The-Creature-in-the-Garden-

 

***

I have just emerged from a bout of very ugly crazy.

 

I did me some damage.

 

I blamed the creature, but of course I am the creature.

 

***

I am willing and eager for the pain of my human life. I don’t begrudge it. I walk around with my guts looped in my hands, grinning. But because I have pledged my troth to the woman on the verge, she often gets blasted by the bombs I set off everywhere. I light them and hand them to her, often enough.

 

“Here you go, honey. Hold on to this for a second for me, would you?”

 

boom.

 

***

I think it’s my drama, but often enough I dress her up in my costumes and hand her my props and block out her path on the stage. Shout “ACTION!”

I don’t know what all is wrong with me.

 

Okay, that’s a lie.

***

 

Anyway, she gets hit with a lot of shit that I fling around.

 

I’d like to take this moment to apologize to her in front of everyone.

 

I’m sorry.

 

***

What is happening to me. It is private, I believe. In a way. I don’t know if there is anything to be gained by talking about it or trying to talk about it. It sounds unhinged. It sounds unhinged to me when I tell myself about it. But I’m going to talk about it anyway. Perhaps it will be of benefit to you. Reading here on some dark night of the soul. In anguish. In terror. In horror at your own self. Unfit. Unfit. Unfit and dark.

I am at work.

I am at work.

I am creating and uncreating something wild and vast and limitless. I am uncreating what was built in me by those who built me. I am uncreating what was built in me by my own self after the others got started doing their work in me. They did a lot of damage and then I enthusiastically piled on a lot more. The depth and scope and vastness of the damage I did and have done and am still doing is difficult to comprehend but it is not insignificant. It is, in a way, serious and bad. I have done bad things, I continue to do bad things, and will probably keep doing so. And to whom. To those I most cherish. To those most innocent. To those least deserving.

It’s difficult to face this but I am doing it. It’s difficult to admit and it’s difficult to stop. But I am determined at it. I am undoing it. Undoing the causes of it. Undoing the errors that lead to unskillful actions.

I really believe that I am right. This is the most reliable indicator that I am completely wrong. If I feel totally justified, totally righteous, this is almost one hundred percent positive proof that I am about to do something mean and stupid and harmful.

This is a really important lesson to learn and one I learn but slowly. And must, it seems, re-learn repeatedly.

***

This time I dove so deep into it. I really, utterly believed my own line of shit. And that gave rise to a terrible chain of actions and words. I created this chain link by link and used it to beat on someone who was innocent.

See how I do?

***

But there is something here that isn’t just terrible and awful. I did all of this with a kind of terrible openness. A rawness of being. A relentless openness. I went and I went and I went, but each step I took I took refuge in the three jewels, I begged for understanding, I begged for openness, I begged for support and understanding, for peace and love and healing. It was like diving into the deepest pool of pure shit and swallowing all of it. Not asking to be spared, but asking to be transformed. To be, somehow, an agent of change in it. To go all the way into it, without hiding, without turning away.

but still, I caused harm. I don’t know. My zeal overmatched my capacity. I don’t know what the fuck I was doing. I am still so unskillful.

 

I was willing to be peeled by it, but I scalded my beloved as well.

 

Since we are as one I need to learn how to do this better.

 

***

 

Anyway. I emerged. And my long-suffering wife still abides by me. What I owe her cannot be measured.

 

***

 

So now I am on the other side of it. If there is another side. What I learned is that there isn’t any difference between the best thing and the worst thing, in a way. My massively powerful dark energy was pure and limitless energy. capable of anything. Magic or destruction. Samsara or Nirvana. Good or evil. Everything is the same, in this way. Our minds truly do determine our experience. Nothing is solid, nothing is lasting, nothing is anything but pure, limitless energy. Now in this form, now in that. If you want heaven you can have it. If you long for hell you can be there. If you seek confusion you will find it. If you want to be unloved you can find the proof for it in every second of every day. If you want to be loved the same thing is true.

Nothing is as it seems. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing is at is seems.

Everything is everything.

***

I used to think of the path as linear, but I experience it now as recursive. What looks like going backwards is the way forward. what looks like failure is the signpost of deeper growth. Deeper pain, wilder joy. More peeling. More letting go. Saying goodbye to the solid forms. Examining what underlies everything.

***

I can’t recommend hanging out around me.

 

***

 

Namaste.

 

****