Bhrataji--in order to "keep the game straight on every level" (as Ram Dass says)--I must ask you to consent to being my echo chamber again. Our conversation last time we met has made me think a great deal...and I'd like to bring some of what we talked about into the light of the logos: to clarify some terms, and to make sure I'm dodging the curriculum of this particular moment in as few places as possible. [bxA]
I've asked for the grace many times: not just to know and live out of a deep meditation on Jesus' words and actions, but to share whatever inward realities led Jesus to speak and act as he did. In other words, I want to share in Jesus' silences and his motivations as much as his words and actions. In the eyes of most pundits, this desire makes me commit all of the heinous intellectual crimes: I'm psychologizing the gospel, I'm being isogetical, I'm stealing bits from other traditions, then applying them in ways that are completely ignorant of how devotees really use them. You know I'm not necessarily proud of this. But sometimes, a bloke's just gotta throw the spaghetti at the wall, and see what sticks. To over-extend a metaphor: everything that does stick, I'm making a meal of. Because, well, I'm in the householder phase, I'm TOTALLY unprepared for it internally, and I've got to come to some workable terms with it fairly fast.
This is new, and I can't vouch for its accuracy, but for starters: I've an intuition that, when the engine of my emotional life functions well, my obligations are not to others. What really compromises my serenity is "not using the energy I've been given skillfully." Being an overt and intentionally malicious sonovabitch to others is, for both you and me, a problem we largely hashed through in previous stages of this life. Perhaps you can empathize--but the things I think and do are mostly well intentioned, good and fair--and yet they still manage to piss off those around me. This is either because I'm not aware of my own motivations, or because others have sensitivities, and I could have stepped more carefully around them. To carry proactive self-knowledge and empathy into all my interactions, it seems, isn't important because "then the people around me will think I'm a real groove"--it's important because it's a skillful use of my spiritual energies that makes me feel less depleted. And increasingly, I need that energy to really count, because I work with an energy deficit daily. To misuse my naturally occurring energy, then complain about being overwhelmed--this is the definition of self-sabotage.
If I'm beginning to come to real answers, they always start with presence. Zen talks about koans as "hot coals stuck in our throats, that we can neither swallow, nor spit out." If I'm going to be intelligent about using my own energies, I have to be present, and I have to anticipate challenges to that presence. At some point, becoming better at bearing things has to become a more important goal than all that distracts from that effort. I usually mentally flee tensions. It's understandable, they're tough to deal with. But if I'm going to make progress, I have to focus attention and intention wherever the conflict is--it could be, at first, any situation in my work or home life; but it will always, eventually, be something I'm feeling in my body. It is easier to blame others than it is to face the tension. To riff off of Jordan Peterson, all choices are hard. It's hard to bear tension quietly and it's hard to blame others. But to paraphrase him further, I need to "pick my damn sacrifice, then shoulder it." (Let all who have ears shut the fuck up, use them, and hear what highly educated Canadian carnivores say to the churches.) I know that bearing tension quietly is what I'm called to. It's just bloody hard, and I suck at it.
Sections of chronological time, like entheogens, are going to show me things that are bigger than I am, and setting a wide intention that helps me incorporate it all is important. I think you were right, Bhratajii, when you suggested that Jesus took a nazarite vow before the crucifixion. It's fun to use his "not drinking wine" as proof of that, but more importantly, it explains why he was silent before Pilate: he was doing the hard work of "choosing his burden, then shutting up and bearing it." Fr. M. Louis said something like "sometimes the only proper response to suffering is silence and the sacraments." Most people talk about real presence like it's an attic window that's painted shut--the stuffiness of it begs for correction. To put an applicable spin on it, anywhere facing your life's problems is a full use of attention and intention that's grounded in sensation, that's real presence. It broadens "sacraments" into "sacramental living" in a way that'd fry pundits brains. But I'm probably a source of scandal to others on a regular basis anyway, so why not give "bowing into it" an honest whirl?
Every day, the quantity of blame and resentment and remorse and shame I feel puts me through my paces. But remember: at my best, I'm trying to deal with those to learn serene ways of venting energy, not to gain others' approval. When I feel insecurity (as at the first chakra), lust (as at the second), and the impulse to blame (as at the third chakra), the others are a distraction. The real question is: can I treat my own insecurity as a kind Father would, can I utilize the tense energy at the second chakra for creativity, and when I experience feelings of blame, can I rouse a bit of good, old fashioned might in the service of detachment and say "this is ok, it's just what happens when the energy is in the third chakra--it's just my third-chakra karma running off." The curriculum of the first three chakras is still making itself clear to me, but I think these are some of its learning goals.
The skillset that the lower chakras are trying to form in me, I still don't have a good grasp of that, either. Zen talks about "letting go, and holding fast." Though they certainly didn't mean it this way, my ego is a terrifically sensitive thing to have to do palliative care for. Part of my work is holding fast to egoic boundaries, so that the ego can feel safe in letting go. It's the equivalent of "restricting visits to dying brothers" like I used to do in the infirmary, but doing it for myself. Another way to think about it is to hold fast to what you can change, while you let go of what you can't. I struggle to keep my attention and intention focused on my incarnation's basic insecurity, I fumble around with holding tensions consciously till answers appear, and I find mustering basic might in healthy directions difficult--but this is a great deal of what I've got to do to "pass the course." It's "turning insights into usable skills, then using them in defense of emotional self-regulation," and I think it's a hump we all have to get over if hoarding our spiritual cash isn't gonna turn our third eye chakra into a miserly old bastard. Take it from one who's had lots of thoughts about how he might be God: the energy of the upper chakras either gets used to shore up the insecurity of the lower chakras or it becomes narcissistic.
Do you remember when Ram Dass talked about the "guts way reincarnation made sense to him?" This "guts way" of knowing is important to me right now. I think that "praying with my guts" is a skill I need to spend some time on. Beyond just the need to hold up my corner of the way "all creation groans," praying with my guts means bringing attention and intention and speech in the direction of what's really important. When I say "I want learning to shoulder tension to be more important to me than blame," that statement really comes out of my guts, at the expense of blame's more comforting tidbits--and I'm trying, in a broad way that includes a bunch of fucking up, to limit what I say to those types of things.
At some point, do a youtube search for "Katsu shout Zen." A Katsu shout is a yell, given by a master, to induce presence or enlightenment in the disciple. They're deep, guttural, and truly terrifying. I also think a great deal about Ram Dass' accounts of Shabd Yoga--the way "the bodily location where you felt the sensation" of your mantra would dictate its effects. When I was teaching in South Chicago, my long commute was a chance for a lot of Om practice. There were times when I felt the mantra deep at the base of my abdomen, times when I felt it in my throat. That practice taught me that some very basic flexing of the muscles at the base of the abdomen can diminish blame emotions and the feeling of being trapped, if done consistently and with enough attention and intention. I learned the lesson, then used the ensuing years to quickly forget it all.
Koans terminate in the reality of things, here and now. If "What were Jesus' silences like" is a Koan, then a great deal of his silences had to do with rousing his power in the direction of bearing the reality of his predicament. I don't know for certain, but I think that when Jesus was silent before Pilate, he didn't feel the tension in the throat. I'm sure he had a bunch of stuff he could say to adequately defend himself. When I feel I'm right, I never lack the words to explain why. I think Jesus was flexing the base of his abdomen, trying to prepare for what "bearing the cross undeservedly" would require of him. I'm saying that because "doing the inner work that makes outer work manageable"--and doing it in a climate of at least "mindful speech" if not silence--this is the direction my life has taken over the last two years, and it's the trajectory I expect to continue. Until, at least, I learn the lesson.
There's something more. We can't ignore the quantity of our inner flailing about that DOES bounce off others in unhealthy ways. Inside a devotee, God's spirit never climbs the bottom rungs of Jacob's ladder without putting his shoe in the faces of a few undeserving people beneath him. As the energy climbs into the heart chakra, we might have sincere thoughts about how broken we are, how rough other people have it, how inextricably tangled the knots are that we've tied our innards into. We might have sincere regret for all the blaming we did, all of the energy we spent being defensive and selectively forgetting other's good intention as well as our faults. This is the realm of broken-heartedness, the kind of wounds that really open a bloke to compassion. It's pain, and there's a sweetness to it.
I think the point of the heart chakra's sweetness is this. It makes praying to and with the rat-bastards who wronged you slightly enjoyable. (Don't pray for them, that's to condescending. Just take your position as a fellow ne'er-do-well, and let their ratty bastardness be the whirlwind you ante up to till your objections run out and God speaks.) The Big Book talks about "needing to rework the steps around my home life." For you and I, that might look like saying "I am powerless over ego, and my inner life has made my relationships unmanageable." When I've been a mean fuck to my fiancee, I just use all the disciplines of guru kripa with her as my object. The fact is, we have to forget our romantic partners have the same good intentions, the same blinders on as we do, in order to make blame stick. To the extent that I can work with the medicine of slow, deliberate gentleness, I sit with her selfishness until it becomes indistinguishable from my own. I assume her good intentions until I remember my own, I sit with the agony of our "two-ness" until it yields to unity. I assume her good intentions until I remember my own, I sit with the agony of our "two-ness" until it yields to unity. And it will, because it does. Adam and Eve's marital spats were just a process of throwing the apple in the air, to remember what empty hands felt like. Eventually, it falls to the ground, and we, their ancestors, forget that picking it back up is a choice. It's like a cosmic game of catch between amnesiacs. I'm trying to console myself, to remind myself that it takes lifetimes of playing catch before we catch ourselves doing it, and start doing it consciously.
I want to close with one more thing. Any buddhist worth his salt would say "it's all mind." And part of the "mind game" is learning when to cut the thread of thought. Years ago, in response to similar concepts in Zen, I started thinking about what "wielding the sword of solomon" would look like. In other words, how could I cut through my attachment to my own bullshit, so as to let go of it faster? I held that in my intention for a good while, until one day, I was diddling my inner monologue--and enjoying all the feelings of righteousness it gave me. The point is, I saw all those cravings and attachments and thought processes working. I felt the surge of desire. And a short sentence came hurtling up from the depths. It was "I can't handle this kind of thought. It doesn't make anything better." I said it the way I'd state a limit to another--to a selfish child or a carping spouse. (I'm recalling the Carthusian who said "sometimes the best way to pray for your family is to forget about them.) It was an insight about the fruitlessness of my thinking, that came with a diminishment of tensions. But what I was being taught was that "non-attachment" is nothing more than remembering your track record. If being right doesn't make things better, I said to myself, maybe I should make it a mantra: as a deployable skill, maybe what began as an insight will help me spend less time with my face buried in the rose scented garbage pile of my own self-righteousness. That's a long way to say: I need to learn when to be gently stern with myself, as a gently insistent parent would be with a daughter.
I don't know, bhrataji, maybe "listen here, miss ma'am, you've already watched cocomelon 5 times today, and you need to cut it out" is something you need to be saying to a part of yourself, too? Is there a part of the parenting that's worth doing for yourself as well? Tiny darshans of your own small one have been a part of teaching me: at the right times, and in the right ways, I certainly need a good bit of re-parenting. If a day comes when I can get the balance right, between limit setting and letting go, I will consider myself successful.
Brother, I love you. The deeper I look, the more I see that the game we're playing is shared-solitude. As you become Christ, remember you're surrounded by thieves. To dabble in the trite, I'll remind you that "Today, I will be with you in paradise." Since we're stuck suspended next to each other, when later yields to now at the wedding banquet of the lamb, I promise to chew quietly.
Peace,
Josh
