The Dawn of Ceaseless Play

Look into the sphere of birthless mind!

Let dawn the enjoyment of ceaseless play!

When free of hope and fear --- that’s the result.

Why speak of birth and death?

Come to the natural, unmodified state!

DRINKING THE MOUNTAIN STREAM SONGS OF

TIBET’S BELOVED SAINT MILAREPA

Before I do anything to screw up my day, I try to sit with myself for a few minutes to simply breathe. Some are sure to ask, “Why must you do that, you were breathing all night and it didn’t seem to matter?”

My answer for that is,“Yes, but I was breathing in my dreams. When I sit with myself my dreams are formed into action. Forming into action my dreams become reality. Becoming reality is a step towards humility. A step towards humility brings my mind to a place where fear is only a phantom and phantoms are for my own entertainment and not at all anything to fear.”

Or, if you like, let Tom Waits sing: "You Are Innocent When You Dream."

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The Politics of Spirituality

I was opinionated on all matters big and small before it happened… it, the big celestial... whack! As a product of the Sixties I had been involved in the anti-war, anti-nuke and anti-anythingthatmoves movements before and after my military enlistment. Even so, my political beliefs have been iconoclastic and have shifted from left to right to left and the middle, depending on how I felt at the moment.

 I do know that there was a certain open-minded contempt for one-sided politicos involved in my attitudes that segued nicely into the spirituality of inclusion I have been embraced by since then. What gives me pause for thought today is that I have become apolitical. I had always contended that to stand in the middle-of-the-road is to leave oneself open to being run over by traffic going both ways! But I have not become apolitical out of indifference or because I am unschooled on the issues. Rather, I have become aware of my own ignorance on matters I was so damned sure about at one time.

This attitude might change in the future but I do hope that my political opinions, whatever they might be, will not be compelled by the temptation to insist that others think as I do.

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Money, Money, Money!

Where money is concerned, I find that I can always use more of it but I have tried to live for the sake of my craft at such a meager subsistence level that the lines delineated to describe poverty would be an admirable goal for me to achieve. One of the side affects of this is to place the importance of money proportional to that of the world’s greediest misers. Today, I have enough income to barely support the pursuit of my bliss but I am cautious that the prudence I have found necessary to adopt now could filter into my behavior in the advent that I ever become more successful. My spiritual condition prepares me to become the master of any sort of prosperity rather than its slave. We try to remember that money is a tool rather than a goal. After all, if I didn’t have a couch I couldn’t help a friend.

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Is it an A.A. Heresy?

Money, power, prestige, sexual relations, and so on are the most obvious obstacles to spiritual growth and can ensnare the very best of us. However, when combined with personal trauma, physical pain and financial deprivation… these things become a hammer and anvil that could have flattened me out. I even considered suicide after countless vain attempts to get sober and I have lost more than one friend in our little Fellowship to suicide… folks who have had long-term sobriety. They were good people… every last one of them. They worked hard on their sobriety and were as committed to their own recovery as I have been.

 In AA there are enough suicides and slips that are testimony to the potency of this toxic brew and it has been a mystery to me why suicide isn’t addressed more directly in the literature of AA. The more I think about the history of our Fellowship the easier it is to understand that the Big Book itself was written before most in our fellowship had five years of sobriety under their belts. I know that this notion could be considered an AA heresy but I believe that much more ought to be written into our literature on this subject because the Big Book, as beautiful and useful as it is, cannot be considered a scripture set in stone that answers all our problems. Rather it ought to best be regarded an ever evolving and growing text-book for recovery. Clean house, work with others and, by all means, get help when the hungry lions of despair are clawing at the door.

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The experience of dissipation towards recovery, and not the theory, this is what I can bring to another alcoholic. How precious is that? What a price I paid to obtain it! More than any Ivy League tuition, a tuition that paid for a graduate degree from the school of hard knocks and my school colors were black and blue… I paid it myself through countless vain attempts to drink like a normal person and did not obtain recovery easily or at the top of my class. It is this experience I bring to the man or woman shut off from life, isolated from it by the horrors of this disease. It is the experience of a man who has looked into the gates of hell and turned away.

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The Burning Bush

I believe it might have been my Catholic rearing that gave me the impression that any legitimate spiritual awakening would be of the Burning Bush variety. That impression brought with it the notion such an event ought to bring with it super-human powers to heal, to levitate or to walk on water.

After abandoning the childish notions of a transformative shot from heaven, I then read into Eastern spirituality (i.e., Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda) a similar take on spiritual abilities. Then I read Buddhist texts. There I read about how a variety of sages experience something translated as “enlightenment”. These too were sudden moments in which the disciple would be transported into a new awareness. I read a story about spiritual competitiveness in which one monk challenged a sensei named Bankei, boasting: “The founder of our sect can perform all sorts of miracles.” 

“I can too,” answered Bankei, “When I feel hungry, I eat, when I feel thirsty, I drink.”

I agree with Bankei because I too can now enjoy life. Isn’t that a miracle?”

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My Beloved is the Young Hart... Song of Soloman

Daily Meds: 1/25/2012

I never was much of a deer hunter. I didn’t necessarily enjoy taking the life of another sentient being. My dad took me with him when I was a boy and, as we hiked out in the autumn air, I reveled at the raw beauty, the fresh air smells of the forest, the feel of a rifle in my hands… the whole scene… walking stealthily, careful of each step, and most of all, sitting at a stand… a place above a known game crossing… breathing the crisp fall air… listening so intensely that my heart-beat seemed so loud it can be heard for miles…. waiting for that moment… that brief flash of a white tail or glimpse of a flank… rifle at ready… aim!

I don’t hunt deer these days at all but the way I meditate is a similar experience to hunting. I sit quietly. What am I waiting for? Why am I so silent? Why am I stilling my mind? What am I focusing on?

The Song of Solomon says it best: “My beloved is like a roe or a young hart; behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the window, showing himself through the lattice…”

Ever elusive is this conscious contact with God to me. It is a hunt that requires quietude. It requires that I am still and alert… an awakened being. Enlightenment is only the beginning of the quest. It is the first step and not the end… the flash of a white tail or glimpse of a flank. It is the awakening

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