An Open Letter on the Holiday Season

To those who, like me, are perpetually recovering from their own assholery,

Over the Thanksgiving break, for the second time in the history of Under the Influence, I stopped writing the post I was working on.  The first time was on June  12 2017, when I sat down to write “Kairos Koans and Conversion Three“.  On that day last summer, I found myself attempting to write myself a solution to my anxiety. Yesterday, as on that June morning, I was working on what I consider to be a good idea.  That wasn’t the problem.  The problem was my writing tried to grasp for secure meaning, instead of letting meaning come and go as it pleased.  I was writing to "fix myself."  With a bit of vigilance, I'd have been able to see that plainly.

I should have looked my distractions, as I wrote.  Ostensibly I was writing about positive masculine gender identity.  Meanwhile, I was car shopping—I can’t yet afford a new car, mind you—but I’ll be able to some day.  I was doing research on the perfect replacement-pair of winter pajamas.  I practiced yoga nidra twice.  The first "sitting" hadn’t been “a good meditation”—that is, it had provided no remedy for my anxiety—so I did it again, and had a similarly “fruitless” experience.  Such evaluation indicates a dualistic way of approaching meditation, but I only saw that later. It stared back at me from the bathroom mirror.

In the middle of everything, I stumbled on an idea from the Kabbalah that got me particularly stoked, and I read through intellectual clickbait till my brain hurt.  I rock a few of the symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive thinking, and they roused themselves to speed my busload of potential blog posts over the intellectual cliff.  Eventually—Holy Shit—I had to stop.

Often I can't put my finger on precisely why I'm hella-angsty.  Mercifully, I eventually saw myself perpetuating my Advent pre-game mindfuck.  I took a shower, did some stretching exercises, shaved for the first time since Thanksgiving break started.

I feel I've come to something of a crossroads.  Since high school, whatever's transcendent has used thought to do its communicating with me.  As I said in July 27th's Art, Empathy and Ministry: Swordfighting with Poets--when the normal cacophony of mental noise is quiet, and I hear only one thought--I have, in the past, considered it a divine voice.  I no longer do.  In part, I suppose it's because a quiet mind is happening less and less.  I mourned this at first, tried to reproduce the inner calm.  Over the past year, I've learned that it isn't the absence of thought, or reduced thoughts, that indicates the divine presence.  I can cling as much to one thought as to 20: it's letting go that indicates the finger of God.  Since I learned this, when I sit down, I don't hear words, I hear the wind blowing through the trees.

Lately, in yoga nidra practice, I'm becoming much more conscious of how the body stores both old trauma, and kundalini energy. (Kundalini energy is the life-force energy one can "encourage" by being attentive to the Chakras.)  I'm not naive enough to assume the body's energies are a divine revelation, but at the very least they're the next thing I have to be attentive to.

When God speaks through thoughts, he makes himself clear, as he has in the past, through whole tomes of mediocre poetry.  When God works through bodily sensation, he says nothing, but lately I find myself listening more actively to that silence.

No matter what I consider my current signposts to be, I know I can have one of two attitudes about the path I'm on.  Either my delusions about self and God can guide my journey, or I can let the journey determine what I believe about myself and God.  I prefer the latter.  And in the midst of that, while I arrive at very few absolute truths, there are pieces of wisdom to which I return that have been consistently helpful.  

So, while brushing my teeth on that conflicted day after Thanksgiving, once I'd given up trying to "solve" my anxious state, I recalled a number of things that are important.  Here they are, in no particular order:

1.  As Ram Dass says, “All methods are traps.”  Both Yoga Nidra and concentrating on the word Om can become spiritual “possessions” I play with to avoid sitting with tension.  New Cars, Pajamas, financial planning for either of them--these techniques can all become justifiable parts of the spiritual-avoidance-complex.  For me, and for Under the Influence, anxiety is the primary indication it's time to switch spiritual methods, or cease them altogether.

2. If Jesus is "The Way, the Truth and The Life," then it's perhaps even more true that Life is Truth, that it's the Way.  To employ Ghandiji's thought again--as I did in May 18th 2017's "The Rights to Being Right"--I didn't, over Thanksgiving, realize Jesus was my life.  I realized my life was Jesus.  "Letting Go" came not as the result of spiritual work, but in the absence of it.

3.  Back in the monastery--I remember every detail of this moment--I remember a time my mental wheelspinning stopped.  I wanted very much to encounter my sufferings, to unite them to the suffering of Christ.  I wanted to commune with God, for christsakes.  After all, that's what had motivated joining.  It's what I'd rearranged my life for.  Toothbrush in mouth, I realized that, while brushing my teeth, the way to unite my sufferings to Christ was by shutting the fuck up and brushing my teeth.

It reminded me of the Zen Monk who'd sequestered himself in a cave to intensify his practice.  Once, he voiced his satisfaction about how his day had gone by simply and contentedly saying "Not one thought of Zen today."

What needs to happen, will happen, in the end, but not if our Egos wear the present moment like shoes and tie the laces together.  

So here it is: I am nothing.  The Spiritual Life is unimportant.  Transformation isn't a low-hanging christmas tree ornament, and we're not  beloved pet cats in a dysfunctional home.

This holiday season, let's donate the last of the fucks we have to give to the bell-ringers outside the grocery store.  If you get to the frozen aisle and find one left in your jacket pocket, join me in using it to follow the advice of my famous Jewish-Buddhist compatriot: "Whenever I find myself talking about Zen," he said, "I just can't wait to shut the fuck up."

The way to find serenity is a non-method.

So, um...Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, or whatever.  I want to leave the seeker of wisdom, and the hack of a guru I sometimes try to be, sitting on the couch while I do dishes.  Peace to all, and God Bless us, Everyone,

Josh W.