He Caught the Hat, or The End of the Search…

Still unwell, I have yet another gap of free time, and thus the opportunity to share with you my experience of allowing the personal self to die more fully.

My first Teacher, and my current teacher, both describe the revolutionary return to Emptiness as a “subtraction” rather than an addition. And now, I begin to experience that in more and more subtle forms.

The interpretations of the old religions, (despite the fact that Jesus said quite clearly and fairly frequently that you had to “die” to the self in order to be reborn), and the new religions are all characterized by how they intend to add something to who you are. In the old vernacular it is salvation. In the new religions they will help you add greatness, or manifestation, or prosperity, or showing up BIG. But without exception they are then and now, attempting to add something.

“Adding” is the struggle to be something other than what you are, other than where you are, other than what you currently have. That very struggle is the egoic mind; the self made mind, the conditioned one.

I once saw a quite lovely movie. Its title was “Benny and Joon” and it was a film about the experience of falling in love, between a young artistic and sensitive man, and a high functioning but schizophrenic, young woman. It was a touching and masterful movie, and in it Johnny Depp who played Benny was truly remarkable. He styled his portrayal with overtones of Charlie Chaplain and Buster Keaton. In one scene while in a park, he did a mime performance that was a tour de force. I think it was an homage to Chaplain as I have a vague memory of him doing something very similar.

He was attempting to retrieve his bowler hat from the ground, with each attempt the hat would mysteriously leap beyond his reach coming to land feet in front of his outstretched arm, and causing him both consternation and deep surprise. The delicate emotions that played across Johnny’s face, the eager reaching, stretching, and authentic attempts to secure his jumping bean of a hat were so well played, so real, so powerful that it took me several moments to realize that the hat was being popped forward by Johnny’s almost invisible footwork. His artistry kept me so focused on the beauty of his facial expressions, the earnestness of his struggle to regain his fleeing hat, the balletic quality of his movements…that I literally did not realize he was kicking the hat each time he approached it. (I had thought at first it was a movie trick of some sort.)

This is just the sort of trick the conditioned mind plays upon us; searching, seeking, adding, gaining, manifesting, goal-setting, greatness…all are names for the struggle to be somewhere other, someone other, some time other.

The struggle is the reach for something that the conditioned mind assures us will finally provide happiness, so we reach with all our hearts, while subtly and deftly kicking the goal from beneath our hands even as we approach it.

Conversely, allowing the death of both sides of that struggle, feels very much like actually dying. At least when it first begins, but as time, and help, and commitment, carry us forward… the dying becomes awakening, and the illusions drop away one after another until only harmony remains.

Yesterday, to ill to shop or cook I went to a diner for food. I sat in my booth and quietly watched the other diners. I felt a kinship and camaraderie that is difficult to express. The old ones, the loud ones, the lonely ones were all somehow me, while pretending not to be. And… I, them.

Giving up the personal self, puts the rightful self upon the center of the stage and into the light. I am nothing more, or less, than Awareness, “wrapped and packed” as a friend of mine is fond of saying.

Allowing Awareness to take complete charge of my life, my will, my journey, and my outcomes, means I am no longer lonely, no longer afraid, no longer engaged in the intrigues of the personal self.

At my job, I am working diligently and with great commitment to create an enviroment in which artists can be showcased and sold…a place that they can be discovered and honored, and yet, they are bit like herding cats. A few are contentious, entitled, demanding, and utterly unconcerned with how much effort, time and money is going into their support, these few pummel me with demanding emails. One in particular I hear from frequently. He never provides a salutation, as though my name has no consequence. His first ever email simply stated that he had been told many times that his work “should be in our gallery” and that I could find his image here and here, it had the tone of you are missing out not having my work and you need to fix that.

Then came increasingly demanding emails wondering when and where he could drop off the work, and so on. Yesterday’s was along that vein, and this time as resistance showed its face to me and rang its bell in my body, I remembered that I am only, and merely, and wonderfully, and gladly, and gratefully…just Awareness…and that Awareness has no argument with his style of communication, or his entitled behavior, or his need to be catered to.

Resistance evaporated, internal harmony was restored and my day brightened with both deeper understanding and deeper freedom.

I feel like shouting from the mountaintops. Like jumping up and down with joy, like you did when you were a kid.

My Beloved Teacher put the idea of Beingness into my troubled mind, several decades ago. But there was no home for it then. Gratefully, my heart could palpable feel his presence and despite the years of reaching for my bowler hat, while also kicking it from my grasp…I have finally come home to the felt realization that the “who” of me is pure Awareness.

I can no longer be emotionally reached by the drama of the game of “lets pretend”. Please do not misunderstand, I am not planting a victory flag here…I know my patterns much to well, to believe that I am done, or finished, or fully baked…but I do believe that I can never go back to the depth of sleep that once had me so completely, that I wanted to die.

It is all so very, shockingly simple.

The ground of Being is Awareness. Awareness makes no distinctions of any kind. If Awareness looks upon something “bad”, it is still functioning as the Greater Intelligence designed it to function – and thus – All is Well. If Awareness looks upon something “good”, it is not deceived into wanting more, or starting to activate the desire mechanism that has trapped every living human since the dawn of time, it merely sees as it was meant to…looking, always looking…and opening to greater and greater depths.

Consider the deep value of such a thing. Imagine knowing, fully and completely, that you will never have to suffer again…ever.

I do not mean, a life without pain. I have been in pain a good part of this week. I mean the futile suffering of the struggle to know, the struggle to become, the struggle to succeed, the struggle of wish fulfillment, the struggle to win. The craziness of reaching for your hat, while you are simultaneously kicking it away...there is an end to that struggle, and the suffering that goes with it.

I also don’t mean to imply that I believe grief or sadness or sorrow or any of the other emotions we so wish to avoid will disappear, rather I mean that suffering which is a mind created phenomena is no longer ruling my life. For instance, I grieved my mother’s death, but because we were so healed and complete and the total unconditional acceptance that surrounded the end of our relationship, which is now starting to bloom in my daily life, allowed my grief to be simple, clean, clear and over very quickly.

Does that mean that I will not ever fall back to sleep, and once more suffer the desire to have things other than they are? Probably not. I am slow, and sometimes thick. But even I, addicted to victim energy as I once was, even I, cannot deny the mountain of evidence that is building. Everywhere I look, the end of the self heralds the beginning of joy, ease, support, and well being.

It is the only thing that is real to me now…the looking…the seeing… free, finally, of the distortions of the conditioned mind.

Richard Rohr, a current day Catholic Christian Mystic, describes the no self in the language of the church when he says, “The saint is precisely one who has no “I” to protect or project. His or her “I” is in conscious union with the “I AM” of God, and that is more than enough.” He further states that you may know when the Impersonal Self begins to awaken in you…when, “Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have – right now, that this shift to true acceptance is the “litmus test” of whether you are dwelling in the Impersonal Self’s grace.

Bless you for journeying with me.

Adayre R. Miller

3/27/12

“Trust Thyself: Every heart vibrates to that iron string…” Emerson

I have encountered an old friend this last couple of weeks…the feeling of being left out.

I almost can’t remember a time in my life, that the feeling of being left out was not a nearly constant companion.

I was born into it really.

A turbulent and pain filled family, with two siblings so much older than me that one of them took on all of the mothering duties, but they both left me out as much and as often as possible, and understandably so…

In the company I now work in, there is a distinct inner and outer circle. I understand that, it makes sense to me and is probably necessary. I am not in the inner circle.

But a co-worker is and he was once warm, open, confiding and inclusive with me and now he is terrifically polite, cordial, and distant…I have no doubt that I have given offense in some unconscious way, and in some way I couldn’t have even known about.

I have asked him on three different occasions to explain to me what I have done and each time he reacts with excessive denial and an unspoken emotional demand that I stop asking…and so I shall…

Letting him go is painful, I wish it didn’t have to be. And yet, I am the one that chose confrontation over comfort, I am the one who decided to risk everything to save myself, and I am the one that must pay the piper. (Letting go of the desire for approval and inclusion is one of the heavier prices that may allow me one day to get through the Bible’s “eye of the needle” and into “heaven”, free of the burdens of the man rich in opinions, beliefs, goals, conditioning, and knowing what is right.)

I have been thinking a lot about what I have had to give up to get what I have received. I am not smart like my Teacher, nor as clear as I wish I could be, but I am willing. Always willing.

I have noticed recently that I am becoming entirely free of the fear of death. I think about death a good deal, looking to see what it can teach me about living, about risking, about willingness. And I have encountered a decidedly large shift in my experience of the idea.

For most of my life I have had heart palpitations. Armed now with the understanding that my heart is not wired correctly, it makes more sense to me. The nerves that should branch out and pump each side do not do so, and instead one long nerve wraps around from top to bottom, causing each side to pump in this unusual way, so said the cardiologist.

In decades gone by, it used to scare the living daylights out of me.

On top of the fluttering, my nervous system would shoot me chock-o-block full of adrenaline, and cause my poor heart to jump and twist inside my chest.

In recent years, I learned that if I coughed really hard I could sometimes get it to settle down. No longer actively afraid, I still didn’t like it and would always strive to make it stop.

Now however, it happens a great deal, and I notice that I do nothing at all.

The job I have undertaken is very physical, I am decidedly out of shape, and have been pressing really hard to accomplish the outcome. My heart protests nearly every day, beating irregularly and seeking some measure of self-discovery.

It fascinates me the response I now have to it. It causes my attention to become laser focused, and I sit quietly and watch/feel its attempt to find the correct path. As it bounces along its bumpy road, I find in myself no fear at all. Instead there is a kind of warm bathing of trust that enters into my Being… it travels all the pathways of my circulatory system all the way to the smallest capillaries. It feels like an inside out hug.

I suspect it means that finally, after five and a half decades, I trust my life.

I trust the losses, like the loss of my friend/co-worker, as much as I trust the gains. I trust the “bad” things as much as I trust the “good” things. (I no longer really see the distinctions, just as my Teacher promised would be true, when I discovered the Impersonal Being at the foundation of my life.)

I trust that goals, and desires, and wanting, are a functioning of the mind’s conditioning and that I should always and evermore be suspect of anything that I “want”.

I have found a new teacher. I am only able to listen to him via tapes, as he lives in another city. He is not a replacement, but rather an addition, and I value him and his way of explaining the depth of understanding that he so clearly can provide. Most of what he says I have already heard from my Beloved Teacher, but he says it in a way that is very satisfying and wonderfully nourishing.

For instance, in a recent talk, he was discussing the experience of “becoming limitless”. The moment he said the phrase, he realized how easy it would be to misinterpret that statement, and to view what he had said from the much-misplaced notion that we can have anything our minds want. So he immediately strove to correct that potential and stated clearly that he did not mean what the current spiritual culture means when they use the term “limitless”, that instead of getting your every whim fulfilled…he said that true “limitlessness” is coming to the awareness that you don’t want anything at all.

I can see the horizon of that, coming into view, in my own life.

I want my friend/coworker to return to valuing spending time with me, but the wanting has an extremely light, almost frothy, consistency. More like an echo than a real sound. I will let him go with no rancor or disturbance, if that is his wish, which it appears to be.

I want to be included, but not at the cost of my own salvation…and that too, is like a long ago sound still just echoing in my nervous system.

I have turned some sort of corner, or reached some sort of tipping point, or gathered enough fuel to keep the blaze burning…because now, it is enough for me that I can sit quietly and watch my heart navigate its pathways in a bumpy and irregular fashion, and totally trust the intelligence that designed it to be unusual in this way, as much as I trust the intelligence that caused it to start beating in the first place.

I have turned away from my mind’s conditioning, far enough and long enough, to finally understand that to place my trust in what I say to myself, is the source out of which all hellish experiences bloom.

I once heard Eckhart Tolle say that after his awakening experience, he estimated that 80% of what he used to say to himself simply stopped happening. He described that what is now his normal life, consisted almost entirely of silence, unless he was being spoken to, or speaking.

It is not that way for me.

I would say a good 25% of my time is spent with no voice in my head. It is the best 25% of my day, and it shows up in the most surprising ways. I will be climbing a ladder, something that is hard for me, or holding my hands above my shoulders, something that is really hard for me, and suddenly I will realize that I have been intensely engaged in watching the discomfort with out a single smidgen of commentary.

Further, I realize that the discomfort only ratchets up to pain, when I am talking to myself about resisting the discomfort.

In the other 75% percent of my waking life, I work diligently at reminding myself to not believe anything I am saying internally. It is shocking to discover that your speaking mind cannot be trusted, that only the clear silence of the eternal One is real.

My Teacher said often, and with as much emphasis as he ever spoke with, that we must come to the place that we totally rest in the understanding that “we will know what we need to know, the moment we need to know it, and not a second sooner”.

I always interpreted that to mean that the ground of life is trust, but I now understand that he also meant that the mind that “knows” is the conditioned one, the untrustworthy one, the misguided one, the judge, jailer, and judgment…and the only evil that has ever been.

My only prayer: “Please give me the courage, fortitude, willingness, and will to walk away from the conditioned mind, in favor of the mind that does not speak to me, but rather holds my fluttering heart in the palm of its hand, secure in the trust that all is well…”

Namaste

Adayre R. Miller

3/24/12

photo courtesy of Orkun Ozbatur and flickr photo sharing…to see more of this artist’s work follow this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/37360382@N08/

A “Through Walker” and His Dog Mabel…

I have been following the travels of a young man, (through his online blog), as he walked across the country with his dog Mabel.

His back-story is similar to mine, in that professional success came to me early and left me as disillusioned in my late twenties, as he had become before he began walking. A capable corporate lawyer by his early thirties, he found no value in the supposed success he had achieved, and so he set out one day to walk across the United States. Apparently there are about 18 people a year who share his course of action, even if they don’t share his motivations.

They call themselves “Through Walkers”.

I have so enjoyed his conversations, as he walks. He talks a lot, in his blog, about his dog Mabel. Her commitment to her self-appointed job of keeping him safe during the day, watching over him in three hour shifts as they traded lookout duty – in mountain bear country –at night, how she curled up on his feet in the cooler climes to help keep him warm and snug.

His pithy blogs were a fun read, and it was very clear how much more in touch with himself he was, when Mabel padded out into the Pacific ocean as they reached Dog Beach and the end of his country wide walk. He reports that he broke into tears about every three hours, the first couple of months, when he returned to living in an apartment. And he also reports that Mabel does not enjoy walking on a leash, now, anymore than he enjoys sleeping under a roof.

I suppose in part I began to read his blog because it reminded me of the-walker-of-all-long-distance-walkers. Her name for the last 32 years of her life was Peace Pilgrim. The first forty-four, she had been Mildred Norman Ryder.

It seems like Mabel’s dad, and me, she had found only suffering in the success she too, had acquired… before she began walking across the country until the very last day of her life.

Unlike Mabel’s dad, Tyler, she did not leave her home well provisioned with a tent to sleep in, pots to cook with, an ipad to write on, a small buggy to push her supplies along in front of her, or a loyal and loving companion to ease the emotional difficulties of a “through walk”.

She left her home on the west coast headed toward the Atlantic, wearing a cotton shirt, cotton pants, tennis shoes and an over blouse tunic with the words “Peace Pilgrim – Walking for Peace” emblazoned on the back, that had two pockets sewn into the front. In these two pockets she carried the entire sum of her world’s possessions. A small pencil and school age child’s pencil sharpener, an equally small pad of paper, a comb, and a toothbrush…this was the outer condition of her life until the day it ended on her seventh walk across the country, in her 73^rd, year, in an automobile accident. (She had begun accepting rides which would ferry her from wherever she was in her walk, to the speaking engagements that by then were occupying large amounts of her time, and back to the exact spot in the road she had left off on her walk. On this day, one week prior to her 74^th birthday, the car she was riding in was engaged in a head on collision and she died instantly.)

I read her book, which is free to anyone who wishes to read it…(and in fact I have it on PDF file, drop me a request and I will send it along to you) and she became one of my spiritual heroes, as I read of her incredible courage.

Unlike Tyler, there were no cell phones by which she could stay in touch with anyone at all. Also, unlike Tyler, her walk was not funded or supplied. She never had provisions with her, but was always supplied and every need met, while on the road…including the sudden snow storm that blew up in Colorado on her fourth walk in August, when she should have been entirely safe to be that far north and instead was suddenly encased in a sheath of blowing snow, so dense she could not see the road in front of her. She reports that a voice sprung up in her, - by now and otherwise - entirely silent mind and told her to continue walking and then “now left, go forward, now right, step up, step over” and so on…until she was lead to a discarded refrigerator carton, in which she found the shelter that saved her life.

She had vowed that she would not eat, unless food was supplied her. By her third walk and beyond… that was no longer an issue as she became quite well known, due to the press coverage of the day, and was routinely asked to speak to college and university groups, churches, and just families out for a drive who spotted her on the roads in their hometowns. But in the first two walks, when she was entirely unknown and entirely without resources, she reports that she never went more than three days without someone noticing her and offering to feed her in some way, or she would stumble across an apple orchard, or a wild berry field.

Can you even begin to imagine the trust that would have taken? Can you comprehend the fearful thoughts that must have plagued her into near madness in those early days?

I can.

I went on a similar journey, in my 28^th year. (Only mine was entirely internal.) I left behind a high paying sales job, a Mercedes convertible, a nice condo, and began riding a bike for an entire year. The noise in my head was a cacophony; the fear in my heart was beyond my ability to describe. I had a lovely gay neighbor whose compassion was apparently boundless. When I would awaken from the night terrors that plagued me like a disease, and run to his apartment at 3 in the morning, banging on his door, and begging to be let in. He became so accustomed to my nervous, sweaty, pale, appearance on his doorstep, that he began coming to the door in his underwear alone, open his door, return to his bed and to sleep… all while not really awake. I suppose that first year, I spent more of my sleeping hours on his couch, than I did in my own bed.

Life then forced me into a job I had never wanted, nor had seen myself doing. Through no fault of my own and with no desire to do so, I became a Muralist and later an Interior Designer. I often hated being on that scaffolding. Most people I met, envied my “living my dream” lifestyle, they romantically imagined was mine. For me, the standing on scaffolding listening to the chorus of voices that lived inside of me, and the fears that they routinely dredged up, was often horrendous. I so understand Anne Sophie Swetchine 1782 – 1857, a Russian Mystic who became famous for a Parisian Salon, where the intellectuals and radicals of her day gathered to seek understanding and enlightenment, and where she was reported to have said about the voices that litter our interiors spaces. ~ “Might we not say to the confused voices which sometimes arise from the depths of our being… Ladies, be so kind as to speak only four at a time?”

Life left me alone, standing on scaffolding, and in outer silence for almost fifteen years. But that had not been enough…

Finally unwilling to paint one more mural, I left my business and moved back to Arizona. I didn’t work the first two years I was back here. I cannot say why. Truthfully can’t. But alone again with only my mind to face, I spent more time listening to the chorus of voices…but by this time, they were well behaved enough, to “speak only four at a time”.

Then I went back to work in the design field, stock piled some income for what I thought was going to be my retirement…and instead, the crash of ’08 took my industry into a depression. This time three years went by, and this un-chosen sabbatical was the most severe yet.

There was no kindly gay neighbor. No money to run my car, and no desire to run around town, filling up all those hours with something external to do.

This time…I merely sat, and waited.

The greatest gift my business had given me, despite my emotional struggles with it… Were the enormous reservoirs of trust I had developed and begun to rely upon. My life had never been on the line, guided to a cardboard refrigerator box in a blinding snowstorm, but I had been just as clearly directed as I strove to paint paintings to large to even see, as I applied brushstroke after brushstroke, year after year.

Over the course of this last sabbatical, an experience that first made an appearance on the day my mother drew her last breath, finally became a stable and accessible place within me.

Like Peace Pilgrim, my mind became Silent.

It is the truest thing I have ever experienced, and it swept away my beliefs about life and the living of it… like a good strong breeze will sweep clean a November landscape.

Carl Jung said, “The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved or even understood, they can only be outgrown.”

I know that to be true.

To discover yourself inside a silent mind is a wonder. It cannot be adequately described, or expressed. It is as simple as the sun rising, as profound as the breath that breathes us, as clarifying as heat on dew.

It is what Tyler wanted, even if he didn’t know it, when he and Mabel set out on their walk. It is the nearness of it while he walked, and its loss when he returned, that caused him to “cry like a little girl every three hours”. It is the motivation behind Peace beginning her thirty years of walking, and the full realization of it in her self, that caused untold numbers of people to turn toward her message, in the turbulent sixties and seventies.

Having found it in myself, makes every footfall of my journey worth it. All the years that I stood in the face of my internal critics, the “ladies who refused to speak merely four at a time”, and the suffering they caused me…all so very worth it.

The most significant experience of my day-to-day existence now, is that I am never anxious. When I faced a diamond back rattler that had found its way into my dining room, I experienced the fear that is necessary for survival, and it was entirely clear to me the vast difference between that fear and the acidic nature of anxiety, which has gone from my life.

A few days ago, I passed a gall stone in the night. I have never felt a more searing pain. I had no need at all to reach out to someone. I found the most comfortable position I could discover, began watching my breath, and my pain, let my mind go silent…and waited. It took several hours, but there was no mental or emotional resistance to the severity of the pain, or its contents, and thus there was only the simplicity of awaiting its end.

Due to the largesse of an old friend I am recently employed, and under her guidance the company she founded, seeks to serve others and imagines that a large part of that service, is to provide everyone with an equal measure of external emotional comfort, support, and well being.

I have been supervised by a woman whose perfectionism and military background requires of her that she searches for what is wrong in a diligent and commanding way…it has not been pleasant working for her. She finds much of what I do to be inadequate, and each of the layers of management…all the way up to my friend the owner, have wanted me to allow them to “coach” my supervisor out of what she believes in her heart of hearts is “right”. I have resisted their desire fully. It has caused my friend to wonder if she were fulfilling her role as a spiritual leader, because she was “allowing abuse to occur under her roof”.

For myself, I do not see it that way at all…

I have not externally pilgrimaged across our nation, as Peace Pilgrim had done. But I have traveled the entire length, breadth, and depth of my internal landscape. I have stood still and listened to every voice that had ever taken root inside my mind, until they were finally done speaking to me. I have endured my own self-hatred, which once threatened my survival, until there was nothing left of it. I have journeyed with my irrational fears and anxieties, until only primal and quite necessary survival fear, is possible in me.

I have come to see the great wisdom in Peace’s statement when she said about emotional disturbances…”Do not suppress it – that would hurt you inside. Do not express it – this would not only hurt you inside, it would cause ripples in your surroundings. What must be done is that you transform it.”

We live in an age that believes that if you express your fears and anxieties and disturbance with others, that those fears will leave you. Having done that myself – for many years – I can say that it did help me…but it did not free me. Freedom can only be found through transformation. For transformation to occur you must become willing to be a “through walker”. You must be willing to leave all that you believe behind…to turn your back on all that you were taught would save you, and face the demons head on…and entirely alone.

Freedom can only be found in this one way.

Comfort, some measure of emotional stability, a certain form of pleasure, and some types of kindness…can all be had by teaching one another how to speak, how to behave, how to conduct ourselves in a shared enviroment.

That is not what I am willing to settle for.

I have tasted the wonder of a silent mind. To stand still inside yourself and discover you are not the voice of the personality that you label “me”, that you are not the tiny span of time that parenthetically encases your life in this, your current body, that you are not your wants, desires, or demands…is liberation. All else is a mere reflection…

I trust that the impetus that started Tyler and Mabel off and into the western sun will carry him along. I know that Peace found her eternal self. And I have discovered more than I could have ever hoped, wished, or prayed for…even if I had known how…which I did not.

The path of freedom is a singular endeavor; you must travel alone, naked and willing.

I bless my intense and critical supervisor for coming into my life and bringing with her an enhanced capacity for me to watch my internal experience, and not to seek outside myself for release or surcease.

So in the end…I say with my whole heart, soul, and mind…

Walk On and Walk Through.

Adayre R. Miller

2/11/12

You may read more about Tyler at www.tylercoulson.com and more about Peace at www.peacepilgrim.com

A Good Pair of Boots…

As you know, by now, from reading my essays…that I am not a global thinker. I cannot deal in large themes or views that are so clear that they can see the arc of human development over centuries or, even millennia. It would be grand, I imagine, to be that kind of visionary. An Albert Einstein, a Ralph Waldo Emerson, or my Teacher who often said he was serving the “deck and not the individual cards.”

But I am not capable of that kind of stratospheric living. I am a simple storyteller, attempting to tell stories that have a purpose greater than entertainment.

Essays ~ a simple story, with a moral. Toward that end, I must share my life with you, in the hope of sharing the lessons I learn.

This last Thursday was a doozy.

I am not sure that I completely understand, but I trust that by the time we have finished this conversation…that I may, end up knowing more about what happened, what it means, and how I can use it to become more expanded.

As the Queen of Hearts told Alice, begin at the beginning and when you come to the end stop.

My story begins with a woman I had not yet met. Ms. Darci Nivas, came to my company’s owner with a request. She had come up with a genius of an idea, to support the educational process she is engaged in. She took eighteen canvases, drew a large tree upon them and then distributed them to the homeless she was working with and instructed them to “do as you will”. Paint whatever, in whatever way you choose. “Try any medium, paints, collage, beads, scraps of paper…whatever”…and when they were finished, and hung, and viewed, there appears a tree… a quite wonderfully eclectic, diverse, and very recognizable tree. She then imagined, that she could produce a forest in exactly the same manner. So she began distributing the trees to many different groups of folk, who share some form of communal experience to create her forest.

You can see the genius of this idea, can’t you?

Lots of people, and lots of different kinds of people, get to show up and play. No one person is too exposed. The groups bond, much as we used to bond around camp fires, sharing our lives with one another, before we got too busy and self important to sit down and breathe with each other, and look one another in the eye.

And there’s more…she is going to have a reception so that all the unknown tree makers will get to see her forest. I can’t wait to see the quilter’s tree, and the version the art students are going to make combining photography and painting.

When my employer put this idea in my hands, and asked me to execute it, I don’t really know that she was expecting the commitment I was willing to make to it. But I know the power of shared creative expression, and I am a “get on board” kind of gal, when it comes to anything creative.

Back in the day when I first began painting at seven years of age, my parents would line my works up on the couch to show them off to neighbors, and aunts, and uncles, and folk… just wandering down our street… anybody and everybody, was welcome to join the viewing. It was the yang to my mother’s rages, the full ripeness and flowering of her loving attention, while the yin of her rage eventually became our shared journey into unshakeable and enduring unconditional love, understanding, and forgiveness.

We in the west, imagine that yin and yang, are polar opposites and on one level they are, but from a much deeper and therefore from a truer place, they are not really opposites, but rather, complimentary energies.

For instance, dropping a stone in a calm pool of water, will simultaneously raise waves and lower troughs between them, and this alternation of high and low points in the water will radiate outward until the movement dissipates and the pool is calm once more. Thus, yin and yang are always complimentary opposites, but equal qualities. Further, whenever one quality reaches its peak, it will naturally begin to transform into the opposite quality: for example, grain that reaches its full height in summer (fully yang) will produce seeds and die back in winter (fully yin) in an endless, and quite natural cycle.

It is impossible to talk about yin or yang without some reference to the opposite, since yin and yang are bound together as parts of a mutual whole (e.g. you cannot have the back of a hand without the front).

That said, and so that you do not get lost in my round-about story, please allow me to recap so far. Darci went to KC and asked for a company tree. KC, who has more on her plate than the law should allow, handed it to me. I saw the jewel in it and caught fire with the idea….and here is where the yin and yang dance began.

It started with me writing emails to our community to get them to join in the tree idea. The first one was professional, and I thought fairly clear. It got a teeny tiny response of three – already creative individuals – eighteen needed, so I tried again.

The next email I sent was folksy, newsy, and witty. The responses started flooding in, not only did I have to ask Darci for another tree, but I got a fair amount of praise and appreciation for my written explanation, from the troops.

It was very much like my mother lining my paintings up on the couch for all to see. It fed the creative spirit in me, it caused joy to bloom in a very vivid way…so much so, that a dear friend who works right beside me said he experienced me as a little giddy, that day.

Fully yang.

And becoming fully yang, caused me to lose touch with the only goal in my life… that of releasing myself from identification with form, (egoic thinking mind), in favor of the rising above yin and yang to the place that my teacher embodied so elegantly…where yin and yang are resolved in a unified wholeness and total harmony.

Now you can guess the rest right? Yin made an appearance.

It came in two forms. First a coworker I hardly know rained on my parade when I asked him if he had read the emails, hoping to invite the group of folk that he shepherds through him, to the creative party, and he said “no he had not… they were way too long”, and no he wouldn’t give me access to his group, full stop. Ouch.

I am still a very sensitive writer, even though I have been doing it for almost 12 years. Whereas my hide is as tough as nails when it comes to painting, but of course, I’ve been engaged in that for fifty years. It took me three years to be able to re-read what I wrote before I destroyed it, another three years to offer it to someone to read – and then only to my coach, whom I would trust with my life – another couple of years to decided to publish them in some form, and finally a blog, and an email blast list…thank you, from the bottom of my heart… you, tender readers…

But the real yin showed up in my immediate supervisor, who just cannot tolerate my artistic ways.

When I want a red sharpie, rather than a black one, she thinks I am coloring outside the lines. When I did my first exit interview with the students I am charged with caring about…she didn’t like how descriptive and “adjective” filled my language was. When I wrote the second of my emails about the tree project, I chose to include a reference to the “no child left behind” campaign that Laura Bush spearheaded into existence on a national basis, but I couldn’t remember if it was Laura, or Barbara, or Hilary…so I asked aloud, the co-worker who sits on the other side of me, who he thought it was, and my supervisor turned the answer into a competition between herself and him. “No, that’s not right it wasn’t her”…and so on, and so on.

By the time my creative joy had reached bursting yang and I was… in-point-of-fact… a little giddy, her yin energy was reaching a full roil.

I won’t describe, any further, the way it manifested… mostly because that isn’t the point and that would only serve to make you lose sight of what is important, just as I did.

I have worked for her, now, for about six weeks. She is as yin as my mother was. Although I often feel quite dull around her, her yin energy has not caused me any real discomfort until this event. Mostly because my mother and I had traveled that ground and healed that wound, with such commitment, dedication, and obedience – which had subsequently resulted in such a wonder of healing and miraculous release.

We, the western world, believe with our whole hearts that we can shape a destiny in which yang is ever present, and yin doesn’t darken our doorstep…we believe that, because we are young, still powerful, and quite immature.

Older cultures than ours, having already watched Rome burn, are wise enough to know, (or at least experientially understand), that yin and yang are as yoked as night and day.

There is, however, a wisdom path that can take you above the wild swings of living in the turbulence of yin and yang. I know because my Teacher is a living, breathing example of it.

I have had moments of rising above the polarized energies of yin and yang; I have done, in my mind, remarkably well working for such a yin supervisor…until my yang energy, pushed us both over the edge.

I am as much to blame for her severely delivered criticism, as she is, not because I am wrong and not because she is wrong…but because yang will never exist without yin. I completely lost sight of that, and moved back into a victim space when I perceived her displeasure costing me my much valued yang energy.

With my joy tattered, I lost my equilibrium and became really angry.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I moved cleanly and easily back into the child that had once cowered in fear or burned in resentment when my mother beat me, I gave myself to the egoic mind structure that I have spent so very long attempting to mature beyond.

There is a Zen story that talks about forgiveness, as being the perfume that a flower sends forth into the world, even as the heel of a boot is crushing it.

We don’t like that idea.

We want other people to make us feel comfortable, welcomed, included, and to provide us with the experience of being loved and appreciated.

I am not looking for that kind of service. My Teacher never once provided that kind of teaching.

He lived, and taught, the non dual principles depicted in the ancient wisdom parable that if you are walking the world barefoot and your feet hurt because of the brambles, stickers, and stones…do not seek your comfort in covering the earth with leather, but rather, sit down and craft for yourself a pair of boots, no matter how long it takes and no matter what it costs you.

My immediate supervisor with her near total yin energy is my latest opportunity to continue crafting, for myself, a pair of boots. I spectacularly failed at it, on the day in question, but I will not fail in the long run… because my eye is fixed upon the horizon.

Having come to the experience of total, unmovable, and complete peace with my mother for the last seven years of her life… I will have nothing less than a sturdy, functioning, and effective pair of boots to wear. So that all those who are required, by virtue of unconsciousness, to carry the yin energy…for those of us, who so much prefer the yang… can be blessed for their service. (It is my belief that is why our prison system is larger than any other westernized country, they are carrying the yin energy, we, the larger population will not deal with.) Until the fine day arrives… the one day ~ some day… when I am grown well beyond the reach of my personalities preferences, and my boots are worn and entirely broken in.

If that day ever arrives ~ I will upon that day ~ like my Teacher, be capable of sending forth a fragrance even as I am crushed by the heel of the necessity for the existence of yin. Death will call us all, destruction will find us all, disease will rob us all, the only thing that matters is if it will find us wearing a self constructed, sturdy, and well worn pair of boots. It all boils down to one simple question…will we, at the end of days, be shod? Or, like a small child, will we still be looking for someone else to cover the earth with leather?

Adayre R. Miller

1/28/12

photo courtesy of Matt Osborne and flickr photo sharing, to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link… http://www.flickr.com/photos/32681588@N03/4752299027/

To Role Over…or Under…That is the Question…

Let’s start this conversation with the notion that there are only two states of Being. Only two. Real Simple.

Contracted or expanded.

Nothing else, no big deal…

Here’s the thing. “Expanded” provides relief from the confinement of the personal self and its many minions of suffering. “Contracted” makes suffering such a ubiquitous experience that sometimes you don’t even know you are suffering.

Let me give you an example or two…

My supervisor is contracted much of the time. She suffers much of the time, sometimes I can tell by watching her that she does not think of it as suffering. The reason she does not view this sometimes suffering, as suffering, is because it arises out of the field of “being absolutely sure of what is the right thing to do”. I am deeply familiar with that particular set of belief systems.

I was very often the recipient of my mother’s rage, which was entirely driven by what was “right”. If I cleaned under the bed on any given Saturday, (which was my all day task – if it were done correctly), then she would check the top of the refrigerator find it dirty, and I would get my ritualized Saturday beating for not having done the job in the right way. If the next week I got a ladder, scrubbed the refrigerator to within an inch of its life…that week she would check the baseboards…and… I would get my Saturday beating. The target was always moving and “right” was a thing that could barely be discovered, much less understood.

I remember once, after having studied with my Teacher for many years, attempting to describe the concept of this type of “rightness” and its deadly effects, to my sister, versus the much more subtle and appears to be, but really isn’t at all, similar “agreements” that have been a staple of my Teacher’s process for more than thirty years.

My sister who had also, somewhat surprisingly, attended George’s workshops and had been exposed to his foundational lesson which is the necessity of keeping ones “agreements” and thereby, becoming what is defined in the larger world, as a person of character. This lesson of George’s was not hard for me, or my sister to incorporate, and abide by. We were, after all, both daughters of a mother who required strict adherence to the rules; we had no difficulty what so ever, abiding by whatever was perceived by us, as the “right” thing. But living based upon doing what is the right thing, and keeping ones agreements, are very different experiences. They are both limitations, to be sure, the first born of a totally unconscious need to adhere to militaristic style rules, and the illusory safety it promises. The second; a mature, conscious, and measured decision, to accept self-chosen limitations for the purpose of becoming an honorable, dependable person, of great depth and moral fiber.

In an attempt to describe that difference, to my sister, I told her of the time a roommate questioned me about why exactly…did the toilet paper HAVE to roll off the handle, top over, instead of bottom under. I patiently explained, again, to my roommate, how that was the way it was done, must be done, couldn’t be done otherwise…because it was the RIGHT way.

She looked at me like I was crazy.

And right there and then, I began questioning everything I had ever been taught about what was right. As I told my sister this story, she had a deeply confused look on her face. “So you see”, I said, “this is why it is that George, our teacher, is forever reiterating the need to undo our unconscious beliefs about what is right or true, not just some of them…but all of them”. Her puzzled look did not abate.

Long pause.

“But…the toilet paper should come off the roll, top over – rather than bottom under…that is the right way…I don’t get it….”

This world of knowing what is “right” is where my supervisor lives, the water she swims through, the lens she sees through.

She told me not long ago, a procedure that I must follow when a student comes in to drop off a final project…she was very specific, must be this way and no other way…y’up say I, no problem. The very next time I did it that way, she nearly jumped over the desk divider that segments our offices, to prevent me from doing it that way.

Seems that moving target, is still on the move.

Or yesterday, I asked if she had a red sharpie and could I borrow it? The near total exasperation on her face was very sad to witness, no she said…”black is standard, we all use black”…(toilet paper, simply must come off the role top over, not bottom under…).

By and large, I do not react to her, as she is nowhere near as good at it as my mother was, and I came to total and unshakeable peace with my mother before she passed. But I do feel considerable sorrow for my supervisor, as she has no idea that the suffering she endures is because she holds so very many beliefs about what is “right”, and how everything must be done.

It was my Teacher who freed me from the belief that I knew what was “right”.

The genius of my Teacher was that he never lectured, and instead, always put us in experiential situations which, if we truly showed up – and believe me when I tell you that I showed up – we would encounter our unconsciousness in a direct and lived way, and thereby have a deeper and more impactful chance of waking up. I have rarely shared those experiences with anyone, because we were asked not to. But now that he is no longer teaching, I feel that I can at least describe the lessons I learned, if not the process.

In the early years of attending my Teachers workshops, I was partnered with a very “spiritual” young man who was very ungrounded and airy. We were given a task to accomplish and it was weighted with the very clear, and very direct information that if we did not do it as instructed, we would be asked to leave the training. Further, if our partner did not follow the simple guidelines, and they were agonizingly simple, then both partners would lose the opportunity to attend. The instructions were given, and being my mother’s daughter…I not only heard them, I committed them to memory. As the activity began, it was clear almost immediately that my partner was not doing it correctly. I began by trying to coach him, I soon moved to insistence; anger followed, and finally a few bitter tears… as I knew that his actions would put me out of the training. And somewhat surprisingly, for all his “love” and “light”…he could not be budged a millimeter, with respect to doing the activity in a manner that I knew was correct.

After the activity concluded and we were once more seated in a circle. George asked that everyone who had completed the assignment correctly to stand. Everyone stood, no exceptions. Then George began to reissue the instructions, one at a time, and directed that if they had not been completed correctly that the person in question should sit, and that they were consequently out of the training, having broken their agreement to follow some very simple rules. (The reason this exercise worked so very well, to expose us to our unconsciousness, was because he used a tool that everyone had been using since grade school, and we had all been taught the “right” use of this ubiquitous tool to the degree that it made many of us blind to what he had instructed, thus most of us could not even hear his instructions, much less complete them accurately.) Slowly, everyone dropped into their chair… amazed and realizing, hopefully, how entirely unconscious they had been.

Everyone save me.

Don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t conscious in any expanded way, rather I was merely exhibiting my childhood training, the futile pursuit to get it “right”, to hit that ever moving target …you remember… toilet paper must come off the role, top over, not bottom under.

Finally, as I became the sole standing participant, George turned those entirely impersonal, blazingly blue eyes upon me…and asked in that incredibly non-judgmental and utterly uninvolved way, (which is the hallmark of the awakened), why…he asked, did I need to be perfect so very, very, badly.

I began to silently weep.

I sat, and wordlessly so.

And for the first time, and by far not the last time, a surge of energy started in my coccyx and blasted its way to the top of my skull, leaving my legs paralyzed. It is a sensation that cannot be adequately described, and it is very disturbing – or it was that very first time – because I truly could not move my legs for several seconds, and that is a very scary thing.

I was about twenty-eight at that event, and it took me nearly two decades, but slowly over time, I undid every shred of “rightness” that has come up from that day to this.

While also, paradoxically, becoming more and more willing to live by the rules, or the “agreements”, my Teacher taught me to honor. A great many of the agreements I am bound by, are simply because I was born here, in this particular culture. To this day I am never late with credit card payments because when they gave me a card, I have “agreed” to pay them on a timely basis. I haven’t been stopped for speeding in over a decade, because as a citizen of this state, I am bound by an “agreement” to the road rules that were set in place by my states lawmakers. I do these things, and many many more, not because they are “right”, but rather because I have an agreement to uphold. And yet, there are occasions were agreements must be broken…

I am privileged to have a coach, in my life, who is a very bright guy. I have learned a great deal from him. He defined the need to occasionally break our agreements as “situational ethics” and illuminated it with this simple analogy…if the SS is at the door and demands to know if you are hiding Jews in the basement, then lying becomes the bravest and “rightest” thing you can do. (Even though it breaks your agreement with your countries authorities, and lets be clear… there can be a terrible price to pay for breaking agreements… telling that particular lie would take enormous courage, as you would be putting your life in the balance).

Tom, my coach, tells me that situational ethics has a dark side and a light side. I stole a dog because I was compelled to put the morality of theft aside, for the purpose of saving the animal, which would be a light side example of situational ethics, in my opinion. The dark side of situational ethics allows for doing the “wrong” and often expedient thing, for the bottom line or for some other profitable outcome, or “right” result.

George also addressed this issue of “situational ethics” and of course with him it was not a conceptual lesson, but rather a lived event. It stands as one of the most profound of my life.

In this training, we were again partnered; again our fates were tied together. This time my partner was an older man who was going through a very rough patch in his life. We were given a good amount of time to come to know and care about our partners, and then we were put into an exercise and told to express to one another how much we wanted to be in the training. I was so glad to have my particular partner, as he was as committed and emotionally invested as I was.

Then we began an exercise that was dreadfully painful.

We, as a group, were told that fifteen of us had to be chosen to be designated as “lost”. I will not disclose how that was undertaken, but it was deeply sad. My partner was one of the ones lost; someone I had begun to invest in, someone I knew wanted to be in that room as much as I did, someone whose life was already in terrible turmoil.

Then the fifteen were removed from the room, truly lost to us.

As the door closed on the last of them, George said, “You may save them…if you choose to… they are in the building.” And then he sat. Giving us no more guidance. No matter how we tried to get him to…he would merely repeat, “they can be saved…”

At first the discussion on how to accomplish such a feat, was civil and reasoned. After all, we were “loving” individuals committed to one another’s growth. But we were also caught in an unwinnable trap, we had all signed the agreement that required we not leave the room for any reason, during the training. We had all been through two other, earlier levels of training where we had learned the vital, earth shattering, importance of integrity in the life of the very cosmos. Give your word, keep your word…or renegotiate…no exceptions.

In the first few moments several of the more verbal among us, attempted to renegotiate with George. He absolutely refused. “You have an agreement with me…and you may save them, if you choose to…”, was his only response.

As the participant discussions moved ever more resolutely toward letting our partners go, in order to preserve our agreement with George… I began to feel a measure of dissidence that was so ugly it tied my guts into knots. “We can’t, I kept saying. We simply can’t. My partner needs this training I won’t let him go. I just won’t.”

I have, in my lifetime, never before or since… experienced such a driving, demanding, searing, and tearing conflict. As it became increasingly clear to me, that I was going to have to choose between keeping my agreement with the most important, loved, and valued human being that I have ever had the privilege of knowing… or let my partner slip away…my heart beat reached code blue levels of trip hammering. My palms began to sweat, I had a stress response need to urinate that was nearly driving me crazy, half the room had begun almost shouting at me, and George refused even the tiniest indication of having any interest at all in the outcome, much less the will to direct it.

(Do not imagine that George’s uninvolved stance was a matter of lack of caring. Enlightened Beings care enough to literally give their lives to the education and evolution of the human family, but they do so with such total trust, that the outcome is never a consideration. Complete faith in the moment-by-moment unfolding of any given event, coupled with a uni-polar view, where “right and wrong” are no longer concepts they deal in, allow these rare individuals the total comfort of detached acceptance. They, therefore, have little to no emotional investment in the outcome of things. As an example, Jesus cried out in anguish that he had to sacrifice his mortal life, the Christ he became… accepted the sacrifice with total trust and faith.)

Finally after what must have been two hours, or maybe two years…I stood, and with tears flooding my face I marched toward the door.

Four other people followed me.

I put my hand on that handle, and I swear to Almighty God, I thought I might pass out. Somewhere in my heart of hearts my emotional response was that I believed that I was choosing, in that moment, between a man who had provided me with the tools to save my own life, and a man I barely knew, but to whom I felt a commitment that I couldn’t even understand.

As I pulled open that door, thereby breaking my agreement with my beloved Teacher, the need to urinate became so intense I knew I couldn’t go looking for my partner without first addressing that need. While I was in the bathroom, now unable to urinate, the four people who had followed me out of the room went in search of, and found, our partners. They had been in a room, beside the one we were in, behind a two-way mirror that we had no idea was anything more than a mirror…watching and listening… to the microphones that were feeding our struggle to them via a sound system. Most of them had been crying, for much of the two hours, while we struggled with this moral conflict.

My partner felt almost the same level of pain I was feeling…not for himself… but for the overwhelming struggle I was engaged in – attempting to save him – by casting asunder my moral compass.

Stealing that dog, in the real world, rather than the utterly safe world of George’s training room, removing it from harm’s way… was the full circle moment of learning that sometimes agreements and rules must be broken, with the full knowledge and acceptance that there may be consequences to bear.

George often told us… that someday… we would have to become our own Teacher, Teachings, and Student. That seeking outside ourselves would have to end, if we were to find the freedom we sought.

I have come to that day.

I can sit beside my supervisor, unengaged and unenageable, and deal with her moving the target and her need to control even the color of Sharpie that I choose to use, and have no resistance rise up in me. I feel nothing toward her save compassion; I know what it feels like to live under that many rules and regulations. I know how painful and demanding is such a life.

I do not know what lies behind the Mystery of my life and yours. I do not need to know. I know only, that I am grateful in my DNA for having encountered George, for having learned that nothing outside the impersonal awareness that I am, has any lasting value. Grateful beyond measure for having come to the capacity to turn my attention away from goals, outcomes, ambitions, and the right/wrong, good/bad dualities.

The parable in the Bible, of Lot and his wives, being told to leave Sodom and Gomorrah and the admonition to not look back, as they would be turned into pillars of salt for the doing of it, has always meant to me that when we are given the opportunity to walk through the threshold of the personal, into the expansive freedom of The Impersonal Ground of Being…that we dare not look back… yearning for a time when life was juicer and more dramatic. If we don’t turn back, we will be gifted with the ability to live the fluid life of the awakened one’s. If we begin to yearn for the days of good and bad, of goals and achievements, of dreams fulfilled and desires satiated…then we, most certainly will, turn into the bitter salt of unshed tears.

Giving up rules in favor of agreements, relinquishing desire in favor of acceptance, letting go of all but what is underneath our fingers at this precise moment, is the doorway into peace of mind, serenity, tranquility, and well being. This is a place where rolling top over, or bottom under, or red vs. black, is without merit. This is a place where must haves, and even mild preferences, dissolve. A place where safety and security is an internal experience, rather than an external event.

This place is our rightful home.

Adayre R. Miller

1/21/12

Photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Elyce Feliz to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link… http://www.flickr.com/photos/elycefeliz/4638361635/