The human mind is so twisty. At every turn it's like it's trying to get you. It will use any taste of sorrow to convince you you're worthless. It will use any taste of happiness to convince you to go off center to get more.
It's enough to make someone scared to move at all.
But then, ha! It has won yet again!
Like Ben was saying earlier, we have so much power and we don't even realize it. I'm thinking about that more. The ignorance keeps us from being powerful...but the ironic thing is that it does so by trying to make us seek power. But there is an inherent potency in us that we can only access when we stop seeking it or trying to impose it.
I don't want to just feel happy. I don't want to focus on a state, or achieving a feeling. Just as the novice mystic tries to attain enlightenment just for the high of it and then learns the error of this approach...I must not seek happiness.
What I seek is truth. And truth is sometimes painful. But there is no point in avoiding it.
I'm just glad I have someone to hold my hand while I face it for myself.
Being honest with yourself is a difficult thing to do. We want to get to the safe place as soon as possible, to where we don't have to be fearful and full of pain. And so we find ourselves falling into patterns and habits that allow us to dissociate from it. It doesn't go away, it just gets pushed down.
And then it bubbles up and explodes.
I thought I was perceptive. So did other people. But I'm no different. Life gave me a nice little reality check, and I'll gladly take the lesson. It's okay to feel pain, it's okay to suffer, it's not going to make important people want to leave me. Not sharing will. It's okay, even necessary, to show my humanity. It's okay to be weak.
I'm not going to push things down anymore. And I'm not going to be apologetic or try to hide what I'm feeling from anyone. If it's what I feel in my heart, then it's true, and there is no reason to hide it. Hiding is what got me here in the first place.
I recently broke up with my boyfriend of 8 years. We were going to get married. It's been a month since I broke up with him. I know why I did it, I don't have regrets. I've made peace with the fact that we won't be together anymore. But I'm not over it. There are things I've yet to face...things I've been avoiding facing.
I can tell myself I'm over it all I want, but as long as I keep avoiding these particular things, I'm not. Obviously.
No more. If I really really want to make things work and not just use him as a crutch, I will give him the respect he deserves and be completely open with him about my feelings regarding Rico.
And I'll be completely open to the world about my feelings regarding him.
This post could cause me problems. But what is the point of avoiding them?
No more hiding.
"And then the second one which is pretty much like the first, as he says, is 'love others as yourself.' Because once you see there is only one self, they are your self. So you're actually meeting yourself in another form, in the separateness. Now I suspect people here have had that experience. And it's one of love isn't it? When you meet yourself through the separateness in another form, it's love. Because love is how oneness feels. When you love someone, or when you love a place or thing or anything, it's because you're not separate from it."
-Tim Freke, from this video.
And the great thing is, being not separate from it doesn't seem to have anything to do with physical location...although it helps. I can be 2500 miles away from someone I love and yet talking on the phone with him, feeling the same things, we can feel completely united, as if there's nothing to separate us. The Kabbalists call this "equivalency of form", the idea that two things are united/the same not based on physical location but on the fact that they extend from the same spirit and invoke the same feelings. It's something I've felt many many times, especially while talking on the phone right after this very talk. :)
And it makes me feel incredibly happy and full of love. As if my heart is fluttering about in my chest. Because love is how oneness and complete unity feel. And I never want it to end.
Finally, all my videos have been uploaded to youtube, so now you can go through the whole talk in order, so that everything makes sense. :)
One thing I noticed while re-watching this particular clip was the similarity that this process has to the dialectic process of personal transformation, in particular for me: Annie Dillard's account of the three days.
I think I can add yet one more row to the chart I made on her process of personal transformation
Day One: Oneness
Like Freke says, as a baby you are not conscious of yourself as separate from the rest of everything. You probably feel like you *are* the world, but then of course since you're not conscious you can't say anything about it or even experience it.
This corresponds with Day One in Dillard because here you have the kitsch of complete harmony with everything. It's beautiful, but the lack of consciousness makes it one-dimensional and incomplete.
Day Two: Separateness
Then naturally as we learn to live in the separateness, as we lose that magic and become enveloped in our own heads, and that can be extremely lonely and painful. Separateness by itself is hell. Maybe that's why Sartre said that hell is other people? Because the fact that there is an "other" means that you are separate... I doubt he meant it that way but that's an interesting way we could take it.
Obviously this is a very Day Two style event, since Day Two is a not happy day.
Day Three: Both!
Eventually we come to see that even though we are separate, we are also united in oneness. It is a synthesis of the first two phases, which fits the overall structural scheme perfectly. Now we come to see that we are Being/Awareness and Oneness, but we are also individuals living out our separate lives.
At this point it is tempting and a lot of people really want to say that the separateness is bad and that we should live in the Oneness only, but that is yet another form of escapism and an attempt to go *back* to Day One. What we really want to do is let the Oneness inform our separate lives.
Every part of the process is a necessary part. Perhaps that's why Gnostics don't tend to demonize the Fall quite so much as literalist Christians. We need the separateness, we just don't want ONLY the separateness. We've *needed* to make this journey. It's necessary and in some ways good, even though sometimes it hurts like hell. I guess that's where my hope and trust comes from, from the fact that the difficult times are necessary, in a way Hell (as we have described it here) is necessary to help prepare us and open us up to the possibility of the deepest form of hope. And so in pain I know that not only is everything okay on that level of Oneness, but also that this is a part of my journey that is necessary and in the long run could be characterized as good...on some level.
Of course I don't deny in any way the pain of the moment, the possibility of horrible things happening. It's just that for me, it's the trust in the journey that means the most.
Another interesting thing is that, as Freke points out, this happens on all sorts of levels, be it phases within a persons life (as I've always read Dillard), as one huge overall general progression of a person's life, and even as a progression in history (it may even be a repeating process just as in Dillard...how the Day Three slips into a new Day One without noticing it). This just keeps popping up everywhere!
I'm so happy I went!
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Tim Freke speak at a bookstore in San Rafael. If you don't know what he's about try watching the following video:
I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I knew he'd be good, but what I didn't count on was (a) the personal resonance that I felt because though he is obviously Gnostic he does not identify himself with ancient Gnosticism and (b) the fact that he had the same sorts of mannerisms and passion for what he was talking about as my favorite professor in college.
I found my heart getting all excited like it always does whenever I'm listening to or reading something of incredible value that resonates with my personal experience. Like Freke, though the history is interesting that is not my focus. I'd much rather look deeply into the essence of it, and it especially delights me when that essence seems to be shared across multiple religious backgrounds.
I had my trusty camera along with me, and so I was able to take a lot of video to share with people who weren't able to come with me. Here are the three that were short enough for me to upload to vox, but the rest will be coming soon once they finish uploading to youtube. I will make another post with links to those videos.
For now:
Oh, I also got a book signed. :)
Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,
let them sleep.
This Love is beyond the study
of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
I you want to improve your mind that way,
sleep on.
I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.
If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,
and sleep.
"Like This" Coleman Barks, Maypop, 1990
"I've
said before that every craftsman
searches for what's not there
to practice his craft.
A builder looks for the rotten
hole
where the roof caved in. A water-carrier
picks the empty pot. A carpenter
stops at the house with no door.
Workers rush toward some hint
of emptiness, which they then
start to fill. Their hope, though,
is for emptiness, so don't think
you must avoid it. It contains
what you need!
Dear soul, if you were not friends
with the vast nothing inside,
why would you always be casting you net
into it, and waiting so patiently?
This invisible ocean has given
you such abundance,
but still you call it "death",
that which provides you sustenance and work.
God has allowed some magical reversal
to occur,
so that you see the scorpion pit
as an object of desire,
and all the beautiful expanse around it,
as dangerous and swarming with snakes.
This is how strange your fear
of death
and emptiness is, and how perverse
the attachment to what you want."
Rumi VI (1369-1420) from 'Rumi : One-Handed Basket Weaving
This looks awesome.
New song from The Faint: The Geeks Were Right.
Check it out:
http://www.myspace.com/thefaint
