Going Deep

Unless we go deep we cannot understand another’s context, emotions or even perspective because we will always be trying to make personal sense out of it first. Going deep requires accepting that “everything belongs,” just as it is, and everything holds within it the power to teach. But understanding this requires first surrendering control; something ego will resist with all his might. And if you can get over that hurdle, you can actually begin to accept that “everything belongs;” that even evil and darkness are part of the whole of the universe. Without that acceptance, however, ego will try to selectively accept some things (the good and useful stuff) and reject other parts as negative and useless.

But because all of creation is one, the so-called (or at least perceived as) negative stuff must be included within “everything belongs” or you risk not fully being open to learning. You have already begun evaluating before opening to what must be learned. And by extrapolation, you are only open to what you have already judged as acceptable within your limited scope. Only after going deep within yourself, and transforming the crushing blows of grief into compassion for your broken and defeated egoic self, can you accept all else in nature as part of the whole, as belonging, and as a perfect reflection of all else - including yourself. Until then you do not have the capacity for compassion. As the Buddha said, you must find compassion for yourself before you can have compassion for others.

It is the same with religious beliefs. One cannot fully comprehend another’s belief, spirituality, or spiritual crisis, until and unless one has first gone to deep places in which one’s own spirituality does not make sense - at least it does not make sense at the utilitarian, ego-driven logic level. You must allow your own beliefs to be challenged and to push you to deeper meaning making. Comfort with doubt and darkness must be accepted elements of your own beingness before you are able to look with compassion at another's struggles, another's torment, or another’s radical clinging to some fundamental structure. Compassion does not condone the values of the Taliban or ISIS, but rather can see through the hate and anger to the core of doubt and fear that must exist in order to demand such rigid adherence to those beliefs.

Then and only then can you ask, “What must I learn in order to love in such a way that the hurt, fear, and pain from which ‘the other’ must be operating is soothed and mitigated? How do I channel that type of healing love?” In fact, until your innermost self has been opened and transformed, most of us would probably ask, “Why even bother?” But once one has been opened, MLK’s assertion that “hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that,” takes on a new and deeper meaning. And Jesus’ demand to “love your enemies” is no longer spiritual ideal, but a possible reality.

The Error of Ego

There is a wisdom that only humility can teach. But it does not come in the form of some factual knowledge - some thing to be possessed or known - that the ego would love to grab hold of and claim as its own. Tis wisdom is merely an opening through which far more than the ego could imagine flows.

I cannot claim to know that wisdom, because my teacher has told me it is not mine to hold or mine to claim and name. It is something that only has existence in letting it go and in giving it away. This wisdom is quite simple in its message: that I am a human, like every other human on this planet. In learning this, through humility, one has to accept that what lives in the most wretched terrorist is also resident in me. It is easy to claim brotherhood with the mystics (and loads of fun for the ego to claim as his understanding!). But to know that I am no different - NO DIFFERENT - than the poorest of the nameless untouchables or than the foulest and most hate-filled zealot, is the humiliating (humbling) lesson.

But least I get ahead of myself, let me walk you through the steps of getting here. For whatever reason and by whatever means, I have been recently opened up to a new level of understanding and feeling emotions. And with that level of perception came the awareness of other people's emotions as well - not some people's emotions, not just my friend's emotions; all people's emotions. It is the one thing we all have in common, irrespective of circumstances, history, culture, gender or any other aspect of life. The bottom line of the human experience is that we are blessed or cursed with that region of our brain that produces emotions.

Now, truth be told, many are not aware of their emotions, or if aware of them, do not know how to access them, or may not know the full extent of what they are and how they work. But we all have them. That translates into something like seeing a picture of a Syrian father grieving the death of his child and knowing full well that you do not need to know his religion or speak his language to
understand his pain or well up with tears.

But if that is true - that we all are given the same capacity of emotion - it levels the playing field. It means that we are actually, on some level, all the same; created the same, evolved the same. We all bleed the same and die the same way. By placing myself apart from, or different from another human (which is what we do when we outcast them, vilify them and make them "them") I am living in the state of egoic superiority and denying my fundamental humanness. I guess I can no longer do that.

And now that I have painted myself into that corner, we are left with the question of what to do. I will try taking that on tomorrow.

On "Losing it All"

The graduation address at ANTS this year was drawn from the book "The Things They Carried" that (among other themes) described the characters of the story by the objects they had with them in combat - from canteens to pictures and bibles. We tend so often to define ourselves and our lives through the things we have, the things we own or, perhaps more accurately the things that begin to own us. At least I do - that is until a few weeks ago when became apparent that all of those things were about to become dust, ashes, memories, and lost.

I just lost a very big gamble - a company for which we had borrowed a lot of money to launch. In failing, all of that investment was lost, flushed right down the proverbial toilet, and lost. Well not entirely lost inasmuch as I still remain accountable to repay the vast amount of money borrowed in the first place.  But what went down with that company was a set of dreams, hopes, vacations, and a whole lifestyle we had hoped on in our retirement. Gone. Poof! In a matter of just a few weeks all of that was no longer something that I had - and now is something that has me.

In my meditations I am looking for the release - looking for the sense of nothingness and freedom that having nothing and owing a lot carries with it. And I find that I am still carrying pictures of that lost dream tucked into the band of my helmet. I am still carrying stories of what I would do if... in my duffel bag. I am still carrying all those things with me into battle. I want desperately to let go and to step into the humility of this new naked life that has been thrust on me pretty much against my will. And to tell the truth, I am not there yet.

Yesterday I laid on the floor in a crucifix position, praying for God to take my ego away.  "Go ahead - rip it out of my chest," I shouted out to the air that might be listening. And the only response I heard was a whisper that seemed to say, "When you are ready, you'll let go of it. It is the only thing standing between you and me."  Damn it, God, why do you have to be so right! Why don't you just let me wrestle you like your boy Israel instead of messing with my mind? Beat me fair and square instead of making it my job to surrender!

Then again, maybe that is what this losing it all is about. Being beaten at my own game.

Trust Fall

I am currently reading The Ascent of Mount Carmel by John of the Cross; the book in which he outlines the steps and process of the dark night of the soul.  John's description of the way in which one "prepares" for this journey toward god is huge - and risky!  Think of the preparation this way: you cannot be intimate (you know sexually intimate) by yourself - it takes two to do that tango!  But what you can do it prepare yourself for intimacy.  You can adopt the "position" of intimacy - open, vulnerable, hungry and waiting.  And to increase the sensuousness of it all you could even close your eyes and let your lover "surprise" your senses.  Love is a giant game of "Trust Fall."  Close your eyes, fold your arms over your chest, tuck your chin, lean back over the cliff, and let yourself fall into the arms of your lover.

John is saying somewhat the same thing about achieving intimacy with god.  You cannot do this willfully on your own.  But you need to adopt the position of readiness. That position, he says, is that you need to starve your senses, and get to a place of total not-knowing, because any thought that you might have about god or the experience of god is in the way of actually experiencing god this time and the next time, and so on.  Any sensation you have a longing for and any "knowing of what that connection may have felt like before, if still present inside you, will be looking to stuff this next encounter into that same wonderful place.

And god refuses admission to any of those boxes.  God cannot be described, containerized or labeled by any human classification system.  So all our thoughts and feelings have to be stripped away (and they do not go quietly) so that however and whatever is next in the smorgasbord of god-encounters can manifest however and whenever it manifests.

Now here is the thing we need to get: god is already and always there/here inside and with us.  And it is really all of our thoughts, emotions, feelings and memories (including the very moment we have one) of our encounter, our touching, that awareness that get in the way of having that awareness. Close your eyes and lean back!

In Whose Eyes

I have been observing the function of focus lately in an attempt to see how focusing on certain things altered the experience of them – in particular how focusing on the divine altered the experience of life.   The great news is that doing that, like focusing on beauty or seeing love in others, has a marvelous effect.  Suddenly the entire world looks sacred and holy.

In addition it was my intent to actively choose this focus – to see if I could constantly focus on the Divine.  Now, while all of us have that part of the brain that concentrates our focus on foreground, relegating all else to background (a function of the RAS or reticular activating system), actively choosing to focus on this or that more intensely engages the RAS and its focusing function.  When suddenly, in the middle of my mental conversation, it hit me how arrogant and ego-centric it was to assume that my choosing made the sacred appear!  It was not my choosing at all but the fact that God, had already chosen me – all of us – and that was what had made it sacred in the first place. 

I cannot pretend for a moment that I am choosing God – God has already, always chosen me.  And there is nothing in my choosing that can alter that, except that I forget and turn away from time to time.  But each time I turn back, there is God waiting, accepting, and welcoming me back, just as I am.  So while I do have a choice (whether to look away or toward God’s light) it is not my choosing that makes it so.  It is that God has – long before you or I ever had this thought – chosen us, in the very act of giving us this life to live. And in God’s “eyes” we are enough; holy and sacred; all we need to be; God’s very creation in 3D.

The thought suddenly relaxed me – like my shoulders dropped about six inches from their tensed up position – as if it was all a huge effort I had to do.  It isn’t.  It is quite easy. Just shut up and accept the gift (I am not good at receiving gifts – I’m much better at giving, I think).  Oh, I am certain I will forget this lesson and turn away, but as it always has been, all I have to do is turn back and remember, effortlessly, and there it is.  I think this is what others have called surrender.

Ego versus Soul

I am doing some work these days on knowing the difference between the voices of ego and soul. I envisioned a great battle set in the days of the Romans in a sun-drenched coliseum. At one end of the open arena stands the gladiator Egous Pontificus. His armor gleams in the noonday sun. Huge well-trained muscles bulging out from under the chain mail. Sweat glistens on his face and arms, steeled and ready for the battle. And entering from the other end of the arena comes his opponent, Souleus Minimus, an elderly and diminutive man clad only in a loincloth. He walks slowly, his bare feet barely making an imprint on the sandy floor of the arena. 

Ego arches back and lets out a bellowing laugh at the sight. Who set up this fight in the first place? It is hardly worth the warm up. "Ha Ha, Oh frail one, you come here to do battle with me?" he roars.  The old man says nothing but continues walking slowly forward. "Very well. A battle to the death it shall be," roars the giant gladiator. "But as I am feeling gracious today, you may choose the terms of the battle and the weapons and I swear to obey the terms."

At this the old man stopped in his tracks and stood silently thinking for a moment.  Then he slowly sat down in the sand crossing his legs in a lotus position. “Most gracious of you, my fine adversary. Have a seat. I choose a duel to the death by starvation!”

Ah yes my mighty ego thinks it is so powerful and strong, but it has no real power and not the least bit of endurance in the real tests of worth.  Soul never asserts itself, but just is. Pure power in its powerlessness. Certainly ego serves its purpose in ensuring that I accomplish what I have committed to.  But by far the power I am growing to love and embrace is the humility of the soul.