Conversations with Nana

Light teachers point me to the light, give guidance, encouragement, direction, support, inspiration, thoughts to ponder, new information that resonates within me. They are helpful, kind, generous, patient, non-judgmental. I don’t end up feeling deficient, slow, competitive, inadequate, resistant. Light teachers appear, sometimes uninvited, and offer what is needed, sometimes only planting a seed because I am not able to hear it all now. They have faith that I will hear, at my own pace, and when I do, if they are still around, they do not hold the truth as if it were their own. They don’t say, “I told you so.” They simply hear me with a welcoming attitude as if to say, “We are one in this.”

Dark teachers also point to the light, or sometimes ‘a’ light. Their teaching is sometimes simplistic, usually in response to my words or actions. Dark teachers correct, direct, do not ask for my meaning or intention, assume my words are precise and reflect exactly what I mean. They react, intending to improve my thinking and behavior for the better, but without considering my pace. They tend to move quickly, sometimes impatiently when a lesson needs to be repeated.

It is important to note that the dark teachers are equal to the light ones, have the same essential intentions and ultimate good will. They are dark for me because I must listen through them rather than to them. Otherwise, I end up feeling wrong, judged, foolish, childish – a child needing instruction – and my reaction (rather than response) is to crawl into my dark cave of self-doubt, lowered esteem, embarrassment, and even depression.

So, while the light teachers are showing me the light, and I am learning more of the source, the dark teachers are showing me the areas I need to work on, the dark cave that pulls me down and keeps me from embracing spirit. The light teachers are guides; the dark teachers are true teachers because I learn about my reactive self and how much work I have yet to do.

I can choose just the light teachers and feel wise and holy and complete. What I learn comes to me at the pace I set. But silence and solitude are only part of the constructive tools; without the other, darker truths, I am not really fully growing. I must invite and receive the dark teachers, too.

2008

This is part of my Sunday Sermons series, where I wrote rebuttals to the Baptist preacher’s sermons while I lived in Costa Rica.

The Hindus speak of the ultimate source as That Which We Cannot Talk About because the reality of the first and highest is incomprehensible to our human minds. And, yet, we try. If That Which Cannot Be Named is the inside, the core of each particle, each entity of life, how could we even begin to explain? Each new description sounds good at first, until so many people have used it so many ways, it starts to sound empty, and we go searching for another.

We need to make up a God we can talk to and believe is listening, because we are not yet capable of living in the grand and solitary silence of God. Without our willed and imagined beings, which we manifest from our core, we would go crazy like prisoners in solitary confinement. Because some of us are bent toward the light rather than the negative, some stories are about good beings who help and rescue. Those bent toward bitterness create stories about devils and evil, punishment and penance. And it’s all the same.

Does God really exist? “God” in the many names we ascribe is the projection of the most sacred source within. Whether  that is a yes or no answer is for each person to decide.

2009

This is part of my Sunday Sermons series, where I wrote rebuttals to the Baptist preacher’s sermons while I lived in Costa Rica.

The sermon was on Denying self in order to find God -

use personal suffering and sacrifice as an offering.

Here is a different interpretation of denial:

Deny materialism that claims to make you a better person through possession.

Deny power over others that pretends self-importance.

Deny pride that requires ‘saving face’ at another’s expense.

Deny patronizing and condescension that creates self-inflation.

Deny criticism of others that provides the delusion of safety.

Deny unhealthy narcissism:   self-involvement, absorption,

obsession, delusion, self-centeredness

Because all are survival strategies born of old pain.

You must clean out the wounds before healing can begin.

Then you gain the essential self:

Self-possession            Self-awareness

Self-containment            Self-sufficiency

2008

My friend and I were talking outside when I noticed a spider web with a spider hanging in it.

I pointed out what looked like a crumb caught in the threads of the web directly below the spider.

As we watched, the spider started moving toward the nibble until it was right next to it.

She opened a little mouth-like part and drew in the crumb.

“Wow!” I said, “I’ve never seen a spider actually eat something. This is a first.”

After a pause, my friend said, “Thank you for bringing me into the present moment.”

Oh, so that’s what that means.

2009

I was chopping the tall grasses and finding my mind wandering to blame. After several times of stopping that mental transaction, I remembered the Be Here Now injunction. I started to make a silent chant with each movement:

I am the blade that cuts the grass

I am the rock that chips the blade

I am the grass that’s gone to seed

I am the seed that’s already spread

I am the ground that takes the seed

I am the chopper who chops the grass

I am the grass that takes the blade…

The chant worked really well in that it was directed specifically at each of my movements. I also started talking to the grass and encouraging it to allow itself to be pulled up by its roots. Each time the roots came along with the stems, I said ‘Jai Ma! Good Grass!’ That worked well, too, because the grass and I were engaged with pulling and collaborating on the outcome.

Near the end, I thought to myself, this is why the field workers used to sing as they chopped cotton. The chant creates rhythm that puts everything in synch, and gives the mind something to do that’s positive.

2009

Needing something or someone in order to feel emotionally complete is one way to talk about addiction. Ultimately we have no real control over that thing or person we need (people die, hurricanes destroy.) The fulfillment of need through something outside is always inconsistent and transitory, unreliable and unpredictable. Unpredictability is another way of talking about the unknown. Not knowing can be frightening; the fear and anxiety can cause us to make poor decisions, mistakes, and errors in judgment as we try to grasp peace of mind and certainty.

The emotionally whole person operates out of choice rather than need. An emotionally whole person – we might say genuine, or true, or  authentic – has the luxury of weighing integrity against pleasure when making decisions. Pleasure, among all its good characteristics, can also be anything that sedates the anxiety of not knowing. We think we need this kind of soothing  pleasure because it feeds the addiction of avoiding anxiety.

Personal integrity means asking serious questions: is this solution good for me in the long run? Will I grow from it and actually change for the better? Or, will I be able to enjoy it without changing for the worse? Will this action or behavior make me feel better temporarily without leaving me feeling worse eventually?

The emotionally underdeveloped person is limited by his or her need. Even though there is a vague memory that the pleasurable thing alone  always leaves an emptiness in the end, the compelling need of pleasure almost always wins.

So, we tell ourselves, of course we want to be whole and healthy. However, no matter how gently we word it, we end up implying a right way and a wrong way to be. We spend much of our lives trying to be a ‘right’ person, one who is ‘good’, or nice, one who fits in – healthy, functional, kind, friendly, fair, hard working – the list goes on and on. It’s the story of the brunette who wishes to be a natural blonde. Impossible and ultimately all attempts are superficial, temporary, a mask, false. As soon as he or she is not diligent, the true roots show through. The roots,  in this metaphor, then, are seen as failure, inadequacy, unworthiness, or even ‘sin’. In trying to be the good person, we hide who we really are. To pretend to be “better” than I really am (who I really am), to “act as if”, then, requires constant vigilance and discipline and can be exhausting. Relaxation and having fun become threatening because they require “taking a break,” which could mean exposure.

Being whole and authentic does not mean choosing the ‘good’ list and playing the part. The path out of pretending versus acting without self-consciousness is to begin learning that having emotions and acting inappropriately because of them are two different behaviors. Instead of hiding, rejecting, or sedating the “bad” emotions, we need to recognize all emotions as human and worthy of self-study. Awareness and understanding are the keys that open the gate to the path of emotional maturity.

When we are genuine in our personality, when we accept all aspects of ourselves, in all our myriad disguises and moods, we move closer and closer to our core, our center and foundation, the Self. Sacred Self, or Self with a capital ‘s,’ has nothing to do with all the little self’s we talk about – self-esteem, self-image, self-concept. These and all the other labels we, or others, give us from time to time can be helpful (or not) ways to explain our perceptions and behaviors, but they are not directional markers toward authenticity.

The authentic person is real but without malice or desperate need. The difference is like comparing zircon, a close, but fake and inexpensive match, with a real diamond. The real diamond had to sit trapped as carbon in the dark rock of the earth for eons, slowly becoming itself. The zircon sparkles appropriately, but is worth no more than the price of glass. The zircon has no long history of transformation, no mystery, and enhances nothing beyond a fanciful imagination.

There is no jumping or sudden leap from being needy to being complete. On the authentic path there is nothing to do but take one step at a time. Rather than perfecting the art of sedation, the journey is to make friends with one’s need and to embrace it as a long lost relation. You are the found prodigal son coming home to your roots. You are the book you must study. You are the wise elder ready to mentor your free-floating selves. Anything else is only adopting someone else’s program, living someone else’s life.

2008

Letting go is more than relaxing one’s hold on something or someone, or releasing possession. It is about surrendering self: identity, image, concept, esteem. Letting go is to stop looking in the mirror of others’ eyes to see who you are, and to look within instead. To look within you must surrender what you thought was true about yourself and be open to something entirely different, or something slightly different, or even the same. You must seek the ultimate darkness in order to see who you are. Only in the darkness of surrender can you be seen by your own inner light.

Letting go of self is surrendering the reasoning mind, logical analysis, deductive thinking, and educated guessing. To let go is to seek the ultimate silence where sound is no longer a distraction, where thinking stops and listening begins. Letting go is walking naked and unarmed into the chaos, the silent and dark void.

Caretaking is an example: In order to not be pulled into taking over someone else’s responsibility, I must let go of the identity that I am even capable of such a thing.

Controlling is an example: The struggle in backing off is in knowing that I could do a better job. Letting go is not in the backing off. Letting go is in giving up the idea that I know more about what’s best in a situation than the person who is in the middle of it. Letting go is releasing the false concept that I am in control or ever could be.

Jealousy is an example: Letting go is far more than allowing everyone to be themselves, more than forgiving others involved. Letting go is surrendering the false esteem that categorizes the “me” as a deserving person, or a betrayed person, or a person who needs someone or some thing in order to survive.

Letting go is accepting the empty space. All the rest is just what happens.

7/7/09

There is no way to define time, or ensnare it in a label such as ‘one-fifteen.’ Life is time, we are time; time is merely each one’s experience for however long it lasts. There is rock time, and leaf time, and human time. Divisions such as days, months, minutes, come in, causing details of experiences within bigger experiences. There is, for example, a lifetime, and within that, love time, or learning time, or dream time – hours, minutes, seconds, nano seconds.

Each part of life is involved with it’s own time or timing. We make the labels simply because we want to communicate in a common tongue. She may want to convey that in planning ahead she will have a better chance of being fully present, being ready. Someone else may need to follow his own inner clock – if the timing isn’t right, his ability may be compromised.

The obvious question here: how do people get anything done if they must wait until both sides are in the right space of time? But people do get things accomplished, because of the pretense of labeling time. What is real is that with a shared future date, all involved are able to align themselves with the other and the project. Each mind says, when this device called a clock says 2:30 I will move myself into the project – I will operate within that space, making my time and space work together.

Life, time, space – all the same thing, really. Time savors an experience for however long it lasts.

4/27/10

This is part of my Sunday Sermons series, where I wrote rebuttals to the Baptist preacher’s sermons while I lived in Costa Rica.

(8/15 is Costa Rica’s Mother’s Day)

The scriptural passage today was from “Genesis” the first book of the Christian Old Testament, or a part of Jewish scripture, if you prefer.

Old man Abraham was entertaining three men, one of whom was God, the other two angels. God told Abraham that Abraham was going to have a son by his ninety-year old wife Sarah. They were childless but God particularly wanted Abraham to have a son so that a lineage could be started. Sarah overheard and laughed because she was so old to still be having “sexual pleasure,” which is a sweet way to look at procreation, and tells you right there that this is a Jewish story and not a Christian one. God later asked why she laughed. She was scared God would smite her, so she lied: she said she hadn’t laughed. God said, “No, but you did laugh.”

God asked Sarah why she laughed and Sarah lied out of fear. God was a smiter, so she was smart to try to avoid getting caught. But Sarah should have realized that she had the upper hand and didn’t need to lie. God had already said she would have the baby, so he couldn’t punish her by death on the spot, and if he waited until after the baby was born, the kid wouldn’t have the mother’s love necessary for starting a good lineage. He could decree that she would have a hard childbirth, but then, he already set that up in the first garden story. And what would Sarah say? “Hard childbirth? Well, duh!”

God had himself in a bit of a bind. Being God, he should have already known Sarah’s reasons for laughing. Maybe he was having a bit of an off day or, being male, maybe he just didn’t get female irony. Or, maybe he was paranoid about being laughed at. Whatever was going on, he forgot a basic rule of communication: Questions that begin with ‘why’ are rarely perceived as merely seeking information. Rather, they sound judgmental and laced with indirect criticism. You can’t really fault Sarah for getting a little nervous after a question like that. Talk about blaming the victim – God sounds just a wee bit defensive there.

Ok, so Sarah answered with a lie: “I didn’t laugh.” Now here’s where God could have taken back the upper hand simply by being consistent. “Sarah, why are you lying to me?” She still might have answered with a lie: “I’m not lying.” But she would know that the game was up. While the meaning of laughter might be ambiguous, everybody knows you’re not supposed to lie to God, so a why question at this point is simply setting the record straight. But, no, God lost the advantage by becoming argumentative: “I did not lie” – “yes you did” – did not, did – did not, did – there’s nowhere to go here, unless one of the two is brave enough to admit they need to start over. What are the odds that it’s going to be Sarah?

Well, we’ll never know, because the story veers into other territory at this point. When next we hear of Sarah, she is traveling with Abraham who has asked her “to do him a kindness” by telling people they meet that Abraham is her brother. Now, any modern married woman will start to get suspicious at this point. Sarah, on the other hand, probably figured that at 100, if Abraham can get a little action on the side, good for him. But, lo, at ninety, Sarah must have still been a looker, because one of the local kings decided to “take her.” It’s always been a king or nobleman’s right to sample the goods of his kingdom, especially on the “first night” of a marriage, which may be why we don’t have much royalty around anymore. But there aren’t many (any) stories of them testing the geriatric waters, which brings us to the question: How old was Sarah, really? Is the bible fudging just a bit?

Next we hear that God “did to Sarah as he promised,” which must mean he helped an egg slip down because we don’t hear about the other possibility until about 1300 pages later. So she had a son. Maybe Sarah was having a touch of post partum depression afterward, because now she was the touchy one about laughing. When her husband’s concubine laughed at such an old new mother, Sarah sent her and her son into the wilderness to die. Well, can you blame her?

Sarah continued on until 127 years old, the story goes, making her son 37 when she died. And for all her trouble, while her husband did mourn and weep for her, he found a burial place “out of his sight.”

The point of this story, as it was explained to me, was that nothing, even pregnancy, is impossible with God.

Here are some alternate sermon topics that might arise:

Elder sex

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

Risks of late-life pregnancy

From Barren to Bearing

What Is Old?

Keeping A Sense of Humor

Lying to God

Changing The Rules

Second Chances

What Did Sarah Want?

8/16/2009

This is part of my Sunday Sermons series, where I wrote rebuttals to the Baptist preacher’s sermons while I lived in Costa Rica.

Everything that is now has been before, and before that. We are one people who have noted the rhythms of the earth and marked them with celebration and ritual. Marking the equinoxes and solstices was a way to prepare the mind and spirit for change.

But in the ancient stories it is God, or one of the gods, who goes into the underworld in the winter and rises up again in the Spring, an eternal reminder that there is more to come. In these stories the resurrection can happen because the one who rises is a god. In the Christian story, that one is seen as God because he has risen. Instead of the god reassuring us of tomorrow, this God is proving himself to us so we can accept his rule.

When Jesus said he would come again, people thought he meant soon. Many didn’t marry or produce further children, in order to be ready. Jesus told them the end was coming soon, he didn’t know when, but he knew it would be in Peter’s lifetime. His people expected to see him again in that time and that place, the same lifetime, as they knew him when among them. They expected the same image, with the scars of manhood, but glowing with the light of the new order. The people waited expectantly and eventually died in the same world they were born to.

Gradually, the story changed. When he comes, at some unknown date, then the world will end, and heaven will rule.

With just a small correction, what if Jesus meant that he would indeed come again – each season, just as Krishna promised he would come from time to time when we needed him most? Jesus said he would always be among us; perhaps there is no need for a second coming because he never left.

The ancients saw their god come again every year because they saw that god was intricately bound with nature. Jesus showed that our nature was intricately bound with God. Jesus completed the story.

April 6, 2009.