So much is cracking open for me it’s difficult to settle down and try to write about it. I turned fifty in the midst of a great upheaval, and all around me the seas keep rising like mighty mountains, threatening the continued destruction of everything I’ve endeavored to construct to define myself. I’m hunkered down in my little raft, grabbing onto the gunwales and grinning like a mad fool, urging the storm on, shouting into the wind-driven spray, gibbering and dancing erratically, my eyes streaming with tears.
Nor have I learned moderation.
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I’m beginning to think it is not to be found in me.
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This spiritual path is my welcome undoing.
It is good that I didn’t understand what I was up to when I started out on it or I would have left the whole thing alone. I think that I really did believe that I was pretty much supergood, and smart and capable, and that really committing to a spiritual path would be like adding some really sweet and creamy frosting to a pretty wonderful cake- you know what I mean? That it would make me better tasting, more desirable, more attractive, all that. A better me, but, you know, still me.
What I’ve been in the process of discovering is that things are a little bit more dire than that. But also, confoundingly, much better than that, too. I am much, much worse than I’d ever been willing to see or admit, and yet, and yet, there’s this really limitless, profound, stainless, wise, compassionate aspect to my own fundamental nature that is vaster and more perfect than anything I could have imagined.
And what I’m experiencing right now is this kind of actual working of the teachings on me. I am engaged with full, unstinting commitment to this practice, and the results are manifesting. It is not anything you could describe as pleasant. It was horrifying to see, to really see, the lies I have been telling myself about myself just to get through the days. I have been engaged in this lifelong practice of subterfuge and posturing, lying to myself, lying to my loved ones, to my wife and daughter and everyone, about who and what I really was.
Maybe that’s overstating it a little bit- it’s not that there was a real other me inside- the real me was the false one, has been the false one. Now I’m left kind of in this empty landscape where what I was has been torn down, dismantled, the pieces carted off- a process for which I am profoundly grateful- but it’s unclear to me how to relate to this new place. It’s not that I am enlightened, or that all of my obscurations and defilements have been uprooted and purified, not that at all. But I think that I may be at a genuine starting point for discovering something profoundly true, a true way of being. One that is maybe not free from ego completely, but certainly is no longer enslaved by it, no longer blind to it- it is almost as if I’ve been cleaved in two and I can now really regard the creature that has been running the show for me for the last fifty years. I imagine a vast, empty, windswept plain, two figures standing there- a dark, twisted, golem-like thing, wincing and shielding itself from imagined blows, but still somehow boastful and proud, and this new man, naked, blinking a little bit in the new light, unknown to himself and to this new world.
I wish that I could take credit for being this new man, for finding and casting out the golem hiding within me, but I can’t. It wasn’t my doing- I am as astounded as can be by the whole mess. I believed that I was the golem, but I saw myself as the golem sees himself, not as he really is. I thought I was beautiful, handsome, precious.
If you didn’t see that, it was your fault. You didn’t understand me.
Ah, but there was another kind of ignorance in play. I didn’t understand me. I was maybe the only one who couldn’t see my real self. Or couldn’t see that there was a real self in there, hidden and concealed by the golem.
To protect me. To shield me from the real world.
So, yeah, not really my doing, finding myself in this new land. I mean, yes, yes it is my doing on one level- I certainly asked to be revealed, I asked to be known to myself, I embarked upon the path wholeheartedly- but it is the path that has done the revealing.
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I am relieved, I think is the best descriptor. Horrified, ashamed, regretful, yes, and frightened, uncertain, too. But full of curiosity, and light, and love. Love for myself, love for you, love for this world and everything in it. Love for Buddha and his teachings, love for the teachers, love for those who have gone before me and are helping show me the way.
I know this path isn’t for everyone, and I’m sorry if my bald enthusiasm for this path is off-putting for you in any way, but it is mine and it is the work I am here to do. I can’t imagine anything more useful to do with this life I’ve been given.
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Thanks for listening!
May you be happy, may you be comforted in your time of need, may you be of comfort to others in their times of need, may we all know love as the very basis of our being.
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Namaste.
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The Dishwasher's Tears 
You’ve brought a tear to my eye, an easy task at this time of year, when my own cracking open happens as likely as not. Thank you for sharing this amazing journey.
Carroll-
You are most welcome. As are tears, I think they’re pretty good. Can you imagine if we couldn’t weep? How poor we would feel.
yrs,
Scott
Beautifully said, Scott. I think I know what you mean. What a journey we have undertaken in this human incarnation. I sometimes feel unequal to it, but stumble on, blinded sometimes by the illusion of all that is not love. And yet i really do believe that love is all there is, and everything that seems unloving is there to render the truth of love in ever more stark relief. I feel somewhat ransacked today, as if everything I perceive might be a lie, everything but love.
Somewhat ransacked is a pretty rational way to feel right now! I certainly feel that way.
To me the death of Eric Garner is a training failure, not an expression of racism, but I have to admit that I, too, feel defeated and unequal to this continuing string of bad deaths. It’s one thing to kill a human being because you were truly afraid that you couldn’t defend yourself against them, but it’s another thing completely to kill them while just trying to get them to comply with your commands. And I’ve worked those kinds of deaths, too, first hand, and they are so tragic.
And you know, I could look at the cop who put the chokehold on Mr. Garner and say that racism had nothing to do with his actions, nothing at all, he was simply trying to control a much larger man who was telling the cops he wasn’t going to play by their rules any more. But I have to say that racism had a LOT to do with WHY Mr. Garner felt like he couldn’t take being hassled by the cops any more. Not Mr. Garner’s racism, but the racism that he was subjected to on a daily basis just by being a black man in this country.
But you are right to believe in love in the face of all of this hatred and mistrust and fear. Love is the only thing that has the capacity to lift us out of the basement of our worst selves. If there is darkness, then we must intensify our light. We must be committed to that endeavor.
Even though it won’t save us.
Anyway, I am profoundly grateful that you are my friend. I appreciate it especially now, when it might be easier for you to put me on the other side of the line between good and evil. Or maybe just right on the line. I don’t know.
I recognize that I have the privilege of being a white man in a white man’s world, and that even beyond that I have the power of the gun and the badge in a world where many are powerless, and I’m wise enough to know that I don’t always live up to the expectations that society has for me and that I am part of a terrible machinery even when I do everything right.
I’m not asking for forgiveness, I’m just expressing my gratitude for your friendship, which I find so valuable.
Sorry to go on like this, it’s probably not the right time or place for it, but there you are.
Do the love part, though. Do keep doing that.
yrs,
Scott
It takes courage to face the truth, or maybe just some guts to face it and courage to accept it. Thank you for sharing your journey.
Well, coming from a woman who has both guts and courage in huge supply, I take your words to heart.
Thank you for sharing yours as well. We are all the richer for having found each other in a world where we might never have done so.
yrs,
scott
Ah but we are a mixed bunch of souls here, aren’t we?
Oh wait. Not really. Because at the core of all of us here, I think, there is love. As Angella said. Maybe we’re just the people who believe in love and however we interpret that and however we practice it, it all adds up to the same-same.
Keep up the good, loving work, Scott. Keep telling us about your journey.
I think you’re right about us all being kind of same-same. We’d look like a hell of a motley crew from the outside- couldn’t be more different- but yes, down deep where it matters, all same-same.
You guys are all my teachers, you know. I gain so much from you.
I remain in your debt.
love,
Scott
I find your voice and perspectives very valuable in this and the previous conversation.
Well, thank you for that. I’m glad you can find something of value in this.
You teach us too, Scott. I’m so grateful for your voice, your courage, your friendship.
I am a better man for having your friendship, and honored for it
Love,
Scott
“I wish that I could take credit for being this new man, for finding and casting out the golem hiding within me, but I can’t. It wasn’t my doing- I am as astounded as can be by the whole mess. I believed that I was the golem, but I saw myself as the golem sees himself, not as he really is. I thought I was beautiful, handsome, precious.”–
It wasn’t my doing. Exactly. That’s how I feel about who I am now. I can’t even conjure who I was, five years ago–45 was when I began to feel a subtle shift towards happiness in my brain. Who was that person? I have no idea. But that woman, who I was, could imagine this person, even if through a thick fog of sneering skepticism. That person watched at least one version of A Christmas Carol every year, and upon seeing Scrooge’s seemingly miraculous transformation, would wonder if it was really possible.
It is. Possible. I tell everyone I know. I tell everyone I kind of know. I try to make anyone who will listen believe that you can change, that you will change, if you allow it, if you accept it, if you can let go of who you were. No one, so far, believes me. Everyone is stunned by my transformation. Grinchy, grumpy, woe is me, angry, sad, pessimistic, selfish Laurel…..is gone. Despite my transformation, proof right in front of their eyes, they are dubious.
It’s like the elusive mayonnaise jar in the fridge. It’s right there on the second shelf behind the pickles. You just can’t “see” it.
And that path you said that isn’t for everyone? It is for everyone. It’s there for the taking.
I rejoice in your transformation, brother, as much as you have in mine.
Here’s hoping more folks take the path.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas, brother.
Let your heart be light. Let your heart be LIGHT.
Your transformation is one of the most inspiring and welcome things I’ve ever encountered. To be graced with it is a profound gift- I’m happy you were given it!
I’m grateful to find myself living in this world, where these things are possible. It’s a great blessing!
yrs,
Scott
I think you need to hear this:
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/06/310089151/sam-baker-finding-grace-in-the-wake-of-destruction
I’d never heard of him before today while driving back to work from my lunch break. It’s an amazing interview. And his song are pretty damned amazing, too. I’m an instant fan. I think you’ll probably become an instant fan, too.
(hope you had a merry, merry. hope you have a shiny, shiny.)
this is exactly where I find myself right now. it is very comforting to read these amazing words. thank you for sharing your experience.
I miss you! I hope you are well and that you haven’t gone away again (although of course you will do what you need to do). You teach me. You have no idea how much. I can’t get enough of this journey you’re on, and the way you make sense of it all. Love.