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 Well past the fears of my first leap off the well-worn path, I spent most of that year angry and withdrawn.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.