Jealousy is a fiery redhead with intense green eyes.
Interesting thing about her is that most of the time she behaves
herself. But when she's bad, she's really BAD. I can't remember ever
inviting her in for tea, but somehow I end up entertaining her now and
then. She hangs out with a rotten crowd, Fear, Anger, Insecurity and Envy. All of which I wish would just move out of town, but what to do? When I ignore her, she and Anger just get louder. When I entertain her, she brings her friends Fear and Insecurity, and they talk so incessantly that they begin to sound like voices coming from my own head. Her friend, Envy,
is just bad news. I locked him out once, and he just replaced the door
with a new lock, one in which he owned the key. I found the thing to do
when this group of shady characters shows up is to invite them, but I
make sure I have some of my friends with me. Courage and Truth are the first I call. They have a way of giving Jealousy a reality check that quiets her down. Anger and Envy just leave when Love and Compassion show up. It takes all kinds. It's better to make friends with your demons, resisting them only puffs up their egos. Acceptance taught me this.
Today
is not a good day to fall apart. My world seems to be in chaos. The
panic button is flashing red. My situation seems to be quite delicate,
as if my "House of Cards" could be blown away at any moment. This is no
time to make a wrong move, a poor decision or to skip a beat. Just when
I need to have all my wits about me, to conjure up all my magical
powers and clever charms, I seem to be dull,
lacking confidence and certainly far from charming. I seem to be
hanging on by a thread that is on the verge of breaking, surely to drop
me down into the pits of hell, then I remember. I have been there
before, so what's the harm in one more visit?
One of my
favorite lines is from a Talking Head's song... "Heaven is a place where
nothing ever happens." Perhaps that makes hell the place where
everything happens? Hell is a place the mind moves through. Heaven is a
place the mind rests in. My mind, by it's very nature, is restless and
often uncontrollable. I ask myself, "If I were able to control my mind,
who is this that would do this controlling?" I have never come up with a
satisfying answer.
What if the mind were given the freedom to
be restless? How long could it be restless before it sought rest on it's
own out of sheer exhaustion or perhaps even boredom? The truth is the
mind cannot be controlled. It can only be attracted and distracted,
attached and not attached. We often don't realize we are in heaven when
we are there, because it is so non-eventful our mind doesn't bother to
show up. A restful mind is one that has been engaged in positive ways. A
restless mind is one that has been engaged in negative ways. If we find
ourselves hanging on by that last thread, it's a sign we have already
fallen apart. We might as well let go of it, and watch the cards fall.
All of our wrong moves, poor decisions and missed beats have already
happened. We are simply experiencing the results of our past actions.
The mind cannot rest in hell. How long it's journey through it is
depends on how tightly we are clinging to the past, how fearful we are
of the future and how content we are with nothingness. All good minds go
to heaven.
I am reminded this morning to play good games. I
don't know how this reminder came to me anymore than I know who controls
my mind. My mind does not want to sit, so I will watch it dance it's
drama out until it wears weary from it. I suppose I will hold onto this
last thread until it breaks, which it will. They always do. I suppose I
will fall down into the pits of hell, and then I will crawl, climb or
claw out. I always do. I suppose my "House of Cards" will be blown down,
and again I will rebuild. I always do. History repeats itself, because
the mind repeats itself.
The mind creates stories and then
lives them out. Play good games and tell good stories, but don't fool
yourself. Hanging onto to heaven while you are in hell, will only keep
you in limbo. A free fall down into the fiery pits will catapult you out
faster than you can say "Abracadabra." Accept your existence. You
really have no other choice. Think good thoughts. Say good things, and
do good deeds. And when you can't, accept your defeat, then go ahead and
fall apart. All of God's angles will put you back together again. They
always do.
The philosophy of Non-doing can be a tricky
one. It is enticing because in one sense it gets us off the hook, as it
means if there is no doer, there is no one there to be held accountable
for anything. It means that life is not our responsibility
and therefore, nothing to feel guilty about. It means that there is a
Divine Order that runs the show and that all is taken care of within
that scheme. There is nothing we need to do, and we are free to just be.
The slippery slope of truly understanding the philosophy of
Non-doing and ultimately realizing it, begins with the mind. The mind
seems to be the problem. As seductive as sounds to be free of the
feelings or responsibility, guilt and shame, it is just not that easy.
It is dangerous to assume we are not responsible for anything when we
still feel a solid doer present. Non-doing is never an excuse for acting
out of alignment with Divine Order. To use Non-doing as an excuse for
our actions as result of fear, jealously and greed only shows our
investment in doership. A mind that refuses to accept it experiences
fear, jealously and greed is a mind that cannot accept it is not the
doer.
When life is beautiful it easy to accept Divine Order but
when life is ugly, we cannot understand how Divine Order can be so
cruel. There is suffering and rest assured, we will experience it. It is
impossible for the mind to fully grasp the mystery of Divine Order, and
even more impossible for the mind to believe it is not the doer. It's
not just you. No one wants to suffer, and everyone wants to be happy.
Our suffering and unhappiness is not God's fault. It is the result of
our unmindful, unconscious living... yours, mine and theirs.
The realization of
Non-doing happens through observing the mind do what it does, not
controlling the mind doing what it does. Any controlling going on is
going on in the mind, not by Divine Order. In becoming more conscious of
the antics of our mind, our emotional body, our personality, our ego,
we begin to notice how fickle and fictitious it actually is. When we
catch how ridiculous we are, how fearful we are, how jealousy and greedy
we are, we don't want to accept that is who we are. So, we either make
up a story of an image that is more acceptable to us, or we realize that
just can't be who we are. When we no longer believe the mind, we
collide with truth of our self.
I have seen many a "non-doer",
including myself, throw the philosophy out the window when the going
gets tough, and start grasping for control trying to uphold the house of cards we've built. It is in these times of
suffering, when we are absorbed in our fear or utterly fed up and
disillusioned with life, that we are given the opportunity to break the
mind's clutching to a reality that does not exist.
It is in
this breakdown, we accept the mind, the ego, the individual "I" in all
it's mucked-up-ness... in all it's insanity, with all it's fears,
jealousies and greediness. It may or may not happen over night. It may
or may not happen even in this lifetime, but eventually we realize the
truth. Eventually, the mind merges into the background of existence.
Eventually, we are free.
May we always remember... "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."
Just
because we have a "truthful" feeling, it doesn't mean that is who we
truthfully are. Mostly we are imposters, and our feelings can't be
trusted. We pose as this and pose as that in search of who we really
are. Unfortunately, we believe our feelings, and our feelings constantly
change. My angry self is not the "real" me; however if I am in denial
of my anger, my greed, my jealously, my pain, I can never get past it
and my awareness of my angry self grows.
The ego is a fictional
character, but it is often who we believe our self to be. It is quite
difficult to get handle on who this character is, as we are constantly
creating and recreating this personality based on an image we would like
to project. It is our belief in this fictitious character that feeds it
and wears the grooves of our psychic patterning. Beliefs are fueled by
our emotions. The stronger the emotion, the more rigid the belief. Our
emotions are like a computer program and it's language is our
conditioning.
When we can recognize our patterning, we can go
beyond our conditioned responses. To go beyond our conditioning, we
must accept that our perceptions may need to be corrected. We are not
who we see ourselves to be. We are who we know ourselves to be. We do
not have to believe anything about ourselves to be. If we are trying to
convince anyone that we are anything, then we can rest assured we are
still trying to convince our self. Believing does not lead to
conviction. Believing is a feeling. Acceptance leads to conviction. When
we are convinced that all we will ever be, we already are right here,
right now... we are free.
Truth is simple; however it is not so simple
to live it. It is the immaturity of a soul that creates complex
interpretations of truth in efforts to maintain it's individual
interpretations. In other words, to keep fooling ourselves by making
up our own version. It is life that teaches the soul and with it's
teaching, the soul matures. It not that we need to learn anything that
we don't already know. It is that we need to uncover the truth already
within us that has been veiled by our layers of conditioned patterns and
fears. Living the truth of who we are takes a courage beyond the normal
human tendency and a faith unfathomable by a normal mind. But what is
normal? What is madness? A life truly lived is beyond the limits of
normal. Be madly, passionately fearless. Cultivate irrational, insane
faith. Go beyond the limits. Live juicy.
