DEEPLY AWAKE - LOVE HAS NO OPPOSITE

 

DEEPLY AWAKE – LOVE HAS NO OPPOSITE

 

I have written some posts but they have gone unpublished, undone, unfinished, somehow incomplete in a very complete way, intact in their attempts to bridge realities but unready to be sung, these private songs, whistling and humming in the background.

 

This has been a time of extraordinary moments, shimmering realizations that occur in the oddest situations.

 

Twice in the last two weeks I have been driving, and, for an extended period of time, I am operating my vehicle with absolutely no idea where I am or what I am supposed to be doing. It's as if I get plunked into this situation, and I do not recognize landmarks, everything is not unfamiliar but so abstracted, so theoretical, that it takes me some time to snap back into better aligned awareness.

 

I had an argument with myself about this yesterday. Do I want to shock myself into fearing a grisly demise as a victim of aggressive, advancing dementia? Forgetting where you are is the first sign! Pretty soon I'll be crapping my pants and demanding coffee and cigarettes from an overworked and resentful nursing home staff. Christ. I am fucked.

 

So that's how that went for a couple minutes. But then I realized, the truth is that neurologically I do know I am changing, and no one is talking about these awareness blips, but I think they're probably a lot more common than anyone lets on. Furthermore, death by dementia just doesn't sound like a great time, and I have never felt that was a path I needed to walk, so stop with the catastrophizing and just enjoy the blips.

 

With that, I began to explore what it felt like to experience these blips.

 

These blips are a lot like a dream I had while taking a nap break at work this summer. I dreamt I was driving in the mountains, and as I often do in my dreams, I lost control of the car, and went flying off the mountain. The dream was special only in that it was the first time I really reveled in letting go, surrendering into the fall, feeling the exhilaration of “Ooh! I wonder what comes next!” while knowing that you're dying, this wild feeling just slamming my torso and making me feel like vomiting. It was awesome.

 

These blips are like that dream. In the moment, when I am aware that I don't have a clue where I am, I feel this great happiness, this wide, clear sense of fun. And I ride the excitement instead of the fear.

 

There really is just no way to condense and offer all that has happened within me, the changes are far too fundamental. The best I can do here is to reflect back to you some of what I am now aware, and then ask, ever so politely, if you are having similar experiences. It is so important to me to know if others are having the same sort of things happen to them. And that is not only for the solace that shared experience brings, but also as a way to comfort anyone who might also be having this experience and fearing having to wear diapers in another twenty years because you are convinced you must be losing your mind.....

 

I thought about that this morning, because I couldn't find my phone last night, so went to bed without my contraption. Without it, I was able to understand just what it has done for me.

 

I have been connected, through the internet, to you, for a year now. It is false to say that I did this growth on my own, and it is false to say anyone did it for me. It was a cooperative effort. I read blogs, channelings, watched youtube, studied books, listened to radio programs, and have just lived a totally immersed life for so long, that today, this morning, waking up without an immediate connection to my community, this gave me a chance to really appreciate just what it is that you have given me.

 

If I had not had ready and easy access to all the mental products of the great seekers of my day, would I be here now? I know that the answer is a resounding YES, but I like how I got here. It was always a stair-stepped approach to rapid enlightenment.

 

I have finally been able to understand Hinduism a bit better, and this too has led to an inner state of permission. The internet gang helped me by presenting a miasma of information from which I took what interested me. And my study into Hinduism has allowed me to fully own the yogi I am.

 

Funny that only now I have allowed myself to reclaim this ancient religion. I have always known it was mine, but I never gave myself permission to explore it. I have found that it suits me on every level, it is a religion that speaks to me. Until really studying this faith, I did not understand what could possibly make a person kill or die for their religion. But when something slams into your life that just keeps expanding into more and more and more beauty and grace, well, yes, I guess I can sort of understand it. Personally, I could care less what belief structure a person finds, it's no business of mine, and I think proselytizing is retarded. But I better understand the fundies now. Which is nice.

 

My friend Diane and I have a running joke, started when we first met each other nearly thirty years ago. We both came into this lifetime feeling like we are separated from our group. I went to our first meal together wearing that button on my coat, “Separated From My Group.” She and I are from the same group, and now I see that my bigger group has Hindu blood. Nice. That's nice.

 

On the way home from work yesterday morning, I had a thought that I would like to share with you. It is sort of a revolutionary one, so prepare yourself.

 

Fear is not the opposite of love. Anger is not the opposite of love. Indeed, no emotion is the opposite of love.

 

Remember how they tell you that white is the color of all the colors combined? I think that's highly unlikely, but let's go with it for a minute. I think of Love like the color white. Love cannot have an opposite, because it is the stuff from which all other emotions flow.

 

Black is not the opposite of white. Black is white ignoring itself. Fear is not the opposite of love. Fear is love ignoring itself.

 

Saying that fear is the opposite of love implies that fear is as strong is love. That it is enduring. Permanent. That it is fact. And fear is none of those things. Fear disappears in the bold light of mercy. Fear cannot hold its own when confronted with truth. It folds like a cheap card table.

 

Who says fear is the opposite of love? Well, The Community. Sages. Channelers. But I think that it is not true. Love has no opposite. Love accepts all, creates all, bears all, tolerates all. Love prefers, but love never needs, because love is sufficient unto itself.

 

So, fear lost its strength for me on that drive home. I haven't been able to fear it the way I used to. It's a toothless giant, or that flayed thing left behind a bench in Harry Potter's dream meeting with Dumbledore.

 

After this thought came The Biggie.

 

I thought then upon my lifelong phobia in making a mistake. I am, in some areas of my life, so very avoidant that the natural flow of love and light doesn't happen.

 

I thought about a past life regression then, in a heartbeat. Alone in the desert, my death decided by my failure to bring an additional canteen.

 

I realized that I had carried with me the “lesson” that no matter how high your hopes and how great your plans, sometimes shit happens and you die. You make one stupid mistake, and everything turns to shit. Physical life cannot be trusted, it will always wind up surprising, and then killing you.

 

Well, that was an incorrect, or unskilled, interpretation. At the stoplight I realized that although I did die in a desert that lifetime because my camel fell ill and I had failed to pack enough water, the person I was motivated to live for in that lifetime is in my present reality. He's living with me. We ARE reunited. And that had been the motivation, this reuniting had been my only hope, and I took it so hard when I screwed that up!

 

So here I am, at the light, thinking, well, wait a minute now, the one who I wanted to be reunited with that lifetime is here now. And the canteen which could have made me live, well, so what, I am with my loved one now! Who cares if I died that lifetime, THIS is the lifetime where it's all coming together!

 

There are no mistakes! It was not a mistake to die in that desert, it was The Way Things Are, and it's perfectly ok.

 

So, while watching a truck make an illegal left, I had this thought: Maybe a mistake is just what something looks like until you understand its purpose, its gift.

 

Now I am sitting at the stop light with tears running down my face, realizing that there is no such thing as a mistake. Big picture.

 

So, yeah, things are different for me these days, gentle for the most part.

 

And I will end on that note. The note of gentleness, and its retiring cousin, mercy.

 

Gliding into the garage this morning after dropping Sam off at school, it dawned on me that maybe the big upsets in my life can begin to subside. I think that the biggest upsets always came because I love mercy. I love the feel of it, the smell of it, the rescue of it, the surprising and shocking goodwill of it. I love everything about mercy.

 

The thing is, mercy usually only presents itself at the very very long end of upsetting and dramatic events, right? Like screwing up at work but the boss shows mercy on you, lets you keep your job. You cheat on your lover, but he takes you back. You have no money and you're hungry, and someone feeds you. You don't have transportation, but someone steps up and you get to work anyway.

 

OK, so what happens if I start to EMBODY mercy? What happens if I start looking at everything, or most things, with the eyes of mercy? What if I can see mercy in this problem, that emergency, this boring detail, that gross bit of mundanity. Would I need to create drama if I am getting the drama's pay-off with regularity? Would I really need to have huge dramas play out if I am feeling love and forgiveness and mercy toward myself and everyone I know, consciously, voluntarily?

 

This now is the change.

 

I am understanding that I am indeed a master walking this earth.

 

I am a great and merciful light who dons clothing every day and who walks among men, clear and open and unafraid.

 

I am clear. I am open. I am unafraid.

 

And I am changeable, as mutable as the sky, and just as responsive. I no longer mourn when I lack clarity. I no longer hold fear inside my bones when I cannot hear my inner guidance and do not know my direction. I'm just having a spot of amnesia then, a bit of resistance, a muddied moment. The clouds eventually clear, the sun eventually comes up, and then the understandings come.

 

This is the Hindu effect.

 

For all my life I have been a profound seeker, and have not felt permission to be spiritual on a daily, integrated basis. This is a culture which derides spirituality, sees it as feminine, which is seen as weak, stupid and dangerous. It's crazy thinking. But its the culture. And now, here in my awareness, is a whole culture which venerates the seeker, which acknowledges the spirit.

 

Having seen myself as crazy my whole life for knowing, living my truth, that the internal experience is the only game in town, is far more important than the external one, I finally have realized that I am not alone. There is a whole continent of people who are unafraid, or at least less afraid than Americans, of their spirituality. There is an actual place where people are not made fun of for being spiritual, for being a seeker, for being on an inner quest. This has given me peace.

 

This brings up an interesting vignette. I have a neighbor who is a roly poly asian dude. He has a nice family, and they are always very kind and gentle. I have seen them in the building for years. This week, I saw my neighbor dressed in monk garb. We rode the elevator with him in his saffron robe.

 

My immediate response was shame. I felt a tremendous wave of shame. Here is this fellow, displaying for all to see, his most delicate beliefs and fragile longings. Here is this man dressed in the robes of someone who is very close to his insignificance.

 

That's what I thought.

 

Then the next day, a different thought came to me. While putting groceries in the trunk of my car outside the Walmart, I thought about my monk neighbor. Quite forcefully, I had this thought: “You were not seeing that man at his most vulnerable. Notice your feelings. Now. What you were witnessing was a man standing in his unshakable truth. In his strength. You saw him at his strongest, not at his weakest. Check your thinking. Now, how does this feel, to think you saw him at his strongest?”

 

That I would see a monk and consider him unspeakably, obscenely fragile, there is something to that. There is a truth in there for me. And then to be visited by its opposite reality, that this monk was in fact standing in his truth, and was probably happy to be seen, not ashamed, well, this is the nature of my life now. Turning things around on a dime, seeing things differently, feeling more clarity and peace and love. So what if the beliefs I turn to are unconventional? I am on the mercy train now.

 

So, this morning, without my instant connection to you, to my seekers and sages, gurus and teachers, friends and loved ones, I contemplated what it would be like to go analog again. Could I do the rest of this spiritual quest without the regular input from blogs telling me what the moon is doing, what the meaning of the solar flares is, that kind of thing? Could I do the rest of this without comparing, and is it ok that I have gotten this far by comparing my understandings with those of my community?

 

Well, I could, but I don;t think that I want to. I am not sure that I have been using blogs and channelings so much for deciding if I am doing this right, and more for a check on the consensus. I think after the solstice I began to realize that what I read on the blogs is all projection, and there is truth buried within the tornadoes and clouds that form in our collective skies. I read the blogs like I look at the sky, to see what the weather is like. I don't usually get big realizations from clouds, although they do interest and surprise me, and often communicate with me, but I see it for what it is. And I see the blogosphere in much the same way. And main stream news. It's a quick way to get a pulse, to check the general condition of the patient.

 

There is so much more that could be said, but this is where I leave it today. I do hope that others are also feeling a consolidating effect occurring in their realities. It's nice to not think of myself as crazy anymore. To not feel separate anymore. And to know that, all around the world, at this precise moment, there are people at every age, checking in with their computers, just checking the pulse. Some will find this blog, and most will not. All will be using their consciousness, or a small portion of it, to peek in, check in, put in their two cents.

 

I will continue to check in, and I will continue to feel deep, abiding love for each and every human across this globe who, in doing their other stuff, also is taking time to acknowledge that there is more to this thing than how much crap you can fit into a Walmart cart or a house. There is more to life than the denial of feelings, the denial of spirituality, the denial of mercy. There is so much more, and you, my dearest friends, the ones who kept cheering me on as I woke up, I love you, I love you, I love you.

 

There is mercy here, in this little body, in this open heart. I can feel nothing less for myself, for my son, for my coworkers, for the loved ones who have rejected me, and for the loved ones who love me still. This is a seat of power, this seat of mercy. It is one which is offered to the ones who have come to understand a couple things, from mercy's withholding. No need for that anymore. Withholding nothing, I tell you with heart blazing, a truth I know and want you to know too.

 

I do not fear you. I love you.