I retreat, to lick my wounds and recover from all of the rejection and judgment, once more.
"I am so tired of this 'not good enough' story," I tell S, as we spend her daughter's tenth-birthday reveling in food. Although they're celebrating, I'm emotionally eating. S understands my need to wallow and allows me the space to bee exactly where I am. I surround myself with dozens of books found on the shelves and tabletops within her home. Sprawled out on her king-sized bed, it is her business partner and spiritual teacher, Arjuna Ardagh, whose words resonate deep in my aching belly.
His short novel, The Last Laugh, is filled with animal medicine (ladybugs!), laughter and LOVE as it moves its reader through the quick tale of one man's awakening - from failure, despair and a near-suicide to discovery, redemption and reclamation. Of course, it's always the human mind that gets in One's way - creating attachment, suffering and misery by not bee-ing in the present moment.
In Ardagh's book, the guru also offers a 10-step recipe for awakening:
1.) FEEL WHAT YOU MOST RESIST (i.e. S. once shared with me how she laid in bed for three hours as her entire body was wracked with jealousy. She allowed herself to feel her feelings as deeply as she could so that she could then transmute her pain.)
2.) Become the Other
3.) "Just Like Me" (i.e. "She's ugly - just like me." "He's hot - just like me.")
4.) The real teacher is the present moment. Respond within and from it by allowing your listening to guide you.
5.) Drop the past.
6.) Act without thought.
7.) Practice Gratitude.
8.) Give just to give. Add color where it is missing. Be generous with yourself. Make love to life in all her forms.
9.) Become friends with the darkness. The Zen poet Bunan once said, 'Die while still alive, be absolutely dead. Then do whatever you want, it's all good.'
10.) Step into and own your own freedom. You are free. You are free of even the need to be free. You are free of me; free of any work; free of any teaching. It is done.
And a few pertinent quotes that just felt so damn ripe for this now:
"See, the way you are with a woman is just like you are with all of life. One mirrors the other. If you hold back, if you are half-assed, she will turn from you, and close to you. If you give everything of yourself to her, she reveals her deeper beauty to you. All of life is just one huge beautiful woman. You have to make love to her all the time. Seduce her, find her ticklish spots, open her, in all her countless forms and appearances. And then penetrate her completely, till of her writhes in surrender.
Lick her, bite the inside of her thighs, drive your tongue deep between the wet lips of her juicy mango. Suck her, give her everything you have. Whisper sweet nothings in her ear. She is craving your penetration. Thrust deeply into her in every moment, like there has never been any other moment, and there will never be. That's the whole key, you see, to bring all of you to her. Penetrate her so deeply that she writhes and screams and begs you for more. Slay her with the sword of you absolute presence."
"What more can I hope for than what I'm made of, this legacy of embarrassed compromise, of failure to stick to one's course? But its so much bigger than that. I'm not only shackled to a family of mediocrity but to a species that's bent on consuming its way to destruction. This is the legacy I pass on to my children, this legacy and this example. I come from a long line of weak-willed men, generation after generation, whose ideals are so faintly conceived and asserted they are washed away in the current of the status quo.
I conceived my children like Nero did, when the culture was already beyond the point of no return. Just last week, I read somewhere that global temperatures are averaging three degrees above normal. The signs are everywhere, but like lemmings we rush, following power-crazed self-righteous leaders over the cliff. Give me a bigger house, an upgrade to my airline seat and my RAM, and I'll turn a blind eye to the madness.
It's all dying. Not dying in a natural way; dust to dust, ashes to ashes. The very system that supports a healthy life and death is itself dying. Every year more species wiped from the globe by this collective trance of greed. A huge machine smashing everything in its path, chomping everything down its greedy gullet....
I once read a story in the paper about a man, quite well-to-do, good job, worked for one of the long-distance companies, with a wife and three children all doing well. One day he shot them all and then committed suicide. The question we all ask ourselves is 'why?' When all is going well, why? In my attic at dawn, cold, alone, I knew why. Perhaps that poor crazy man was saner than the rest of us, perhaps he saw through the futility of trying to make something right that is plunging, out of control, into something wrong. Perhaps he saw the future he was raising his children for; one with polluted water, polluted hearts. One in which love and nobility are insidiously turned into products to sell."
"The music goes on and on.
We're dancing still, we're laughing still.
Put that computer screen down now, my beautiful friend.
COME JOIN THE DANCE."
