On Suffering, and Becoming

I had a sudden realization recently, that I felt compelled to share. But, I feel like I need to lay some thought-groundwork first to set up where it's coming from. So, what comes first are some possibly-disjointed thoughts and philosophical snippets which tend to bounce around in the rattling bingo cage that is my mind. . (Bibliography and inspiration/sources available on request. Likewise, If you want to skip this part, scroll down to cut to the chase.)

The natural state of the human being is open, curious about the world, and actively compassionate. Anything that deviates from that standard indicates an emotional wound that lies unaddressed, and unhealed.

"In the presence of Love, that which is unlike Love comes forth to be purified."

The ego's job is to protect the self against all attacks--real or imagined.  Yeah--it's the imagined part that's the problem. The ego takes everything personally.   It can't grasp that it's not the center of the universe.  All the cool kids know this:  Buddha, Jesus, Buber, Khan, Rumi, Tolle, Walshe...that whole crowd. They say it a lot better than I do, but the bottom line is always:  "You're not who you think you are--you have no limits, and we are all One. The same. God."

Decisions we make about our lives--to be more patient, to eat less chocolate, to finally write that novel--are often met, almost immediately, with a host of obstacles that seemingly come out of nowhere.   If I say, "I'd like to be more patient," that intention is not rewarded with a sense of serenity and a feeling of calm as we move through our days. On the contrary, it's as if Life itself is conspiring to give us opportunities to work on that very skill.  That is, our patience will be tested. Constantly.  The thing is, this isn't personal. It's just the way it goes.  Were given plenty of chances to say, "On second thought, no thanks. I'm good."  This is what free will is about. We have the option to say, "No, thank you" to what we know is in our best, highest interest. And, in the end, in the largest sense, it's okay if we do. The chance will come again to grab (or not) for the gold ring. Maybe not in this lifetime, but eventually, we'll make the choice to go for our highest, greatest vision of ourSelves.

Some schools of thought phrase it in terms of a "Breakthrough/Breakdown" cycle. After a "Breakthrough" (a powerful, profound realization combined with an intention for some sort of transformation in one's life), comes close on its heels, a "Breakdown" (life circumstances, events, and personal resistance that challenge one's resolve to follow through). It's a constant cycle, and though it's easy to take it personally, even to the point that it appears a super-human battle on an epic scale--a fight against "temptation" and even "The Devil" himself--it's just not. This gives an outsized amount of personal authority to this impersonal cycle. It also allows us not to take any responsibility for saying "Never Mind" to what we say we want as our higher good.

Every religious and spiritual tradition teaches that we ultimately are here on Earth to recognize our identity with God--to realize that there is no separation, to become One with All That Is. At the core of these teachings is the commandment to love each other as oneself. To practice compassion, to be our brother's keeper, to break down the walls that make us think we are separate and apart from each other--in short, to live in such a way that we are the very embodiments of the holy spirit of Love and Compassion. The Kingdom of God is Within, and there is no Without.

God is the impersonal energy of Creative Love, manifested personally. God creates in order to know Itself. It just creates, and creates, and creates again. Because that's what Love does.  It really doesn't care about who wins a football game, or what the building looks like which we have built to honor It. It is the Great What-Have-You. The Ineffable Mystery of Everything. It honestly doesn't care what you think, say, or do. It has no need to take offense. Does a river care if you throw a stone into it? Or curse it? Or even look at it? It's the same with Love. It simply Is. It will continue to flow and do Its work whether you "put in" or not.

Cut to the chase:

So, why do we suffer? Why is there so much suffering and pain in the world? I've been thinking on this a lot lately. And something finally gelled for me, which leads me to share this post.

I came to this inquiry about suffering on learning about the family of a child who passed away recently. This child had a recurrence of cancer, and their home was burglarized while he was in treatment. Throughout it all, they steadfastly refused to be anything but loving in their viewpoints and their approach to their circumstances. They were active in philanthropic organizations, and raised some $300,000 dollars for cancer research in the past six years; and, the father's eulogy was a love letter and a promise to the children who knew and loved this valiant young man. They chose powerfully, deliberately, to live and cultivate Love, and that radiance was, and still is, palpable. 

I sat with my heart torn open by the beauty, perfection, joy, pain, and loss that is inherent in this worldly life, and I felt like some puzzle pieces started fitting together, helping me understand in a new way, this piece of the picture.

What if--just what if--we really did come into this world, charged with the Self-initiated task of realizing ourselves as Love Itself? (This is not a new idea, of course.) But to extrapolate from other teachings, what if the very act of being born is a Breakthrough in the soul's evolutionary cycle?  We make a resolution to stand for Love (and it's not enough to know ourselves as Love, we have to choose to experience it as our Truth) Then, from the moment we get slapped by some guy in a mask, we're in Breakdown--the basically impersonal process by which we can take responsibility for defining and creating ourSelves as Love.  And this includes no less than giving it, allowing it--recognizing (at long last) our own inherent worth to receive caring and love from others.

So, you wanted to come here to practice Love, eh? You're on: I'll give you plenty of opportunities to be Loving.  Try this on for size: You're born into unimaginable poverty. Or maybe you're born into unimaginable wealth.  You have a genetic disorder. Your nerves don't work. You can't walk. Your child has cancer. You will be a target for other people's pain. You'll be used,  abused, attacked, emotionally extorted, and bullied. What do you stand for?  In the face of the "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," how will you move through your days? Will you still Love? Do you still want to do this? Really? How about now? What about this? Or this?  

Pain, the despair of feeling isolated, disease, strife, world tumult, it all shows up in our awareness; and every time, it's as if Life itself is asking us what we stand for. 

I think, when all is said and done, suffering is a test of our resolve to Love. In the face of suffering, Love can be a fierce, defiant choice.  All the things that befall us in our lives, all that we witness and help (or not), every injustice we ignore or wrong we seek to right, is a challenge to our pre-birth resolve to be Loving.  So if we take the viewpoint that we are in agreement with this spiritual task in our lives, we are in choice, and we are not victims. We can start to recognize that it's not personal, though we often experience it that way. It's about what we choose, putting us in charge of our capacity to love.  We choose to stay with our Big Task, or not. Every moment. We're in choice, all the time. There's no "have-to" and no punishment awaiting us if we don't go along. At any point, at any given moment of the day, we have the option to say, "You know what? No. I don't wanna." We can give in, it happens all the time. Most of us live our entire lives this way. But if, in our spiritual prep-time, we'd already made the pledge to come here to find, express, and be Love, maybe we can start seeing suffering as a means to prove ourselves and what we stand for.   Maybe we can afford to see suffering as part of the process of becoming Love.

Now, I'm finding myself--when confronted with some ego-trigger or I witness someone's painful circumstance--starting to reframe events and circumstances in these terms. (It's not that huge of a shift, really--just taking a slightly larger view of what I already know.) I'm feeling more inclined now, to remind myself, "This is a test. This is only a test. What do you stand for? Be that."  The result: it's not only making it easier to transcend the "bad stuff", but it also has the unintended happy side-effect of deepening and clarifying my experience of the "good stuff.".  Even if I'm wrong about all of it, everything I've written here--so what? It's enhancing my experience of my life.

Bingo.

Physical Conversations and the Mythic Mind.

This is not a fanciful suggestion by a bunch of New Age bookstore employees. Smart people in a laboratory figured this out.

This, to me, is pretty fascinating. I encourage you to click on the link to read the brief encapsulation of the discoveries. It appears that schizophrenic individuals have the ability/propensity to transfer or expand their sense of physical self beyond the bounds of their own body. My extrapolation: The literal displacement of chi (life energy) suggested in the minute drop in temperature of the subject's hand (the hands being exit points for energy) is consistent with a mytho-energetic understanding of schizophrenia-related disorders--which I had first read about in Joseph Campbell's Myths To Live By (cf. Hands of Light - Barbara Ann Brennan).

When I teach juggling, I approach it from a standpoint of having a 'physical conversation' with the objects--conversation being both 'talking' (exerting one's will/yang energy) and 'listening' (receiving information/yin energy). The best jugglers work their props in such a way that they appear to be extensions of their own limbs, deftly manipulating the objects in the air and around their own bodies. My students make their own juggling balls, which they keep with them for practice outside of class. This is not only a practical solution to the "how do you assign homework in juggling class", but also sets up the ability for these objects to be 'imprinted' into the practitioner's energy field.  This in turn, makes the object more a part of their sense of 'self'.  'Practice makes perfect' takes on a whole 'nother level of meaning here.

It's a reasonable, logical extension of the assertion in physics that all matter is simply energy, condensed.  Frontier physics (quantum and string theory) is where Western empiricism meets Eastern mysticism.  The fact of a subject in the above research having a repeatable out-of-body experience in the laboratory suggests that the bridge between the two is there for the crossing. So, don't call it 'chi'...call it our electromagnetic field.  There's no conflict in premise, only in approach.  East=chi. West=EMF. To me, it's a kind of unifying theory of consciousness, physical existence, and consciousness and its related disorders--you know: Life, the Universe, and Everything.

So, the question is: what if the treatment of schizophrenia included modalities that are not only based on brain chemistry, but also on consciousness alteration centered on energetic awareness? If this research can be integrated into a mythic/energetic mode of treatment for consciousness disorders?

Further:  based on the above picture, how far of a leap is it, really, to suggest that the Universe is the mind of God, and that we living creatures are literal microcosms of that God-ness?

Where was I again?

You know how sometimes you forget what day of the week it is? Today, I forgot what my emotional state was. As in, I had to remind myself, actively, that I wasn't pissed off.

In more than one idle moment today, my mind and body went back to the funk that had been in for much of the week. I felt the tightening in my lower back, my adrenals were ready to pounce, my thoughts started ramping up...then I remembered, 'wait a minute--that's not in play anymore'...the fog had lifted a full twenty-four hours prior--no need to be angry. After a moment of mental/visceral recalibration,  I was back to being a little more present.

It was an odd sensation, actually--a kind of unmoored anger, which was so patently made-up, and kind of easily released.  An interesting exercise in choice, awareness, and maybe even possibility.

For those who fast today

What strikes me most about this image is that so much more than a cute little angel playing the lute--it is a cherub, a young angel-in-training, learning to play--practicing awkwardly on an outsized instrument.

 

Fasting

There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits
where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue
in place of the Kaaba. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it
to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents,
Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

~Jelaludin Rumi
trans. Coleman Barks

Phantom Pain

Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away?

I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard something curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?

It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine once was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a hair, do I. Is't a riddle?

~Herman Melville, Moby Dick. 1851

This seems to me at this moment an apropos description of the human heart, the grief of any loss, and the feeble desire to share the experience, or to have another take away the persistent suffering that such loss causes. 

Allowance

Being concerned about another's comfort and happiness is a very different thing than being responsible for another's comfort and happiness.

I just butted up against this distinction in the last 24 hours.  Realizing it's time to make a change in the habitual way I handle my relationship with my son has been a lightning-fast, hard lesson. This is a very difficult identification to face.  If I'm not constantly concerned with and responsible for ensuring the smooth sailing of his life, then what kind of parent am I, really? Don't I care about him at all?  This is what goes through my head as I face this change. In looking at how to move past this old pattern of being, then, I'm faced with this fear that I'm sending the message that I don't care about him at all.  It's a dynamic that is based in the history of my experiences with and regarding him and his care.  It's tried, and true...and now it's truly trying.  

The way I show my care and love for him is by taking responsibility for his moment-to-moment emotional state. Yeah, that doesn't sound at all pathological when I type it out like that. Feels strange to be downgrading my attention on him...that really, my only concerns need be his health and well-being and safety...but that the minutiae are up to him.

So. Okay. time to move into a more mature phase of our relationship. Time to allow him to be responsible for himself more, his own sense of happiness and comfort. So what if a particular thing isn't his first choice, or if he's resistant to it. Is his basic safety assured? Then get over it. Or don't.  But it's not my problem.  As he is about to turn 13, moving into something closer to manhood, it is time. I've been holding him back, without realizing it. He's coming of age, and I'm realizing that it's time for our relationship to do the same.  So, this is the allowance I can give him. To allow him to be responsible for himself.  My desire is for his happiness and fulfillment. My job is to let him seek it himself.

UPDATE:  If I'm releasing all this misplaced energy and attention...what am I freed up to do now?  Where could that attention go? To what projects/thoughts/creations?  The possibilities feel expansive.

"My mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."

This Easter morning, I'm reflecting on the Gospel of Thomas.  (another translation here. . . and if you like your Jesus with old-timey pronouns, there's this one.)

Among the early Christian writings known as the gnostic gospels (or in mainstream Christianity, the "apocrypha"), the Gospel of Thomas is a remarkable collection of sayings and teachings by Jesus by way of dialogue and parable. There's almost no narrative, and there is most certainly no dogma (which explains in part why these texts had to be eliminated at the Council of Nicea, when the orthodoxy of the religion was being settled). There are many stories and parables that have parallels in the canonical Gospels, but there is a lot of evidence that these gnostic gospels, a library of which was found at a place called Nag Hammadi, were written before even Mark or "Q" --the earliest known writings in the canon, circa 74CE. (A quick shout-out to my Catholic High School experience in Mr. Bruce Hoff's Biblical Archaeology class)

Here are some of my favorites.

6    His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"
Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."

"I won't tell you what to do or not do. Just live with integrity." Heresy! I mean, come now: you can't build a religion on such calls for individualistic instruction. Sounds almost humanist.

14  Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.
When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them.

 Again: disregard dietary and other dogmatic restrictions and proscriptions. Just adapt and do your work in the world.

Then there are a few sayings which talk of the call to 'house-jack', subdue, or even kill a 'strong' or 'powerful' man.

35    Jesus said, "One can't enter a strong person's house and take it by force without tying his hands. Then one can loot his house."

 and

98    Jesus said, The Father's kingdom is like a person who wanted to kill someone powerful. While still at home he drew his sword and thrust it into the wall to find out whether his hand would go in. Then he killed the powerful one.

 Taken literally (as there are would be few with 'ears to hear') this could be seen as a prescription for class warfare, and blood in the streets, even as a way to bring about the "Kingdom".  Problematic for the Church leaders, to say the least.  But, when the powerful man is the ego, which must be annihilated in order for identification with deity (which is the real message, even throughout the Big Four of the canon), the messages become more like Buddhist teachings than anything else. 

For what it's worth, the wonderful contemporary Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, wrote a book entitled Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers (a small excerpt here).  I think a primary link between the two traditions is to be found in these early Christian writings, which didn't make the cut back in the 13th century.

Further, I want to add that--yes, the Thomas of the title is the "Doubting Thomas" of legend. Maybe because Thomas was granted special, secret knowledge from Jesus, he recognized that the physical resurrection was, in a way, superfluous. Hence, the "doubt."  Maybe in this perspective, the resurrection happened in order that those who need a literal experience can have something to hold onto, and perhaps can't handle the mythic implications of the teachings.  Like Mel Gibson, for instance.
 
At any rate, I like this Jesus better. Happy Easter and God Bless us, every one.