly in front of me, to end my searching so that I might discover what has been underneath my heart and within my grasp, all the long days of my life, to liberate myself from the bondage and horror of the conditioned mind…these are the things, worth living for…and they can be found every minute of every day, and in every circumstance in which we find ourselves, nothing needs to be added or subtracted from the life we are all leading at this very moment, for liberation to be ours.

I have very nearly succeeded in ridding my mind and heart of the hope, wish, and expectancy of a better tomorrow. I have almost reached the place where I am willing to live in the truth, rather than the fantasy of a heaven somewhere off in the clear blue future. I am almost an adult, with the strengths, capacities, abilities, potency, power, honor and humility that adulthood brings with it. I am almost beyond the sticky reach of things like approval, and fun, and pleasure, and gratification. (No, there is nothing “wrong” with these things, it is that they provide no real value. You and I do not take any gains away from the illusory difference between the pleasurable and the painful sides of the same coin, and we can and do, very often turn “pleasures” into additions.)

I can no longer recall the author of this quote, but I leave you with his/her, sane and reasoned words…”Each of us must choose between two ways of facing life: We must (1) live in direct, spontaneous contact with the emerging now, or (2) live fearfully on the deferred payment plan as an alien from reality in a world of wishful thinking, ideal expectancy, and endless searching.”

To wish, to have idealized expectations (hope), to endlessly search…is the wheelhouse of the egoic, conditioned mind…it is a hamster wheel cage, from which there is no release, no respite, no reprieve, and worst of all no authentic power, a long and painful childhood that ends in defeat, despair, and eventually physical death.

The Course in Miracles defines the ego in this manner, “The ego’s dictum is to seek, but never to find”, to seek but not find is the very foundation of the waiting place. To end waiting is to end the desire to be released from the truth of the current moment, to end resistance and come to find the beauty and value of acceptance.

Adayre R. Miller

5/29/11

photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Kevin Bond, to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link… www.flickr.com/photos/bondomania/482223348/

In The Middle Nothing Stays…

Not long ago, I stopped at a convenience store to supply myself with directions and snacks. I pulled up to the shaded side of the building hoping to spare myself some of the blinding heat drowning the store in its embrace, and noticed an elderly homeless man making himself busy searching for cigarette butts in the sanded trash receptacle located just beside the door. He combed through the offerings found there, with the practiced patience of a man used to sifting the leavings of others, to meet his simple needs.

He was thin to the point of painfulness, not an ounce of spare flesh hung from his bones or crept out over the lip of his belt. His arm muscles exposed to view in his dirty t-shirt, roped and attached to his bones like small snakes curling around the long bone in his upper arm and roping his forearm with such sharpness, that he seemed somehow unclothed, compared to the ample flesh of those coming and going through his world like the shades, we no doubt were, flowing around and past him, like water around an obstruction in a stream. To say that he was dirty does not at all describe the layers of soil and the gray sheen that covered him from head to toe. His clothes carried the encroaching layering of dirt as though it were especially dedicated to ending the patches of white that, here and there, stubbornly clung to the fibers out of which it was once spun.

He wore an old baseball cap to shield his eyes from the glaring sun, his head bent to it's task of sifting and sorting, and the brim of his cap making his world a visually circumspect one. I doubt he would have seen me, even if he had been aware of my presence, which there seemed little evidence of. After he had found all the cigarette fragments of an acceptable length, he went to the dead middle of the first parking place in the shade, directly beside my car, and knees bent he sat on his spare haunches and began to sort through a stack of pennies.

There were perhaps 40 of them in all, and he made and remade stacks of them, like poker chips on green felt. He shifted them from one size of stack to another, and from one location to another, in the same manner as black jack players I have seen at tables in Las Vegas. A kind of restless and hypnotic, kinetic energy expressing itself in the placing and replacing of small towers of rounded and compartmentalized copper objects. His attention never waivered, he never looked up, and he seemed entirely unaware that he was occupying an entire car parking spot in a busy and bustling environment.

I was attacked to, and repelled by, his concentrated focus and the magic it surrounded him with, making all but his own thoughts utterly invisible to him.

Later that same week, I stopped in Whole Foods – my favorite lunch spot – and encountered a homeless woman, also completely lost in her interior reaches, and yet there were some striking differences.

She too, wore clothes covered in the same gray film, evidence of weeks or perhaps months of absence from any form of laundering. Unusually, she wore layers and layers of clothing, here in our sun drenched climate a pair of shorts and a t-shirt is all most people can endure as the thermometer climbs well into the triple digits, for many months each year.

With temperatures already over a hundred, she had on socks and tennis shoes, with slim pants beneath a floor length skirt and a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over her head, a shirt atop that…and gloves, one cotton and one plastic. Her gloves were of especial interest to me, I felt they were more about protection of some sort, rather than for the added warmth they might bring, despite the fact that they too, were grimy gray and ragged from use. I have always thought of the homeless as being underfed, (she too, was painfully thin), and yet she sat before a banquet of such rich diversity that it was somewhat surprising to me. Every type of food was represented, dairy, fruit, meat, pasta’s, grains, deserts… they were spread out upon her table in staggering volume, bound in plastic and resting jumbled one upon the next, in a veritable cornucopia of edible possibility.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that they looked inviting… some of it I would have worried, quite rightly, about salmonella issues as there is no way she could be providing the proper cold storage for her many food items, and even the breads will grow molds and become unpalatable in very short order, in the temperatures to which our city is exposed.

So my first observation was that hunger is something she is not plagued by, despite her thinness, at least on this particular day. (I have encountered her at Whole Foods on two other occasions, and each time, this day included, someone from the lunch crowd approached her and asked if they could buy her some lunch…and thus her basic survival is not in question).

I sat behind her and to the right of her, fascinated by her presence and by the expression of her interior process. Unlike the homeless man who seemed entirely beyond the pale, completely unaware of anything at all, she was quite actively engaged in an inner dialogue.

As each new “functioning” member of society entered the lunchroom, all were affected by her presence. Some stared quite openly, as though she could not know that she was being ogled, some cut quick glances her way, and one woman stopped her advance into the area and retreated back the way she had come, with a look of disgust written large upon her features…

All of us could feel her presence, and unlike the members of our collective humanity who seem to glow from within, and drag our attention their way because they are beautiful, graceful, or exquisite in some way…she compelled attention for exactly the opposite reason. Her quiet, self-contained demeanor, her unpacked and on display possessions, and her layers of dirt all spoke to a supposed misery, that may well have been our collective projections.

She, in fact, had more than she needed, some form of shelter was provided somewhere, clothes were available and food was plentiful…and yet, you could feel the impact she had on each of the room’s other lunch customers. A kind of…”there but by the Grace of God, go I” kind of self crossing and fearful pulling away, from one so different than all the rest of us.

Sitting behind her, and fascinated with her experience, I both watched her and didn’t. She spoke softly to herself, and ate quietly, while I tried to read the book I had with me…but every few moments she would raise her plastic gloved hand in a gesture of protection. Her palm facing inward, toward her face, she would lift her arm with speed and commitment as though something were flying her direction and might hit her in the face, if she were not so defended.

Not every time, but frequently, her other cotton gloved hand would bounce up beside her right ear…held a few inches from her head, with now a hand held in front and one on the right side, she might have been executing an energetic dance move, had there been the slightest hint of music.

Each time her hands flew up to defend her, the movement would pull me from my book to peer at what might be assaulting her from out of the reaches of the unknown, and of course there was no way for me to discern whatever had been launched at her, but I could not avoid the looking.

It began to develop a kind of superstitious quality to it… my looking and her defending herself, were so well timed, I actually asked myself if she somehow knew I was observing her at the precise moment she needed defense against my intrusion. But then I scoffed at myself for making her experience about me, something we humans are so very prone to doing.

Her need for defense was an internal one, and solely so…

Her hands in their plastic and cotton coverings, leaping into action to protect her, were the evidence of a mind divided by itself. The only threat that could possible have been occurring, there in the midst of Whole Foods bountiful environment, was the assault of a mind turned in upon itself.

We, those of us, who daily sift through our comparisons of ourselves against another, like the cigarette hunter, endlessly looking for some measuring device to determine if we are more worthy than that one, or less so than another one….are equally divided inside ourselves, but not so much, that it can be seen from the exterior.

We take some measure of comfort in the fact that our lips are not moving to the rhythm of the internal dialogue that we are constantly engaged in, and thus we assume that our hold on reality is more steady and capable, than the woman who must defend herself from her own mind, with her own hands.

We imagine that because we bathe, work, launder our clothes, pay a mortgage, and know where we are going to sleep tonight…that we are somehow better off, somehow better examples of humanity, than someone so adrift in their own interior that they cannot be reached. I submit that distinction is the splitting of hairs, a razor thin edge of difference to small to even count.

You and I, just like he and she, are victims of our own hand. There is nothing in the world that can harm us save ourselves.

If you have been betrayed, beaten, harmed, shamed, shunned, or unloved…the suffering you continue to endure is by your own hand. It is a very difficult thing to understand and an even more difficult thing to practice, but the Truth hidden behind your divided mind and mine, is that no event, no matter how evil, can reach you unless you allow it. It is your response to the events in your life, that shape your reality and nothing else…

We are put here to remember that.

Born and born again, over and over, we are required to remember that our inner experience is a choice; the outer event is a karmic obligation.

I am reminded of a Buddhist adage that describes the spiritual path of remembering the Truth in this way…“at first nothing comes, in the middle nothing stays, and in the end nothing leaves.”

In the beginning of our remembering the Truth, when we are lost and trying to protect ourselves with our cotton and plastic sheathed hands, “nothing” seems to come. We cry out to our god, in whatever form he may take, and we suffer at having been so forsaken. In the middle, “nothing stays”… finally wisdom has begun to make an appearance… one day we know that all of Life’s experience sources out of how we choose to use the power of our attention, that finding ourselves is a matter of coming to know that what we tell ourselves is not real, but rather our personal illusions… and the next moment, the wisdom departs us.

Here is where I find myself…

One day I am bathed in the blessed relief of the Truth of What Is, and the next day I am sifting through comparisons with others and losing myself once more to my divided mind, and thereby empty heart.

“In the middle…nothing stays…”

Nothing may stay in the middle, but I can tell you for sure that faith blooms even so…I know in my heart of hearts, that there will come a day when “nothing leaves”. A day so full of impersonal self-understanding that I cannot be lost again amongst the rubble of the conditioned mind, a day when my heart, will no longer allow my mind, to rob me of the peace that “passeth understanding”.

A day in which I will live solely from the depth of Being, and will not be persuaded to return to the conditioned mind’s unwinnable war. Here is the Promised Land, the land that flows with milk and honey, the land of our Fathers, the end of our journey, the way back home…the place… “where nothing leaves”.

I have lifetimes of faith built upon this truth, that one day I will be free of the divided mind, that one day all of us will be freed from the divided mind…and suffering will leave us for ever, and ever, Amen.

Adayre R. Miller

5/14/2011

photo courtesy of Nardell and flickr photo sharing to see more of this artist’s work, please follow this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/nardell/5510203776/in/gallery-58398502@N05-72157626144720522/

Between A Finger And A Thumb…..

I found this photo, in my favorite place to window shop, flickr photo sharing. The amazing artists, who populate the place with their color, genius, and generosity, afford me the opportunity to put pictures to the words that I spend so much time, devotion, and energy producing.

I wanted to direct your attention to this one, I am sure you agree with me, that it is transcendentally beautiful … the shades of gray, white, and black, contrasted with the spring green and the deep azure blue. The circular nail bed and the crisscross ridges of the skin texture, add dimension and depth. The soft defocused presence of the thumb resolving into the crystal clarity of the sphere, cause the eye to travel up and in some mysterious way… in …

The three small blades, one of which gently holds the bubble from floating away into the forever blackness of the background, and the oh-so-small world a-l-m-o-s-t recognizable – but somehow not – pictured in the bubble, create a sense of wonder and powerfully valuable uniqueness.

I feel that way today… held between a gentle thumb and index finger … suspended on a tiny sliver of living green, bound on all sides by a beautiful, but mysterious sphere of right side up and upside-downess, back lit by the emptiness of eternity.

I have, of late, been spending a good portion of every day contemplating my death.

It hasn’t been that I “decided” to do so, and it certainly isn’t the wishing to die that came out of the emotional trauma of my childhood and young adulthood, but more like a spontaneous form of spiritual waking meditation.

I have not feared death, in any tangible way, for a long time now… but I haven’t actively engaged it either. I think now, in the middle of my fifth decade, is just the right time to begin the slow waltz that will prepare me for it’s inevitable embrace.

The notion of it, comes to me in the oddest places and circumstances…

Yesterday, in the shower, I was rubbing soap along a washrag causing bubbles to jumble together and grow like froth at the edge of a fast moving stream, as they grew into my hand and the cotton cloth I held against the soap, into my head popped this idea. “There will come a time when this warmth, soft soap, pleasant aroma, and tender falling water will no longer be perceivable. A time when death has sealed my eyes and taken touch from me.”

I waited and watched the idea, as it moved through me and around me, and I marveled at how much it enhanced and elevated the simple process of growing and harvesting bubbles.

Sometimes, in no particular order – or discernable pattern, I will glance out my car window and capture a person in a still frame sort of image, doing something perfectly benign … like sitting waiting for a bus, or leaning over adjusting a bike pedal, or talking on a cell phone in the car beside me, and I will be struck anew with the recognition that they too, are traveling the exact pathway that will deposit them alongside me, at death’s door.

Look again at the picture … don’t you see that same mystery, in the deep blackness beyond the apparently life filled sphere? The fragile nature of our lives, that we live with such silly seriousness – the comings and goings, the useless ambitions, the terrible desires, the misspent time and the lost opportunities … the whole tale, told in that one arresting photograph.

Something that we cannot fathom has plucked us out of the deep unknown, placed us here on this floating sphere, and holds us worthy of the deep attention necessary to keep our slender green tether from loosing us back to whence we came. You can see the great tenderness it takes to hold that fragile bubble in place, between thumb and finger, you can see the great power humbling itself to be concerned with us … caring for us … holding us steady…while we build castles in the air, unconcerned with how fragile it all is.

Foolish I say, we are all so very, very, foolish.

We parade around with our notions, and beliefs, and problems, and concerns, and desires, and ambitions … meanwhile, everything that we think we know, everything we think we can control, everything we think we want is all just an image, locked inside a bubble, hanging on a slender strand, held by someone or something whose immensity is beyond our wildest imaginings.

I have come to understand that spending a good deal of time imagining one’s death puts everything we do, and every moment we breathe, into the exactly right perspective.

This photographs perfect depiction of the truth of our lives, should awaken in us the power and perfection of humility. We don’t know anything, in fact we can’t know anything … and still we are so perfectly cared for … that to withhold our trust, is tantamount to withholding our devotion, worship, and allegiance. Every single time we allow the smallest shred of doubt to creep in, we abandon, not just ourselves – but the divine as well.

Not long ago, I saw a post on facebook of a young family dealing with the recurring leukemia of their four year old. The father had posted that his faith was badly shaken, that he had prayed, his wife had prayed, their community had prayed, and yet his small son had not been cured or spared the difficulty of a life threatening disease. He had come to the conclusion that God had deserted him and his loved ones, having not brought him the cure he so longed for, he now wondered if God were even present in his life.

I can certainly understand and empathize with the young father’s anguish, his despair, and his doubts … but I no longer share his view of God as a dispenser of the fulfillment of our desires.

I imagine God exactly as the picture depicts. A gentle hand holding a lively and largely imaginary world, having little or nothing to do with the worlds comings and goings … and why, might you wonder, would my God have so little interest in my world? Well, mainly because He, or She, or It, is waiting for me to mature to the place that I can accept every single thing that occurs as being utterly and totally necessary. He, She, or It, is watching as I work my way toward the kind of total trust that accepts what is directly in front of me, without opinion, intrusion, or judgment.

Waiting for me to see the long view, waiting for me to recognize through the embrace of death’s coming … that the real stuff is in that deep blackness, in that long beyond, in that long dark night.

I believe in that, and very little else.

I don’t know what “God” wants, what he plans, or what his purposes are, and neither does anyone else … I do know that I am held aloft, on a slender thread, by a loving hand … and that is all I need to know…

I came to that knowing through a great deal of self-created hell, until finally I was strong enough to stop believing and start accepting. Belief in all it’s many forms is a way of holding off that deep black mystery, a way of self-soothing that is designed by the egoic mind structure, to keep us from facing the reality of our brilliant but startlingly brief stay here, and the total mystery of our existence.

It is possible to end our dependencies on believing, and open ourselves so deeply… that we are willing to stare straight past the colorful blue sphere, and into the deep unknown.

In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king … so says the ancient parable. In a world scurrying around like all this matters, the one who has learned not to mind anything at all, is King. I am reminded of a story I heard of a great Indian Vedantic Teacher, I have since forgotten his name, but the story goes that after decades of teaching the ways and means by which peace can be acquired, a follower begged once more for his secret. After decades of trying to illuminate the minds of his followers, who at one and the same time wanted peace and worldly control, he finally said … “my secret is, that I don’t mind.” Not minding, is to say that Life flows through, in, and around me, with no resistance from me whatsoever.

To Not Mind, is to take everything with the same detached attitude that you might conjure up for nothing. To Not Mind, is to hold no opinions about the challenges we might be facing, and with equal commitment to have no opinion about the victories we have accomplished. To Not Mind, means to hold everything in your life, between your own gentle thumb and finger … viewing it all from the same distance and calm space as would God, giving nothing any greater significance than any other “no” thing, or event, or person, or feeling, or attitudes, or any of the other thousands of things we are surrounded and impacted with on any given day. To Not Mind, is to come to the centered core in which, I have no doubt, the divine rests at all times.

Leonardo Da Vinci is quoted as having said, “While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.” I too, have been learning how to die … for a very long time now. From the moment my heart quit beating, when I was undergoing surgery at 17 years of age, through the dark years of facing the desire for death, to the recent years of actively attempting to allow the death of the personality I once thought myself to be, to these quiet years in which I spend some portion of each day recognizing that physical death is drawing ever nearer, all of these years having been teaching me to die well, and by doing so, to live more profoundly than I could have ever imagined. To be capable of recognizing your life in soap bubbles is the birth of being capable of recognizing – at one and the same time – the utter smallness of your life, held between your own thumb and finger, and the Universal Spaciousness out of which you have come and to which you will return.

When next you are lacking the peace that passes understanding, when life has taken a turn you do not want, or wish, or desire, try putting your disturbance on a slender green thread, trapped inside a blue bubble, held at a distance by The Loving Hand … and remember softly to yourself, that the one who “does not mind” is King, in the world of the overwrought and despairing. And in this, you will have found “God’s will” for your life and with his will, the peace you crave.

Adayre R. Miller

4/30/11

photograph courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Svein Nordrum (Zen Roxy) to see more of this artists work, please follow this link: http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0099009/photos/nordrum/5669325242/

Some Are Buckets and Others Brooms…

What if we never get what we want…?

What if we can’t? What if it isn’t possible? What if wanting isn’t “natural”? What if the purpose of the agony of desire, is to grow beyond it? What if, it could be ended…what would your life look like…without it? What if, when we get what we think we want, there is a mechanism that prevents satisfaction from being stable or enduring?

So many things come to my mind; if we didn’t “want” would there be anything like addiction? If we didn’t desire would there be anything like jealousy? Envy? Heartache? Disappointment? Emotional dependency? Approval seeking? Suffering? Or on the lighter side…if “wanting” were not behind us pushing with all its might, would we need goals? Passion? Purpose? Drive? Or Ambition? ….And what would life look like without them? Is it too scary to even contemplate, or take a sideways peek at?

As the demands of learning something I am not naturally good at has ebbed, and I am not stretched so gawd awful thin, I find a very interesting experience which I could not have anticipated, for all the tea in China – as they say – to have come, from the many months of solitude.

I feel little or no desire, toward anything at all.

You may not have the capacity to experience the sheer wonder of surprise, which that fact engenders in me. Unlike a good many people, I have met over my nearly six decades – who reported they “didn’t know what they wanted”, I have ALWAYS known exactly, precisely, specifically, what I wanted…or at least that is what my conditioned mind told me was true…and I wanted it fervently, and with great anguishing desire.

But now, I notice, that I do what is required of me…and even what is expected of me, with no resistance and no argument. I never look farther ahead than the task precisely before me, and even as I strive to figure out air conditioning equipment, and sit in rooms with over zealous and over competitive people…I merely do whatever is closest at hand.

I don’t “want” anything from my job, not even a paycheck. It is more like I understand that unless and until, I have taken the action that results in a response, that a check will not be deposited into my account, and thus, I take the actions and watch for the results. I have no other involvement in the job, I do it with precision and commitment, mainly because I have an agreement in place to which I am obligated. (My boss describes me as the most “dedicated” of our new group), I assume that is because every time he sees me, I have made significant strides in understanding and organization, but I am in no way emotionally involved.

At Tuesday’s meeting, sitting across from me was one of the youngest and most earnest among us, who was talking to an older gentleman who is not doing well. The older one said he thought his problem was he just couldn’t get his “head right”, and the younger said “man, I know what your talking about… but now, my head is right”.

The older said, “how so?” The younger said, “working for this company, man”. His zeal, fervor, and the gleam in his glassy eyes caused me to chortle, I couldn’t help it…and I swear, I meant no disrespect. In sales team circles, it could be said that he has “drunk the kool aid, man….”

I chortled, not at his expense, but rather at the recognition of the young, (myself included), who are taught to believe that the outer circumstances of life, if manifested just right, if believed in just so, if worked toward with dedication, if cared about deeply, will one day…as sure as the moon follows the sun…produce happiness and ever lasting satisfaction. I chortled at seeing the younger me, in him. And right behind that, I felt sorrow for the utterly inevitable let down, he will sooner or later face.

Anyone over the age of 35, who has the will and the courage to tell themselves the truth, knows that the outer realms cannot assuage the deep yearning we feel for wholeness and completeness. Which is why, so many, are in so much pain, as they round the bend toward middle age.

It’s not, just… that the dream will not come true, or if it does it will not provide the connection we hoped and longed for, it’s that the outer realms are not real in any effective way, at least not to the part of us yearning to return home.

Many years ago, my Teacher had an exercise that he would often do, attempting to explain the difference between the Real and the illusory. He would place a very strong spotlight on a thick chain and hook suspended from the ceiling, which then broadcast a very clear shadow hook and chain upon the wall. Then he would take a metal bucket and attempt to hang it from the shadow hook…and of course, no matter how many times he would stoop and retrieve that metal bucket from rolling at his feet, and return it to it’s position upon the shadow hook, it would not, and could not, be hung upon its projected hook.

Here is the lesson; every time, without exception, that we are looking to our future for some hoped for goal to be realized, some longed for outcome to be ours, we are projecting And just like my teacher’s metal bucket, once we attain or “manifest” our much-desired goal…our bucket will not hold and it will role away from us, lifeless and useless at our feet. The deeply stubborn among us, will turn away from the lesson that The Loving One is trying to teach…and pick a new goal and begin again, ignoring the truth that the weighted metal bucket, cannot and will not, hold to our shadow fantasies. a shadow hook upon the wall…and sadly, the only thing becoming successfully “hooked” is our mind and our sanity.

And in this way…a life ticks by… in the shadow realms, lost to itself, and using the drama of believing, and willing, and visioning, and hoping, and praying, and convincing others, that the grass is greener somewhere over there, and that all that must be done is traveling just a bit farther, just a little bit longer, just a little bit due North.

Here embedded in this believing, is the absurdity that made me chortle when the younger man held to the notion that he had found the one true outer place, where his mind could finally rest…

All the days of our lives we are like Dorothy in OZ, with our newly pinned curls, gingham dress, and sparkly red shoes…we click them together at the heel and wish and hope and pray for a return home, to Kansas.

Discovering that there is no Wizard, just an old man behind the curtain pulling levers and puffing smoke, is only the barest beginning of the long road home. It is equally necessary to give up the hope that Kansas, the familiar and understandable, holds the key either. It is necessary for full maturation to bloom, for us to pull our expectations all the way back inside, to the point at which we can win for ourselves the recognition that there never has been anything “outside” for us to attain at all.

There is only and ever, the capacity to open ourselves afresh to the current moment, to become willing to be vulnerable to the dying that is required at every moment and in every breath, to honor the sheer implausibility of our existence, and to rest in perfected trust.

You cannot win. Not now, not ever… There is no such thing…

If you can fully embrace that idea, it will release you from the bonds of the conditioned mind and set you free. Free to trust Life, free to feel the truth, free to see the simplicity, free to cherish the moment, free to truly live…and finally, to leave the shadow hook in the shadow realms. Once that is accomplished, then the metal bucket becomes a useful tool for carrying water, or building castles in the sand, or holding colorful marbles to play with, or bringing seeds to singing birds, or holding nails to frame an abode… or just a simple vessel…waiting, empty, and potentially useful, content in its “bucketness” and striving for nothing more than what it is, for reasons unknown and unknowable.

We are not the Author, we are merely the players, some are buckets and others brooms, some cups and others saucers, some low and some high, and how could any of that matter? … Even in the slightest…

Now, as my life matures and deepens, I see the necessity of examining my bucket in close and loving watchfulness, the dull gray, the rolled wire handle, the utilitarian value, the commonness, the usefulness, the emptiness, the lack of glory…and I am moved beyond words…in gratitude and thankfulness, in acceptance and recognition, in harmony and utility, in value and worth, and I say quietly to myself…”it is good…”

And more…it is enough…

Adayre R. Miller

4/23/11

Photo courtesy of Mattwarburg and flickr photo sharing to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link… www.flickr.com/photos/mattandmaggie/2403129235/

A Light Left Burning in the Window of Their Souls, By Which I Might Journey...

...Or...

A Journey of Such Great Distance, I Bow My Head, So As Not To Glimpse How Far It Is, I Have Yet To Travel…

Yesterday at work I was obliged to give the “role play” of the company story that they require us to deliver, with the fervor of religious commitment.

I did not want to do it, despite the fact that my dream was once to be a public speaker, I wasn’t looking forward to sitting in front of this particular competitive crowd and awaiting the “constructive criticism” that follows these weekly events.

But, of course, wanting or not wanting to do a thing, is not criteria that figures largely in the day-to-day activities of adults…and thus, I prepared what I knew was required, and set my mind to accomplishing their goals.

A couple of really interesting things occurred, and allowed me to take the experience into the Spiritual realm where my only true interest lies.

No doubt, because I have so many years of experience with public speaking and because I have spent an even larger number of years training my mind to go inward rather that out, (even though I am not nearly as good at it as I would wish to be at this stage in my life, and at this age) still, it provides me with a certain level of equanimity not normally exhibited in that room and in those “role plays”, except by the people who have been doing it for years and are the successful crowd, who we met in an earlier essay, who sit on the North side of the room.

After I had concluded my rendition of the company story and completed my assigned task…the “constructive criticism” portion of the days events was underway.

On the East, West, and South sides of the room…almost to a person…surprise was the unifying expression. “I can’t believe how comfortable you are doing this, for the very first time”, or “Wow, you seem so relaxed and at ease”, or this from the curmudgeon who doesn’t want to talk to any of us newbie’s, because “we won’t be around long enough to bother with”…”I don’t know your name, (no surprise there), but you won’t be going anywhere”!!??!! High praise indeed, from a man who won’t speak to you, until you’ve been aboard for three months or more.

Ahhhh, but then the North side weighed in…the list of crimes they discovered were so long, detailed, and persistent that eventually my boss waded in and began defending me, as I sat silently as instructed to do, and awaited the finish of the “We’re-Only-Trying-To-Help-You-Grow-Rag-Time-Blues”.

As I sat through the four points of the compass and received my baptism in the company culture, my mind did as I committedly instruct it to do, and kept it’s attention on my reactions rather than on their contributions.

Over the years that I have grown and matured in my spiritual practice, I have developed a very strong habit of blending into the wallpaper, (unless I am having a lot of fun and then I get rowdy and ribald as in the old days, when I was young and not very bright), and so I was not overly surprised at their surprise. Having kept such a low profile, I was an unknown cipher to all of them and therefore it was not unexpected, that I provided a type of shock.

For some reason my boss chose to take comments starting in the East and West, then allowed the South to chime in and finally the North, as the surprised praise turned into disgruntled blame, I watched my mind want to reach for the former and pull away from the latter.

But I did neither…

I cannot begin to tell you how much that means to me.

In the early years of being my Teacher’s committed student, he would often formulate lessons around what he called the “Twin Evils of Praise and Blame”, he taught without pulling any punches - as he was so masterful at, about the ways and means by which Praise and Blame can enslave a mind and prevent the, oh-so-necessary, growth of the Soul and Spirit.

In our culture of the blind leading the blind, there is almost nowhere to which you can turn to discover the evils of praise and blame, and the necessity of maturing into the capacity to accept neither of these dark energies into your self.

We abide in the notion that praise is a thing that heals, rather than wounds, and we, in all probability, would deeply resent someone trying to tell us that it can so easily and deeply damage the very ones we are attempting to serve.

When you praise another, if they are not in their “right” mind…which is to say, if they are living a life bound to the external as their source for well being, then praise can and will, enslave them to the source of external praise which brings them some temporary and fleeting relief, from the burdens of the “self”. They can so easily become as attenuated to the giver of praise, as does a heroin addict to their dealer, and in the doing of so, will have introduced a dangerous pathogen into their mental and emotional systems.

Blame on the other hand is the projected emotional disturbance of another’s mind upon some external source or person, to which they attribute their suffering, and in that way, is just as erroneous as is praise.

The only thing that happens in the outer is Events. Events are entirely neutral and without the potential for good or ill…in the Inner is where Experience lies, and in that, we can train ourselves to have absolute control over our lives and the levels of joy or suffering to which we are subject.

Since I have returned to the workings of the world, the deep realization of these truths - which I have enjoyed for some months now - has been somewhat wobbly, I have often felt myself under pressure which I incorrectly assigned as coming from outside myself, until the Evils of Praise and Blame made their way around that room on Tuesday morning.

As I watched the surprised glad handing slowly metaphorisis into blaming criticism, and held my attention firmly upon my internal responses, my balance was restored.

I remembered to remember… that my only role in this great drama of Life, is the role of Witness, that my contribution to my fellow human beings will not be found in what I do in the world, but rather, the tally that will be taken upon my death, will be of how much, how pure, how often, and how sacred was my capacity to bear witness to the workings of mind, as it sought to rob me, and therefore the planet, of poise and steadfastness.

When you, and I, and those that will come after us….can stand in the quiet center of our still minds, knowing – truly knowing, that nothing in the outer can affect us in any way that we do not allow it to, then we will have won for ourselves and our humble home, the blessings of the Invisible Ones.

You can touch people with praise so deeply, that they lose themselves entirely…

I cannot recall even a single instance in which my Teacher praised me, and yet, his unconditional Agape Love, fell like soft rain upon my upturned face. His gentle willingness to sit through my many and varied attempts to force him, through attempts at manipulating him, into praising me were met with a benign, beneficial, beneficent, and blessed refusal to do so.

He never waivered, nor wearied, in his willingness to allow me to see my false self in the clear and transparent mirror of his soul, until finely - one day, I could see my own transparency coming into view as well.

And so, I sat… still and quiet inside myself, as I was Praised and Blamed in fairly equal measure, neither reaching for, nor pulling away, from the external circumstances on display before me. Do not imagine that I am far enough down the road to no longer feel the pull, as my Teacher so clearly is, I felt it…I just didn’t journey with it.

Later in the day, a coworker came to me and described Rick as being an “asshole” for his “unjust and unkind” comments…and allowed as how I should not take it personally, that I had “done the best one she had ever seen”, including the North side of the room, superstars. I accepted her commentary without providing the feedback, that I was not taking her praising comments any more “personally” than I was Rick’s….and herein lies the victory…

When we can rise above the pull of praise and the fear of blame, is the very first moment in our lives, in which we might have some use to the Invisible Ones. Until then we are merely puppets manipulated by others for their need or gain, strung along like hungry baby birds, needing and requiring the energies of others to sustain us… or worse, demanding like small children, that they “take it back” if they throw us a bone instead of a meal. But either way - we are indeed -merely manipulated or manipulating children, reliant upon the outer to conform to our wishes, for our shadow strengths. Caught in a web as surely as a fly in a spider’s embrace, doomed to continuing looking beyond ourselves into the world of the mirage for our salvation, succor, and survival…a view that dooms us to the endless repetitions of the lost and lonely.

To mature into full Beingness requires that we lose this willingness to manipulate and to be manipulated, it requires of us that we rise up high enough to see the doom to which we are subjecting one another when we rely upon Praise, or when we accept Blame. Does that mean that we are not fully responsible for any and every wrong doing of moral and ethical character? …Of course not…but those are matters of self responsibility, rather than the projections of a mind that can no longer bear its own presence, and is therefore casting about in the external, looking for someone upon whom to project its weaknesses and flaws in understanding.

It takes a good deal of maturity to see this view of Praise and Blame, it took me a good many years to even get a peek at it…but now, as my emotional structure becomes increasingly stable, and my will increasingly turned to the realms of the inner, I can see, for myself, the ways and means by which Praise robs people of self-reliance. And self-reliance stands practically alone, at the very top of the mountain of good that the Creator yearns for us to acquire for ourselves. To become a self-reliant individual serves every-other-living-thing upon this blue globe of ours. A self reliant individual is a source of strength, a meter of well being, a lighting rod for the attention of the Invisible Ones, an opening through which grace can travel to us, a harbinger of what we could be, and might be, and a song each of our Souls longs to sing…

I move toward it with my head bowed so as not to see the great distance that must be spanned, but even knowing how far I must travel, I recognize that the Great Ones need only know that I am traveling their direction to support and encourage me, and to leave a light burning in the window of their souls, by which, I can find my way through the darkness of the “self”, into the pure and radiant light of the Impersonal One.

Adayre R. Miller

4/20/11

if you have enjoyed the photos that accompany this essay, please visit Ben at either of these links © Ben Heine 2011 – you’ll be glad you did…….www.benheine.com
BLOG: benjaminheine.blogspot.com

www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/4407567317/

www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/3634462128/