-- Albert Einstein
"Compassion and resilience are not, as we might imagine, rarefied human qualities available only to the saintly... In fact, these essential and universally prized human qualities can be solidly cultivated by anyone taking the time to do it."
Really, Dude?
"Yikes. I did it again," I thought.
Moments before, I had proclaimed with utter certainty that MY take on what going on, was absolutely the truth of the matter. I was even quite uppity about it.
Then, quite quickly, Reality asserted itself.
My certitude that my friend was "wrong," and that I was "right," disintegrated in the clear light of a sunny day.
Duh.
Thankfully, my friend was gracious. She didn't skewer me for not immediately noticing the tightness in my chest -- and shutting the fuck up.
Once again, I had missed the opportunity
to pay better attention to the emergence of ego's hard headed clinging
to its limited point of view. I first noticed it in the tightness in my voice. Yet, the momentum of ancient patterns had propelled me into a rather strident declaration of the facts at hand. I immediately reacted to her questioning my take.
Thankfully, the Universe -- and my friend -- were kind. No 15 round knock down, drag out, battle ensued. Within a few moments, I could see quite clearly that I was mistaken. I had to give it up.
Whew.
At this stage of the journey, I actually was grateful for my "mistake." The Universe had pointed out, once again, that who I am at any moment in time can be nothing more, nor anything less, than a bad habit. I've learned to appreciate those moments.
As a 5'2", 78 year old white, working class, cis, male (an Aries, no less), who emerged from a significantly chaotic and traumatic childhood, I can be a real jerk. My supercharged need to be "right" is a deeply conditioned way to drive away the demons of existential angst -- and prove my worth. Yet, these days I can bow to that reality with a grin more readily -- and try to move into the next moment with a bit more Presence.
I blame the Practice for that.
The Real Deal
Over the years, it has become more and more obvious to me that much of human life is dictated by habit. Although it may not feel like it, who we are is not a fixed, free standing, independently existing, reality. My current "point of view" emerges from a cauldron of causes and conditions, many of them beyond my ken -- or control. Experiencing life through what Albert Einstein called an "optical illusion" of consciousness, I, like most of us, have learned to perceive ourselves as fundamentally separate from everything -- and everybody -- else.
Lost in our thoughts and conditioned feelings, driven by a set of deeply ingrained, mostly subconscious and often contradictory beliefs about ourselves and the world, we rarely are Present to the deeper dimension of life. Yet, it is always there. It glows as a vast and silent presence that energizes each and every moment.
Unless we distract ourselves with one of the myriad external amusements readily available, our inner world is most often quite noisy. A jumble of thoughts, emotional energies, and, for some, a restlessness expressed as bodily fidgits, the noise in our heads resonates with the prevailing noise in the world. It dominates our attention. Oblivious to the subtle energies dancing within the infinite space of each and every moment, we don't experience our fundamental unity with all that is, has been, and ever could be. We don't experience our connection to the One Love that is the ever-unfolding source, sustaining energy, and destination of all life. All this is nothing more --and nothing less than -- a bad habit.
Embedded in that habit is the deep disquiet of what some have called existential angst. A restlessness for relief creates layers of addictive patterns to fill the void. Each is a grasping, an attempt to find happiness in all the wrong places. Buddha described this as the cause of all human suffering.
It's no surprise that we creatures of habit find ourselves in tough straits. Each of us is awash in a culture where capitalism, scientific materialism, and a dysfunctional religious dogma have been woven into most every nook and cranny of human life -- for centuries. The individual and collective subconscious of generations of human beings have been increasingly conditioned to create and feed this habitual sense of separation. The pervasive "us vs them"mentality creates our day to day life as the individual struggle it appears to be.
