The road to Enlightenment is through truth

I do not consider myself to be enlightened. I feel I’m on the path leading there and I feel that compassion, being a major tenet of this, that we must strengthen the bonds of our interconnectedness. To do this I feel the best way is to erase fear, since I believe it is fear which keeps us apart. I feel the best way I can do this is to expose myself to you, raw, unfiltered and real – in the light of truth.

The path to Enlightenment is through truth. I posted that earlier and several people liked and agreed with the sentiment. How closely do we look at this process though? How much light of truth do we allow to penetrate us? Because it is inversely proportionate to the levels of our misery. It seems odd to say that exposing yourself; your ugly side could lessen your misery but let me explain my walk, which is ongoing.

I wasn’t happy, life wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I wanted a bigger house, a better car, a better job; hell no job – I wanted to be independently wealthy, I wanted a better relationship with my wife. I felt lost, I felt incomplete and empty often. I wanted a better life for my kids but my own childhood left me with no tools for a normal relationship. The dynamics of my household were horrible. Everyone lived in fear of me. My excuse was that I was building a good family and that I couldn’t make everyone happy. That was total bologna; the truth was I just wanted it all my way.

As I have written before my big epiphany came when my wife took our kids and left me. I was a violent, irrational being for many years, she had grown accustomed to it so when the violence ended but I still had the same energy, the same air about me the waiting and suspense for something she was sure was coming was too much. I don’t blame her. At the time I was in the beginning of really trying to fix myself. I knew, let me get this completely clear, I knew the whole time that violence and what I was doing was wrong. Even after I had changed the bulk of it I was still aggressively after securing only my own piece of the pie. I wanted a better life for my kids…. For me; because that meant I was a good father. I never considered just relating to them and letting their needs dictate how I was a good father, nope it was all about me.

So they left…. I had a house with empty rooms. I had a job to go to and bills to pay. Part of the problem between my wife and I was money (like most families) and how it was being spent. So when she decided to leave she let the bills go, I believe, to subconsciously force her to leave. She had to make a big mess and run from me, she couldn’t just leave. We were messed up, folks.  We kept it hidden, like many families I suppose. The point is though I didn’t hit her or the kids she felt the same fear and left. Your transgressions don’t always immediately bring about their consequences. That is in no way under your control.

I slept on the couch; it was too difficult to sleep alone in our bed. I filly wallowed in my misery. In fact I entertained suicidal thoughts. I laid there on my couch for a month at least eating horrible fast food, not cooking for myself and smoking like a freight train. Then one night deep thought took me. I didn’t intend to be thinking deeply about myself and my place in the universe, it just consumed me. Suddenly there I was kind of floating above all these scenes of myself in different interactions. I was watching this unfold through eyes of truth. I could see my own horrible actions as well as the actions of the others. It was an odd sensation to be so disconnected from myself, seeing myself so clearly and finding disgust for myself in my heart. Then I saw myself lying on the couch and I looked dead and you know, it didn’t bother me. It didn’t bother me at all. Then the couch faded away and there was my body floating in this black emptiness. I watched as my clothes left, leaving me naked unto myself and then as my body faded but my consciousness didn’t; it hit me. I understood that I was alone in this vast darkness and I had only who I was for company and I was a jerk, no I was a dick, a real dick. I had hit my kids, I had hit my wife, I had bullied them all. I couldn’t love that person, I couldn’t stand him let alone being left with only him for company for all eternity. Then as the world faded back in and I realized I was sitting on my couch it all made sense to me. I set about being a nice person and considering others as I had wanted to be, but was afraid of not being, so I was passive aggressive about it and bullied people. I didn’t look at it though. I had a life full of drama I created which kept my focus off my own actions.

Then as I sat there I went back in my mind to all those interactions I had seen and I watched myself and I noticed one thing in all of them:

The moment you witness yourself making an excuse to yourself for your own bad behavior is your call to enlightenment by establishing the source, action of and only escape from your own karma.

It was true in every single instance.

Let me quickly explain how I see karma so that that sentence can make more sense. Karma is the wave you create by acting other than yourself. When you try to act tough the universe smacks you down. Some times its just as clear cut as that and sometimes it’s a total mystery but it always, always, always stems from excusing yourself for what you hold others to judgment for. Theft, for example, is mostly universal. Universally, most people would say it’s wrong. Now, not giving up your seat on the bus to someone else, which is up to your own moral fiber, could be wrong but stepping away from that will cause a wave you have to overcome. Your life is your own and it is shaped by you; by your conception of yourself. When you don’t live up to what you know you should be the Universe sets u[p tests, challenges and lessons to help you see it, but it is still up to you to see it.

So there I was on my couch reliving all these painful moments in which I was a complete tool and standing against my choices. It was like I had to go back and atone for them all and fix them by standing for what was right. I had to watch myself hitting my son and witness the true horrible ugly I embodied and unleashed upon my gentle son. I had to drive into the center of me, down into my soul, the reality of how wrong that was, what I should have done, what I did to him. I had to account for it all. So I spent my three months in solitude when I wasn’t working and I did nothing but look back at myself. Slowly but surely I emerged a different person. I found my own gentle roots, which look so much like my son it breaks my heart. Doing that helped me see how to be a better father to them, a better husband to my wife and a better person for myself.

It was the worst of times; it was the best of times.

I vowed to walk in the light of truth from that moment on. Much later after having found Buddhism (which paralleled my experience) and working with Rinpoche, my Lama, I learned three simple steps to maintaining that walk: Be humble, Be a good person, what will be will be.

Your life is your own, you are responsible for it completely; your actions, your inactions and your reactions - from the three levels of being – they must all be in harmony for you to be able to find happiness…

Or so it is in my experience.

Namaste

Come on People now, smile on your brother

Yesterday my wife, my eleven year old son and I were almost in a head-on collision. A heavy duty truck, which looked like a cement mixer, belonging to an environmental service company was straddling the double yellow center line around a blind corner.  The look of shock on his face as we came around in our lane truly frightened me. His truck was too large, too heavy and moving too fast for him to maneuver at all. I swung my car to the curb on my side and came to a stop. He missed us by inches and …. just kept going. He just drove off. I took the next block and backtracked. I was extremely upset. I wanted this jackass to know what he almost did. I found him two blocks up about to make a right on the street I was on and as I passed him I yelled, cursed and told him to pull into the nearest parking lot. I know. It was a stupid thing to do. I was caught up in moment. The problem was my initial approach.

When he didn’t pull into the lot but instead taunted and goaded me with his passenger as he kept driving I decided to take this to his boss. I knew where their office was, we used to work in the same office park. I hope he received a written reprimand. I plan on following up in a few days, but that isn’t the point of this, it’s about how we treat each other, about our initial approach; our combined consciousness.

You see all of us enter our isolation booths and maneuver through our city avoiding all the jackasses on the road without ever realizing that those jackasses are approaching it the exact same way. Where did this sense of entitlement come from? When did all of us decide that our city, government, country, the world, all of existence was there to witness the “me show”? How do we figure we are the only important one?

Well with that attitude fell our cooperation, our compassion, our willingness to do what is right. What we adopted was the willingness to do what is right… for me. We disconnected from each other and started to take care of only ourselves. We drew lines, like we always have throughout history, in order to set ourselves against them to make it easier to excuse our behavior to ourselves. It’s competition; on the roads, in the office, in the community in the home. I’m all for doing the best you can and felling good about your accomplishments but when are we taking care of the most important aspect? I mean sure, we can be the best on the road, the best in the office, and the best in the community but if we’re not tending to our initial approach then all we end up with is a trophy shelf we admire alone. No one, I mean no one, wants to be taken advantage of; not on the road, in the office, in the community or in the home. So when did we flip and change to this me only approach? More importantly, why haven’t we noticed and done something about it?

We treat each other like enemies on the road, we have “road rage” which doesn’t come from congestion, it comes from our mindset. If they’re enemies then there are no holds barred. We drop polite society and “handle our business”. I call bullshit. I don’t want every other motorist on the road to treat me this way, then without being a massive hypocrite, so I cannot take advantage. I must follow the rules we have all agreed to.

We approach all of life in this same way. It’s been going for so long. I grew up in this mindset. I was a child in the 80’s during the “me generation” and boy isn’t that the truth. We were taught to take care of “No.1” and a bunch of other catchy slogans we would repeat to desensitize us from the usury we were being bred into. We did as every generation does, we improved upon the existing system. The improvement? “The Game”! It’s where I can act like a complete asshole and then excuse my behavior with the slogan “don’t hate the player, hate the game” which is tantamount to saying “don’t blame me, I’m no worse than everyone else”. That’s just great, lowest common denominator societal norms! How did we not notice we were circling the drain? How did we all adopt this philosophy so quickly? So easily? I mean it started in a subculture, as all things do, and went mainstream so quickly. Then came the “haters” and how we don’t have to listen to anyone, because haters are going to hate. What a giant system of self-delusion. That means I can be however I like because I only have to be better than those I judge to be less; which is to say I can do what I want because I can always judge people in such a way as to allow my bad behavior. Then, when I piss people off I don’t have to listen to them because I can just label them “haters” and dismiss them. It’s the recipe to complete deluded pseudo-happiness.  All of that outward manipulation causes us to live within ourselves and use our bodies like a robot. All the hate from the haters just hits the robot and doesn’t get through…. and neither does the love, neither does the happiness… nothing does.

So here we are; a world of people hiding within themselves and all of them missing out on life. It’s messy, you will cry, you will love and you will lose and all of it is the experience you were meant to have. There is no hiding from it, there is no broadcast delay in which you have a moment to factor your next move, nope. You act, you live, you learn, you grow, you give of yourself and you pass on. If you’re one of those lucky beautiful souls you touch the world with your honesty.

I am saddened by how many beautiful souls I meet who insist on remaining caterpillars.

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

The Yougbloods

When Life was Sesame Street

I was thinking the other day about love, compassionate love and the state of the world. I was thinking about our politics, our business, our government and our society. It seems so involved, deluded, convoluted and manufactured with an agenda. I think that is what bothers me most, the agenda. When you know that the way you want it doesn’t serve everyone and selfishly subvert it to your own gain. I think that describes the actions of those three groups I just mentioned, don’t you? I remember a different time, as all generations do; we all have our “good ol’ days”. Mine were Sesame Street and it was beautiful.

To me the world was made up of people who were loving and tolerant. There were people from different races coexisting, different religions, folks who were hearing impaired and visitors with all sorts of challenges and triumphs. It was a beautiful world to live in and I remember it well.

What happened? We grew up, but more specifically we became jaded. We became aware of ourselves and our focus shifted from the outside world to the inner world of our fears and delusions. We became obsessed with not being exposed, no one can see the real me. We heaped on layers of personae of the characters we so desperately wished to be. We grew and popularized them in their stereotypes and placed them, like the marionettes they are, against each other to run out the endless scenarios of our interactions through our stories in books and movies, in our art, in our poems in our culture. We understood what evil is only when we gave ourselves the example first. When some exaggeration of a thing which we knew existed within us pinged us for the first time. When the outside world reflected the ways in which we let ourselves down, when we could see our own bad possibilities in the actions of others we began to build out walls. Brick by self deluded brick we build the walls of “they’re worse than me” to excuse our failings to ourselves. That first selfish deed where the fabric of us was torn into two; when we knew what was right but decided to do what we wanted, to get what we desired; in that moment we sold out our Sesame Street.

Is it lost forever? Must it be exiled to nostalgia? I don’t believe so. I believe we can retrace our steps and stand against that slithery part of ourselves which made the weak or selfish choices. We can go back in our minds and realign with right. We can learn those lessons of sharing, compassion, tolerance, of love and of the ways of life. We can live honestly, wholly authentic in our body, speech and mind. We can participate, and become personally invested and active in every moment of our lives. We can kill the autopilot. We can be mindful. We can be gentle. We can recognize that subversive part of ourselves; that part which clings to things and work against it. We can meditate until we realize that while it is who we are and needs to be accepted and loved it is also not who we are. By that I mean if you were to erase time and space and remove everyone who isn’t supposed to see the real you, only then would the real you be left exposed. That is who you are and if you don’t like it, do something about it. Understand your Dzogchen; understand you’re Dzogchen.

There is a Native American story “An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.

"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."”

Those are not solid physical parts of your body are they? They are energies and I believe it is true, the one you feed wins or as the Buddha said "The thought manifests as the word; the word manifests as the deed; the deed develops into habit; and habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings."

From Sesame Street to Wall Street we don’t have to change, we give in to the fear that others are and they will somehow have an advantage. It’s weakness on our parts that we aren’t strong enough to live our morals, our ideals actually, literally. When I say we, I mean each individual should regardless of those around them. I certainly don’t mean to be saying that we should wait for all of us to, because we already know that drill. It’s in practice as we speak. No, I mean that each one of us should take a deep trip within, figure out who we are and bring that genuine person back into the world. We should be open to express ourselves and open to the expressions of others. If you don’t agree with it, walk away.

Above all we should understand this: We should never be abusive in pointing out the abuse of others.

I believe in a world where we can be gentle to each other without limiting passion. I believe in a world where we can have tolerance and still make the strides which come from deep belief. I believe we can all get along and love each other unconditionally. I believe we could live in Sesame Street if only we were committed to it rather than chasing profit.