Letter to a Kind Mirror

To Hanuman Dass, my guru brother,

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

 

Dialogues with Mystery 13

Rabbouni was awake in a different way than all other teachers on the earth. His awakeness wasn't, in the first place, a freedom from desire, but an inhabiting of it--it was an acknowledgement that revelation, desire and ego take a toll.  It took  a toll on him.  And it is taking a toll on you, now, who are reading this.  Because you are the only person for which all of history could have been written.  And now is the only moment when the cost or the benefits of that teaching could possibly play out.  Night is coming, when no one can work, but to you, who are beginning to awaken: while it is day, sit down and look at this squarely. [bxA]

The hard part is that revelation is a task. It's true of God and it's true of you.  The minute "this" reveals itself, so does "that."  The minute "I" reveal myself, so do "you."  It's all done out of deep, passionate love...but that lays bare a system of obligations that will leave you tired, and needing rest, most of the time.  Don't blame others for this, it's just how dualism works.  But what the prophet said is true: "This is rest: give rest to the weary."  He said "this is repose" in the midst of burden-bearing and work.  Learning the interbeing of opposites is a deep cosmic purpose: it's part of how dualism's separateness begins to collapse.  "The time for every purpose under heaven" is always now--and it's your job to learn the lesson.   Rest happens amidst work, and work happens in rest.  If any of us shirk the heavy lifting or dodge the curriculum, who knows how long this game of chronological time will have to continue?

Everyone on earth likes to say "I am not that" to a huge swath of the human experience.  But HaShem asks this of you: who else could it be?  There are no others.  Upon finding yourself in a human experience, you can't ask to be given just the good parts of it.  God called you "good" and will be with you as you experience the shadow side of that--while you discover the cost of being "bad" as well. You can't leave the crumbs of the children's food for the dogs.  You are the child and the dog, you are the Master whose table it is and you are the even the crumbs from the feast.  None who wish to be good and righteous are allowed to duck the lessons of what's evil and cursed.  You are here to learn Jesus' lessons, and Satan's.  You are here to learn the lessons of good kings and wicked thieves.  You are here to eat cake. You are also here to die from glutting yourself on sickly low-flying quail in the wilderness.  And the God who has revealed himself as I AM will stick with you for as long as it takes.    

To the indulgence of every desire, there is a cost--incarnation is the medium in which that cost is paid.  When the serpent, said "Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God," he was telling the truth. The unfortunate piece is that God's presence is a burden and sharing his being is a Cross to carry--neither of our first parents were ready for what relating to a revealed God, let alone becoming divinized, would cost them.  Whatever eating the fruit cost Adam and Eve, the Serpent knew that experience was the hidden benefit.  He was quiet about it out of respect for hardship.  Appropriating experience involves the transformation of suffering, and the serpent knew he could not do that on Adam and Eve's behalf.

What incarnating costs is precisely "everything."  Elizabeth said to Mary "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord." That blessing is heavier than it is pleasant. It was spoken when Mary was pregnant. Even in the spiritual realm, you can have what you want. The downside to desire is, there's no one to pay the cost but you. If Mary wanted spiritual promises to be fulfilled, they could have been fulfilled in no one but her.  Be here, now.  But know that all of the promises of human history can be fulfilled (and all of the costs can be exacted) nowhere but here, from no one but you.

The rough bit is that relationship requires separateness--union individuates, and then "being together" takes work. You will love the connectedness. You will say "The father and I are one," as quickly as you will say "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine." But you will struggle with abandonment as well. You will think that others exist to share in your work and suffice your needs--you might even find that limitedly true.  But you don't get to decide how they do that, or when, or to what extent, and the loss of control will be an absolute crucifixion.  The words we say aren't free--the emotional cost of saying "why have you forsaken me" can come from no one but you.  Wiggling out of any of this will meet with no success.

Who are you to abandon self? If the Teacher wills that selfishness tarry till he returns within you, what is that to you? You were climbing the hidden ladder to God long before you knew it had a name--but that wasn't unique or special. It was what you were supposed to do anyway.  You only want to know you're doing the work because you long for control, because you long for the credential you can flash around to others.  There's no shame in wanting that.  But be grateful if those longings go unfulfilled.  They would cause immense suffering if it were otherwise.

Who are you to hope that humility be pleasant? If it were God's will that life feel like imprisonment and humility feel like exhaustion and imposition, could you use what you learn to be compassionate to others?  Take a lesson from Siddhartha: in this life or the next, if you find yourself in a hell realm, note your misery and be kind to others who suffer with you.  Make no mistake, becoming Christ is not a way to claim your own excellence.  It is a way to shoulder burdens and empathize.  Becoming God is not a way to being adored by the masses.  It is a way to care for all creation.  Not even the mystery of the Trinity, into which we might be folded after death, provides bliss.  At most it provides serenity and equanimity of the unmanifest divine consciousness.  Longing for spiritual pleasantness is no better than longing to win at children's games.

Don't let statements like "there are no others" make you think there's not a lesson in asking the people around you for help.  I am suggesting that you do that.  But from people with egos, need and dependence will outweigh willingness to help.  Insofar as you act with your ego, you will feel needy and dependent and your generosity will be sluggish if it's there at all.  Just know that ego is a limited tool with which to transact the business of life, and don't be surprised when those limits manifest themselves. 

I want to say this with gentleness and kindness: fairness is an egoic category--it has nothing to do with how life works.  Life doesn't even guarantee the sufficing of needs (you have spent as many lifetimes starving as you have ignoring the needy) so you are certainly not here to get everything you want.  All the same, if you can get what you want, do that for as long as you need to.  Just don't be surprised when that ceases to satisfy you.  And don't be surprised by sudden scarcity.  The prodigal son spent all he had, and only then began to be in need.  The Teacher had the right idea.  Fulfill desires rarely, make it a celebration in which you find all the others who have discovered the blessing of poverty.  Don't even desire gratitude.  Just know that poverty is the downside of gratitude.

I am not saying "Don't give up self" or "don't appreciate the pleasant bits of humility."  I am not saying "don't need others."  I am saying that the muscles you use for that should come from the Spirit, not the ego. If you've ever sat in silence long enough for the absence of noise to become worth listening to, that is the beginning of conversion.  There is more--but like the serpent did with Eve, I will not tell you.  When you experience it, all of the right teaching will come from your own mouth.

To the Father, the Teacher said "While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me.  I guarded them, and not one was lost except the one destined to be lost."  A name was spoken--and if the one who became sin declared his own name vanity, what would that name be?  There was one destined to be lost--and if the betrayed one says "there are no others," who is destined to be  lost?  When you know these things, you will come to yourself, thinking it's hired hands that the Father needs.  You will be wrong, of course.  But as in the beginning, so in the end: realizing exile is the first step in return.

Dialogues with Mystery 12

When you rise in the morning: realize that part of you sees the day as a crisis. And part of you is looking for behaviors and substances and circumstances that will soothe that sense of crisis. This could be coffee, lust, the distraction of mindless internet strolling. (Make no mistake, you’ll choose when and where to indulge those crutches, and when and where to forgo them, and that’s ok—it’s just a matter, knowing that all indulged desires take a toll, of choosing your cost.) Absent security and comfort, you will begin to blame others. It’s often those who, bound to you by some personal affection or professional responsibility, definitely SHOULD kick in and help. Blame is fruitless too, and provides short term cold comfort at best. Better not to indulge it, but if you don’t know it’s fruitless from experience, give blame some time and energy—learn where the dead ends are early, so you can move on.

Here’s the work:[bxA] Daily, to train intention and attention on the emotions and sensations of your body--so as to be present to yourself in the first place. Daily, to commit to enabling YOURSELF to be safely vulnerable. Daily, to come to YOUR OWN defense. Daily, to rouse your sense of might and empowerment toward taking responsibility for the corner of unjust suffering that it’s your task to lift.

These commitments are hard. Facing crises you’d rather deny, defending yourself when it shouldn’t be necessary, and forgoing the comforts of blame (shallow and temporary though they may be,) this usually only comes after a long battle with our own toxicity has convinced you of its fruitlessness. But there is a way in which taking responsibility for your corner of undeserved suffering allows space for transformation of the suffering itself, and preserves what spiritual energy and attention you have for getting through the day as peacefully as possible. Later on, when paired with gently focused attention, that energy will allow you to discover a great sense of empathy, compassion, and broken-heartedness for all people, facing together the common, uncomfortable predicament of daily existence.

Dialogues with Mystery 11

You have been shown the beginning. Satisfaction isn't the end end of desire, and even if it were, there isn't enough of what we desire for everybody to get enough. You've begun to grieve the massive loss of self, to admit you're powerless. You've been shown the end. Rabbouni has shown you that plain things like bread and prayer and weeping can be celebrations. Because of it, you can see all those around you who are in desperate need of rejoicing.  You have begun to find the others. 

 Somehow that fell short of real serenity. [bxA]  You racked your brain for solutions. It yielded much. You heard things like "Acceptance asks further questions. Can you act compassionately in the face of lack of control? Can you, because you face the same limitations as others, live unconditionally?" As true as it may have been, that wisdom, too, provided no rest.

And then it was clear. Ego still has a handhold because you've not yet begun to grieve what an inadequate medicine Wisdom is for what lacks materially. In the beginning, you'd seen the flaw: you'd created ego as a balm for the vulnerability of existence. You admitted it was a problem but you didn't change the maneuver: you continued, and are still using mental abstraction as a solution for reality's perceived shortcomings.

Reality is whole. You're the one who's fragmented. But I don't want to leave you with the problem, and no "order of operations" with which to find the answer. I don't want to state the destination, and give you no sense of how to work with where you are.

The body is a tool.  Compulsion by emotion comes with different sensations than impulsion by the Spirit.  Compulsion feels riskier--it has bought into permanence, and fears the total loss of self.  And that fear creates a tightness in the chest, a gut tied into knots, an energy blockage we're apt to call anxiety.  Impulsion is just using the gift of sensation to follow subtler and subtler energy.  Impulsion allows for times of totally identifying with the ego, and the times of transcending it.  It allows for all emotions and all thoughts, for emptiness and fullness.

The Gospel is more like the Tao than it is the full throated advertisement of miracles on the lips of a  newspaper vendor.  It is a flow of the universe, and all manifest beings find their serenity by relaxing back into it.  The Spirit is more like a vibration than it is a lightening strike.  You're used to deploying willfulness to get through life, but that's too forceful.  You'll miss all the cues.  Don't pay attention, either.  That's too transactional--nothing will grab you that hard. If you sit back--if you're willing--and just watch the universe, there will be subtler things you're asked to see.  

But for now, just be.  You're learning to cooperate with the way things are, but you've been through a tremendous amount.  Eat when you want to eat, cry when you want to cry, find empathetic people to spend time with.  Nap. Laugh. Breathe.

Dialogues with Mystery 10

We are in a hard spot together, you and I. Rabbouni died. Your grief over losing him--well, that's the easiest part. As you grieve he will descend into your self-made hells, rise again, then ascend. When that happens--and it will happen inside you--you'll no longer see him. Don't worry, this is how grief goes. You're not supposed to be able to see the one who has chosen to see the world through your eyes. True, no one told you that internalizing Jesus would involve grief. If they had, it wouldn't have made that measure of loss any more bearable. [bxA]

On top of that, there's a oneness of life, and serenity demands it be respected: the hard part's that seeing Rabbouni's death increases conscious of your own. You've lost a great deal. I know that you're numb to begin with, and that mourning the loss of your self on top of it all feels like too much to ask. But here we are: this is the work. To busy yourself internally or get demanding will only increase your suffering: keep your attention on the task of the moment. Namely, give up ego, grieve, and be honest. I'm in the painful, unpleasant business of expanding your heart, but if you're willing to listen, I'm also here to talk you through it. It's totally safe to feel everything you feel, and it's totally safe to let it go.

First, don't be surprised if you find fault with everyone and everything. When you're called to give up preference, accommodating others preferences will seem tyrannical.  You will realize, in one moment, that you need to give up judging, and in the next you'll spend emotional energy hating someone's wardrobe choices.  When it hits, the truth of it will physically hurt.  And all you've got to do is witness it.  Remember the prophet "they will look upon him whom they have pierced."  See that it was written about no one but you.

To incarnate in the first place is to be nailed with Rabbouni to a cross--and if you can't move from it physically, the afflictive emotions of ego (blame, shame, remorse and resentment) will present themselves as a last-resort method of mentally fleeing your pain. I want to encourage you to thoroughly experiment with all of it. The comforts of that kind of mental abstraction are real--you'll be absolutely right about everything you blame people for.  The present moment will eventually feel too small for "being right" and "decreasing suffering" to live together.  In the end, you'll have to choose between them.  You can do everything right, and still lose. What no one tells you is: shame, blame, resentment and remorse take a toll. They create all kinds of anxiety.  And they'll make things like entitlement and craving and desire for control infinitely worse than they already are. The sad fact of desire is that there's not enough satisfaction to go around. If, on the other hand, you decide that being right all the time or being satisfied all the time isn't worth suffering through the attachments, then you and I can endure this together.

This incarnation is a high stakes game, and there are rules. Everyone's at least a little bit at fault for the web of suffering. The reach of awakening transcends each conscious soul, but that's also true of toxic denial. Maybe you're finally facing "what you did to deserve suffering" after lifetimes of evasion. Maybe you actively agreed to endure more than your share--for the good of others--then promptly forgot the whole thing in the "amnesia of becoming."  For one reason or another, it's terrifically overwhelming, and not comfortable in the least.

Make no mistake: you are being called to account. There's no reason to be afraid of this. "Sinfulness" will be only one layer of it. Underneath morality, though, the question will persist: in a climate of great pain and suffering, did you make it better or worse? When the question of existence had no logical answer, were you able to stay silent, to just watch and feel your way through it, or did you busy yourself grasping at the balm of wisdom? Love is going inside-- it's completely still and utterly silent. Only the silent and the still will see it plainly.

Grief will change a number of your emotions. You'll see that a great deal of the feeling of excitement comes from being drawn to the chaos you create. When you decide that's a real problem, you'll stop being "moved" by things. Sunsets will lose their draw. Beautiful people will age terribly. Maybe, so will you. They call the impermanence of things "the way of all the earth" for a reason. No one is off the hook.

You will remember that Rabbouni told you about this ahead of time. He sang the praises of the shifty and the the shrewd in stories about dishonest servants. Remember? They cooked the books, got caught, then forgave people's debt to widen their options. Rabbouni said not to worry, that your debt has been forgiven, and that it'll only get difficult if you don't do the same for others.This incarnation, he knew, is an experiment. The God who made us all is seeing if we can deal prudently with dishonest gain.  We will know who will give us what is our own after we're done making good choices about what belongs to another.

Ride the tide of blame and resentment until you can't afford the toll it takes in anxiety. Exploit entitlement, craving and attachment until you can't hack the isolation they produce anymore. Even those fruitless maneuvers have a teaching that can be used compassionately in different situations. Remember Gautama Buddha's early lifetimes, when living in a hell realm; he began to awaken after showing compassion to someone else who suffered with him. Remember Jesus who consoled thieves from the cross. You are getting all the lessons. You're simply getting them in packaging that's not pleasant. That way you won't get clingy again.

Where life ceases to compel a response, you'll have an opportunity. As holy writ says "offer to God the things that are within, and behold, all will be made clean for you." In another place, we read "let whoever has a willing heart bring the Lord's offering." Acting with compassion, perhaps after lifetimes of selfishness, will pay dividends in serenity. Sages say "you don't know until you know" and that's very much the case with a grieving process that's found acceptance, with a life that's free from attachment.

After lifetimes of clinging to things that made him suffer, the buddha sat under the bodhi tree.  The man with the legion of demons had been cutting himself with rocks, but after encountering Christ, he found the silence of his right mind.  Before Jesus fessed up to not wanting to die, he took bread and made poverty and grief a communal celebration.  Our job is to sit still, to look straight at the fullness of life when he approaches, and then to find the others.  

Suffering is just pain we haven't accepted yet. On the way there, Jesus threw tantrums and flipped tables.  Our anger will soften just as his did.  Jesus admitted not wanting to suffer. If anyone tells you the resurrection was the only miracle in the passion, don't believe them.  Acceptance is a miracle too.  When our own pain becomes an empty room, maybe we'll know the space Jesus was in when he said "Not As I will, but as you will."  Being asked to willingly lose a losing game is a tall order, and it's hard to know what to do with it.  For his part, Jesus wept. You and I, and all the earth--it's best if we go and do likewise.

Dialogues with Mystery: 9

Listen: experience is a parable. From the beginning, I've been trying to get you to hear this: incarnation comes at a cost. When I said "you will be like God, and your eyes will be opened" I wasn't lying. I couldn't tell you[bxA] that being like God would be a burden and a responsibility. Any cycle of desire and satisfaction comes with a heavy load of self-knowledge. So, neither could I tell you "what your eyes will be opened to." Preference, choice, desire, fulfillment--these all force us to look at attachment and craving, attraction and aversion. I've told you, I'm bound by rules just as all manifestations are.  Freedom is one of the rules--and, like Rabbouni did before Pilate, I face challenges to freedom in silence. 

There's a great descent: from the intellectual to the intuitive, from the theoretical to the experiential. It's a radical "taking responsibility" for more than our share of the world's pain. It's a real dying: and it'll cost us the body's garment of skins, that's certain. But it'll also cost us the "garment of leaves" of the ego. Non-self is the wedding garment Rabbouni was talking about.  I couldn't tell you that, because the journey of that descent is yours, and yours alone, to make.  I did it too.  And before the end, you will join them in calling me a great satan, the father of obstacles.  It's you who say it.  But I am also wisdom.  The point is, both the obstacle and the solution are within. Just like Rabbouni's kingdom, and everything else.   Dig beneath the unfruitful tree of your own existence; descend and address the rot at the roots.  And when you encounter the obstacle, just be ready to see that "who you are" is more than that.   I am here to tell you that you are all of it.  And I'm here to help you find acceptance and healing and power in the totality of that being.  

Satisfying desires comes with increasingly limited payout. Still: everyone in the equation is free, and no one can be forced to provide what you feel you need.  This is a great predicament, that will unravel all the toxic emotions of self-will.  You will live in a climate of great anxiety.  It will teach you to allow creative tension to form you. You will die at the hands of resentment daily.  It will teach you to care for yourself and allow me to help you.  You will misplace blame a thousand times.  It will teach you to be healthily uncertain about your capacity to judge.  The games you play in an attempt to end-run around freedom and responsibility will seem increasingly worthless.  Doing good isn't an effective strategy for getting others to do what you want. And don't say "I should, then, have been more willful." Because that way of being comes at a cost as well.  Your gains are dishonest wealth; and if you've not been faithful with dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?  If you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?  You are evil and good, prudent and foolish, innocent as doves and wise as serpents.  Being all of it will teach you how to wield power gently and compassionately.  More and more, total acceptance will seem like the only useful work.  You have been sly as a fox for thousands of lifetimes.  You crave.  You're drawn to some things, averse to others.  You thirst.  Not every source of discomfort is a problem to be solved.  Stop being "this and that" in an attempt to correct "that and this."  You are who you are.  Just be.

You will look and not perceive.  You will listen and not understand.  You will honor God with your lips, but your heart will be far from him.  Right now, ego is filtering your entire experience.  By and by, you'll learn to hear with your ears instead of your mind.  You'll learn to feel sensations with your hands.  You'll learn to feel emotions with true vulnerability.  You'll learn to act willingly instead of willfully.  Don't worry.  Just as silence conceals obstacles, it also conceals the subtle power of the entire cosmos.  All of the things that need to be done will get done.  Relax.  The need to be in charge is causing you more stress than you need in your life. 

Look: today and tomorrow, Rabbouni is casting out demons and performing cures.  But know that, on the third day, when he finishes his work, he will go inside as well.  You will long to see one of the days of the son of man, and you will not see it.  But do not allow your attention to wander.  You will get to the point where you're eyelash to eyelash with the messiah; then, in the blink of an eye, you will see him no longer, and he will see with your eyes and hear with your ears.  The day of the son of man will be like lightning.  When there is no inside or outside, there will also be no me and no you and no him.  The voices saying "turn these stones to bread" and "let us make man in our image" will be silent.  There's no doubt that time will come when God will be all, and in all. The real question is, when that time is now, what will we be?  Will you be gone with the other?  You already have the answer.

Dialogues with Mystery: 8

I have to ask you: what if the truest thing about this moment isn't a desire, a story you're perpetuating about yourself, or an attempt to bamboozle someone into providing for what you need or want? What would life look like if the day led you, instead of the things you lacked? [bxA] You have heard it said "The father knows what you need before you ask him." I am telling you that you don't know what you need until you ask him. Solomon was blessed because, in a dream, he asked God for wisdom. You will be blessed if, in prayer, you ask God to help you distinguish needs from wants. Enlightenment will overflow within you if you allow that dance--between the Father, the Son, the Spirit and me--to define what you need and want.

Your existence is a question, not an answer. You experience stress because you come at life with narratives of "this is who I am," and "this is what I need and want" looping in your head--and then maybe people understand you, maybe they don't. Maybe you get what you need or want, maybe you don't. What if each moment were an answer to those questions? What if you already are who you need to be, and already have what you need? What if the hardest part of wanting is, in fact, something no one taught you to expect: namely, evaluating what desire will cost you? Accepting all of this will require you to adjust, but in our learning, the student changes, not reality. 

What if the the truest thing about your grief were its malleability and impermanence? You will experience great loss and enormous tragedy. People will tell you "Never forget" until it becomes a chorus ringing inside you. But what if we switched the narrative? What if I told you "Always remember--"always remember, for instance, the way ego will use your legitimate sadness and anger to keep itself safe. Always remember that advertising companies, nation states and desire systems are waiting with baited breath to exploit the vulnerability, sadness and anger you feel to achieve ends they first defined for you, and then ennobled. "This product will make you happy" they'll say, when what it'll really do is numb what you're feeling. "People who are different than you can threaten your security" they'll say, hoping you'll forget the teacher's greatest lesson: that not even death can threaten you. "Satisfaction is a click away" they'll say, hoping you'll miss the way you're getting baited into thoughtless, emotionless loops of stimulus and response.

There's a truth to be told here. When I tell it, people get nervous, but I want you to know you're totally safe: you see, everything that you know of yourself is a lie. Every desire you have, every attraction and aversion and craving--none of this assists you in being who you are. And it's totally okay if that's something you don't understand on a guts level right now--if we continue to learn together, you'll be telling yourself "I don't know why it took forever for me to get that" over and over again. Even the most minor gurus of this age have a response for that: it didn't take forever. It required only now, and that you be here as the scales fall from your eyes.

I can anticipate you asking me "how do I get better at being here?" In order to become what you are not, you have to walk an unfamiliar path. Take the job that comes with less prestige, feel the emotions that break your heart, accept other people just as they are. The process will suck most of the time, but even the healthiest practice comes with suffering--because suffering is just an unkind word for the strange emotions an sensations that come with becoming. One more thing: in the midst of that unfamiliarity, you have to allow yourself to stop looking for support from others: instead, console, nurture and encourage yourself the way you wish others would. I know that's a hard thing to hear. But look: you will become who you are. It's unavoidable. Your needs will be revealed. Your true desires will clarify themselves. Your most important work in that process is letting go of how you want that to happen.

Just breathe.  How much of life do you miss because your attention fixes on shiny objects like television or stress or emotions?  How much more alive would you feel if you allowed life, and not your attention span, to tell you how vibrancy feels?  Look up: the first rays of dawn are emerging outside. Listen: the trash trucks are collecting.  The birds are singing.

Dialogues with Mystery: 7

I remember the enormous frustration you felt, taking this incarnation. I may well remember it more accurately than you do.  It was so intense that it soaked into every pore of your body. I knew--because incarnations are lawful and that's just how they work--that your body would remember. At first glance, anyway, you appear not to "deserve" some of what existence saddled you with.  I don't have access to the reasons for all that, and reason is overrated anyway.  All I can tell you is [bxA] that "deserving" is an egoic calculation. Selves don't exist in the first place--and there is no self, in all the earth, that's entitled to a positive experience. This life is a clean up job. You are attached: attracted to some things, averse to others, learning to let go of both. You are learning, when life throws experiences at you, to choose which emotions to nurture and which to allow to die off. It's hard work, because your first instinct is to personalize and internalize what's painful, allowing it to fester.

You decided to drown out paradoxes by picking one side of them, and going with it. It was an expedient. You can't un-ring a bell, you can't turn in all directions and you can't un-choose an incarnation. But I saw the enormous vulnerability and the need for guidance, and it filled the choosing with fear, abandonment and anger. I need to be carefully honest with you: the so called "negative emotion" you feel, these all came from you abandoning embodied, unexamined existence for the sake of something you could mentally control. Fault is not the issue, but this resulted from choices you made. You would know the meaning of "paralysis by analysis" by the end, and it would leave you groping in the dark of your own body, searching for the center of yourself that you've strayed from, where you can hear hum of your own existence, the hum of everything being: that place where the hearing is both medicine and healing.  

You decided to eliminate the desire you felt by satisfying it. I wasn't concerned, and I am not now, about satisfying your needs. But all of this created enormous suffering. Craving and desire is the most toxic possible response to poverty.  When you realized you are poor, you called out to God.  You had realizations about where you went wrong that seemed to come from outside of you.  In reality, that was just You speaking to yourself.  More and more you were learning to listen to your own needs.

There was enough, and needs were satisfied, and you were who you were, well before your system of choice and preference limited you in the making of them.  I was present: everything sufficed, before there was gospel and salvation and messiahs of all types.  Before buddhas, bodhisattvas and dharma, I was there.  You don't have to become any of it, or choose anything, to make reality more or less real.  

You'll see the steps that you skipped: to get away from vulnerability, your sensations jumped the fence of your body--suddenly, not only did you identify with your body, you mislabelled as needs the cravings and desires anesthetizing that pain. You were not gentle with yourself--you did not take food as a gift or celebration, and you did not allow touch to free you from ego. You need to reset your definition of enough. Once, remember, it meant "enough for today." But having more than you need for too long, and having too long sustained the effort to overwhelm your vulnerabilities with craving--this has made times of poverty a necessary corrective. The anxiety you feel is withdrawal. If you bear and bear with it, it'll end shortly.  Just like everything else.

Listen: As gently as I can, I need to tell you this. The impermanence of your feelings and thoughts is the core of the Gospel. This is what Gethesemani's stones cried out; it's what Rabbouni heard while the need for sleep silenced his students. All pleasure and pain is momentary. And it doesn't commit you to a personal narrative--it's not necessary to ennoble your pain to justify enduring it. You don't need to explain anything to anyone. You become free of cause and effect by not running from it. All flesh is like the grass--your flesh, the Teacher's flesh, the carcass rotting in the field.  The letting go will feel like self immolation, but that's not as fearful as you think.

If I could make these words feel, each of them, like a hand on your shoulder, I would: vulnerability is totally safe.  Eternality is more like a paradox than it is a long wait.  The paradox of existence and non-being, of work and non-doing, of knowing and unknowing--these never go away, no matter how our focus shifts, no matter how we might think our perception changes reality.  The question's been asked "if a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"  I'm telling you that you can't answer the question with your ears or your ego, and if you were listening that way to anything at all, this moment would be the answer to the question.

If I am glib, if I say to you "shut up and listen," the humor of it will get you caught in acting with your ego.  But I suppose that's part of of what I'm saying.  Beyond that, figure out how being limited feels.  Choosing and preferring, craving and desiring and nursing opinions--these are all optional.  Everything changes, when the poetry of their absence liberates your breathing.  You and I are one.  We are an openness speaking to a vulnerability: the flower of manifestation whispering that it's high time to bloom.

Dialogues with Mystery: 6

There's a spot we'll meet in, together, more than once.

You'll admit all of the compulsivities: using relationships, psychedelic chemicals, spirituality, sex and food to self-soothe.  You will cop to being a people pleaser, and realize that you modify your consciousness more to comfort a sore ego than to learn how to use it differently.  You'll fess up to seeking heaven because you can't deal with earth, to looking for God because you shirk personal responsibility.  You'll admit that you use sex to end-run around truly internalizing the teacher's power, and feel bad about subtly asking your lover to cooperate in your self-deception. You will face the fact that you eat your feelings. You'll feel silly and immature and ashamed and simply exhausted.  And you'll ask me to give you the resources to quit the whole business.

But I won't. [bxA]  Listen: you can perhaps hear me speaking.  You have perhaps had spiritual experiences.  You may even have given all that you have, many times over, in an effort to find answers.  But you still have a great deal to learn about how to encounter your needs consciously.  All of the unmet yearnings (for others, for comfort and for egoic transcendence) that those things provide--their deficiencies are a great poverty, and that poverty is neither a problem nor a crisis.  Remember: I am asking you to see what you lack as cause for a kind of "celebratory finding the others"--because the bounty of the infinite cosmos makes beggars of us all.  I'm asking you to treat your suffering with curiosity and fascination rather than dread.  

You are still learning how to notice the dread in the first place.  You need a great deal more work in being able to watch non-judgmentally as that dread changes to opportunity and the energy runs its course.  You are by no means a realized being.  You are a student, and a student works with a curriculum.  Get over yourself.  Of the Teacher, you have heard it said "his yoke is easy and his burden is light."  Asking to bear nothing will simply increase suffering.  But if you work at it patiently, you might perhaps find serenity.  

Celebrating your poverty is a wedding feast of empowerment and joy.   You must wear the festal garment of non-self to enter.  And you keep entering the party and then leaving again--that's okay.  In and of itself, it's not a big issue.  You are in a world of people who wear their egos like winter coats in summer time: you will have to learn to assume your ego when you need to, and to drop it when you can.  But you come and go compulsively, in a way that's driven by fear and insecurity.  Remember the book: it said I will go forth from God's mouth and not return to him empty.  I am teaching you to come and go, to wear your ego and be humble, as God wills, not as you will.

And don't worry: that process is supposed to feel like whirlwinds in your chest and burning coals in your throat.  You are every prophet that was ever martyred in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is your own body.  I'm asking you to be so attentive to the sensations that, like the teacher before his accusers, you get quiet.

I don't know.  Maybe egos just need to know what "spending all you have fruitlessly" feels like, before the hem of the teacher's garment looks appealing.  Maybe using blame and resentment and defeatedness to cope needs plenty of space to get old before you're willing to try something else.  Maybe there's a yoga to the years of sitting lame before the Teacher tells you to take up your mat and walk.  The patriarch Joseph wasn't given all the power in his prison on the first day.  Before the end, you will realize you love the time you have to practice, and you'll suspect you've spent lifetimes thinking it only just occurred to you.  As the upa-gurus of this generation say, "You didn't need a long time to realize this.  You only needed now."

There it is. First, be here now.  Then, put on some music.  And go clean your messy apartment.

Dialogues with Mystery: 5

Listen: creating a mentally abstracted "self" is not a shortcut to self-discovery.  Ego is psychological sleight of hand: it paints a smile on reality while our thirst for control blows up in our face.  Nothing finite is in a position to control the infinite.  Your life is not a hostage negotiation, and you are not in a position to present Divine Mystery with terms of surrender.  Craving, attachment, attraction and aversion, shame and blame and resentment gain ground every minute you buy into the lie that your will can change reality.  How many of your opinions are simply inward attempts to force, persuade or cajole others into thinking as you do?   Every attempt you make at that kind of control will demand its pound of flesh: anxiety is the cost of consenting to that illusion.  It is like unwittingly mixing ashes in your own food. [bxA]

Somehow, admitting that you're vulnerable has to come first.  After that, understand that the spirit acts in the body as it acts in the world.  Within you, it flows where it meets no resistance; outside you, it blows where it wills.  Wisdom makes every person on earth a hermit; facing your needs without manipulating to get them met is the only real solitude.  You alone can search your heart to know what's holding you back: the work is to become your own remover of obstacles.  You alone know how you have failed to cooperate with and harness the universe's power: the work is to "read the distance" between you and empowerment and take small steps toward whatever's more manageable.  Be wary of cycles of desire and fulfillment.  They never have, and never will adequately address your needs.   And they can distract the attention and sap the energy you might otherwise use to help yourself.

I am not here, nor are you, so that you'll start desiring spiritual things. Calling out for divine help will not gain you support.  The Teacher is a sign of contradiction--crucified so that the inner thoughts of many will be laid bare.  In the beginning, thought and emotion and sensation and energy were a free flowing stream within you, and it would slake your thirst as often as you drank it with remembrance.  But God help us, we forget--we forget, and can neither breathe and nor weep as we wish, and we live in such fear of our mortality that the sight of our own blood causes aversion.  The absence of divine assistance can teach the attentive to survey the wreckage, to more effectively distinguish what can be changed from what can't. I am here to restore calmness of breathing, to create openness to the gift of tears, to help you find the power in your own blood.

For the sake of living without anxiety, please be still...poverty is an absolutely miserable spiritual tool, and you will go through a hell of withdrawals as you learn to live with fewer stimuli, as you let go of your own petty manipulations.  But for the sake of your own serenity, identify what's worth more to you than stillness and let go of it.  If you are not able to sit in the center of your own body, the whole world will confine you.  If, even for a moment, you can calm the inner impulses seeking to chase one shiny object after another--if you can do that, the world will open inside you like the lilies of the field.   Then you will see: you are splendor within splendor within splendor.  But it will be no big deal--because you will be free, and that will be enough.

Dialogues with Mystery: 4

This isn't my message.  It's what the crumbs on your dirty coffee table are telling you.  It's the voice of your own numbness.  I know you're tired--but so long as you're seeking to be excused from weariness, you'll find no relief.  The Teacher first bore the Cross, then he died on it: rest is found on the other side of acceptance.  

I am asking you to hit bottom. [bxA]

If you're any kind of intellectual being, know that mind, in the end, is ego.  It's extremely helpful, until it's not.  A vulture is Christ.  One hand claps.   This will seem contradictory, and will shake (to its core) the part of you that's addicted to logic.  The Teacher lived Isaiah's words: he gave his back to those who beat him, his cheek to those who plucked out the beard.  He turned to you and said "if anyone strikes you on the one cheek, turn and offer him the other."  This isn't an instruction manual in being a push-over.  When you are actively trying to accept sensations you're viscerally averse to, there's very little room for self, for preference, for finely tuned opinions.  It's true, you are immensely valuable: you're a member of God's people, and you share his name.  But you are also impermanent.  God said "You are not my people and I am not your God" through some fairly loud prophets.  When the legion is cast out of you, when sitting finds you fully clothed and in your right mind, it will be because you have ascended the cross within you--the one that brings reality out of the tension between who you are, and who you are not.  The day on which that happens will be as all days are: great and terrible.

Beware the false bottom, the "lowest point possible."  Explanations about how it couldn't get any worse often have an implied "you" at their core.  Whoever this "you" is, it's not who you are. 

If you're any kind of a spiritual being, know that your superego will co-opt everything you value, and every bit of wisdom it's yielded.  A time will come--and it may be today-- when looking for God won't work.  Listening for God won't work.  The quantity of ego in seeing and hearing make it inevitable.  The Father asks the prophets: "Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.’"  When superego uses religion to reengage our attachments, aversions, attractions and cravings, it's building a tower that not only risks collapse, but is inevitably bound for destruction.

Remember: Job, having been deprived of everything, demanded explanations.  Elijah, facing the threat of death, talked about his own zeal and complained that his life was at risk.  Neither received a fantastic and blinding divine manifestation.  Both were rendered silent.  In a whirlwind, God told Job: the reason for suffering none of your business.  Elijah heard the still small voice of sheer silence.  In other words, the two men had their egos reduced.  All incidents of non-self are spiritual experiences, but not all spiritual experiences have non-self at their core.

Humility is an important movement.  Non-self is the muscle you'll use to rise, take up your mats and walk.  Don't ask me how to do this.  Don't ask me what this looks like.  The mind's unable help with the question or supply the answer.  I am unwilling to help.  God cannot do for you what you're unwilling to do for yourself.  Jesus ascended, and I know how hard his absence is.  I know that leaves you crucified between two sides of a paradox.  It's okay.  First, breathe.  Then, clean your home.  When you see the sunlight on the walls, and hear the room's quiet, rejoice: you have become the teacher.