The Way of It

The trust that has been placed on me by my teachers

I shall not defraud

This is amazing!

I am finally Home.

All the more amazing: I never was not.

Is it time wasted, when I think otherwise?

Or does it help me see every part of my life in a most wondrous light?

Words, it is said, cannot capture It, only point to it. How about a video?

Thanks to my friend Tash for sending this my way.

A few Sundays ago as I was taking a shower I had the courage to admit to myself the unadmittable: that I still loved my drama. I have been reading over the last few months in several of Adyashanti’s writings about the fact that the reason that we humans still identify with the notion of a separate Me is that we think it is fun to be a Me. If we didn’t think there were any benefits, why would we do it? And if we did not identify, how could we suffer? So to the extent that I still feel entangled in my life I can open my eyes and, well, begin to take inventory of all the benefits I think being a Me brings.

And the insights I got from this kind of honesty to myself are too numerous to count and even to describe, although I will try my best.

• I found a freedom that was at the same time deep and very ordinary, that simply comes from the realization that it is okay that I love my drama, when I do, because that’s what is.
• Loving what is, no matter what it is, does not take me to the land of the metaphysical fairies, it brings me to now, now, now. Where else would anyone think it was going to take me? It’s all reentry, all the time. And this is the best news.
• I notice an ease to deal with the “curveballs” in life that I fall in love with more and more with with each day that passes by.
• I am more loving and accepting to myself than before. I don’t have to wait to be “enlightened” to really love and admire the way I live. I can be more loving and accepting of it now instead. And whatever parts I don’t love yet, I can love and accept that I’m not there yet. It REALLY is okay.
• My favorite way of saying it, for now: I still have problems. It’s just not a problem that I still have problems. I don’t need to be problem free to be happy or at least to be at ease with the conditions in my life, or at least to have the integrity to be present with my suffering, when it comes. And sometimes it does.
• Further, I see the advantages of still “having problems.” Judging from all I’ve learned from my old problems, and knowing the value of those lessons, wow, I can’t imagine what good could come from what is left of my problems. So I look forward to them. They are welcome here. Not because I’m masochistic, but because, well, they may come anyways. I am open to the wonders they bring. In the end it becomes difficult to call them problems anymore, and I notice that I still do, sometimes. I’m working on it.
• The real end is that I don’t care much anymore about whether there is an end or not, because either way, I know how to deal with what comes. And even if I forget how to deal with it, I’m never too far from Home. Not far at all.
• And that, as far as I can see, is the real freedom, the one that is independent from conditions. It’s what’s meant in Buddhism by the expression “Samsara is Nirvana,” as far as I can see.

But, please, don’t take it from me: I may just be full of hot air. That could be as true, or truer :).

I am currently driving West, on my move to San Luis Obispo County in California. Along the way I have had the joy to see spectacular sights side by side with, well, the wonderful content of my mind.

At some point early in the trip I decided to do The Work on the thought “I need people to admire me.” I came to see for myself that, despite me believing it at varying degrees of strength throughout my life, it isn’t really true, and what wonderful news this is!

Further, I tried on “I need me to admire me” as a turnaround and to my amazement I discovered that whenever I do something that makes me proud of myself I soon want somebody to praise it but I spend barely any time giving the kind of honest and loving praise to myself that I seem to want from others. And so I decided to catch up with myself: as I drove through the desert I began making a list of all the aspects of me that I really do admire, and I took it in, really spending time reflecting on them, bathing on them, fully.

It is one of the most beautiful things I have done for myself. I would think, for example, how proud I am of how I have handled my divorce this last year, of how dedicated I have become to establishing a genuine connection with my students, of how loving of a father to my children I have become through the years, and the list would not stop. It would go on and on, searching through the distant past, finding the ways in which my life has had meaning and enriched this wonderful, mysterious planet. I did this slowly, really taking in the internal approval for who and what I am, for what I am becoming, for what breathes and thinks me.

I would think about each of these reasons for humble pride, and they would fill my heart, and I would cry, and cry, and cry, in joy. In fact, my heart swells up just to think of those wonderful hours of driving through the Southwest, crying, becoming real with myself about my own worth. At last.

What a wonderful thing, to be aware of one’s greatness, because it is through my greatness, and only through it, that I can be of genuine service.

One of the most exciting moments in my life took place when I realized that just because I love somebody that does not mean that I have to date, kiss, have sex with, live with or marry that person. Love only implies itself and it is sufficient for itself. And I learned this by noticing that my love for somebody is really my love for myself, that the somebody was a projection of mind all along. What joy came out of this realization, I cannot describe, although there is a way, I found out, to get a taste for this kind of joy, and this is the exercise that I describe below. It is odd, fun and quite delicious. Read on.

1. I close my eyes and picture in my mind how would I feel if I was with someone I really liked. I Pick a specific person and I allow my mind to show me all the qualities I like in that person. I allow the experience to become very real, I really recall how good it feels to be with that person.
2. Aware of the fact that it’s me whom I’m liking throughout the experience, I allow the images of the person I thought about to dissolve while keeping the feelings that came with it. They are feelings about me, after all, and I notice that, even though these people in my life come and go, I remain.
3. I then pick somebody else, and allow my mind to show me all the qualities I like in this person. And while keeping the feelings from the previous experience, I allow this new experience to also become very real, I really recall how good it feels to be with this new person. I then repeat step two, with the new person.
4. I add as many people to the soup as I wish.

It is an exercise in finding all the wonderful qualities your loved ones have that really are inside of yourself and in having the courage to take them in, of bathing in the experience that it’s YOU whom you’ve been deeply in love with all along.

Sometimes I make the list of all the people I’ve liked throughout my life that I can recall, and I sit in the experience of running this exercise for as long as I can handle the intense joy that comes with it.

Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1855