Click here for Ambassador Watch
Oops….
Where CAN One Go From Here?
I have amended the title of Where Does One Go From
Here? to Where CAN One Go From
Here? simply because going anywhere is a choice
and not something one can dictate to others.
After a sincere observation that the original title sounded
suspiciously like a manipulative WCG booklet, I thought
perhaps to actually provide a meaningful perspective on where
one might go from here. I will resist the temptation to
rename this effort….Just What Do You
Mean…Can?
I’d like to up the ante and change
from merely reflecting on this topic to noting how life
really seems to work. I refer once again to what, for
me, has been a perspective that is not just another way to
be, but THE way to be FOR ME in processing the results
of my own choices in religion and
group-think.
First of all there is a vast difference
between being "happy" and finding a genuine inner peace
that "passes all understanding" to quote the
book. Happiness is often confused for inner
peace. The two are not the same. One can be
having a miserable experience and still be at the core "at
peace." You can be suffering through the loss of
a loved one, career, belief or be in a health crisis an still
have an inner peace. When you meet these unusual
people, you remember them. The bottom line is tied
directly to how one graciously accepts what is as
opposed to demanding life be some other way for happiness to
be. Happiness is that shallow and temporary fix
one gets from stuff, position and comfort, while peace is
that deep ability to not define the real self by such elusive
qualities. Inner peace is the ability to say "is that
so" when life does what it does and defeat the drama queen in
all of us with presence.
I have a saying "It’s not good,
it’s not bad….it just is" on the wall in my workspace and
many clients comment on it. They like it even thought
they can’t quite say why they like it. I think
the reason is that down deep, we all know that one can’t
judge how something works out no matter how it seems at the
moment.
A client knocked it off the wall
accidentally and cracked the glass. She brought it out
to me in tears and said she was so very sorry. I said
read it……I told her she made it even more perfect a truth
than before by breaking the glass. I thanked her for
how good the crack looked going all the way through the
saying. She smiled and said…"I get it…but Dennis, you
ain’t right." I hung it back up and now clients think
the crack was deliberate for effect.
Who’s to say what is good or
bad? So often what seems so good turns out to make a
miserable experience. What seems so bad turns
into the greatest teacher and opportunity. Doors
open to better ways of being or an opportunity that
never would have come any other way. Bad stomach cramps
and a morning in the bathroom after an anniversary
dinner the night before, gone bad, did , in fact,
keep one business man from making it into work exactly
where the first plane hit on 9/11. For him what’s bad
certainly was good.
A "bad" experience can force one
to let go of illusions, falsehoods and wrong concepts that
will not serve one’s life experience. A "bad"
experience can cause one to become more real, more humble,
more compassionate and to possess an understanding . A
bad experience, when viewed from the ego which is merely the
mind’s false sense of the self can keep one frozen in time,
bitter, angry and consumed with changing the unchangeable
past. The ego is that unconscious and running mind that
views itself as unique and separate from everything and
everyone else. The ego views everyone and everything as
a potential threat to itself and can only preserve itself
with control, power, greed and attack. Ego runs and
ruins organizations and sends governments off to commit
genocide on those perceived as "them." All conflict is
a battle of egos, and the need to be right. Give up the
need to be right and you will have arrived at a state few
attain to.
Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now
sums it up nicely
"When two or more egos come together , drama of some
kind or another ensues. But even if you live
totally alone, you still create your own drama.
When you feel sorry for yourself, that’s drama.
When you feel guilty or anxious , that’s drama.
When you let the past or future obscure the
present, you are creating ….the stuff of
which drama is made. Whenever you are not
honoring the present moment by allowing it to be, you
are creating drama.
"Most people are in love with
their particular life drama. Their story IS their
particular life drama…. When you live with complete
acceptance of what is, that is the end of all
drama in your life. …. YOU CANNOT HAVE AN
ARGUMENT WITH A FULLY CONSCIOUS PERSON."
The Power of Now
It has been my own experience that some need their drama to
define themselves. I remember well one who was railing
to me against a minister that had hurt them deeply
in life. I was appalled and ashamed at what she
said he had said to her. She was in her 80’s and I could not
imagine who among my peers in WCG would be so cruel and
stupid…well I could actually.. But she needed help with
this. After listening for 30 minutes I finally asked
who this minister was and when did this happen. She
screamed at me…"Rev. Butler and it was August 12th,
1933!" It was 1978 or so when she came to
me. Even in the ignorance of my mere 27 years I
remember thinking "yikes." Butler was long dead,
yet he lived.
I certainly have played that game
and sometimes still do, though less and less. I won’t
let the past define me or others define me based on their
perceptions of who or what I was as a minister in WCG.
Perhaps not letting them is too optimistic. I should
say, I accept it as something they need to do but not
something I need to buy into and take personally.
Every honest human being knows themselves better than any
other can possibly imagine and get it more correct than
others can with fleeting judgments or invoking their own
accumulated pain to define others.
It is drama that freezes one
in place spinning hurts and pain of the past in ways
that merely lead to more spinning and pain in the
present. The spinning and pain accumulate like so much
stuff in the attic. It is the energy behind
lives. It takes time and energy in the present to keep
that of the past going. It is the false belief
that if we don’t keep the past in mind and alive,
something will be left undone or someone
unpunished. It is what the ego needs for
identity.
I remember a first time visit to a
members mobile home where I found my mind going
blank. It seems these people could
not physically throw out anything including the garbage and
so we sat at a small table with white garbage bags filled and
piled from floor to ceiling, front to back, side to side.
What did not fit in the home was under the home outside and
packed all around this place where these two people
lived. It was an amazing experience and in
hindsight, a reflection of the baggage this man had
crowding his mind. His home was a stark reflection of
his inability to let go. His past garbage was his
current décor. Of course he was mentally ill, but I
would not have known then how to define it or perhaps
recognize this outward manifestation of how the man
thought. I might have shook my head then but now I see
how we all have the potential to lose site of the life
garbage and pain body we have stacked so neatly where we now
are endeavoring to live. This man had literally tuned out
what he was doing and it all seemed quite normal to him
now. There was no sane reason for this man to do this
physically, and there is no sane reason for anyone to do this
emotionally. You’ll get sick or at best not have
much room to maneuver.
This is not to say there is not a
processing time of months or even some years of events past,
but I am not speaking of that. Even an animal has to
flap and shake itself off after a painful or tense situation
to drain off the excess energy raised in the fray. But
it is relatively short lived and animals have the
wonderful ability to bring themselves back into the
present.
I am speaking of creating an
identity for oneself based on past pain. Take
away the drama and the ego would not know exactly who
it is anymore. It would have to get out of the
past, which contains all the stories and drama that dictate
the present , or resist projecting themselves into the future
where fears can be imagined and cultivated, to be present and
at peace. But then again, the ego lives in the pain of
the past to define itself. The ego, the false self does
everything it can to avoid the present, which is the only
real thing any of us have to work with. We all know of
people who left without their pain, illnesses, negativity,
complaints and woe would probably have to go out and find a
new batch or risk having to be likeable…and present.
Simply put, the sum total of all
painful experiences, if cultivated and held on to into
the present can ruin you. The mind and body were never
meant to store psychological time, that is the sum total of
painful experiences kept alive by the unconscious,
running mind in the present. There is a vast difference
between one’s life and one’s life situation.
"I have lived with several Zen
Masters…..all of them cats."
A "good" experience, on the other hand.,
can keep one way too comfortable, aloof and unreal.
Sometimes we say "I feel so dis-illusioned." What’s
wrong with that? Sure, it’s painful but who wants to be
illusioned? We should thank someone when our illusions
are exposed. Easy to say, I know. I’m still
trying to get over some of the illusions I had about the
Bible itself and the implications of such illusions.
Illusions are false beliefs about ideas and ways to
be. Delusional is when one has false beliefs
about themselves which do not stand up to
reality.
Hot button words those! Usually we
say this when someone has pretty much pushed our last button
or we are sending out a warning that we have had
enough. It’s a way of saying that someone is bleeding
their pessimism, anger or past pain all over and it
needs to stop. It is a way to say "you are ruining my
day, my moment and my desire to be around you much
longer." It’s another way of dividing people up
into types. It’s also a way to live one’s entire
life.
All inner resistance is
experienced as negativity in one form or another.
All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two
words are almost synonymous. Negativity ranges
from irritation or impatience, to fierce anger, from a
depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal
despair. Sometimes the resistance triggers the
emotional pain-body, in which case even a minor
situation may produce intense negativity, such as
anger, depression or deep grief. The
ego believes that through negativity it can manipulate
reality and get what it wants.
Once you have identified with some
form of negativity, YOU DO NOT WANT TO LET IT GO and on
some deep level, you do not want positive change.
It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or
hard-done- by person. You will then ignore, deny
or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a
common phenomenon. IT IS ALSO INSANE.
Tolle goes on to notice that most
neurotic behavior seen in animals seems to afflict only those
animals that live in close contact with humans and so link
into the human mind and this insanity. Be careful who
you hang with!
The simple fact is and if you are
screaming "simple my ass!", that’s the ego making every
effort to defend and preserve itself. Acceptance
of what is provides the way out of pain. All
resistance is some kind of non acceptance and that is a
bottom line reality in how life really works. Is
it easy? Yes….just accept what is. Stay
present and not needing the pain of the past to define you or
the fear of the future to justify you. Or
No…it is not easy and it won’t be if one is left with only
the false ego self running the show. The ego knows only
one tune…"I will survive" even if you don’t.
We have ALL had quite an experience with
religion and religious types whether sincere or supremely
manipulative. All churches contain all types, from
Pastors to members, from founders to
administrators. If you know where to look, you’ll
find both Old and New Testament accounts full of
drama queens, liars and my-way-or-the-highway
leadership. Even as a kid I wondered why the
personalities of the Bible were so full of bluster and
threats. Why were individual lives so cheap and power
over others so evident. Even God, by his own
admission was jealous, angry and insecure to the point of
needing absolute control over people and worship.
Come on, only human ego could get a rip out of twenty four of
your best friends singing "Holy, Holy, Holy" to you day and
night forever! And then not for very long I would
suspect before we had to at least change the
tune. Ego is also easily bored.
Needing to be worshipped makes me
nervous.
The Power of Now IS the peace that
passes all understanding. Ego will argue this to it’s
last breath because ego can’t live in the present.
That’s too real and genuine. It has to derive it’s
power from the painful past or the fearful future. The
Lion lying down with the Lamb is another way of saying there
is another reality here that can work.
Being enlightened or being conscious and
present, is not some new age doubletalk. Jesus was
enlightened by any standard. It simply means to be to
be made lighter. At risk of angering the ego, lighten
up. When you understand the terms, a mind , or that
spinning thought factory for pain, anger and resentment is a
terrible thing... waste it. If it is filled with
negativity and drama... waste it. Get out of the
unchangeable past and the unknowable future. Buddhism
says that sometimes there is nothing left in life to do but
have a good laugh. If you just said in your mind "that’s
stupid" , it was your ego defending and wanting to justify
itself.
Surrender is the simple but
profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the
flow of life. The only place where you can experience
the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to
accept the present moment unconditionally and without
reservation…..It is to relinquish inner resistance to
what is…It is precisely at those times that surrender needs
to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and
sorrow from your life. Acceptance of what is
immediately frees you from mind identification and thus
reconnects you with Being. Resistance is
the mind….Surrender is the most important thing you can
do to bring out positive change. Any action you take is
secondary. No truly positive action can arrive
out of an un-surrendered state of consciousness.
Perhaps, if we allow this dark night to
pass and learn to be present in now, the sun can
come up again on a more conscious and en-lightened
self.