Unaltered State

Sogyal Rinpoche says in today’s meditation (Glimpse After Glimpse); “If you are in an unaltered state, it is Rigpa.” This tells me that I am led to believe that I am mistaken when I am trying to achieve some sort of altered state when I meditate. We think we need the right guru, the right gong, the right candles, the right incense and the right quiet place to achieve such a state of mind. The reality is that we when we depend on these things we are simply avoiding ourselves as we are. True humility tells me that I must see myself as I am without any of the subterfuges of ego and any meditation that takes me out of this awareness is contrary to any form of enlightenment and thus puts a barrier between me and you. Love is hard enough to understand and spiritual materialism is simply another wall that separates us. Even Bill W.  says; in his essay on Love (first published in the Grapevine’s January 1958 issue and can be found in The Best of Bill, p. 55); “There wasn’t a chance of making the outgoing love of Saint Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away…. I found that I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatsoever…” We can erroneously substitute ashrams, churches or whatever causes me to believe I am separate, superior or inferior from/to others.

This is the Saint Francis Prayer Bill W. is referring to: 

"Lord, make me a channel of thy peace --- that where there is hatred, I may bring love --- that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness --- that where there is discord, I may bring harmony --- that where there is doubt, I may bring faith --- that where there is dispair, I may bring hope --- that where there are shadows, I may bring light --- that where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted --- to understand than to be understood --- to love than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen."

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Junior Seau

Rest in Peace

There are far too many suicides in the recovery community because of unnecessary mea culpas… pounding of our chests... for this or that failure to meet standards imposed on us by others… or worse, ourselves… along these lines. Chronic depression requires the kind of help the medical community provides. It is not to be fooled with and I believe I make a grave mistake and further driving it home when I use the hammer of moral judgment. To determine that I am somehow failing to be the best person I can be might work for milder conditions but chronic depression is a beast that thrives on guilt… guilt compelled by our sense of failing this or that standard. 

A wildly wonderful pro-football player (Junior Seau) was buried last week because, some suspect, of the depression he suffered due to a history of head injuries in playing his sport. These tragedies have physiological causes that can be aided by a healthy spiritual practice but the chronic condition can only be prolonged  without some serious medical assistance. Having survived more than one serious concussion (and, in my experience, there is no such thing as a mild concussion) I can attest to the fact that depression is more a physical condition to be treated than it is a spiritual one.

So please, if you are reading this blog and feel as though you are failing... especially if you have had serious concussion or  chemical addictions...  perhaps you have returned from combat in Iraq or Afghanistan and find no friends or loved ones who understand... you have a hard time getting out of bed... you have no compelling reason to live and everything you try seems futile... you see no light at the end of the tunnel... please seek spiritual and professional medical help. A phone call to a suicide help line can be the first step out of the darkness. Just make sure you avoid moral condemnation and the kind of supposed help that tells you that you are doing something wrong. There are others who have suffered as you are suffering now and have come out on the other side. We are here to help you.

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Sometimes It is This Easy

Depression stalks most of us at one time or another. It lurks in wait as my mind takes me around corners into blind alleys of doubt and despair. It is easy to accept it’s stranglehold on my consciousness until I am no longer of much use to anyone (including myself) and actually begin to enjoy it. I can even become irate at the suggestion I get off my ass and do something about it while I wallow in bitterness and contempt for myself and those who truly love me. In my case, I can seemingly be fulfilled in every way… with my bills paid; with a loving partner; living in a beautiful city; having good friends; giving a helping hand to those who need it… I can be quite successful in hiding my feelings and I can “put on a happy face”… but still it is there. What then can I do?

            The answer to my dilemma isn’t simple: there are medications and therapies and the help of sharing these feelings with my spiritual guide. Yet, I have found… along with an honest inventory… I can ask the Heart of Compassion for help and trust that help will come. This morning I felt like avoiding my meditation but it is a habit I have developed that has become automatic. Still, I approached my cushion, as though I was being executed... taken to the chopping block; before I sat, I simply made a quiet and honest request: “Please help me. I don’t want to do this.”

 Regardless, I began my usual preparations, a calm came over me and love for that beautiful creative force arose in my heart once more. It was in this place that my mind was quieted and was lifted from the disease of alcoholism. It was this source that has on countless times called me to move with compassion for myself as well as for others. It is this source that I abide in when all else fails.

Sometimes it is this easy.

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Let Them Ripen

Can I sit for a minute and pause without reflection? Is there a quiet place in a garden; a spot in the workshop; a minute or two in the kitchen nook; a bath tub; sauna or perhaps the patio over a cup of Java or tea where I can simply listen? Listen to the pulse of my heart and watch my breathing; listen to the waves on a beach or the wind through the trees in the forest? Can I turn off the cell phone; close the laptop; take a few breaths; sit in loose clothing or a robe and allow myself to appreciate the touch of water or air around my body? Can I sit quietly in an auditorium, a church or temple and listen to the lecture or sermon without an inner commentary or debate? Can I sit with a friend that is troubled and listen without offering opinion or advice? If I can do any one of these things, I can meditate. Sure, anyone can, and does, do at least one of these things throughout one part of the day, week or month. What I find essential is the regular practice of meditation. To do so daily changes everything about how I perceive the world. It is the starting point of my day and the closing minutes of my evenings. One of the first fruits of meditation is emotional balance… now, to let them ripen.

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Instrument of Peace

It takes some reflection and inventory to see that most of what I do and the causes I embrace arise from adolescent rebellion. The majority of my experience with life had to do with convincing myself that I believed the bullshit authorities were trying to feed me. After that, when I took on the mantel of a rebel, I had to convince others that I believed in what they believed even though my van sported the bumper-sticker: “Question Authority”. In actuality, I was angry at the world for not giving me what I thought I earned and my tactic was, if I couldn’t play their reindeer games, I would side with my fellow mutant reindeer.

I have not given up a healthy distrust for authority but I have taken another tack on it. It doesn’t take much vision to understand, as expressed in the prayer of Saint Frances: my relationship with others depends on harmony trumping discord; love over hatred; forgiveness over the wrongs others commit against me; truth over error, hope over the shadows cast by doubt; and light where there is sadness. As I try to comfort rather than to be comforted; to understand rather than to be understood; to love than to be loved; discovery of Self through self-forgetting; and forgiving… forgiving…forgiving; and, most of all, to be kind to myself; I grow.

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The Rock 'n' Roll of the Spheres

I will never forget the many childhood experiences I had while attending Sunday morning Catholic High Mass. In those days, before Vatican II, they didn’t have those annoying and preachy folk masses in English. You didn’t turn with superficial greetings of your neighbors in the pew or chat in the presence of the Host enshrined in the altar. And the words were in Latin so, as an extra bonus, I barely knew their meaning. But, as I knelt or sat in silence, I was able to hear in the resonance of it a similar experience I later heard it in a Bach Fugue, Beethoven’s Fifth or Chopin Etude. The visuals of the almost perfect mathematics of a cathedral or the random splatterings of paint on a Jackson Pollack canvas, also evoke the feeling the evolutionary forces towards consciousness first described by Darwin, or equations of Einstein (though I am almost entirely ignorant of mathematics), that there is order to the universe I am a minutely humble but vital participant of. This glorious dance of creation, as horrific as it appears to be; the collisions of gravitational forces; the explosion of stars; the black-holes in the center of every one of the billions of galaxies (including our own); that once depressed me is now seen in concert with the compassion of Christ, the Buddha and the saints of all faiths. It is the rhythms… the pulse of the backbeat to the music… the Rock ‘n’ Roll… of the spheres that I can now dance to and with the music… the order of chaos.

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A Sense of Humor = Humility

I just heard of a study reported by the Wall Street Journal today about a study by Harvard University neuroscientists:

 Humans get as much pleasure from bragging as they do from food or money, says the Wall Street Journal this morning. A new study has found that we spend 40 percent of our everyday speech telling people about….ourselves, and how we think and feel. Researchers say study participants were even willing to give up the prospect of making more money for the opportunity to talk about themselves some more.

My first reflex was to feel smug and decry the self-centeredness of the subject before I realized the divinely inspired genius and  humor of AA. Just  putting a bunch of alcoholics in a room talking about our selves, sometimes bragging, exaggerating and even lying, in order to approach the honesty and humility it takes to be rid of our self-deception and self-obsession, is a Holy Hoot.

A healthy sense of humor is one of the first fruits of humility and a sign the process of recovery has begun.

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