I just finished an audiobook called, "The Captured". It’s a true story of children who were kidnapped in Texas in the 1800s by Comanche or Apaches. The author had a great-great-great uncle who lived with the Comanche for two years before being returned to his original home. The thing is, he never fully recovered. More to the point, he never fit into white culture again, try as he might. Eventually giving up, he, Adolph Corn, lived his last few years in a cave, in solitude. In case after case, the situation was similar, especially for the young men. Within a year or two they had literally forgotten English (or German, as many who were captured were from recently immigrated families) and had fully embraced the Native culture as their own, even with its privations and hardships. One young man was recaptured by the whites and ended up dying, by most accounts, of a broken heart as a 15 year old boy once “reintegrated” into the culture of his birth. Another, Rudolf Fischer, who was captured as a 13 year-old, became as fierce a fighting man as any of the Comanche, and that’s saying something. His long hair, bleached white from the sun, made a stark contrast to his sun-darkened skin and made him into a truly frightful looking apparition of the Southern plains. What would make a child completely reject their birth family and even go so far as to kill those like them in defense of a new life and lifestyle?
I can only venture some guesses, but a few facts stand out. For one, the young men were treated like exactly that: a younger version of a fully-grown man. In a couple instances they were leading war parties by the time they'd been there for only a couple years, usually against the whites, sometimes against their former communities. All the former captives could live off the land indefinitely. Even later in life, relatives reported that one could knock a penny off a stick with an arrow at 20 yards.
Another's hands were so tough from the life he chose even after re-assimilation, that he could pick a live coal out of a fire with his bare hands to light his pipe. Several slept on the ground or outside for the bulk of the rest of their lives. Not because they had to... because they wanted to.
Getting re-assimilated, they asked good questions like, "why would I ever want to go to work for another man?" And, "why should I cut my hair and wear constricting clothes?" Sitting in a classroom amounted to torture. You think YOUR kid is unruly? Try sending an 18 year old - or a 10 year old, for that matter - to school after he knows how to be entirely self-sufficient.
This brings up several points for me. Actually, it brings up the same questions, including that timeless question of middle-aged men: What am I doing? Please forgive me as I publicly self-process. But I think I am not alone here. You might ask yourself the same questions, even if you are not of my gender or age. In fact, I hope you’re younger. Either way, you may have the same observations.
I was the one in the family that got up early as a 12-13 year old, grabbed my shotgun and my dog and went hunting in the fields behind my house to try to kill something before school. I slept outside in the summers often, often alone, and stayed up until 2-3am watching the stars. I read and re-read books about survival, hunting and fishing. I loved being outdoors. But I was also a good boy with a kind heart. I wanted to please my parents, especially my dad. So I did what they wanted me to do. I went to school, then a mission (eventually...kind heart and "pleaser personality" notwithstanding, I was not always an angel). Then I went to college and graduated. According to the convention to which I was now firmly dedicated, I married young but well and had three beautiful kids. For the bulk of my married life I kept pretty hard at recreation, but I was torn between the needs of a growing family and my own desire to be in nature, whether that meant surfing, trail running, hunting, fishing or snowboarding. Sometimes the family came first and sometimes my need to commune with something that was wild within me won out. Looking back, from my early teens until about 2008, my life was about taming this wild thing inside me. The Church mandated it and I made great progress within that paradigm, having deep, meaningful and amazing experiences within it. But some things weren’t meant to be wholly tamed. I submit that our souls are one of those things. Refined? Yes, I think so. But never tamed.
Mary Oliver famously asked, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” If I were to answer that as a member of the temporarily dominant culture today, I would have to say I am going to learn as a child to sit in a square room in rows. I am going to learn to quietly get in line behind my classmates before I leave for lunch, and that if I or my neighbor talks or giggles it will hold us all up. I am going to ask to go to the restroom. I am going to go to the principle’s office for busting my mouthy classmate – who was always one of my best friends – right in the mouth, breaking my hand in the process and then walking back into the classroom with our arms slung around each other like nothing happened (because nothing substantial did). I am going to be asked to get a license or two to fish, several licenses to hunt, one to drive a car, another to get married. I will swallow the treble barbed hook of a mortgage, keeping me from wandering with the seasons or my whims or to cool music festivals. I will eschew any substance or practice that loosens the societal grip on my mind. I’m going to get a job and trade my hours outside for hours inside, where I will make a lot of money for my employer, who will then share some of it with me. But I will still have to tell him when I’m going to the bathroom. In short, I am going to make my wild and precious life tame and homogeneous. Somehow, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one tame and homogeneous life” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. But that is the reality for almost every adult I can name.
And that’s exactly where I’ve been, but at least I know it. I can’t say that for everyone. In fact, I can say that about hardly anyone, statistically speaking, which is why I’m going to share this essay. I had the chance in my early 20’s to change the course of my life. It would have been hard, very uncomfortable, because I had already made commitments. But I had just learned what critical thinking was and had serious questions about life, religion, personal philosophy and path. I had stumbled upon – I still don’t know how – books about real Native Americans written by Charles Eastman and Black Elk. They spoke to me deeply and I read voraciously all I could get my hands on. Pre-fatherhood, I was spending copious amounts of time in the woods outside Seattle, namely Issaquah and North Bend at the base of Mt. Si, scouting for deer, elk, bear and mountain goat to bow hunt. I was happiest outside, but I could not admit it to myself. That was not what I was taught. Therefore, it was not what would make me happy, as contradictory as that is. It was not okay. Therefore, it was irresponsible and wrong. So I stayed on my path toward happiness in the future, in heaven.
Are you like that, too? Are you nearing middle age with the same questions? Or are you younger, but with an old soul that knows that all the purposes of your life can be wrapped up in your own personal happiness, and know that that is EXACTLY how it’s supposed to be? Do you also know that Mary Oliver’s question is the right question – and maybe the ONLY question worth sitting with? Can you relate with a supposedly reclaimed but supremely miserable young man in Texas in the late 1800’s, standing alone in a school yard in anachronistic handmade buckskins, watching his classmates play red-rover and tag, wondering how he could ever be satisfied with that level of play again, when he could now ride bareback, shoot grasshoppers on the fly with his handmade bow and harvest big game to feed his family, not to mention protect them against real danger? Can you see that? More importantly, can you feel it?
Quanah Parker was the product of a family that consisted of a Comanche chief and a kidnapped girl, Mary Parker, who stayed by choice with the Comanche all her days. He is largely credited with being the last Native American chief to surrender to the whites. Quanah begged Rudolf Fisher to go meet his white father when they was found out that Rudolf was still alive. There were political reasons as well as personal ones for this. After multiple refusals, he finally consented to go. But he could not stay long. The freedom he had known was too much. He reintegrated back into Native culture as best he could as it had basically already failed due to pressure from the whites and the murderous effect that had on the land, particularly on the mobile food larder that was the mighty American Bison herd.
I can relate to Rudolf. I also felt freedom, turned myself in, and now I want back out. I am 50 years old, and I publicly and consistently reject this culture in many ways. But more importantly I re-embrace the opposite of the culture - that wild thing within me; the un-tamable part of me that no one, including a brainwashed, substandard version of myself, can smother. I give a nod to the species that have awaited my return, both physical and spiritual, both plant, animal, and mineral. I feel my soul ready to melt back into the sweet soil. I long to hear my boots make sucking noises in the mud as I trudge home in a misting November rain. I am dying to taste wild blackcaps again, and to feel cold on my face that I know I could easily erase… if I only lived in a house instead of a tipi, or had driven my truck to this spot, or hadn’t stayed out so late waiting for that last flock of ducks to set their wings before dusk, a happily shivering, wet retriever by my side and the smell of gunpowder still in my nose.
This is the home of my soul. I have been a captive of the whites and dammit, I am returning home.
PART 2: Let’s Go Together
It may take time to unravel commitments that were made under duress of an insane philosophy, or one bereft of concern for your wild wisdom, or when you were otherwise in a state of confusion. The commitments were real and affect others, some of whom you love deeply. It doesn’t ultimately matter if you go live in a tipi on the edge of Hell’s Canyon in Snake River country in the next few months. The point, the whole point really, is to see the entrapment, the whole sub-sane tragic comedy, and know that at some point the disentanglement is good work for the rest of your life that will, at any rate, slow you from making further entangling, soul-sucking promises. Try to go slow. Be compassionate with yourself if you can’t. In fact, if you ignore my (hypocritical) advice and cut and run without forethought, when everyone else in your life asks why you've gone bonkers (even though they’ll think they have the answers), you have my support anyway – even if it seems unwise to me, too. If your life has become something you don’t want and slowly disentangling is not going to work for you, I am handing you right now a stick of dynamite. You will rebuild with cleaner materials when the dust settles, as it always does. As Don Henley sings in “My Thanksgiving”, “sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge.”
To conclude, you are wild. You are not meant to be tame. You are meant to love deeply and with passion and with abandon. You are related to the hummingbird, the eagle, the bear, the owl and a host of other animals that are hoping and praying that you learn their names, too, for they have so much to teach you. You are meant to feel far more than an air-conditioned office, car and stick-built home will allow. You are a glorious animal, made of the dust of your Mother under the starry, atmospheric hug of your Father. You were made to lift your head and feel the warm sun on your face, and laugh in awe at the wind, and make love under lightning skies. We all were.
The captives came to know it and I am dedicated to remembering it.
How about you?
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Friday, September 11, 2015
(D)anger - Essay
(D)anger: A Conversation with MySelf About Frustration with the World As It Is, or
How To Stop Being Self-Righteous and Get Out of My Own Way
It’s time for something different.
We all see it; a world in turmoil. Corruption, greed, avarice, unbridled consumerism, addictions galore…we are made for better. I don’t care if you are Christian, agnostic, atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist; we can agree that the world is a mess and that there has to be a better way.
But here’s where the agreement generally ceases and each philosophy starts naming both the reasons and the repairs, centered as much on the “wrong-ness” or “evil” of the other as much as the merits of their own philosophical or theosophical basis. I am electing not to give examples, but if you look, they are prolific. The “problem” is always “them”. That statement alone betrays an error in thinking. For me, a type of self-righteous frustration can arise, and frankly has been increasing in frequency. I think my experience is not unique.
Here follows an idea. It is not a new one. It’s simply a subtle switch from what we are currently prone to do. It doesn’t try to turn Christians into Muslims, or Atheists into Believers, or hippies into … the opposite of hippies (Dick Cheney, maybe?). It takes each of us where we are and works from there. It is ancient wisdom that has been largely forgotten, but whose time has come again, as if traveling in a great wheel. Go figure.
To explain this idea, I am going to talk to myself. You are free to drop in. It goes a little like this:
“Hey Eric, you need to put away your anger.”
When I hear this, I don’t even need to ask, “What anger?” because as I mentioned, I know in the past year or so I’ve sensed a subtle shift in myself, and I am seeing it among others in the communities I run with. A decrease in patience with others. A desire for greater punishment for breakers of what I/we think the rules of a decent society should be, amounting to a desire for increasing karma terms for career consciousness criminals. But it’s not about the choices others make. It never has been, and it never will be. I know this somewhere back there, past where my mind stops.
I glare back at the Voice.
“Hey Eric, you need to put away your anger,” the Voice says again.
This time I reply. Thinking of the things that are most likely to trigger my frustration, I say to the Voice, “OK, so what am I supposed to do, pray Monsanto into oblivion? Am I supposed to allow Nestle to buy the water coming off sacred Mt. Shasta as I smile love into the faces of the water truck drivers? Let the seas continue to be used as a dumping ground from a drum circle safe on the beach?”
The Voice chuckles at this barrage. “No. You are not supposed to do anything. It’s natural for your love of all the manifestations of Life to increase as you become increasingly aware, and then to allow that love to grow into actions. But you’re preventing that from happening.”
“I’m preventing it? What? No I’m not. I get mad and then I do stuff. What’s wrong with that?”
“Of course that’s not what I said.”
I frown. It’s here that my soul explains to me that seeing my own anger is a way to get at the real underlying issue, which is really within myself, not “out there”. It’s easy to spot because it’s what throws a hard angle, a handle almost, into the way I think about the thing or situation in front of me that I want to believe is causing the angst. Anger, which arises from a lack of inner harmony, is stirred by fear like the wind can make a high mountain lake ripple, or create eighty foot waves in the ocean. Fear is deeper, more elemental than anger. In its most camouflaged state, it hides in memory and justifies its existence in urges and desires; anything to protect itself from being found, even though on some level it wants to be addressed, heard. Fear lives in the deep caves of my subconscious, my soul reminds me. It can be big, toothy and dangerous. Anger, it’s dumber, slower little brother, is far more accessible, and far more prolific. Anger, as the main manifestation for our hidden fears, colors the actions we take and shuts out actions that might actually help shift the reality of the world, which can actually only be done through love, mySelf tells me.
“Wait,” I laugh to the Voice. “Changing the world is going to happen if enough of us control our tempers? Excuse me, but that seems just a little simplistic. In fact, it kind of pisses me off that you would even suggest that.”
“Here’s why it works,” the Voice says to myself, shaking his head in amusement. “Letting go of anger works because everything, simply everything, is made of energy and potentiality. The way we manipulate these is through our intention. This is true on any plane of existence. Emotion, including anger, colors intention. We can do great works, necessary works, but if those actions are held in an intention that is skewed by anger, the actions themselves will have limited benefit at best because the Creator is made of, and responds to, love. At worst, because of the Universal Law of Opposition – that whatever we resist persists and gains strength – we actually make that which we are angry about grow in size and dimension. Which, as you’ve experienced, increases your capability for greater anger. This creates a railroad – or neural pathway - to feed the monster fear in those dark caves you don’t want to venture into. That’s where we find ourselves in the world today. “Justified” anger has been feeding our un-addressed individual fears for so long that we as a world society act in increasingly unconscious ways, with increasingly devastating results. This has resulted in issues so serious that the survival of the species is in question.”
“So,” I say to my wiser Self, “let’s say I put away my anger, and...”
I interrupt myself, “It’s not quite that easy, but continue…”
“I put away my anger and, I don’t know, get involved in a prison outreach program. You’re saying that I will be more effective in a state of “no anger” than if I did it because I was angry about career criminals?
“You glossed right over it,” the Voice says.
“Over what?”
“The point.”
Predictable anger begins to arise again. “Explain please. Dammit.”
“You are not going to just “put away” your anger. This is going to seem a little counter-intuitive, but your anger has a voice and needs to be acknowledged. As the voice of your un-addressed fears, it is sacred. Try to squelch the voices of those fears and they will ooze out the corners of the box you keep them in. Instead, see the anger. And if you can trace it to the fear it is attached to, do that. See the fear and hear it with compassion if you can. And then – actually this will happen simultaneously – love will replace it. The soul, like all of nature, will not tolerate a vacuum. Like air, love fills every empty space where it is not pushed out.”
“But…”
“Let me finish. You generally can’t say “I love, therefore I am healed and can now be effective because my energy has changed and my intention will be pure”. At that point, Love is still likely a mental concept, a nice idea. Better than anger certainly, but ultimately it can be just as attached to fear as anger is. In a relationship, that looks like co-dependence, where each party feeds off the other in ways that make each feel secure, but that ultimately support a state of non-growth. What we want instead is to see the world, not as a place of trouble and “things that piss you off”, but as a field of beauty, where beautiful things happen at will. It requires a complete shift in paradigm where the world is seen as having Innate Beauty. The difference is that the truth of Innate Beauty has to be FELT. Right now, what is “felt” is anger and frustration, and we know in a mental way that the world can be a beautiful place. We have to switch that around. We have to FEEL the beauty and harmony around us, and acknowledge that fear and anger can look really real. But the reality is the beauty, not the fear and anger. Does that make sense?”
“It’s starting to,” I say to the Voice. “But it still sounds totally contradictory in some ways. You say that emotion colors intention and action, and that anger is the voice of my un-addressed fears. OK, I can accept that. But then you say I have to acknowledge them and hear them but I guess, not act from them?”
“Right. The way to use that anger is not in an outward motion, directed at what you think you’re mad about. The healthier way is to go inward, and see what it is that is triggering the anger- which fear is speaking - and sit with it compassionately. When the fear is heard enough, when it is done speaking and understood and accepted, love naturally fills that space. But the key is to sequester yourself when addressing your fears – do it in a sacred space at home or church or in nature – so that your fears don’t end up coloring your intentions and actions. Make sense?”
I think for a while about this. “So you’re saying that when I get all worked up about the Syrian refugee crisis and I want to get mad at the governments of the world that caused all this pain, the thing to do is to see where within myself the anger or frustration is arising and address that rather than working directly on the problem itself? Rather than writing a congressman or giving money? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that unless you see the roots of your own fear first, your efforts will be of limited effect. You will, to put it I the vernacular of the Toltec shamans, be buying into the same “dream” that created the refugee crisis in the first place. You will be giving it energy, fighting it and therefore, strengthening it to an extent.”
“Do I really have time to address all my fears before I do anything? I mean, that might take a minute…”
“You are not alone and “fixing things” is not your job. You are here on earth to heal, period. As you do, love will fill you. And then it will inform you. It will tell you what to do. You will operate outside mores, convention and even in some instances, the law of the land because you will answer to a higher law. Not one that is written anywhere, but your own law, the law of love. It’s the law that Ghandi and Mandela answered to, that of Jesus and Harriet Tubman. You’ll know it is love because it harmonizes with people, even if it creates disharmony with the established order and those tied to it, blinded or distracted by it. Your actions will bring beauty. They will inspire others because their own souls will recognize the voice of your actions. Harmony, rather than disharmony, disunion, anger, will begin to fill the lower spaces occupied by pure souls like water, a drop at a time. It is done an individual at a time, a moment here, an afternoon there.”
“Wow, it sounds so beautiful. So organic, and clean, and healthy. But that’s what I was going to ask again. I mean, I don’t have time to do all this… healing, do I? I mean, as the world goes to hell I’m supposed to go walk on a trail?”
“Remember, you are not the doctor of the Earth or the Universe! Both are self-healing. But if you want to assist, heal yourself and the Universe will then direct you about what to do because you will no longer be fighting it, swimming angrily upstream. Take a moment and see where you spend your time. Facebook? Popular music, or television, or movies? I think you’ll see – in fact I know you will – plenty of areas where you can insert stillness to use to address fears or cultivate love rather than constantly distracting yourself.”
“Huh… it sure seems like a lot more fun to go blow up a dam.”
“Well, yes… but do you want to have fun and create pain or be aligned and healthy and happy and full of joy?”
“I think I see your point.”
“There’s a woman named Gabriela Andreevska. She is a woman dedicated, for now, to helping the Syrian refugees. She is motivated almost entirely by love in this regard. You can google her.”
“Has she addressed all her fears, then?”
“Oh, not by a long ways. One doesn’t have to be without fear to look fearless. Perfection is not required. She came to a point in her life where love had filled, drop by drop, the seemingly empty places in her soul that vacated by the fear she once felt. She still has a long way to go to lose ALL her fear, but enough has been heard by her scary monsters that it changed the balance of power within herself. She sees now with another set of eyes far more often than she did with her old eyes that saw only problems caused by others.”
“Oh that reminds me, I know I’ve felt the truth of the teaching that our problems are never about other people. But I don’t understand it. If a guy comes and punches me in the face for no reason, it seems like that’s a problem caused by someone else, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s not easy to grasp from where you sit, but the guy won’t come punch you in the face for no reason. Ever. There is always a lesson to be learned, a truth to be reiterated, a dream to be fulfilled, or it does not happen. He doesn’t come hit you unless you create him first.”
“A dream to be fulfilled? That’s a laugh! I don’t think…”
“Nightmares are dreams, are they not?”
“Oh. Right. And I guess to your point, what society has collectively dreamed, so to speak, is a nightmare. So I guess that what you’re saying is that if enough people address their own fear by hearing their anger, by doing the solitary work, it will work the same way as the little drops within ourselves that eventually turn us more to love than fear. It will be like that for the world, where enough people have healed that it just changes things; a new reality will simply emerge. And it will happen organically, and won’t make sense to people who are fear and anger based.”
“Correct. It’s what Jesus spoke about when he said the meek will inherit the earth, and that the foolish things of the world will confound the wise. It’s the real meaning behind the 2012 prophesies, Hopi lore, Andean shamanic wisdom and the second coming of Jesus.“
“Wow… well, it makes sense when you say it like that, I guess. Sure pisses me off that it took me this long to figure it out though,” I said to myself with an ironic smile as I sit alone in the late afternoon, pine-filtered sun on the bank of a small creek in the foothills outside my home in Bend, Oregon.
How To Stop Being Self-Righteous and Get Out of My Own Way
It’s time for something different.
We all see it; a world in turmoil. Corruption, greed, avarice, unbridled consumerism, addictions galore…we are made for better. I don’t care if you are Christian, agnostic, atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist; we can agree that the world is a mess and that there has to be a better way.
But here’s where the agreement generally ceases and each philosophy starts naming both the reasons and the repairs, centered as much on the “wrong-ness” or “evil” of the other as much as the merits of their own philosophical or theosophical basis. I am electing not to give examples, but if you look, they are prolific. The “problem” is always “them”. That statement alone betrays an error in thinking. For me, a type of self-righteous frustration can arise, and frankly has been increasing in frequency. I think my experience is not unique.
Here follows an idea. It is not a new one. It’s simply a subtle switch from what we are currently prone to do. It doesn’t try to turn Christians into Muslims, or Atheists into Believers, or hippies into … the opposite of hippies (Dick Cheney, maybe?). It takes each of us where we are and works from there. It is ancient wisdom that has been largely forgotten, but whose time has come again, as if traveling in a great wheel. Go figure.
To explain this idea, I am going to talk to myself. You are free to drop in. It goes a little like this:
“Hey Eric, you need to put away your anger.”
When I hear this, I don’t even need to ask, “What anger?” because as I mentioned, I know in the past year or so I’ve sensed a subtle shift in myself, and I am seeing it among others in the communities I run with. A decrease in patience with others. A desire for greater punishment for breakers of what I/we think the rules of a decent society should be, amounting to a desire for increasing karma terms for career consciousness criminals. But it’s not about the choices others make. It never has been, and it never will be. I know this somewhere back there, past where my mind stops.
I glare back at the Voice.
“Hey Eric, you need to put away your anger,” the Voice says again.
This time I reply. Thinking of the things that are most likely to trigger my frustration, I say to the Voice, “OK, so what am I supposed to do, pray Monsanto into oblivion? Am I supposed to allow Nestle to buy the water coming off sacred Mt. Shasta as I smile love into the faces of the water truck drivers? Let the seas continue to be used as a dumping ground from a drum circle safe on the beach?”
The Voice chuckles at this barrage. “No. You are not supposed to do anything. It’s natural for your love of all the manifestations of Life to increase as you become increasingly aware, and then to allow that love to grow into actions. But you’re preventing that from happening.”
“I’m preventing it? What? No I’m not. I get mad and then I do stuff. What’s wrong with that?”
“Of course that’s not what I said.”
I frown. It’s here that my soul explains to me that seeing my own anger is a way to get at the real underlying issue, which is really within myself, not “out there”. It’s easy to spot because it’s what throws a hard angle, a handle almost, into the way I think about the thing or situation in front of me that I want to believe is causing the angst. Anger, which arises from a lack of inner harmony, is stirred by fear like the wind can make a high mountain lake ripple, or create eighty foot waves in the ocean. Fear is deeper, more elemental than anger. In its most camouflaged state, it hides in memory and justifies its existence in urges and desires; anything to protect itself from being found, even though on some level it wants to be addressed, heard. Fear lives in the deep caves of my subconscious, my soul reminds me. It can be big, toothy and dangerous. Anger, it’s dumber, slower little brother, is far more accessible, and far more prolific. Anger, as the main manifestation for our hidden fears, colors the actions we take and shuts out actions that might actually help shift the reality of the world, which can actually only be done through love, mySelf tells me.
“Wait,” I laugh to the Voice. “Changing the world is going to happen if enough of us control our tempers? Excuse me, but that seems just a little simplistic. In fact, it kind of pisses me off that you would even suggest that.”
“Here’s why it works,” the Voice says to myself, shaking his head in amusement. “Letting go of anger works because everything, simply everything, is made of energy and potentiality. The way we manipulate these is through our intention. This is true on any plane of existence. Emotion, including anger, colors intention. We can do great works, necessary works, but if those actions are held in an intention that is skewed by anger, the actions themselves will have limited benefit at best because the Creator is made of, and responds to, love. At worst, because of the Universal Law of Opposition – that whatever we resist persists and gains strength – we actually make that which we are angry about grow in size and dimension. Which, as you’ve experienced, increases your capability for greater anger. This creates a railroad – or neural pathway - to feed the monster fear in those dark caves you don’t want to venture into. That’s where we find ourselves in the world today. “Justified” anger has been feeding our un-addressed individual fears for so long that we as a world society act in increasingly unconscious ways, with increasingly devastating results. This has resulted in issues so serious that the survival of the species is in question.”
“So,” I say to my wiser Self, “let’s say I put away my anger, and...”
I interrupt myself, “It’s not quite that easy, but continue…”
“I put away my anger and, I don’t know, get involved in a prison outreach program. You’re saying that I will be more effective in a state of “no anger” than if I did it because I was angry about career criminals?
“You glossed right over it,” the Voice says.
“Over what?”
“The point.”
Predictable anger begins to arise again. “Explain please. Dammit.”
“You are not going to just “put away” your anger. This is going to seem a little counter-intuitive, but your anger has a voice and needs to be acknowledged. As the voice of your un-addressed fears, it is sacred. Try to squelch the voices of those fears and they will ooze out the corners of the box you keep them in. Instead, see the anger. And if you can trace it to the fear it is attached to, do that. See the fear and hear it with compassion if you can. And then – actually this will happen simultaneously – love will replace it. The soul, like all of nature, will not tolerate a vacuum. Like air, love fills every empty space where it is not pushed out.”
“But…”
“Let me finish. You generally can’t say “I love, therefore I am healed and can now be effective because my energy has changed and my intention will be pure”. At that point, Love is still likely a mental concept, a nice idea. Better than anger certainly, but ultimately it can be just as attached to fear as anger is. In a relationship, that looks like co-dependence, where each party feeds off the other in ways that make each feel secure, but that ultimately support a state of non-growth. What we want instead is to see the world, not as a place of trouble and “things that piss you off”, but as a field of beauty, where beautiful things happen at will. It requires a complete shift in paradigm where the world is seen as having Innate Beauty. The difference is that the truth of Innate Beauty has to be FELT. Right now, what is “felt” is anger and frustration, and we know in a mental way that the world can be a beautiful place. We have to switch that around. We have to FEEL the beauty and harmony around us, and acknowledge that fear and anger can look really real. But the reality is the beauty, not the fear and anger. Does that make sense?”
“It’s starting to,” I say to the Voice. “But it still sounds totally contradictory in some ways. You say that emotion colors intention and action, and that anger is the voice of my un-addressed fears. OK, I can accept that. But then you say I have to acknowledge them and hear them but I guess, not act from them?”
“Right. The way to use that anger is not in an outward motion, directed at what you think you’re mad about. The healthier way is to go inward, and see what it is that is triggering the anger- which fear is speaking - and sit with it compassionately. When the fear is heard enough, when it is done speaking and understood and accepted, love naturally fills that space. But the key is to sequester yourself when addressing your fears – do it in a sacred space at home or church or in nature – so that your fears don’t end up coloring your intentions and actions. Make sense?”
I think for a while about this. “So you’re saying that when I get all worked up about the Syrian refugee crisis and I want to get mad at the governments of the world that caused all this pain, the thing to do is to see where within myself the anger or frustration is arising and address that rather than working directly on the problem itself? Rather than writing a congressman or giving money? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that unless you see the roots of your own fear first, your efforts will be of limited effect. You will, to put it I the vernacular of the Toltec shamans, be buying into the same “dream” that created the refugee crisis in the first place. You will be giving it energy, fighting it and therefore, strengthening it to an extent.”
“Do I really have time to address all my fears before I do anything? I mean, that might take a minute…”
“You are not alone and “fixing things” is not your job. You are here on earth to heal, period. As you do, love will fill you. And then it will inform you. It will tell you what to do. You will operate outside mores, convention and even in some instances, the law of the land because you will answer to a higher law. Not one that is written anywhere, but your own law, the law of love. It’s the law that Ghandi and Mandela answered to, that of Jesus and Harriet Tubman. You’ll know it is love because it harmonizes with people, even if it creates disharmony with the established order and those tied to it, blinded or distracted by it. Your actions will bring beauty. They will inspire others because their own souls will recognize the voice of your actions. Harmony, rather than disharmony, disunion, anger, will begin to fill the lower spaces occupied by pure souls like water, a drop at a time. It is done an individual at a time, a moment here, an afternoon there.”
“Wow, it sounds so beautiful. So organic, and clean, and healthy. But that’s what I was going to ask again. I mean, I don’t have time to do all this… healing, do I? I mean, as the world goes to hell I’m supposed to go walk on a trail?”
“Remember, you are not the doctor of the Earth or the Universe! Both are self-healing. But if you want to assist, heal yourself and the Universe will then direct you about what to do because you will no longer be fighting it, swimming angrily upstream. Take a moment and see where you spend your time. Facebook? Popular music, or television, or movies? I think you’ll see – in fact I know you will – plenty of areas where you can insert stillness to use to address fears or cultivate love rather than constantly distracting yourself.”
“Huh… it sure seems like a lot more fun to go blow up a dam.”
“Well, yes… but do you want to have fun and create pain or be aligned and healthy and happy and full of joy?”
“I think I see your point.”
“There’s a woman named Gabriela Andreevska. She is a woman dedicated, for now, to helping the Syrian refugees. She is motivated almost entirely by love in this regard. You can google her.”
“Has she addressed all her fears, then?”
“Oh, not by a long ways. One doesn’t have to be without fear to look fearless. Perfection is not required. She came to a point in her life where love had filled, drop by drop, the seemingly empty places in her soul that vacated by the fear she once felt. She still has a long way to go to lose ALL her fear, but enough has been heard by her scary monsters that it changed the balance of power within herself. She sees now with another set of eyes far more often than she did with her old eyes that saw only problems caused by others.”
“Oh that reminds me, I know I’ve felt the truth of the teaching that our problems are never about other people. But I don’t understand it. If a guy comes and punches me in the face for no reason, it seems like that’s a problem caused by someone else, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s not easy to grasp from where you sit, but the guy won’t come punch you in the face for no reason. Ever. There is always a lesson to be learned, a truth to be reiterated, a dream to be fulfilled, or it does not happen. He doesn’t come hit you unless you create him first.”
“A dream to be fulfilled? That’s a laugh! I don’t think…”
“Nightmares are dreams, are they not?”
“Oh. Right. And I guess to your point, what society has collectively dreamed, so to speak, is a nightmare. So I guess that what you’re saying is that if enough people address their own fear by hearing their anger, by doing the solitary work, it will work the same way as the little drops within ourselves that eventually turn us more to love than fear. It will be like that for the world, where enough people have healed that it just changes things; a new reality will simply emerge. And it will happen organically, and won’t make sense to people who are fear and anger based.”
“Correct. It’s what Jesus spoke about when he said the meek will inherit the earth, and that the foolish things of the world will confound the wise. It’s the real meaning behind the 2012 prophesies, Hopi lore, Andean shamanic wisdom and the second coming of Jesus.“
“Wow… well, it makes sense when you say it like that, I guess. Sure pisses me off that it took me this long to figure it out though,” I said to myself with an ironic smile as I sit alone in the late afternoon, pine-filtered sun on the bank of a small creek in the foothills outside my home in Bend, Oregon.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Air - Prose
Air
And when I awoke I saw
That all the practices of all the
The earnest people
Were made of the same air.
It was the same air.
The same -
That swirled around the hands
Of the culted practitioners,
That swished around the cloak
Of the friar,
That blew into the mesa
Of the Laika,
That eased as Ohm from the smile
Of the Lama,
Exhaled as prayer from the mouth
Of the Imam,
Smiled out of the blissed joy
Of the yogi,
Fell in chants from the tongue
Of the Hindu,
Yelled hallelujah from the lungs
Of the Christian,
Was displaced by the lovers wrapped
In sacred, forested Pagan ritual…
It was the same.
The air existed with or without these
People;
Was indifferent to their
Holiness
It was all the same.
The sacred air,
That gifted space,
That kindly bubble
That surrounds in gentle hug
That surrounds in gentle hug
Gaia, Earth, Pachamama, Unci…
Was merely the breath of Creator
And what we humans chose to do in it
Made no difference to S/he
Other than for the humans themselves
To grow or not
To die or not
To be reborn or not
But certainly to experience
For to play in the breath of Creator
The holy air we breathe
The holy air we breathe
Was the whole of Its purpose
To give “Us” a place to go
So that each could return
And know that we had never left
And to learn that all the actions taken
While in the story
Were only that -
A story to be told -
Around deep campfires
Lit by twinkling stars
Carried on the breath
Of those profound
Weary
Humble
Courageous
Travelers
As we await
The lost pieces of ourselves
To return from the darkness
And tell us
Yet another
Story.
--Eric Marley
September 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)