A Great Disorder

A. A violent order is a disorder; and

B. A great disorder is an order. These

Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)

Wallace Stevens, “Connoisseur of Chaos “

 

My expectations explode against hard reality.

I end up not where I am supposed to be.

Nothing unfolds according to plan.

Just once, could things happen as they are supposed to happen?  Just once, could what I seek come my way as I imagined?

In Zen we say that all things exist in disorder but against a background of perfect harmony.  I have tried in so many ways to see and feel that harmony.  I have even pretended to grasp it.  But I don’t.  I feel no order or harmony- just swirling and cruel chaos.

Where is this harmony?  How can it be mine?

All this grief and questioning and doubt, I now understand, arise from one simple mistake.  I keep supposing that I can control what will come.  I imagine that when I do X today, then Y will happen tomorrow.  I seek to impose order upon the disorder.  And when I fail, as I must, I rage against it all.

The harmony, I know, is right there.  Waiting for me.  The key to that ecstatic existence is right here.  Simple acceptance.  Undiluted, sure, steady acceptance of all that is and all that I am.

I know these things.  And I know that I am moving closer and closer to that way of being.  Substituting that simple truth for that simple mistake.  To be purged of rage, filled with gratitude and acceptance.

Closer and closer.

The Weight

Sitting on the back porch, feeling the warm sun filtered through the pines.  I am a stroll away from that great source of peace, the ocean.  My precious dog, Sammie, is dozing at my feet.  I know I’m blessed.  And still.

It’s hard to describe.  This feeling that keeps me away.  Like a drug that leaves me numb and stalled and lost.

These past weeks I could not bear to look at the blog.  Thinking of those with whom I felt a connection here, I imagined that they had left me- or worse yet, that they had come by and in my silence I had let them down.  So I just stayed away.

But today, awash in the terrible sadness that I just can’t shake, I decided to stop waiting for the strength to return.  To stop waiting for that moment when I might again write of peace and gratitude.  Just come back in all your shakiness and doubt and then go from there, I thought.

So here I am.

Too Much

What are the words that might capture the brilliance of this morning?  If they exist, who could find them?

I experience first the air.  Crisp air that fills my body with its energy as I breathe it in.

The white heavy dew lying across the fields.  The trees, stark and strong against the sky, standing mostly denuded but with a few clinging leaves that the emerging sun lights up like golden lanterns.

Closing my eyes, I feel the stillness, the quiet- and then a light wind across my face.

And that sky.  A blue that the greatest artists could never recreate.  Existing above and around me, going on and on, with a beauty that I cannot possibly describe.

In this place and in this moment, I think- who could doubt the magic and wonder of existence?  What gift greater than just to be here, now?

But then for a moment, it feels like too much, more than I can bear.  So I breathe- I return to myself- and I know once again.

Not too much.  It is all just right.

 

What I’m Doing

Busy day, again.  If I start to catalog my tasks and responsibilities, if I allow my busy mind full rein, it all comes crashing in. Too much to do, too little time.

I can feel it starting to hum.  That anxiety machine up there.

So here’s what I’m doing.

First, I’m turning the stereo to full throttle. Driving pop music.

And then I’m taking my dog for a long, long walk in the woods.

After that, we’ll see.

That’s what I’m doing.

Only Love

I used to believe that love was a form of relationship.  I love you; you love me.  That’s our deal.

I would diligently monitor my love relationships.  Feeling hurt or wronged, I would ask- was that an act of someone who loves me?  If she loves me, how can she not see my needs?

Or I would turn this judgment on myself.   Why have I been filled with anger towards her?  Why have I been so cold and distant?

When the ledger got out of balance- and it always did- I called the deal into question.  Does she really love me? Enough?  Or, looking inward, I’d ask whether my conduct suggested the absence of love?  And in either case, I doubted my commitment.  Perhaps time to back out of the deal, I’d think.

All, all, wrong.

Love, as I now seek to live it, is not a relationship or a deal.  There is no ledger.  Love is not earned or maintained.  Love exists in my simple, full, and caring acceptance of the other person.  It resides within me.  It doesn’t depend on what you do, or fail to do.

If she is angry, I love her in her anger.  If she is depressed, I love her in her depression.  If she hurts me, I love her in her very assault.

This is the love that I seek to embody.  I often, maybe most always, fall short.  Sometimes hideously short.  But now I know.

Seeking to love others in this way, I also know that I must begin with myself.  Suspend self-judgment.  Never wish to have done this or that.  Cherish who I am.  Only from that foundation can this sacred and abiding love for others come.

Just love.  Only love.

 

Resistance

I feel the horrific rush of self-judgment.   You dropped the ball again and now look where you are?  Buried and lost.

And then I think- No, this is all wrong.  Don’t look back.  That’s done and gone.   I take a breath.  I feel the calm.  It’s okay now, all okay.

But soon the dark feelings return.  So again, I breathe.  I repeat the mantra- nothing but here and now, no looking back, no judgment.  Calm returns.

This pattern repeats- distress, then calm- over and over.  An endless, soul-crushing loop.

The truth is that we never beat back our demons.  So long as we consciously resist the negative feelings, we will never find real and enduring peace.

I cannot think my way out of my unsteadiness and self-loathing.  Nor is it simply a matter of belief in some external set of principles.  I could read the Tao each moment for the rest of my life and still not escape this terrible loop.

I must return to the place where I belong.  I will not get there armed with a club and a conscious striving.  I will not get there at all.  It is not a destination or an achievement.  I will just be there.  I will just become who I am.

Resistance is never the way.  Simply to live acceptance, love, and forgiveness is the path- the only way home.

My Watch

I sit in the diner waiting for my good friend, Dan.  I look down at my wrist and see the watch.  It’s a vintage Omega, from the 1960’s.  Susan, my treasured friend, gave it to me.  It was her father’s watch.

I look at the watch and think of Susan, and her father.  I think of my children, imagining that someday one of them will wear the watch.  I recall my father who, like the man who wore this watch before me, was a fisherman.  I imagine the early mornings on the water with my father, picturing the way his wrist snapped as he cast his line.  And my imagining just spins out from there.

In Buddhism we say that we die, and we don’t die.  That which exists cannot become non-existent, we are taught.

Like all great wisdom, it’s simple, enduring, and true.  In the things that we do, in the way that we exist in the world, we set in motion ripples of feeling and thought that collide and connect with other ripples and become part of the same cosmic field that Buddha walked.

We change the world, each of us, by our presence.  And when we die, when our bodies return to dust, even that dust may enrich the soil, feed a living thing.

On and on.

We cannot possibly trace all the interconnected ripples that bring us to where we are.  But we surely feel the presence of those who are with us now- and those who came before.

A half century ago a man walked into a store and bought himself a brand new Omega.   And here I am, in this diner, waiting for my friend.

The magic of life.

Effortless

I grew up with the surf and ocean as part of my life.  My mother used to say that the first day of each summer season, I would always run screaming directly into the surf- full sprint- undiluted joy.  I still feel that way about the ocean.

In my adult life, it is my sanctuary.  A place of peace, a spiritual place.

I now understand that the ocean is also a great teacher.

When you are trying to paddle out against a strong surf, you soon discover that you can’t just bust through the big waves.  You must learn to maneuver yourself and your board to create the least possible resistance to the wave and allow it to wash over you.  Even the strongest surfer cannot bend the wave to his will.

And when the surf presents itself like a roiling cauldron, as on the eve of a great storm, and you go out without the board, you must give yourself over to the surf.  You swim and struggle to get out but once in the midst of the raging surf, you’re best off just letting go.  Letting the crashing and ricocheting waves bounce you around, push you under, and have their way.

The ocean is a mighty thing.  When it rises up, resistance gets you nowhere.  But letting go, accepting its power, can bring moments of great bliss.

This is true in life- everywhere, always.  We do not achieve our moments of transcendent bliss by wrenching them out of the cauldron of our busy lives.  Effort, thrashing about, resistance- not the path.  Those blissful moments come to us only when we are open to the wonder and energy that surrounds us.

So I try to live the lesson the surf has taught me.

It’s effortless.

Not Done

I have been away.  Not in the ordinary sense.  Away as in disconnected from my sense of self.  Lost.

Last night was the worst.  I awoke in the dark with a rock sure sense of my unworthiness.  This blog, this book idea, this whole thing- all a big hoax.  I had nothing to say, really.  What was the point of it all? I composed in my head the final post, called it “Done.”   Thinking the pain would subside once I embraced my unworthiness.

Somehow I returned to sleep and awoke this morning feeling different.  Like a fever had broken.  The doubt and fear weren’t washed away but I thought- when the darkness has run its course, it will go.  You will find the strength again and carry on.

Struggle, I now understand, comes to me in two ways.  When great loss comes, or when my busy lethal mind beckons, I feel the battle rise.  But I am aware and ready.  I know that I will falter.  But I also know who I am.  This is good struggle.

But when I lose my sense of self, it’s different.  Nothing but the demons of anxiety and self-loathing battling against my blunt desire to be free of those horrors, a desire for relief in any form, at any cost.  In this battle, no peace can exist for me- only numbness.

Before the fever broke this morning, I was in the pit of bad struggle.  Fighting a battle that I could never win as I wasn’t really there.

Good struggle, even in its most daunting moments, is a great blessing.  A reminder that we are here- fully conscious of our self- seeking that way of being that is the great treasure.  A struggle that never ends and never should.

Unsteady

I sometimes feel like a fraud in this work.  Peace, strength, presence.  Who am I to speak of such things?

These past few days have been like that.

I’m going through a period of what I call feeing “unsteady.”  Like walking across an icy sidewalk in dress shoes.  Having to consciously hold on to my balance.

The thing about feeling unsteady is not so much the risk of falling.  Nor is the pain really in the fall itself.  The great cost of the feeling is that so long as I am feeling unsteady, I cannot be at peace.

I say to myself- you’re okay, just breath.  And I pretend that the calm this induces is peace.

There are long stretches where I’m not consciously anxious or bereft, where I’m holding myself together.  And I think that in this effort I have found peace.

But all that time where I am watching where I step, where I project calm and composure, where from the outside all looks well, I am not well, really.  All that conscious effort blocks any hope of real peace.

And so as these unsteady days roll on, I sometimes wonder what I am doing writing about peace and strength.  Someone who lives the lessons with such inconsistency.

I have no pat answer to this.  But I do believe that anyone who seeks self-awareness and to live an authentic life will struggle.  And I know that among my great teachers have been those who struggle, who battle their demons with awareness and honesty.

So I’ll just have to feel unsteady until it passes.  Then I’ll regain peace, the true peace that is natural and effortless, not falsely manufactured, just lived.

Struggle, peace, struggle, peace   My life from here forward, I imagine.  But a real life, not a fraudulent one.