Traces

Noodles

Thu, 3 Jun 2010 18:28:12 -0700

Today, while talking to someone on the other side of the world, I remembered a line from a film, As Good As It Gets, that Jack Nicholson’s character, Melvin delivered. The three main characters are sitting in a car after pulling over during a road trip. Simon is broke, Carol’s son is sick and Melvin’s in love with Carol but staggers under the weight of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Simon has just gotten out of the hospital and they’re traveling to ask his father for money to get his life back on track. He tells the sympathetic Carol how he and his family were estranged. It’s a horrible story with no happy ending. Carol says in response:

Hey. We all have these terrible stories to get over and you . . .

Melvin interrupts her to say:

It’s not true. Some of us have great stories. Pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just, no one in this car, but a lot of people--that’s their story. Good times. Noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad but that you’re that pissed that so many others had it good.

They don’t agree, nor do I. The person to whom I was speaking has had a life with a prettier story than the one in which I presently play our hero. It was so clear and obvious that even I could see it. The story I’m living in is one I don’t often share, certainly not in detail, for a number of reasons. Sympathy is an anchor with which I do not care to attempt the swim to the other shore. If I even smell a hint of it the smoke alarm sounds and I instantly ring up the internal fire department.

It might be easier to be angry at the supposed injustice of life. When I look at the angry people I don’t think their life is better or easier. It’s just angry and they like that energy. They feel it gives them a sense of power and control. It doesn’t but they don’t know that yet. They’ve yet to discover the terrible price they pay for that illusion of power and control. They may not find out. What I know is that it’s a dead end. There is nothing down that road for me. The not so pretty story of our hero’s life is what made him our hero. Had he had the lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad he’d be looking for a hero to help him find a way to fill the void in his heart. Our hero is sixty-three and has lived every one of those years. He has known physical pain, the emotional kind and the spiritual kind that comes from the void in the heart. He’ll take the physical kind over the emotional kind any day. To take it a step further he’s willing to endure the physical and emotional kind to have the void in his heart filled.

Jack’s character was spiritually blind for the majority of his life. His understanding was tiny, stunted. He was like a peeping Tom who looked into the window to see someone’s life and only saw a little piece for that short span of time. The trailer for the film with the lakes and boats and friends and noodle salad. He didn’t see the rest of it. The grind of being human in the pain factory we call the world. The life sucking events of everyman’s existence who has a hole in his heart. Most people die long before their bodies give up the ghost. Without heroes they have no hope of being reborn, transformed, born again, born free, or at least freer. The hero’s job is not one to be taken lightly, not one to be coveted, though many do before they know the cost. Sadly we take our heroes for granted or we worship them and later take them for granted, if they survive the worship. There are certainly days when I think those horrible words about which John Greenleaf Whittier spoke when he wrote:

For all the sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these, “It might have been”.

There’s nothing down that road so I will stop here. I am the most fortunate man alive, though I rarely have the good sense to see it. My life is charmed in the most hidden way. For you see, the hole in my heart is being mended by the Master Mender.

Mercy

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:43:14 -0800

It takes such a great deal of humility to realize even the tiniest bit of truth it’s no wonder we sit so long in darkness. How difficult it is for one trapped in the self-made prison of pride and vanity to acknowledge our need for assistance. Pride insists we can do. It’s a tenacious illusion because we make daily offerings to it. These endless alms nourish it until it grows so large we take fitful rest in its shadow. It brings to mind some of the final words of Jesus on the cross. Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34). How true this is for us today is staggering if we allow it to wash over us. Our pride acts like a raincoat that keeps the truth from washing over us and touching us in any way that can begin the cleansing process. The song, O Holy Night, has a line in the lyrics that I like. Long lay the world in sin and error pining. Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth. The spirit can’t feel its worth as long as pride and vanity are feeling their worth.

Today I received an email from a listener in Central America. He said something I’d like to share with you. I am grateful that contact with you had worked to bring a bit of light. To notice this. It’s not often we can get behind our pride to see how much we need others. Part of thinking that we can do is thinking that we now do. The way the word is used in esoteric teachings isn’t the mechanical reaction of a machine but the conscious action of a Man who has attained Real Will. Of course we all imagine we have will and if we have it then it must be real. This is not the same meaning self-realized men and women have. Here follows part of the response his email drew:

Yes, that's how it works. It's difficult for people to see beyond their pride and vanity. Because we think so much of ourselves it's hard to see that contact with another can work to bring a bit of light. It's just like putting your watch (if you have an old watch with a dial face and numbers and hands that glow in the dark) by a light source. Then, when the watch is no longer near the light source, it glows for a time with the collected, stored light from the source. By regular exposure to a light source we can begin to see things we could not see before, on our own. This is why the Conscious Circle of Humanity can work for us and with us. If it were not for this merciful law we would be even more lost than we are already.

It's interesting that this season is the outward manifestation of that very merciful universal law. There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man (John 1:9). Of course fundamental understandings of this esoteric truth miss the broad and universally applicable point, but we can approach a greater understanding if we're willing to surrender our limited points of view. All come into the world with that light within them and don't need to submit to some form of religion lacking the power. Some hide that light under a bed or basket while a few put it on a lamp stand where everyone in the house can benefit from the light if they wish it. If they don't, they are free to shut it out, which the majority do.

Mercy is compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. In the strictest sense, The Ocean of Love that is the source of our true nature, who we really are, has no power to punish or harm us because it is against love’s nature to punish or harm. Words come from our limitations and therefore fail miserably when we try to use them to express the infinite. You may be able to describe light but you will not make light dawn for yourself or another through your description. We must experience it and one of the easiest ways to experience it is to be close to a light source. Yes, we are all potential sources of light, it’s true. Our pride blocks it most effectively but the potential is still there. Those who have removed the basket from the light that we all ultimately are stand ready to enlighten every man. There are many somethings we can do to begin to remove the basket so we too can take our place in their company and let the true light shine into a world that lay long in sin and error pining. May the true light that transcends all man made boundaries shine brightly in your inner world this Christmas season.

Story

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:55:43 -0700

It’s amazing how attached we can become to our story. What’s also astonishing is how identified we can become with someone else’s story. Because sleeping people are so suggestible this can be tragic. We start to make someone else’s story our story. Some years ago I watched a training video on personal relationships. One of the participants in the seminar had a story about his childhood that I remembered this morning, again. It was one of those stories with which it was easy for me to identify because it was an abused child story and I had one of my own. His story was better than mine. When he did something that displeased his father he was held down and then had jalapeño pepper juice poured into his eyes. That’s high drama! As an adult he was a very soft and sensitive man with huge brown eyes. As an adult he was still telling the story of the young boy who was so horribly abused by his father. He was his story and had no identity apart from it. He was stuck like an old phonograph record with a gouge in it that keeps the needle jumping back to the same spot repeatedly to replay the same section.

Probably the purpose of him telling his story again was to help him to get free from it, to overcome it and get on with his life. It probably didn’t work. After forty years of going to seminars and workshops, reading books and talking to counselors I’ve found the only way to get past your story is to get on with your life. As I sat thinking about the man with the jalapeño pepper juice story it reminded me of my story. Bits and pieces of it started to come up and I reminded myself, It’s just a story. It stopped because I stopped it. I withdrew my energy and attention from the worn phonograph record with the gouge in it. Given the condition of our memory a prudent person will ask himself if our memories ever happened. Did the boy have jalapeño pepper juice poured into his eyes? I’m sixty-two years old and I’ve seen many horrible things that sleeping machines do to other sleeping machines. I don’t doubt it happened. I don’t doubt his story. We’re not talking about if the story is true or not. This is about getting free from the story not verifying its veracity.

Our memories are questionable because we’re not awake enough to perceive the truth accurately. We were subjective then and we’re subjective now. That makes our memories flawed at best. Some of us have observed that many of our stories have been told so many times the story just tells itself without us. Not as fantastic as it may sound given that our lives as man-machines run by themselves, are made active by the events in life while we imagine we’re in control of what’s happening, what’s going to happen. We don’t have to let our stories run us for the rest of our lives. I know this because I am abandoning my story. It’s no longer my story. It’s just another story, like a television drama. The more often I stop it when it comes up the weaker it gets. What used to be the cornerstone of my life is now a pebble on the beach, just like all the other pebbles. It’s quite freeing. Try it.

Birthdays

Thu, 4 Jun 2009 10:19:45 -0700

Today is my birthday. What is the difference from one day to the next? Apart from weather and external events a day is a day. It’s something to which we either give meaning or to which meaning is given without our conscious participation. Today I’ll change the number representing my age on the About Me page. What will that mean? It will mean I have today completed sixty-two years in this body, on this earth. It will mean today I begin the sixty-third year in this body and on this earth. It will not mean I am wise or kind. It will not mean I have gained anything through my survival. Some might say nothing means anything until we give it meaning. What’s more is that the meaning we give it doesn’t have to be its real meaning. Yes, there is real meaning because we live in a created and ordered universe. What is real meaning? Is it meaning that doesn’t change? If so, then why are there so many things that change meaning? It is because there are two meanings. One is the real meaning assigned by the creator and the other is a place holder meaning that we put over top of real meaning.

This morning I was standing in the kitchen preparing my breakfast when I an interesting realization that caused me to smile. After all these years I’m beginning to like me. I don’t mean love me the way we all love ourselves no matter how much we lie about it. This isn’t self-love. It’s more like self-acceptance. Something that has consistently eluded me. My life is not perfect by any standard of which I am aware, other than the idea that everything is perfect the way it is and we do not realize it. The work of esotericism has a subtracting effect on us. Instead of adding to us it takes away from us. It seems ironic that this should be the case as most people come to esotericism to get something not to get rid of something. That’s how I got started. Perhaps this helps explain why so few find it desirable to continue what they’ve started. If we had nothing else in common we would all still share incomplete octaves. We start things and then do not finish them. We change our minds about things because we don’t have anything that could properly be called a single mind. Instead we are divided into many different minds according to our desires, which we mislabel wills.

I am less than I was. If you have learned to see the plague of yourself you know why I was smiling. Why I will smile periodically throughout the day and for many days to come, if I live long enough. If I don’t I will be satisfied knowing that I am less today than I was ten years ago. To many this may not seem a worthy goal but to a few who understand it will be real. Today is another day. Today is the only day because there can never really be another day like it. We have to be here for it to realize it and that’s so hard to do. We’re called away by so many hopes, dreams, desires and past associations that being here for now is out of reach most of the time. We can be different. Not more but less and less is more when we come to see the plague of ourselves.

Discomfort

Tue, 12 May 2009 20:02:16 -0700

An email appeared in the inbox this morning from the other side of the planet. It still amazes me when things like that happen and I’m glad it does. I don’t ever want to take people, life or this Work for granted. There is no question in my mind that I have been and am being blessed. It’s a strange term to use, blessed. From my current perspective, which I know will change, I do not subscribe to the belief in divine favor as something one may receive apart from everyone else. God is no respecter of persons suits me just fine. Somewhere along the way I had to relinquish my little god for a great Unknown and Unknowable. Though from time to time I have religious twinges and regressions I am not sorry to see it go. It was sentimental and full of idiotic contradictions that hindered my forward progress in the process of transformation. Now I have other things that can hinder my progress. What is purification if it’s not removing the hinderances to our progress?

What I mean by blessed is that I have the good fortune to be grateful. Obviously, being grateful is not something everyone can be. If they can be there seems to be something that hinders them from being grateful. Probably the same things that cripple my ability to be grateful now and then. Mostly accounts, feeling owed or some other form of negative emotions--the attractive poison that we can’t seem to resist for long. It’s an addiction. The email was about a Podcast that I made back in February of this year. As I listened to it to see about what the emailer was talking I had to die a little more to my idea of myself, my sense of myself. This is never really pleasant but it is necessary. As the apostle Paul wrote, I die daily. If we’re on the right track we should be dying on a daily basis as well. It’s so hard to stay on the right track when there is so much in us that wishes to run screaming from the path.

He had some question about something I’d said about negative self-remembering. The thing that I found unpleasant was the tone of the podcast. A kind of superior tone that arises out of a certain despair in which little I’s love to wallow. If it were up to my pride and vanity I would remove all the podcasts that didn’t show me in the best possible light. Perhaps Peter would have had the account of his denial of Christ expunged from the Gospels at some point in his spiritual development. I like to think that he wouldn’t because he realized that his discomfort was not as important as the lesson it could teach, the inspiration it could spark in someone, somewhere, sometime. The podcasts, like the essays I write, are reflections of my own personal pattern of growth, development. Because I am not fully mature they reflect the blemishes in my personality. Sometimes I am the author of unpleasant manifestations. I don’t like that but it is true and I want the truth above all else, even more than my own personal comfort. Is it possible to develop and guard our personal comfort? I think not. It is times like this morning that Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance, supports and comforts me. He wrote, A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. When I first read those words forty years ago, they struck me as true in a powerful way. If you haven’t read Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance recently may I suggest you give it a read?