A Deeper Waking Up

"The path," says Pema Chodron, "is the goal."   (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times)

I read this today and it struck me: I have heard how it's the journey, not the destination, that we should be paying attention to, but this was a new way of saying that we are already here, if only we would wake up.  What does it mean to wake up?  There are as many ways of waking up--and kinds of waking up--as there are alarm clocks and sleeping people.  

A tooth hurts.  It nudges us awake; we get up and go to the medicine cabinet.  The analgesic is only a temporary fix.  We know we must have the tooth pulled in order to heal.

We are sound asleep and then we hear our baby begin to fuss in the next room.  Immediately, we are completely awake, pulling ourselves out of bed and stumbling into the next room to lift the baby from the crib.

A restless sleep, too many dreams; a glance at the alarm clock--there is not much time left to sleep and we know we will not be feeling good at work the next day due to our lack of rest.  Finally, just before dawn, we fall into heavy slumber only to be jolted awake fifteen minutes later by the buzzing of the alarm.

These are temporary sleeps; these are fleeting awakenings.  They are shadows of the real thing.  One day, the tooth will be gone from the mouth.  One day, the baby will be grown.  One day, work will have ceased and the alarm clock will be out of a job.  We will sleep through the night.

Most of us are sleeping through our lives, too.  We are focusing on the throbbing tooth, the demanding baby, the worries of the wee hours.  We do not want to pay attention to the greater pain which undergirds the others.  It is too big, too steadfast, a monolith of fact which we are too weary to face.  We are hoping for a better tomorrow, five minutes of peace today, everyone getting along, and eventually, heaven.  We are lulled by the narcotic of quotidian events into ignoring the pain beyond the pain.  It is a human truth that it usually takes a life-or-death blow to awaken us further.  Sometimes we are hit by financial devastation.  Sometimes we find out we have a serious health problem.  Sometimes our lover betrays us.  Sometimes we lose a child to sudden death.  In all of these injuries, we are given an opportunity: run toward the experience or do everything possible to scramble away as fast as we can.  The world around us is heavily invested in the latter solution.

When a woman is pregnant for the first time, she can only project what labor will be like for her from what she hears and what she reads.  When a child has a loose tooth the first time, he is afraid.  He trusts no one but himself.  The tooth is hanging by a thread but still, he resists its loss.  He does not understand that once on the other side--toothless--he will turn and see himself five minutes ago and laugh at how he'd been afraid.  Labor is not quite as easy, although a newborn baby at the breast somehow causes immediate amnesia of preceding pain, as women who have been through it know.  Irrespective of evolution, wiggly teeth and uterine contractions, and their accompanying fear and pain, are still part of the human experience.  Tooth fairies cannot come if the tooth remains in the mouth and women cannot become mothers if the baby is never born, philosophical objections to the contrary notwithstanding.  As a species, we have not evolved past pain; it is still part of our experience, although we sometimes individually evolve out of or because of our own pain.

Death is the final unknown, and all our conjecturing and belief before we enter into that experience, all our faith in a particular outcome, is no guarantee that we are correct in our thinking.  Only when, only if, we are still there on the other side of the experience will we be able to look back and see how little we understood.  Maybe death is a little like losing a tooth for the first time, a little like the first experience of childbirth.   Transformation often has its before and after.

We all have particular struggles.  We would like them to go away.  In Kabbalah, one of the teachings says that we each choose our soul's difficulties before existence.  We choose our weaknesses, our parents, our life's path; the trouble we face will be the vehicle to help us evolve, if we pay attention and do the work.  At birth, this consciousness is erased.  We are, with regard to our pre-carnate but sentient self, tabula rasa.  In a certain respect, this concept, whether true or not (and it is obviously entirely unprovable), can give us hope and strength, for if we were the ones who knowingly chose the difficulties we are now facing, we are also the ones who have the way up and out.  It will not happen without a fight, even though most of us will decide to stay out of the fray of battle and just go through the motions of being alive.  Yet, Kabbalah insists that we have chosen exactly what we need in order to come up higher.  We are empowered to rescue ourselves; indeed, we are the only ones who can.

Were it not for a broken heart, I might not have learned that I was already enough.  Were it not for the pain of rejection, I might never have had to accept myself.  Were it not for thinking about Kabbalah's claim and discovering what I had been trying to prove, or what I was waiting for someone else to heal inside of me, I might never have rescued myself.  I might still be on a path of self-improvement rather than plopping down under the bodhi tree, already myself, already with everything I need.  This is not to imply that I have arrived; rather, I am continually arriving.

Loss always provides us with an opportunity for going deeper into the experience of transformation.  Loss always means another door has opened; the room beyond it is dark, but so is the room in which we find ourselves presently.  Once you recognize that you are already in a cave with no way out, there is not a whole lot of reason to stop exploring.  You may just find, once you lose your fear of the dark and of death, that you finally get to live.  There is a deeper awakening out of a deeper sleep.  It is only by running directly into our experience--and perhaps witnessing ourselves in the midst of our suffering--that we discover our profound courage.  When we finally stop wriggling to get out from under the grasp of what is, we can look around and see that we have nothing more and nothing less than ourselves and maybe, as Pema Chodron often says, "we could give ourselves a break."  Maybe we can embrace compassion and forgiveness and let the awakening take whatever path it will.  Maybe we can recognize this moment as just what it is: our life.  And maybe we  can let that be goal enough.  

Blindness

I have a friend.  Or at least, sometimes this is how I think of this person.  However, with regard to thinking about this particular person, about half the time hatred springs to mind, violently, steadfastly adamant in its insistence.  I do not mean that, in general, this person's character causes loathing; rather the hatred is a gut reaction inside of me because of how this person has hurt me deeply.

Perhaps more than my own pain, however, is the ongoing reminder, in one way or another, that this person is oblivious to how I was hurt, or even, that I was hurt--am hurt.  Perhaps it makes more sense to put this in the present tense, because if it were all in the past, and I were "over it," there would be far less vitriol spewing out, threatening to destroy  me.  Perhaps it also makes sense to say that the reason there is such pain, such hatred, is that there is such love, such longing.  Often, it is a very short jump from love to hate, when it comes to someone very close to us, if that person has hurt us or rejected us or betrayed us.

This past week was Holy Week.  For believers, and some unbelievers (in Christ) alike, it is a time of reflection and contemplation.  It is no different for my friend.

I got an email from My Chum explaining how a certain piece of music had so powerfully brought to mind the way of the cross, and how we all have a cross (or crosses) to bear.  This person's own burdens were feeling pretty darn bad, considerably onerous--"Why I gotta have such a hard time of life?"--until, for example, the people of earthquake destroyed areas came to mind, and then, there is sort of a moment of, "Gee," (to paraphrase my pal's writing), "our problems are nothing!  We have so much to be grateful for compared to other people!"  And then, my friend continued, as the music shifted, after the death, the tomb, here came the exulted strains of the music announcing the resurrection and my friend was suddenly proclaiming, in so many words, "All my problems have ceased!"

Here is what I did when I read that: I rolled my eyes spiritually.

Because I was thinking, Cretin from Hell that I am, "How could you be so selfish and blind?  Are you even daring to talk to me about trouble or pain you supposedly have in your life? A cross you have to carry in your life? What trouble? What cross?  That things didn't turn out precisely how you planned--oh, thou who controls Destiny Itself?"  I was thinking to myself, "OK, wait--you are, financially speaking, more than set for life, you are in good health, your children have perfect health, have their educational futures assured, you are a far-above-average success professionally, your children and you take world vacations, so...uh, help me out...where exactly is the difficulty in your life?  That you don't have ten servants?  That your children will grow up in two houses, their parents divorced?  Yet, you felt no loss at the ending of your marriage?  You only wished your spouse had come to you and said s/he wanted out and you would have easily understood and it all could have been so friendly and easy?"  Truly, I was dumbfounded; wondering, "How can you be so blind to other people's pain?!"  I am at a loss to understand where the cross exists, because this is not my understanding of Jesus' sacrifice.

With regard to that very thing, I do not say that any of the Crucifixion story is or has to be true or believed; I have my own doubt to battle in life.  I am no evangelist anymore.  Nevertheless, it begs the question, this interpretation of my friend, for me, I mean.  How does the Via Dolorosa get to be about carrying a load because we don't have it perfectly easy?  Since when is the reason for Jesus dying on the cross our discomfort in life?  "We all have our cross to bear" becomes a very twisted platitude and it is very far from the actual meaning of carrying a cross.  I am thinking that as far as Jesus goes, the reason Jesus carries a cross--regardless of whether or not it is true--is because of us.  More to the point: Jesus hangs on that cross--and dies--because of our sin(s).  Yours.  Mine.  (According to Christianity, this is the crux of the matter--crux of the crucifixion.)  The other day I wrote about how we can think about Jesus' death as something other than a blood sacrifice to placate Almighty God; I know.  So, again, let's leave blood out of it but let's talk about a deeper reason for Christ's sacrifice on our behalf.  Isn't the reason Jesus suffers due to us being lost? Isn't his death due to our desperate need for someone to redeem us because we cannot redeem ourselves?  Because we are guilty?  And, aren't we guilty because we harm one another, and live in ways that offend ourselves and each other (and supposedly, God)? Our sin is "the good that we want to do, and which we leave undone, and the bad we do not want to do, which we do anyway,"  to paraphrase the Apostle Paul writing to the believers in Rome.

Why diminish the cross so selfishly?  Why turn the cross into some metaphor for things not going according to plan?   Why not, if we are going to contemplate the cross, blame ourselves, see our weaknesses and our shortcomings, see the way we may need forgiveness from those we have harmed, not just that we need to forgive those who have harmed us.  Could we maybe use the cross for finally, truly seeing what fools we have been even when we have thought ourselves so advanced, so enlightened?  I will give you a very personal, humiliating, example so that you see I know what I am talking about:  Picture me, overwhelmed mother of three little children, typically easily blowing a fuse, a yeller by nature, fiery temperament god-help-me, and there I am, devout born-again Christian, earnest, dedicated, submitted to the Lord, in my bedroom in the middle of the day, on my knees praying.  I have gone in there specifically to pray for help; I am talking to God, asking forgiveness, confessing my impatience, my bitchiness, my intolerance, my...wish to be a better, kinder, more capable mother.  Next, hear the little knock--one of my beloved children--at the bedroom door.  Now see me suddenly lift my face from my folded hands, turn toward my closed bedroom door and angrily shout: "WHADDYA WANT?! DONTCHA KNOW I'M IN HERE PRAYING?!"


Oh, snap.


Oh, sigh. 


God forgive me, for I knew not what I did.  Everyone should be so lucky to have such moments of seeing themselves for the jerks we all really are.  Another admission: I probably still don't see my ridiculous injuries to others--my children, especially--while I am doing them.  Hindsight is a cruel teacher and some of us still don't learn.

So, it is usually true of me, that I recognize that I am in need of forgiveness, and that is how I see the cross, and that is how I understand why Jesus is here at all anymore: to help us bridge that gap we cannot bridge by trying to be "good enough."  But back to my beloved (friend), I don't know that this person has ever experienced the self as the one needing forgiveness and grace; it is always others who have sinned against her/him.  The innocent self rises up and pats itself on the back that it has never harmed others, because, after all, there has never really been malicious intent.  (As if we only hurt others when we are planning to, our hands rubbing together in evil glee. As if, since we didn't mean it, the other person's pain and suffering is actually quite inconsequential, and probably a misunderstanding on his or her part.  It's just a matter of perspective--so goes my friend's thinking, I fear.)  Oh, maybe there is a touch of grace--but it is a limited, stunted kind of grace.  Grace that we all get to live our lives for ourselves, but forgiveness?  Why would my friend need forgiveness?  For what? Simply existing as a human being?  You wonder when the specificity of recognizing our own shortcomings finally opens itself before some people.  You wonder when the failed marriage starts being more about your contribution to the problems instead of your ex-spouse's evil nature.  (I am not suggesting that anyone take 100% of the blame for the failure of the marriage; I don't mean that.  Nor do I mean to imply that you should take any blame at all for your spouse's infidelities, if you have lived through that hell.  But speaking of hell, divorce is one hell of an opportunity to take a close look at ourselves, maybe even in chagrin, and ask for help to do better the next time we are relating with someone intimately.)

My friend wrote about all the emotions that were elicited while listening to the particular music that was about the crucifixion and then, here it came to absolve all the pain-- how glorious--the swelling trumpets of the resurrection.  Triumphant that all was well in the world, my friend felt brand new.  Again, I had nothing to say.  Nothing.  As a sheep before its shearers is dumb...should I even offer to relate my pain at my friend's hands?  Would it open my friend's eyes?  I don't think it would, which is why I have remained silent.  But I have to admit that I wonder why it is that my friend thinks there is already Clear Vision when all I am thinking is, "You don't have to go to an earthquake damaged area to find someone in a lot more pain than you are.  Why, you might just think about the person you are writing to instead of the person who is writing...for once."  I wanted to write, "Here's an exercise in compassion: Play the music again, but this time, dedicate your listening to me.  See me as you listen to the lovely strains.  See if the Lord reveals anything to you about any cross in my life; see if the Lord reveals anything to you about how you treated me.  Focus on this one particular person--ME--instead of thinking of a generic crowd." I was thinking how odd it is that my friend does not recognize that, when I was in need, when I made myself vulnerable, when I was hurting, s/he chose abandoning me over entering into my pain with me.  I marvel that my friend does not see--at all-- that some of us who have been intimately involved with him/her, have walked alongside him/her on the same path have sometimes cried out in utter loneliness, "My friend, my friend, why have you forsaken me?"

But as I have already admitted: I did not say one word in reply.  Why? Because...

What if you think your eyes are already open?

What if you think you see very deeply indeed?

What if you consider yourself a very empathetic person?

Is your friend, accusing you, going to be able to convince you otherwise?

Would even GOD be able to convince (how like the word convict) you otherwise?

So I come to this: Why bother trying to enlighten, even if it means telling the truth about your own pain to the person whose blindness caused your harm?

If the student is not ready, the teacher is only sounding brass.

That's what I am thinking, anyway, today.

And believe me, I know: I have enough wood in my own eye that I should be taking out before I worry about the so-called speck in my friend's eye.

Be assured, if you are not already aware of my inherent bent to self-chastise, that I do pay attention to my own deficits. In fact, I think I pay too much attention to them and am too willing to take the blame, too capable to carry heavy loads, too quick to agree that so much about me needs fixing.  I come by it way too honestly.

So, again, with regard to me accusing my friend, lest you have been shrieking, "LOOK AT YOURSELF!", I want to be quick to admit that obviously I am not such a wonderful person all the time, am I?  If I am feeling such hatred and judgment about another person--especially if it is because this person did not meet my expectations, did not love me the way I wanted to be loved, was not a friend to me as I understand friend--then I am in need of transformation and forgiveness, myself, big time.  I am the one who, ultimately, has to let it go, has to accept What Is and make a decision about holding grudges, holding out for apologies, or letting go.  The only one I can ever change?  Me.

What have I been doing as a way to handle it?  Praying.  For us both.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

This being human is indeed a guest house.  Every day, a new arrival.  Sorrow, joys, laments.  Amen, Rumi, amen.

Sacrifice and Rescue

It has been said that Kabbalah teaches that we each choose our own difficulties and particular circumstances of life before we exist as ourselves here on earth.  Kabbalah says that we do this in order to help ourselves evolve spiritually, but that this memory is wiped out before we are born.  We come into this life without any consciousness of having chosen our situation(s).  As we move into our lives and into adulthood and begin to have struggles that we can not easily surmount, we come face to face with the opportunity to grow.  Kabbalah says that we have the exact troubles we need (since we have chosen them in advance with a conscious knowledge of our spiritual evolution) in order to move up to a higher level of consciousness.  We are the ones who "get to"--indeed, who have to--rescue ourselves.  This sits in direct contrast to Christianity which sees us as inherently unable to perform such a feat.  It is part and parcel of the faith to believe that, were we able to rescue ourselves, Jesus would not have needed to come at all.  However, there are some nuances of theology, or perhaps psychology and/or philosophy hidden here.   Perhaps there are other reasons Jesus can be vitally important to us today, without it having to do with a necessary blood sacrifice to placate Almighty God.  But first, it is important to think about this.  The unknown author of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament proclaims that Moses's law tells us that, "There is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood." (Hebrews 9:22)  The book of Hebrews is important because it explains how Jesus is the Sacrifice and the High Priest at the same time, the innocent lamb to be slain and the one who presents the offering to God.  

Blood sacrifice is a foundation of many religions.  In historical Judaism, the shed blood of an unblemished animal was poured over the altar to symbolically cover the people's sin in the sight of a Holy God.  In other cultures, animals (and people) were sacrificed as a way to placate the Gods.  Many people want to draw a distinction between these two rituals, claiming one to be barbaric and pagan but the Jewish ritual to be merely a religious rite, nothing to do with placating God--it was just that "God required the shedding of blood."  This sounds an awful lot like "placating the Gods" when you strip away the words and look at what you are hoping to avoid: punishment and ill effects in life.  As time has marched forward, however, and our thinking has evolved, some of us are uncomfortable with the thought of a god who requires His (Her/Its) creation to pay a penalty for merely being human, for acting in accordance with our nature.  The very thought that anyone or anything would have to die because of my (or your) inherent sinfulness is something that keeps people away from religions that require any sacrifice at all.  It is much more attractive to believe in something nebulous and benevolent, even impotent, than to believe in an old-fashioned god.  

Today human sacrifice is no longer something we believe God requires, but many of us believe that God did require it at one time.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the shedding of innocent blood was laudable, as long as it was done for The Right God.  Whether that was Abraham taking Isaac to the mountain to slay him for God in order to prove that he (Abraham) could be trusted to obey, or Jephthah offering his only daughter up to that same God because of a vow he felt compelled to keep (again, to prove his trustworthiness to God), or the people bringing their little lamb to the temple so that the priest could cut its throat, we read these stories and are supposed to approve of those fathers for their obedience--and, as an afterthought, approve of their children for acquiescing to their own murders.  Yet, when we read about the Aztecs sacrificing thousands annually to please their sun god and get the results in life they wanted, or the Mayans holding a person down while another person cut into the chest of the "lucky" sacrificial victim in order to extract his or her beating heart, we consider them heathen, foolish, misled, even though in all cases an innocent human being loses his or her life at another person's hand.  Irrespective of the origin of the human sacrifice, human beings today far and away denounce human sacrifice.   

But, still, humans often think in terms of a chasm between man (and woman) and God.  Historically, we, collectively and individually, have attempted to bridge that gap by doing certain things (or not doing others).  Legalistic religions dictate how humans are supposed to act in order to prevent judgement and damnation and find divine favor and, in some religions, a happy afterlife.  Then along comes this guy Jesus and threatens the status quo.  Jesus called the religious leaders of his day "whitewashed tombs" that look pristine on the outside but are full of dead bodies and decay.  (Matthew 23:27)  No wonder the Powers-That-Were didn't like him; no wonder they wanted him dead.  Just because you serve God in the priesthood does not mean you want to be set free by His Son.  Change is scary, even when it promises freedom.  Jesus was not considered a sacrifice by the Levites or anyone else in Israel; a sacrifice was supposed to be pleasing to God and they looked upon Jesus as a blasphemer and heretic.  Jesus was just a troublemaker and crucifixion was a method of execution at that time.

In today's age, in the wrong culture, someone like Jesus might still be killed, but another method would be used to rid the earth of him.  Of course, for the person who believes that Jesus's death is The Final Atonement for Sin, this thought is anathema.  They say that Jesus was killed on the surface only because the Jewish leaders were jealous and threatened; the real reason Jesus was killed was to make a way for man to be reconciled to God, once and for all, end of story.  They say it was men--Jews, his own people, in fact--who put Jesus on the cross, but it never would have happened if God had not already planned this exact event.  And, of course, these same people say, it is imperative to believe that Jesus rose from the dead three days later, in bodily form.  To believe otherwise, to accept Jesus as a road to God without accepting the physical resurrection and blood sacrifice, his death is in danger of being reduced to nothing more--nothing less--than one more unjust execution of a visionary pointing the better way to God, one more brother who was horribly tortured and ridiculed and finally killed in a violent manner, because of his message of love.  In this regard, according to the latter explanation Jesus only showed us that to walk in Real Love will get you in trouble with most people every time, so think about it long and hard before you decide if you really want to follow this guy.  But perhaps there is another option; perhaps for those who did--who do--decide they want to have Jesus be their model, their "teacher,"  who are we to say that they must believe in the resurrection?  That they must accept that the shedding of blood is required for them to have a relationship with God?  Why does anyone else have ultimate authority to discredit another person's faith because it looks so different from ours?  Who are we to deny that there can still be a transformation without "salvation" as so many understand salvation, which is so often salvation from hell, rather than salvation into love.  

This freedom Jesus proclaimed took enlightenment from the realm of the priests and brought it right down to the individual.  No longer did people need to listen to the religious leaders of the community; now they could go directly to the Source.  No longer did people have to squabble over hundreds of picayune laws.  Jesus condensed "all the law and the prophets" down to these two commandments:  "Love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind...love your neighbor as yourself."  (Matthew 22:37, 39)  Shortly after Jesus's death, though, we find the apostle Peter encouraging new followers of Jesus to practice Jewish ceremonial laws along with their faith in Christ.  When the apostle Paul hears about this, he chastises Peter for such behavior, asking him why he would put burdens on others that neither they nor their forefathers could bear.  (Acts 15:10)  Peter capitulates, and Paul goes on to take this liberation message, this gospel, to the world.  It is a limited liberation, of course, because Paul neither encouraged men to embrace women as their equals nor did he encourage women to self actualize.  He neither chastised slave owners for the keeping of slaves, nor did he encourage slaves to imagine their own freedom.  The only chains Paul seemed to want broken were the ones that held heaven's gates shut.  Who needs earthly freedom when you have heaven awaiting? 

Here we are today, some two thousand years later, though, and if we look around, we see that we are in as much bondage as ever to ideological constraints.  In churches everywhere, there are codes of conduct for "real Christians."  Depending on the strictness of Biblical interpretation, you will have certain expectations of your external behavior, even though the all-atoning sacrifice of Christ is proclaimed from the pulpit.  It is an unspoken but understood concept of Jesus plus.  Jesus plus tithing.  Jesus plus not swearing.  Jesus plus church membership.  Jesus plus voting a certain way.  Jesus plus acting the way you are supposed to act.  We have exchanged Judaism plus Jesus for Christianity plus Legalism.   Somehow we are not able to be transformed without another person's direction--someone with authority, someone with an "in" to God, someone who knows better, someone who can tell us whether or not we are on the right path.  Jesus is still not enough, nor are we.  Spiritual mentors can encourage us on our path, but so many of us still want to be excused from navigating our own way. So many of us still want someone else to mediate the way to the mediator.

We say we have been rescued, but what are we rescued from and what are we rescued to?  This is a question we might decide to think about for ourselves.  Until the student is ready to learn, the teacher does not appear--the teacher may be right there all along but the wise teacher knows to wait to be seen before trying to instruct.  Whether or not we believe in God, whether or not we believe in heaven (and/or hell), whether or not we believe in reincarnation, whether or not any of this exists, the truth remains: We have this present life to live.  We have to answer to ourselves, at the very least.  For those of us who have an internal call to keep asking questions, there is a point where we break out into an area of deepest water.  It happens when we assume we may be entirely wrong about all we have believed.  This takes us from a safe environment with comforting answers into the dangerous land of uncharted self.  We are the rare ones who decide that facing monsters is less costly than continuing to run from them, even if we lose ourselves through the battle.