Three Strange Angels

The Controlled Experiment

SUBJECT A: “Do you remember who you were?”

SUBJECT B: “No. That’s why I kept the journals.”

SUBJECT A: “But now you’ve gone and lost them. Haven’t you?”

SUBJECT B: “I never was any good at keeping things.”

SUBJECT A: “Who will you be now?”

SUBJECT B: “Anyone I want to be. I guess.”

SUBJECT A: “Do you remember what you used to write in your journal?”

SUBJECT B: “Not really. Words though beautiful are a poor replica for the fluidity of thought. Thought has its own mercurial quality. Rising like a wave from the depths. Traveling through a sea of consciousness to break away from a world of wateriness and become one distinct wave that departs. Leaves everything it knows to become unique with the sole purpose of crashing into a shore of meaning.”

SUBJECT A: “If words are so confining, how could your journals be your template for becoming?”

SUBJECT B: “What else is there? You’ve got to make do with what you’ve got. And all that I had were the words in those old moleskin books.”

Things I could have said...

...(but never did).

I will miss you.

You touched my being.

Each letter was a gift that flew out of the cosmos and into my heart.

I only wish you joy and deep beauty, for that is what you gave me.

I will always be grateful for the experience we shared, even though the parting was painful.

The time we shared was brief, but it was intensely delicate and magical. Like a majestic feathered creature that flew on a current of hope and looked deeply into our souls, before disappearing from view.

Instead my last words were necessarily abrupt. Even detached.

You see I didn’t want you to look back.

I wanted you to look forward and walk deeper and deeper into your decision. To travel courageously into your life and realize your dreams there.

I did so because I have come to know that if you care for someone you must surrender selfish wants to their higher happiness.

So no regrets save this.

If I could do it all again I would have let you go with love.

Karmapa Chenno*

I was at a meditation workshop with Rob Nairn in the Magaliesburg some years ago, when I heard him tell a remarkable story about the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje.

Nairn had met the Karmapa and said that one of the most remarkable things about him, apart from his stature and compassionate power, was his ability to flow from one emotional state to another. As if he was able to truly feel the fullness of each emotion to its apex, and then simply let it go and move into the next.

I have often wondered why we hold on to emotion. And how we can get to fully being and feeling and living in our emotions, and then let those emotions fall from us when they are done. When we are done learning from them.

Instead we let fear rule us, we spew anger, we grasp at happiness and try to avoid pain.

It is interesting to note that the word 'emotion' comes from the Latin emovere, where e- means 'out' and movere means 'move'. I think the etymology of words offer strong clues to what those concepts mean (or should mean) in our lives.

I also thought that what if emotions (instead of ruling us) are supposed to flow within and through us, and transmute us?

Making us into more beautiful and compassionate human beings?

*Karmapa Chenno is a Karmapa mantra  that was introduced by the 8th Karmapa Mikyo Dorje (1507-1554) in the context of a teaching about the tradition of  "Calling the Lama from afar." 

Written in Tibetan like this:

it literally means "Embodiment of the compassion of all Buddhas, take heed of me."

The last proof

"For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."
Rainer Maria Rilke - German lyric poet (1875 - 1926)

How is it that you know my heart and what lives there?

All the years and fears and tears that come from walking toward the frontier. This land where I have been split into two. Where love lies down to bed with loss.

Come death, make love to me. Sweet tendrils of disintegration that travel like breath around my being and enter unseen to give birth to that which would destroy me from the core. As you access the innermost I will whisper softly in your ear:

"I will love. I will love. I will love again."

Art: Angel on the wall (1998) by painter and printmaker Katarina Zaric.

Walking stories

I can't even remember where I heard it. I think it was from a man called Michael Owen that I studied with. A Jungian Psychologist (and one of the few psychologists I actually like) Owen has written two books Jung and the Native American Moon Cycles: Rythms of Influence and The Tarot Codex: Lovesongs of Spirit and Matter. There's also an article of his online called "The indigenous soul" which is really worth reading.

"It comes to us veiled, in strange guises and restless enthusiasms. But mostly it keeps itself to itself until we say the word. And what might be the word? Nothing that you could think of – more an attitude that looks only out of the corner of its eye, or a way of life not over-scrutinised. The indigenous soul has silent knowledge of what is not here any more. And we all have one regardless of skin colour, gender, race or creed or heritage. It is natural and like nature does not give explanations of itself. It is both carnivorous and gentle; it eats whole lives, and makes them purr when touched." -Michael Owen.

Owen talks a lot about the indigenous soul, the dream time and the narrative. Stories that walk. Stories on two legs. Out of all the teachers that I have chosen for myself, his teachings have woven deeply within me and continue to inform my experience of life - even though I last engaged him many years ago.

I love the idea that we are stories on legs. This idea falls like a dream into depth and meaning and archetype in a life that too often can become thin. A storied life speaks of adventure and heroism, of purpose and legend. It is imbued with the understanding that we are the authors of our own destiny, it hints at our being watched and engaged with others we may not see, and speaks to a collective narrative.

You are a walking story. You are a story on two legs. Every step can bristle with energy, excitement, drama, tragedy, comedy, adventure, quest or purpose if you want it to.

How will your story unfold today?

Do not go gentle...

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
- Dylan Thomas

Wales' greatest son was right about death. We should not succumb. Get seduced. Softly fall into that sleep that would take us from this world into that. We should fight. Tooth and nail for each day. Each minute. Each second.

The easy way is to let go. Like you do in sleep. To just surrender.

But there is a war to be fought and I am taking up arms. The battle field is my own body as the higher and lower forces lay siege to each other. I am not at the point of détente so there is no rest for those that live within me.

For too long I have numbed myself like one of the walking dead, in a sleep-walking shuffle off this mortal coil. Around and around and around I have gone. Not even counting the steps. Not fearing the end. Not resisting the next round.

Of course there are moments of lucidity. In grief and great happiness the skies open and all of nature takes on a vibrancy. Or during moments of quickening the whole of life comes alive begging you to participate. To come play. Then the minutiae steps in to suck the joy from your marrow.

"Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night."
- Dylan Thomas

What are the options? To sleep and breath with eyes wide open? To abandon hope like the toad on the proverbial stove? Or to fly full of fury into the heart of life itself and cut it out alive.

We came here as warriors, as heroes as kings. We were never meant to be small.

Dylan Thomas knew that. And so should we.

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

 

Ham-Sa

There's a new book I have been dying to get my hands on. It is called "Eat. Pray. Love" and it is by Elizabeth Gilbert.

I was with my sister yesterday and she gave me a passage in the book to read.

There are times in our lives when we feel so disconnected from everything. Alone. Fragile. Small. The journey through life is incredible, but it can also be perilous and frightening. I was having one of those moments when I picked up the book and was reminded that in a breath we can connect to all of life.

The passage from the book that touched me deeply was about a mantra one can use in meditation. It is "Ham Sa" which literally means "I am THAT":

"HAM-SA.  I am That.  I am divine, I am with God, I am an expression of God, I am not separate, I am not alone, I am not this limited illusion of an individual." (From Eat.Pray.Love. by Elizabeth Gilbert.)

You say the "ham" (haum) on the in breath, and the "sa" (saaah) on the out breath.

What a miracle that we can reconnect with ourselves, lives and higher purpose in something as simple as breathing.

Thank you to my beautiful and loving sister Wendy for this gift.

Intent

Why do you do what you do?

Crazy thing – have you discovered that the more you say a word the more it seems to lose its meaning? If you take a word and say it again and again and again. Like some crazy repetitive cycle or a meditation that’s going no where. The strangest thing happens. The word seems to separate from the meaning and fly abstract into no where.

I have often wondered about intent. What makes us do what we do? But when I start traveling into my own intent at times I feel like a dog chasing its own tail. Round and round I go in a cycle that never ends.

Perhaps I should just say the word over and over again and watch the separation of the meaning symbol from its meaning.

Like a fleck of dust that rises, hangs, rises and floats on warm currents until it is gone.

Abstract division

I'm looking at the messy edges of my life where the beast blurs perfection with that which I cannot control. As I look at the spilled shells and trash I wonder about how I think about value. What makes a life. What teaches. What our education teaches us and how it teaches us to think.

There's a marvelous movie called "Little Miss Sunshine". Damn. Can't tell you how much I love that small little film. For so many reasons, but also because of the conversation between Dwayne and Frank:

"Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.

Frank: Do you know who Marcel Proust is?

Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.

Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that."

Reminds me that everything is life. And sometimes that trashy bits and discarded shells teach us more about ourselves than most of the other parts.

CWM

Did you know where to go when the world would end? And if you did would you send some small sign back to me?

Like Hansel’s crumbs. Hitch hikers’ thumbs. A couple of strums on a guitar which will let me know that you’re not far.