FEAR NOTHING, BUT THE FAILURE TO EXPERIENCE YOUR TRUE NATURE…

I have been trying to reinvent myself as a writer, because I get no response from the outside world, it is a daunting and difficult task…writing for the sound in my own ear.

I can’t tell if I am succeeding or wasting my time, and I often have no internal thread to follow either.

These months of solitude have been hard in a very particular way. The first time this happened to me, the drama of my own internal process was so scary, vivid, and demanding I didn’t have the necessary stillness to truly know what was going on inside me. Like so many people who use busyness to keep from feeling themselves when I left my job, had no external demands on my time, I underwent the first in a long series of mini identity deaths. Most of us spend an entire lifetime not knowing that our personalities, the very “me”-ness of us, is just a collection of behaviors, preferences, automatic responses, emotional triggers, and avoidance rituals that were started like a wind up toy in our childhoods, in response to the demands of the adults around us. These mechanisms become so deterministic that eventually we think these early choices are the who, of who we are. I have discovered, over a long and winding path, that nothing could be further from the truth.

Four or five days prior to my mother’s death, she was walking with great effort back to her bed to lie down, and in the most off-handed way, she said, I guess mostly to herself… “I don’t know who I am”. The pathos in that statement almost sent me reeling and the sound in her voice…a combination of surprise, innocence, regret, sadness, and resignation, nearly sent me to my knees. As it turned out, her sudden and deeply sad realization came two days prior to her death.

She wasn’t expecting a response from me, I am not entirely certain she was even speaking to me, and I understood exactly her dilemma. I had felt that way all the time, for the first two and a half decades of my life. Who am I? How did I get here? Where exactly is here, anyway? …and much later… Am I headed in the right direction? If these questions have not darkened your door, I can promise two things…the end will be rocky, and you haven’t spent your time wisely.

It is so easy for us to spend our youth and vigor, expressing just that…youth and vigor, achieving, acquiring, demanding, results and more results, getting and taking. The antidote to this youthful folly is little mini deaths. Dying to the idea that you are the world’s one and only. Dying to the idea that you deserve only the good things in life…and that you know what is, for you, the good. Dying to the notion that your preferences, opinions, personality quirks, and desires have a preeminent place in the scheme of things. Why dying? I don’t know…it’s just the way it is.

Everyone from Biblical authors to Shakespeare counsel that we should die, before we die…sounds like a neat trick, but what exactly does it mean, and why is it valuable?

My spiritual journey has been fraught with the experience of death- in the early going-because I lacked imagination, intuition, and courage; it was fear of an actual bodily death that hounded me nearly mad. As I have said before, in these pages, I had to have baby sitter’s to get through it; both my young gay friend and an elderly woman in the condo complex where I lived, would let me stay with them to allay my anxieties…and much to my shame, I used them ruthlessly, in my neediness and fear.

Reportedly, I even did the actual thing during a surgery in my seventeenth year, my heart quit and apparently getting me up and started again was almost not accomplished. That night, the pain killers they gave me were not enough, and I awoke to a pain in my chest from the electric shocks they had given me that was the fiercest, most virulent pain I have ever experienced. I have broken two bones in my life and passed a gall stone, and those events didn’t come close to the pain I felt from the thumping they had given me.

Once I even went to get an aids test, even though I had not had sex, used injectable drugs, or had a blood transfusion for years and years, but the fear of dying was so constant, palpable, and present, that it attached itself to every hyperbolic, hypochondriacal situation that came down the emotional pike.

So if you think you should get an award for baseless, groundless, anxieties-the trophies are all in my basement-carefully preserved in memoriam, to the times in my life where fear ran everything about my daily existence.

Sometimes now, I cannot believe the quantity and pervasiveness of the fears I used to feel…much more importantly, I haven’t been afraid for years and years. Now, I am not saying that if a bear were to leap off a tree in front of me, that I wouldn’t go screaming out of the forest tearing my hair out at the roots, you bet your ass I would!! No, I am talking about those obnoxious little fears that make you worry about the stove, the doors locked, the bump you felt under your arm, the economy, the neighbors dog, the general decline of western civilization…and oh yeah, the big kahuna…actual physical death. None of these things breed fear in me, at least not today and not for many years now.

Lest you think I might be lying about that last one…I have been a Volunteer Hospice Chaplain and I was present when both my parents died. And in all cases, I found the experience beautiful, serene, calming, simple, quiet, kind, loving, generous, and immanently doable.

There is nothing I saw in the deaths I witnessed, and I pay very close attention, that was scary, ugly, bad, or unworthy of us. From where I stood, death had a grace, gentleness, and an ease that is very difficult to explain. Nothing like Hollywood portrays it.

My father was so busy talking to some invisible someone else, that our presence in the room, his wife and three daughters, was not registered by him at all. His eyebrows went up and down, knitting together in concentration and understanding, his mouth moved in harmony with his other facial features like he was having the conversation of a lifetime. He didn’t speak out loud, but he didn’t need to, for me to see the animation of his last conversation. He neither needed us, or possible even wanted us there.

Statistics say that most people die in the wee hours of the morning, when the family members that having been hanging onto them are finally gone so that they may, just as finally, let go. My dad, charismatic and self-referencing as he was, didn’t need to wait for us to leave…and somehow I knew he would let me see it, something I really wanted to participate in. Having shed my psychological fear of death, through the many and varied small personality deaths I had undergone by that time, I wanted to witness the death of a family member, as opposed to a stranger. To see if it contained the same graces I had already experienced…it did, and many more.

A year later, my hyper shy mother, allowed me the same opportunity. Her death was even more vibrant, for me, than my fathers… I assume that was because of the power of our relationship and its many complex and far reaching aspects. I remember the moment of her death, as being the single most alive moment I have ever felt…and I have jumped out of planes. Nothing in my lifetime has been as pure, real, arresting, or powerful. No… I don’t fear death or even, it’s sometimes ugly stepsister, pain. I am not saying I wish to suffer, but facing emotional pain has been my liberator, even my savior…so I assume physical pain has some value as well…if not, well then, there are always drugs.

Today, the 25^th of June, three well know celebrities have died in this last week, two of them today. It’s interesting how death changes your landscape, I remember very clearly the moment I learned of Princess Diana’s death. Going out onto my duplex porch in the clear California morning sunshine, and opening the paper to see her face with text so large it was almost obscene, pronouncing her death in big, black, bold font. There is a shift that occurs, a rearranging of your topography.

When my sister called to tell me, my niece, only 21 years old had been shot and killed on her birthday. That too, rearranged my topography, of course, in a much more personal way than that of a celebrities passing.

It’s the hole that death leaves that can be so painful, not the dying itself.

With my mother and father, there wasn’t even that much of a hole…particularly with my mother. Our relationship had been so fruitful, so layered, so rich…in truth, in harmony, in forgiveness, in unconditional acceptance…that letting her go, was simple, easy, even right in an unexplainable kind of way.

Gone are the dramatic days, when Death seemed like a maestro, conducting the tempo and pauses of my life. Always at the helm, turning me this way and that, so that I might be exposed, tempered, and baked to perfection. Now Death seems like a companion, who urges me to serve, to give, to find my contribution.

I am 53 today, nine years younger than Farrah-three years older than Michael…but my days are numbered as well. I am not privy to that number, neither are you. The question, to my mind, is not when…but whether…whether or not, we have done what was ours to do…whether or not, we have given more than we took…whether or not, we have overcome our natural tendency toward selfishness and made of ourselves a gift, to the world, to each other, to ourselves. Are we ripe? Are we worth the gift we have had bestowed upon us, the gift of breath, and life?

We need not be famous, talented, or beautiful, to make our contribution. We need only become authentic, real, kind, considerate, capable, and giving.

I cannot speak to realms beyond this one…but here; it is the greater that lift up the lesser. The more mature you become, the more necessary your contribution, there are so many emotional and psychological children wearing adult suits who rule our culture…that without the unbroken line of sages who have given their all, that we might understand…humanity would have lost its way centuries ago. You can always tell the authentic light bearers, their humility shines like a great light, and leads the way for so many undeveloped and underdeveloped brethren.

I know, I have been following the light of just such an individual for a great many years. He too, is not far from physical death…but his life has touched so many thousands that his ripple will echo for decades and decades. His life is the standard by which I measure my own contribution…and find it lacking.

I agree with Sir Francis Bacon, who said, ”Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.” I am in such agreement with this statement, that I might suggest to you that your fear of death is a good barometer by which to measure your emotional and spiritual health. If Death scares the living bejesus out of you, then you are not at home…and it is that absence, rather than your physical death that is the basis of all your fears.

This essay is titled, “Fear Nothing but the Failure to Experience Your True Nature”, your true nature is birthless and deathless, your true nature is the essence of life itself, your true nature cannot be harmed, killed, or given birth to…take your rest here, in your true nature. Be at rest from the constant seeking outside yourself, there is nothing out there to find, everything that has real value was laid gently upon your heart the day of your birth. It is up to you to discover and reveal that truth.

Leonardo da Vinci, a towering genius felt this way about Death…”As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”

I personally, am striving for a life so well used that it will bring with it a “happy death”. Sometimes I am unsure of the best use of my life, but the desire to use it well, is the compass by which I direct my journey.

I bet you think I have no sense of humor at all…it isn’t true; I am told that I can often be quite funny. But it seems in these pages, where I am attempting to leave some sort of legacy that I tend toward the somber and serious, the deeper registers of life's melodies. So, amongst the other minds here quoted…allow me to include this, from Paula Poundstone…”The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling.”

Until Tomorrow…

R.

Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com

Fear Nothing but the Failure to Experience Your True Nature…essay by Ronni Miller copyright 2009 all rights reserved, reprinting available with author’s permission. If you wish to contact the author you may do so at ronnidmiller@aol.com

Fourteen Days…

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the dreams, hopes and aspirations that I have carried with me the majority of my life. In just the last few months I have been able to let them go…or maybe, they have let me go. It has helped me to deepen my understanding, of one of the most powerful lessons found in the Ageless Wisdom Teachings.

The lessons regarding First Force, Second Force and Third Force. My Teacher spent a good deal of his valuable time trying to create understanding for us, with respect to this very extraordinary idea…and just now, years later, I finally understand.

(I have often wondered about the phenomenon that keeps spiritual understanding cloaked and misty, before the Soul is ready to receive it. Emerson discusses this phenomena in one of his essays, and says… ”Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, then old things pass away, - means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it - one thing as much as another.”

As Emerson so beautifully describes, all things are changed by relation, to the acquisition of simple and divine wisdom. I suppose it is the very nature of the loss “means, teachers, texts, and temples”, that in part, help to keep us confused and incapable of absorbing understanding, venturing into new depths, and maturing into our deepest selves.)

First, Second, and Third forces are the means by which all things are created, all experience is leavened, and all understanding develops. First force creates, Second force destructs and Third Force is the consciousness we, as the Witness, bring to the interplay of the first two forces.

First and Second forces are, in large part, beyond our control. We can put the ingredients in the bowl and because we have followed the recipe, we can reasonably expect a cake to show up…but it is beyond our comprehension as to why - or how - following the recipe creates cake. Just as, in life, we can make all the right moves and we may, or may not, take home the victory… because Second force, always arises with its commitment to destruction. In the common vernacular we hear Murphy whispering his dictum…”if it can go wrong, it will go wrong”.

This spiritual phenomenon has a scientific corollary. In science, First Force is defined as “action”, Second force as “reaction” and the Third Force or witnessing process is accurately defined by the Heisenberg Principle as being capable of changing the outcome of the action/reaction phenomena. In other words, science has now come to support the notion that the very activity of our directed attention changes the outcome of material or “quantum” physics.

In our emotional immaturity we resent, and hide, from the realization that Second force travels in tandem with First force, that light brings with it shadow.

Every thing I have ever wanted, every desire that has every traveled past my mind’s eye, did so cloaked and covered in the Glory, Beauty, and Majesty of First force. That is the tricky part of believing the cultures advice… “to follow your dreams”. In the escapist illusory mind, our childhood left us addicted to, we are the Hero dressed in glorious robes, trailing starbursts in our wake. Every idea that springs from this source never gets even close to hinting about the downside of our dreams, that they will inevitably bring with them, when, (or if), they manifest. Second force cannot be denied…the shadow side; ruin, wrong turns, and unexpected outcomes cannot be avoided, run from, or bargained with.

Oscar Wilde, put it this way…”There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it.”

I ran head long into the notion that life can be a bowl of cherries, if you just are gifted with the right opportunities, when I was having a chat with a couple of fellows that I meet, every Sunday, at the dog park. We got to talking about winning the lottery; the guys took the stance that all things wrong can be cured by money. That the fabulously wealthy are not subject to the twists and turns of an ordinary life, I was quite literally incredulous by their assertion, and still don’t know if they weren’t just pulling my leg.

I find it hard to imagine that anyone past the age of thirty can believe that life is not hard for every creature that has ever walked upright, no matter their station in life, amount of money, cultural power, or inherited gifts.

Examining this very theme is a quote from the Great Caliph Abdul Rahim. “I have reigned more than fifty years in victory and peace. During this time I have been beloved by my people, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have all been at my beck and call, nor has any earthly pleasure been missing to complete my sense of perfect bliss. In this situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness that have fallen to my lot. They number fourteen.”

Fourteen, good golly miss molly…

So, I got to thinking about my friends belief that money cures all… went online and found an article written by a magazine in Wisconsin which did some in depth, follow-up reporting, on the lottery winners their state has had since beginning lottery sales. Here is a quote from that article…”A shockingly large number of lottery winners end up in financial ruin. National statistics show that about one-third of lottery winners ultimately file for bankruptcy. Often, that’s just the initial symptom of good fortune gone bad.”

In the article, they went on to chronicle a divorce rate much higher than national average, DUI arrests way out of proportion to the national norm, foreclosures rampant, tax problems of unprecedented magnitude, and one guy who ended up living in his car after filing bankruptcy and losing his home and business, to foreclosure.

This is only a tiny portion of the many types and varieties of losses the lottery winners faced. Most were not willing to be interviewed so a great deal of the findings were sourced from public records, but one interviewee said this about winning…”It’s supposed to be a happy thing,” says a Neenah woman we’ll call Nancy, whose husband won $7.2 million in 1989 and who agreed to talk only on condition of anonymity. “But really, it’s not.”

Why amidst all this good fortune, do the lottery winners echo the Caliph’s assertion that fourteen happy days, are about as good as it gets?

Why? And why can’t we understand that winning/money/fame/fortune/et al. don’t create the happiness we seek? The answer is Second Force.

We finally get that big time degree from the prestigious Ivy League college, and it leads to huge debt load and a dead end starter job. We plan, save for, and execute that once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe and the kids get sick and throw up all over everything and everyone.

Second force. Murphy’s law. Or, lowbrow and common…Shit Happens.

So how can we expect any relief from the roller coaster ride of imaginary, illusory, mythological hero, and real life zero?

If we look to religion to sort the mess out, our old-time religions promise that we should look to the life beyond this one; in Islamic traditions 77 virgins await our conquering hero, (I guess the best you get if you’re a woman, is more time spent catering to a man.) In the fundamentalist religion of my childhood, it was streets of gold and pearl gates. Some of our newer religions promise a world you, and your spouse, get to be a god over. The New Age movement gets a little closer to home, and promises prosperity, bliss, and happiness, in the here and now, if you just choose the right thoughts. (Mind, showing up again with illusions of bliss, free from Second Force).

For myself, I no longer believe in a world-this one or any other-that does not bear the mark of Second Force.

My favorite author, Emerson, has this to say about the marriage of first and second forces, and its progeny Third Force…”It is only as a man puts off from himself all external support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

I have finally come to the clarity, that science and Emerson, have it right… “that what you see (perceive/believe) changes what there is to see”. Heisenberg’s theorem, Emerson’s “triumph of principles”… is the Ageless Wisdom Teaching of Third force.

The acceptance and lack of judgment that The Witness brings to bear on our lives will, and can, free us from the roller coaster ride of first and second forces. When you can watch your life unfold without praise or criticism, without attraction or repulsion, without craving or denial, then you have risen above first and second forces, and have released yourself from the limits imposed on this plane of existence and doing so, have acquired Emerson’s “triumph of principles” and the peace it brings with it.

Third force on a feeling level might be called Compassion, Kindness, Acceptance, Honor, Nobility, Divinity…each would be correct, and all are a part of the package.

First force breathes in…

Second force breathes out…

Third force makes breathing worth it…

Until Tomorrow…

R.

Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com

Fourteen Days…essay by Ronni Miller copyright 2009 all rights reserved, reprinting available with author’s permission.

Stuck Here in the Middle Treading Water…

I swim every weekday morning. It has become a favorite experience, the cool descent into water not yet warm by the sun, (I try to start by 5:30 am), its touch travels up my extremities engulfing my calves, thighs, stomach, chest…its hardest when it reaches my shoulders, I don’t know why, but just when it tops my shoulders a delicious chill nudges me all over and then the final drop over my head. I love the way it feels, and the way it’s reshaping my experience of living in one of the hottest deserts America has to offer.

I bring a timer and travel one end to the other for at least 40 minutes, over and over, back and forth, I go…giving it my best and feeling the smooth caress of the water with each stroke.

I am graceless in the pool, having never had any athletic skill of any kind. But I am without self-consciousness either about my skill, the shape of my body, or my goofy stroke pattern. It is enough for me to feel the buoyancy, to move my limbs, and fill my heart and lungs, with air and occasionally chemically enhanced water.

I get in the pool so early; first because I want that cool experience, something hard to come by in the summers here…but mostly because I want to be alone when my swim comes to an end. The pool I swim in is our subdivisions community pool, and I want to be finished before folks and neighbors start their morning commute.

After my little kitchen timer chirps its tuneless little burp, I wait for the water’s motion to subside and then I float.

Toes, kneecaps, breasts, and nose sitting atop the waters surface, my head, arms, legs and torso are held aloft by the smooth touch of the calm surface. I float and I pray.

I pray mostly to put an end to my selfishness.

Sometimes I pray for the capacity for kindness, gentleness, openness, the will to serve others and the ability to give. But mostly I pray for an end to my selfish, self-centered, and self-absorbed behaviors.

I am inflicted, as we all are, by the mind that weaves its victim stories, its self induced illusions, and self-medicating theories. The only difference between who I am now and who I used to be, (a great distance believe me), is that I no longer believe the stories and justifications my mind presents me with. And I have come; albeit slowly, to understand that keeping the narrow-minded self alive, is a form of hell.

My Teacher once presented a lesson that queried whether or not the invisible realms were more powerful than the visible. Of course his conclusion was that what we can’t see is certainly more powerful, more valuable, and more necessary to our humanity than the things are five senses can bring us.

I remember one of his examples being the advent of the capacity for flight. He asked us, which was more powerful, all the planes in all the world, or the invisible idea that gave birth to an entire industry. The answer is self-evident.

Today in the pool, praying for a deeper level of release from the self made mind that once caused me to want to take my own life, I wondered if the invisible realms as well as being more powerful, are more real as well. What if our lives are being led backwards, or more accurately inside out?

EVERYTHING in our culture, from education to shopping, from soup to nuts, from White House to outhouse, pushes us to live for the achievement of outer manifestations. Awards, accolades, achievements, stuff, more stuff, the right man, the perfect girl, the cherry on top, the flag-planting win. All external to us and as such an echo, or rebound effect of the inner reaches.

In every religion, philosophy, depth understanding, Ageless Wisdom Teachings and even science, the proof is incontrovertible… that the invisible, the inner, the unknown is the source of all that is, or will be.

If it is true in the macrocosm of the Universe, then surely it is true in the microcosm of our personal life.

Yet, the number of humans who notice that, and manifest that knowledge, is so small as to be almost ridiculous.

Sure… the Buddha, the Christ, my Teacher, Socrates, the Dalai Lama, Plato, Pythagoras, Emerson…mostly dead, you’ll notice. I want to be in that number or at least in the outer parking lot, (the one you have to be bused to), when my end comes. I want to right myself the way Emerson prescribes… “He who knows that power is in the Soul, that he is weak only because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.”

Erect position, working miracles, commanding limbs…an end to standing on one’s head, these are the achievements I want. To release and let die, the small mind I used to survive my childhood, to give up the petty self, to learn the larger truths, to bathe in the glory of a right mind. I heard an old black gospel saying once…”to wake up clothed in your right mind”.

Having woken up all of my twenties, in the tatters of my wrong mind… I know beyond doubt, that Heaven and Hell are not places, but rather states of mind. In my twenties, I wouldn’t have had the courage to know that, because it would have required my taking complete responsibility for the hell I lived in all day, every day. But now, with almost all of that hell in my rear view mirror, I can know for myself that my state of mind is the only place where real power resides. I often think of the differences between the two as the Outer Life and the Inner Life, but it could just as easily be the Outer Echo and the Inner Source.

Emerson also said…Common souls pay with what they do; nobler souls with that which they are.

My Teacher is a man of such nobility that he can change the air in a room by his presence. I have been his pupil/novitiate for more than 25 years, I have seen hundreds of people affected by his presence, some moved to tears, some see themselves for the first time, some shocked into silence, some bow their heads…. only the truly calloused and truly lost, are unmoved by him, his simplicity, humanity, inclusiveness, lack of judgment, and great kindness.

It’s a tall order, the opportunity to know, first hand, one of the truly enlightened. Not the many and obvious show versions that populate the self-help horizon, they are at best actors and at worst charlatans. But the real deal, it causes changes in you that are permanent and otherworldly.

I haven’t fit in the culture for a long time now; it seems to be getting worse…I haven’t made it to the shore he resides on, and am to far gone to make it back to the cultures…stuck here in the middle treading water.

Perhaps that is why swimming seems so comforting these days…

Until tomorrow…

R.

Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com

Stuck Here in the Middle Treading Water…essay by Ronni Miller copyright 2009 all rights reserved, reprinting available with author’s permission.

Poet Enough….

On three different occasions I have had a time-out from the traditional life cycle of work-home, work-home, work-home.

The first was the 28^th year of my life when my psyche was almost beyond repair and suicide was an everyday idea. The second was when I closed my business and moved to the Phoenix Metro area, grieving my life and work in California, and with a small inheritance to shoulder the burden of paying the bills, I did not immediately find work. And now again, this third time forced into quietness by an economic situation beyond my control.

Each of these three periods has shaped me greatly.

The first one saved my life….but it was not without a price. I had then, as now, saved enough money to weather the storm of no income, but I had nothing in my emotional or spiritual bank account. I spent my days seeing a therapist, reading self-help books, exercising, riding a bike at least 20 miles a day and living with more fear and anxiety than I thought one human mind could contain. Without the distractions the world provides, the inner demons of my childhood were let loose on me like a raging tempest.

I had a good friend, a young gay man, who lived in the condo on the second floor above me; he had become so used to me banging on the door, very late at night, begging to be let in, so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the night terrors I experienced with every breath when the sun went down, that he eventually would just come to the door in his underwear, open it and return to bed without even noticing it was me. I spent many a night on his couch, in the comfort of knowing that if I died in the middle of the night, at least someone would be there to find my dead body the next morning. My fears and anxieties were so bad; I couldn’t imagine a time when they wouldn’t rule my world.

The second time I was bounced out of the common world, I was 47. Well past the fears of my first leap off the well-worn path, I spent most of that year angry and withdrawn.

I had voluntarily given up my business, but I did not know how much I would miss it. I had voluntarily left the richly beautiful environment of the ocean and the sea breezes, to move back to an environment so dead, brown, and hot that I could hardly believe my misfortune. I had, already, begun the process of letting go of the notion that “we create our own lives”, a perversion of a great metaphysical truth…which the New Age peddlers have sold to the masses, in great quantity. And the loss of such an enticing and seductive notion was painful in the extreme. It’s such a lovely notion… that we can control our circumstances by the sweet wishes of our minds…it couldn’t be less true and worse, it causes True Spiritual growth to go off the rails and potentially stall out entirely.

I didn’t realize when I first moved back to the Valley, that I was coming here, to begin again, the Spiritual Journey I had started that first, Sacred and Empty Year. Here is the only place I could have begun anew, for here resides the only living Sage that I have had the privilege of meeting and knowing. He set my journey in motion and my return to his mentorship, is an example of the great rhythms of the Universe. The Great Going Out, and the Great Coming Back. It was such a dangerous time in my development. I was so angry, hurt, and disappointed. So let down and dispirited, I could have well thrown the baby out with the bath water, if providence had not intervened.

Beginning my apprenticeship anew, I could see the new depth of understanding that allowed me to grasp his meanings and teachings at an entirely new level. It required me to jettison the soft notions of the New Age, the easy and sweet refrains of the pied piper who promises riches and joys untold…forever, and ever, amen. This new age notion that we create our lives by choosing our thoughts, by “visioning” our wealth, by tacking pictures of what we desire on boards, and making lists of goals we can see ourselves becoming, is the old superstition of praying to a gray haired god, just left of infinity in the heaven above us…its just been wrapped up in a shiny new bow, and marketed for mass consumption. It is exactly the same superstitious, and quite childish notion. (Lest you decide here that I do not believe in God, because I no longer believe in a gray haired elder version of us…do not make that mistake. I now experience a Mystery of such depth, breadth, length, and height it cannot be contained by the notion of a personal god. I think of it as simply, “The Mystery”.)

The outer circumstances of our lives are not ours to determine, for the most part. Can we push and shove and make a business open, a trip to Europe materialize, a new love desire us? Of course we can. Can these things provide lasting satisfaction, certainty, hope, or peace? Of course they can’t. Expansion without contraction is a fool’s idea and a fool’s journey. Ever increasing good, is not only not possible…it isn’t even desirable. Think on it for just a moment…day without night, light without shadow, up without down.

Growth without end has a name…its called cancer.

Would you really want that? Can you really conceive of it, and the harm it would bring to your life and the lives of your loved ones? The way in which the New Age has missed the mark is the confusion of states of being.

The Outer Life must have limitations; they are required, necessary, and vitally important. So important, in fact, that the Ageless Wisdom Teachings has a name for those limitations. That name is the Ring Pass Not.

The Ring Pass Not is the vital contraction state, a law that insists that what goes up, must come down. In the Bible, the Ring Pass Not is allegorically described in the verses depicting the inevitable change of the mountains and the valleys…”that what was once high will be made low, what was once low will be made high”.

The Ring Pass Not as applied to an individual’s Outer Life can be most easily understood in the concept of traveling the globe. Say you start out in Idaho headed South and continue traveling for a great distance eventually you will run completely out of South, crossing the South Pole, heading now North…and once again you run out of North and must again be moving South. This is the state of contraction, or the “Ring Pass Not” which governs the outer world and makes life manageable. Death will recycle us all, in the outer world.

But now imagine the Inner realms. Using our same allegory, lets begin in Washington and travel East, long distances consumed, miles and miles pass beneath our feet…and what do we discover…there is no end to East. This is the realm of the Inner world; there is no end, no finish, no limits, and no commandments of the Ring Pass Not.

No contraction, no boundaries, no limits and no endings…but, only in the Inner Life. In the Inner Life, it is possible to rise so far above the swings of the metronome that they eventually merge, through the power and presence of acceptance we can eventually bring about unity, where Joy and Peace are everlasting and have no contraction states. To learn, grow, and mature to this level of understanding… our best ally, our one friend, our greatest mentor, our necessary teacher is the very thing we want most to turn from…the contractions of our lives.

What, we in our infancy, label the “bad”.

Every bad, wrong, unjust, or unconscionable thing that has ever befallen a single life, since the dawn of time, has been allowed by the great Mystery in the hope that our minds will grow open, and our hearts learn to heal.

Each individual’s circumstances are crafted in loving care, for them and them alone, who are we to take their greatest teacher from them. Be careful you are not “helping” someone out of the very circumstance they need for their salvation.

Today is the anniversary of my third year of Sacred Emptiness. A day I am celebrating the current form of contraction, my life is requiring of me. I have just recently begun to see the beauty and naturalness of this third year of withdrawal, as compared to the first year it might as well be different lives, the contrasts are so sharp and dramatic. Gone are the anxieties and fears, gone the wishes and hopes, gone the seeking and searching in the Outer world for salvation and escape. In its place, quiet harmony. Ever increasing understanding. The slowing down and cessation of the metronome. My mind is quiet; my inner life is strong, able, content, and peaceful.

The work/home cycle will return someday. I will, or will not, have the money to see it through. I will, or will not, lose my home and material possessions…all of that, belongs to the Outer Life and will in due course change, as all outer things do.

In the Inner life, this third year of quiet has deepened my connection to Soul, opened great spaces inside me, slowed my thoughts to the degree that I can watch them like a kitten watching a mouse hole, with complete focus and constancy…which is of course the only thing thoughts want from us. (If you have the courage to watch them long enough, without judgment and with forgiveness, the ones you don’t want will just get up and clear out of their own accord…taking with them a whole host of “bad” behaviors.)

So here on these pages I hope to offer you a visit to these quiet reaches inside me. I am not the Master Teacher, my teacher is, I am not gifted with a mind as pure, a motivation as clean, a talent as rich…but I am becoming quiet and still…and perhaps you might stay a spell and supp with me, if it does you good, you are most surely welcome. Remember if your focus is completely in the Outer, no matter how long or how hard you travel South it will always become North eventually. The Ring Pass Not requires that what you pursue in the Outer-if pushed far enough-will, in time, turn into the very opposite of what you wanted. It cannot be otherwise.

So, begin today-change direction, choose East and an everlasting opening to the Inner Realms.

The Poet Rilke puts it this way…

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.

Rainer Maria Rilke, poet

Journey Well…

Until Tomorrow…

R.

Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com

Poet Enough…essay by Ronni Miller copyright 2009 all rights reserved, reprinting available with author’s permission.

I am Grateful…

My mother never really talked to me. Not at least until the very end of her life. She didn’t really talk then either, in the sense of explaining herself…rather she made quiet, simple, statements of such magnitude, they would quite literally rock my world.

Don’t misunderstand we spent hours and hours “talking” and what that means, as I look back on it, is…I wove stories about everything and anything…and she sat quietly and listened.

She was a woman of such astonishing contradictions. She could terrify me with her rages, as I was the place her rage expressed itself. And yet, she was to shy and quiet to ask for a bottle of ketchup in a restaurant. From the moment I could speak, I became her voice in the world.

I asked her once when I was working thru the stages of healing required by her rages, and the sexual abuse I experienced as a small child at the hands of a pedophile uncle, if I had her permission to tell my story to the world…as so much of my story was shaped by being born her child.

For some reason she agreed. Don’t know why.

As time passes and I have healed even the need for the telling of stories, I have found that I would rather tell her story than mine. But I can’t seem to come to terms with how to tell her story, mostly I suppose, because there is so little first hand accounting.

She said perhaps seven, maybe eight things, to me that came from the center of her being. Like a child in a fairy story, I picked them up and carried them in my small basket, thru the dark forest, looking for the home that I sensed we belonged to.

I carry them still.

I feel an obligation to these small, simple, and earth-shattering phrases she uttered when no one else was near, no one else to record them save my own ears. I feel such a huge obligation because they are the tumblers in the lock that eventually set me free. One by one, they lifted me free of the constraints of our agreement, set in place while I was still In Utero.

I do not know the workings of the Universe, I am not mature enough, wise enough, or pure enough, to be privy to the Voice of God, the Way of It, or to understand the Mystery. But nestled amongst all I do not know, which believe me is legion; I know one thing for certain.

I chose my mother.

I chose that relationship, and with it the terror that motivated much of my childhood, and the freedom that has characterized my adulthood. I chose her, her history, the brokenness that was her legacy. I chose the struggle we went thru, the fear of the early going, the pain of the birth of the truth, and the salvation of the end.

I gave her my commitment to see it through to the end, and she gave me a voice.

I cannot begin to express the gratitude I feel, for not having lingered over long, in the miasma that is current day psychological understanding. Our priests of psychological counseling lead us into a position of blame toward our parents, a finger pointing mess that calls out their weaknesses, while casting us as the wronged and damaged victims. It simply isn’t so.

No matter what a parent has done, no matter how heinous it may seem, or how beyond the pale, or how below the ideal…we, those of us born to them, chose their specific set of behaviors, attitudes, and appetites.

How could it be otherwise?

I submit to you that if you are still locked in the halfway point of retribution and blame, then the lack of vision is yours…not theirs. The harm you feel, the burden you carry, the victim energy that consumes your life and blocks your path…is your doing, and no others.

I have no doubt that should you be reading this, and hear me so clearly calling out the desire to remain a child that characterizes the unhealed individual that has been haunted by a terrifying past, that I will make you angry with my assertion that you bear the responsibility and accountability of your adulthood. Your anger, should it be knotting your stomach, and balling your fists, is the very proof that harkens to my assertion. Your parent and mine, were the crucible upon whom we hoped to break ourselves open.

In that vast place we were prior to our birth, in that tender mentoring that must surely have been provided us, for the next leg of our journey…our Soul knew, precisely which unique set of circumstances would be needed to supply the lift, necessary to reach escape velocity.

Had your Mother, Father, family member, school teacher, neighbor, preacher, priest, boyfriends, girlfriends, et al., not behaved in exactly the manner in which they did…you would have spent your precious, irreplaceable time upon this green and blue globe, slavishly fawning over the sensual and pleasurable appetites that belong to the lower, and quite frankly, animal nature of your being. Yes we have a pleasure center, and yes a good meal, a sexual encounter, a nice pair of shoes, a trip to some romantic getaway, can and does entice. But those of us sensible enough to have chosen the circumstances we think we were “dealt”, we have the gift of priorities, driven by the pain that sprouted up so dramatically in childhood.

There was a time, that appetites ruled my world, buying and having, seducing and partying, getting and winning…but once healing, began to have its way with me, these lower attitudes and appetites drifted away upon the wind, like dust on the breeze.

Once your heart begins to open, nothing else will do.

Once you know the source of your lifes direction, the balance of a life lived in comprehension…then the rudimentary delights of the sensual life no longer have a foothold in your consciousness, or a demand upon your time.

I live now, not for delight…but for Understanding.

May it please the gods, whoever and wherever they are, that I have the willingness to share my small portion of understanding before the reaper comes to carry me beyond the scope of sharing.

My mother, her rages and absences, her judgments and demands, created my desire to explore the topography of depth, or die trying. She pointed my feet toward the horizon, the compass, map, drinking water, and other assorted tools were provided by the great wisdom, warmth, kindnesses, and support of a great many Spiritual Teachers. But only my mother could have rung the starting bell. She and she alone, held the starters gun. Who would I have become without her?

I shutter to imagine, the emptiness of a life, which holds only the promise of goals-achieved, approval-acquired, recognition-sought…in other words, the Outer Life… a plane of life destined to wither, an inconstant upheaval of change and loss. A life not tempered by the fires of a crucible, has only a constant yearning as its companion, a gathering of more and more, with less and less satisfaction. I have escaped that fate due to my Mother’s wrath, and my own will.

I am grateful beyond my capacity to convey.

Until Tomorrow…

R.

Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com

I Am Grateful…essay by Ronni Miller copyright 2009 all rights reserved, reprinting available with author’s permission.

To See What Is Beyond Me…

After I left the fundamentalist background I was born to, I drifted around for a long while, deeply afraid to look at the spiritual side of life…lest I burn in everlasting hellfire, for the transgression of leaving the pew I was born to occupy. The very one that my parents sat in, to the day of their departure from this plane of existence some thirty-five years, all in all. (There space was so well known to be theirs, that on the rare occasion some newbie inadvertently slipped into the well-worn spot my parents held, it was like the world tilted on its axis and made every thing look slightly skewed and crooked.)

Left hand side, twelve rows back, three different preachers, four different cushion colors, and Lord only knows how many scandals, they occupied their place in the world with little or no concern for its ultimate veracity. They didn’t question…and they could never understand why I did.

Even then, I suppose, it wasn’t enough for me to “just believe”. It took me years and years to understand how damaging “believing” is to growth, maturity, and responsibility.

To be a true believer is to close the door on any questions, doubts, insecurities, or concerns that might dog your heels, or cloud your brain. So if your search is for comfort, find a belief system that you are fond of and hunker down for the long haul, it will provide comfort, but it won’t provide increase, or gain…otherwise, we would still be making maps that showed the Earth as the center of the Universe and the world as flat as a pancake.

To “believe” is a posture developed for the express purpose of holding back the fear of the unknown, and I have come to understand the unknown is the only place real life happens.

It wasn’t easy letting go of believing. I fought it almost every step of the way, and there are still occasions now, I look around me and wish I could go backwards to the safety of a set of pre-prescribed rules for what is right, good, and appropriate. To give up Dogma, to stop preaching your personal point of view in the world, to stand back from the cacophony of voices trying to gain attention and approval, sometimes feels like utter chaos and total loss. And yet, I have come to see that the freedom and sanity I pledged myself to, cannot become mine, until I can rid myself of the views of the times, into which I was born.

I have heard a story that illustrates my understanding of the difference between Truth and beliefs very effectively. I have no basis for knowing whether the story is allegorical or historical, but I do know that it speaks to the idea, that the limits of Truth that we are capable of reaching, are bound and limited, by the dedication we have to the “beliefs” we have been taught.

The legend is set, during the first voyages to the Americas by the Conquistadors. A local Medicine man-a spiritual leader of his people-took to standing for long hours staring out to an empty horizon line across the broad, cool and blue-green expanse of ocean bordering his homeland. His people would come to him, worried for his sanity, and inquire why he spent so many hours staring out at an empty horizon. He told them he himself did not know, he only knew something was coming and something was about to change the world as they knew it.

Days passed, and still he stood, alone and staring…while all those around him went about their daily lives with no thought for the strangeness that had overtaken their beloved and revered Holy man.

And then…one day, he saw it. Shimmered into existence, right before his eyes, huge ships with heavy sails lining the horizon as far as he could see. Ships a name for something he had never seen, and because he had never seen such monolithic structures floating atop the water, he had no reference point for their existence and no subsequent belief that would have allowed him to see them, when they had first arrived.

His eyes were not at fault. What was lacking was the liberation of boundaries his beliefs required of him, boundaries that limited his sight, and with it his understanding. No such thing could exist, because he and his fellows had not first believed in them, which had rendered them invisible.

The legend goes, that once the Holy man was able to see the large Spanish ships, eventually all his tribe began to be able to see them as well. A belief shattered, a barrier breached, a wall tumbled, and a new truth had dawned…and with it a new age.

You no doubt, have heard the aphorism, “Ignorance is bliss”…that old saw has its roots in the understanding that to question your beliefs is to shake your world asunder. I know…all about that.

I questioned my fundamentalist upbringing, and lost more than I could chronicle here…but I gained the first tiny steps toward wisdom and depth.

Then I became a student of a man whose Wisdom and breadth of Soul is so vast it took me years to understand him and he shook my hold on the “New Age” beliefs, I had adopted to replace the fundamentalist ones, right down to the core. (In fact, he broke me free of them.)

He required, maybe even demanded, that I give up the safety of the known and head off to parts unknown.

I don’t do it well. I am not graceful, or beautiful, or beatific, in my search for greater and greater unfoldment. Half the time I don’t even know if I am headed in the right direction. I stumble, start over, withdraw and give up, so regularly that should anyone be counting on me they would have thrown in the towel, long ago.

If it were a game of Ready, Set, Go!! I would still be hugging the tree, counting to ten-over and over-long after everyone else has given up, and gone in to dinner.

But on the rarest of occasions, in the most mundane of circumstances, without the slightest effort on my part, I have been opened to moments of such profound originality, beauty, and aliveness…they have taken my breath away, refreshed my Soul, shod my feet, and moved me father down the path.

It is these moments of rare and precious clarity that keep me gracelessly moving toward an understanding only I can perceive, only I can develop, and only I can reap the benefits of.

I want…no, I yearn for the mountaintop.

My Teacher describes the mountain of Spiritual understanding in this way…

“At the base of a mountain I see what is before me. At the peak of the mountain I see what is beyond me.”

G. Addair

I want so much to see what is beyond me, to find the Truth of the unknown, buried inside my Soul, awaiting my arrival. What else is there, really? I have had money, or at least the taste of it. I have had notoriety, or at least the taste of it. I have had approval, applause, and recognition…and none of it is worth one jot or tittle, to borrow an old Biblical saying. But to see beyond yourself, to open your heart, to the beat of the drummer only you can hear, now that is something worth achieving.

Like butterfly kisses, I have had just enough of those moments to keep me on the path…heading straight for the unknown.

I will let you know…if ships, suddenly pop into view…

Until tomorrow…

R.

Photo courtesy of Clint Barnes whose work may be seen at www.flickr.com under the tag Senrab4

To See What is Beyond Me…essay by Ronni Miller copyright 2009 all rights reserved, reprinting available with author’s permission.

Still Water….

 

In my early life, loneliness was a central feature of my day-to-day experience.  The turbulence in my family life, the loneliness of my parents and their sense of denied betrayal.  Born so much later than my half-siblings, I was in practice, both an only child and left behind by my sisters.  Often scared witless by the episodic rages and misconduct that characterized the adult interaction I had around me, I sought refuge in aloneness, even as I feared and begged for relief from its embrace.

Alone, I used the imagination I was gifted with, to build elaborate fantasies and rescue imagery.

My favorite place to build these Technicolor marvels was the hammock; my father had hung between two huge trees in our backyard.  Tall, stately, and comforting, their large rough trunks held me suspended between the cold hard ground and the tops weaving their dance with the breeze.  My favorite time of year to spend hours suspended this way, was October, gone was the uncomfortable high desert summer sun, to be replaced by cool wind and with it the sound of the trees susurration.  Susurration, I love that word, and have never been under trees moving in response to the breath of the world, without I must say it to myself-under my breath-and in response to that lovely sound trees make, in the wind.  It means to murmur, whisper, or rustle softly… the sound of it never fails to soothe and comfort me.

I would lie in that hammock, covered with a quilt against the almost-too-cold wind, my hair moving across my face, my checks turning pink with the soft abrasion and the cool weather, and dream myself away from the pain of my family, my confusion, and my desire to fix it.

My earliest memory, was asking my mother what was wrong with me.  I just knew that the rage that periodically threatened to tear my house down around me, or the quiet emptiness that preceded that rage, somehow had to be my fault…how could it be otherwise?  I desperately needed and loved the one whose rage tore at me, wounded me, and caused the acid to churn in my stomach until it seemed I might be eaten alive from the inside out.  Love and fear, co-mingled, co-imprinted, conjoined twins…that turned my mind in on itself and nearly broke my spirit.

No human being escapes the development of this injured mind.  It isn’t possible.

In the early years when I would “tell my story” as part of a recovery of my wits and capacity for growth, people would often tell me how sad my story made them, or that they had sympathy for me.  I almost always thought, but hardly ever said, you have it wrong.  It was a gift, a crucible, and a purifying fire.

A good many folks never wake up to the cleverness of the mind because there is no reason to, pain as much as we seek to avoid it, pushes and prods, demands and decries, “you will reach out…you will find the light…you will mature yourself…there is no other choice.”

How can I say with such assurance that all human beings are subject to the injuries produced by the “clever” mind?  The greatest minds of both the East and the West assure us that we are all lost.  The Buddha says it so bluntly as to make his meaning undeniable…  The first of the four noble truths, Life is Suffering.

Life is suffering… to be born, develop the monkey mind of desire, to live in and thru, beliefs handed down to us by elders who themselves, were lost and wind swept…this is the meaning of the Buddha’s first truth, or the Christ’s assertion that we are all lost.

Lost to the center of our being, whose nature is peace, kindness, acceptance, and nobility.

A childhood less dramatic than mine means that the impetus for awakening may very well take a back seat to approval, achievement, or the cultures demand for conformity, all of which may leave the person trapped and unwilling to forgo the norms in search of the freedom that pain demands of us.  I am glad for the fires of my youth; they planted my feet on the path early and with urgency.

I now know the difference between reality and illusion.  I understand that Peace is the product of acceptance, and cannot be attained by any other means.

The Buddha’s second noble truth is… We create our own suffering.  It is a consequence of our desiring things to be other than they are.

Here is the most important thing I have ever learned; it took years and years for me to be able to see the magnificent truth in this simple statement.

 To end the grip of pain is a simple matter of accepting things, people, situations and circumstances as they are, without opinion or dissent.

 That means quite literally, if you are stuck behind a little old lady doing 35 mph on a 60 mph road, you have two choices you can accept her decision and await an opportunity to go around her…or you can rant and rave, push up next to her bumper and make yourself crazy with the belief that she shouldn’t be allowed to drive, or she shouldn’t be driving so slowly or any of the other shoulds and should not’s we bring to the party with our opinions and beliefs.

 Every opinion we hold that runs counter to What Is, is both a lie in the most fundamental way and the source of all pain that ever enters our lives.

 The Buddha said we are the source of our suffering, because we desire things to be other than they are.   His third noble truth…it need not be that way, we may choose our perceptions and with that choice our freedom from pain and suffering.

When we have become capable of choosing our perceptions, of telling ourselves the truth, of interacting only with What Is and not with our illusions and desires, then and only then, we may come to possess that strength of mind that is the greatest gift that can be given another…

 We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us, that they may see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer, life because of our quiet.

                                                William Butler Yeats

Still water, a non turbulent mind…I have spent the last 25 years unfolding that calmness, I see from this new vantage point that all things, and all events that have ever entered my life, have come into being to support my capacity for stillness and the silence of acceptance.  The most notable being my Teacher, he embodies the very nature describe by Yeats.  I have lived a fiercer, clearer life because of his quiet.

I could not begin to find the necessary word to express my gratitude for his gifts and commitment.  I have always wanted to follow in his footsteps.  I have neither the humility, nor the simplicity to do so…but I have the commitment to try...

 Until Tomorrow…

 R.

Photo courtesy of  Patrick Smith Photography you can see more of his stunning work at www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/

Essay copyright 2009 by Ronni Miller may not be reprinted without permission of author.