Lighten Up -- Again!

 

"Get your mind unbound and free; and then from the loosest, highest, best place you have, with the fastest and most humorous mind you can get together, you can reach 

out and make a try at understanding Spirit."

---Stephen Gaskin, This Season's People

 

 

Stephen Gaskin (February 16, 1935 - July 1, 2014)

Sometimes the Universe really lays one on you.  The utterly inexplicable walks right up to you and whispers in your ear "There's magic afoot" -- and invites you to dance.  

 

At those times, the One Love that permeates and transcends each moment lets you know that there is much more to Reality than our rational mind can actually deliver.  That processing channel gets too bogged down in distinctions to grasp the bigger picture.

 

Of course, having Sat Still Doing Nothing (and Everything) for a good chunk of time most every morning for decades, I am often, at least momentarily, aware of the Presence of a dimension of being where magic, miracles, and mystery exist.  

 

Nowadays, even off the zafu, this dimension is more noticeable. It is embedded in the fabric of daily life.  A sense of wonder often emerges amidst the ordinary moments of ordinary days.  

 

In fact, when I'm truly Present, washing the dishes and taking out the trash are as much Ritual Connections to the Sacred as lighting incense, bowing, and taking my seat in meditation. When I'm on my game, the world glows. (When I'm not, Migdalia busts me for the glasses I washed that don't sparkle. LOL)  

 

As best I can tell, Life is just as Thich Nhat Hanh wrote years ago:

"Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” 

 

Yet, for sure, within and beyond the ongoing miracle, there are extra special moments.  There are times that the Grand Synchronicity turns up the volume. This happened ten years ago this month.  The Extraordinary concocted up an experience that still defies any attempt to rationally understand what had happened. 

 

As I sat staring at the blank screen of this very same, now much older MacBook Pro that day, a ringtone on my iPhone may just as well have been Gabriel's trumpet.  At that moment, Stephen Gaskin, who had passed away 11 days before, the worldwide web, and Google conspired to proclaim the existence of a dimension where magic, miracles, and mystery will always have the last laugh!

 

The memory still brings a grin to my face and a glow to my heart.

 

With another deep bow to Stephen -- and to this Most Amazing Universe -- I want to share the post from that day.   It's encouragement to "lighten up" bears repeating.

Lighten Up!   
Originally Posted July 12, 2014

A couple of night's ago, unable to get back to sleep after a nocturnal "nature call,"I had tried to write a memorial piece on Hippie Spiritual Teacher Stephen Gaskin, whose Life -- and recent Death -- touched me deeply.   I got nowhere.  After struggling with it for a while, I gave up and read a bit of a Tenzing Norbu Mystery before finally stretching out to meditate into sleep once again.

Still on the mend from the events of the past month, I've been mostly laying low these days, staying away from the computer and cell phone as much as possible, allowing myself to Heal.  A couple of false starts had showed me quite clearly how energy depleting my addiction to these devices can be.  

 

Scrolling for the next dopamine hit takes its toll.

This morning, I was quaffing my first cup of coffee in a couple of days (another addiction under modification) watching bubbles of confusion and angst float through my awareness.  I wasn't quite sure what to do about this week's commitment to Your MMM Courtesy Wake Up Call.  My attempt to express the profound impact that Stephen had had on my life was going nowhere.  I'd made a few false starts. but the back space key had wiped the slate clean each time.

 

I was first introduced to Stephen when a friend handed me a copy of Monday Night Class, a collection of his talks, questions, and answers delivered to the thousand or so hippies that gathered weekly at the Family Dog to meditate and compare notes on the community spiritual exploration that had emerged and mushroomed in San Francisco in the 1960's.  That book propelled me on a journey that included a daily meditation practice, a couple of extended visits to the Farm, my own attempts at a communal "back to the land" lifestyle -- and a number of conversations with Stephen over the course of a couple of decades. 

Sitting here at a picnic table outside my favorite local farm store on a brilliant, blue-skied morning, I continued to stare at a blank screen.  Then, (probably with a furrowed brow), I reached for my cell phone to check my email -- then, perhaps, just fall back and select an old post to republish this week.

At that very moment the phone "dinged"with an incoming email. Peering down I read the notification

"Your MMM Courtesy Wake Up Call:

 Lighten Up! 

Posted 18 January 2014"

WTF!!!???

I have no idea what strange permutation of the space time cyber continuum at that moment could have possibly have had Google generate and deliver to me an email version of a post I'd written six months ago.  This had never happened before.  (and still hasn't happened again ten years later! -- L.)

How could I not lighten up?  

I broke into a bemused grin as I clicked it open.  The Serendipity of receiving this unsolicited and inexplicably"cosmic" reprint of a blog piece at that moment was magic enough. The decision was made for me.  I'd just read and tinker with it bit, write an introduction describing what had happened and re-pubish it.

 
Then, I began reading the post...

It got even more mind blowing!

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Judge Not and ...

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way
 we open or close our minds right now.”

 ― Pema Chodron

I don't think there is any greater freedom than being Present -- engaging life as it is -- without the distortion caused by Judgment Mind.  

Growing up immersed in a society that is highly judgmental, most of us have been deeply conditioned to experience our lives in terms of good/bad, right/wrong, should be/shouldn't be.  

 

In fact, our ego sense, with its perceived separation and isolation from "the other" is maintained by emotion laden thoughts, opinions, and various mind states that emerge from this conditioning.  Even in its mild form of liking/disliking, Judgment Mind can generate thoughts and feelings that serve to separate us from the peaceful, calm, and caring Presence we have access to in every moment.  

 

If we are overly self-absorbed, distracted, stressed, moving too fast, it's easy to get lost in our conditioned reactions to the events in our lives.  Adrift in Judgment Mind, we loose Presence.  We get lost in the alternative reality we have created -- and forget that the world is really not as it appears to us at that moment.  The deeply ingrained process of evaluating what we experience as bad, wrong, condemnable is a strong and on-going element of our society's collective unconscious, and has had a deep and ongoing effect on most of us.  It appears as discontent, diatribe, enmity, blame, and self-blame.  If we aren't paying attention, it can and will dominate our lives, moment to moment.

 

Seeing For Yourself

 

One of the fruits of meditation is that we can see how that process works directly.  We can see for ourselves that Judgment Mind isn't only the thoughts going through our heads at the moment.  It's deeper than that.  It is embedded in the emotions we are experiencing.  It's embodied in the tightnesses and discomforts of our body.  It directly effects the quality of our consciousness, our state of mind.  

 

It is actually quite amazing to see for yourself how that plays out on the meditation cushion.  

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Mama Said There'll Be Days Like This

"Our thought now being no-thought, even our singing and dancing 

are the voice of the Dharma."

-- Hakuin-zenji, Song of Zazen

 

 "Mama said there'll be days like this

There'll be days like this mama said."

-- The Shirelles

 

For decades now, silent meditation and mindfulness practices have been the central focus of my spiritual life.  Yet, me being me, I've continued to explore a number of practices from a variety of traditions.  

 

In the early 70's, I was introduced to the Chant of Chenrezig by a friend of mine who had absorbed it as he pushed a huge prayer wheel with a group of Tibetan Buddhist practioners in Northern India months before.  Looking into his eyes, standing about five feet away, I could feel the energy of Om Mani Padme Hum as he related the experience.   Coming across the chant again in Ram Dass's spiritual classic Be Here Now a few months later, I filed it away for future reference.  

Later that year, I had the means and opportunity to Practice this chant a bit more deeply.  Unlike my friend who experienced it in India, my prayer wheel was the steering wheel of a canary yellow VW camper.  I was cruising along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado on Interstate 25 at the time.  Using the mile markers as visual reminders to re-focus, I chanted Om Mani Padme Hum for several hours.  At a certain point, I experienced a Shift.  I connected with the larger pool of energy and the Presence. Reality asserted itself.  

 

The Universe hummed along in harmony with the mantra as I drove down the road.

In the eternal now, this moment embraces that moment.  In the seamless whole of One Love, Time and the Timeless dance as One.  There is no separation.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Even Our Singing and Dancing

 
Over the years, I've practiced various other forms of mantra meditation.  I've chanted with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Native Americans, and Christians.  I've come to see quite clearly that words can ring with meaning and power well beyond their conceptual content.  Whether vibrating in sound or in silence, when we experience words we attune to, and resonate with, a  larger pool of energy and connection -- whether we realize it at the time or not.

And then -- although certain fundamentalist strains in many religious traditions may frown at the idea -- it gets even better for me when those words dance in the arms of music. Over the years, I've sung (and danced) bhajan and kirtan with the Hare Krishna's, Neem Karoli Baba's folks in Taos, NM, and a number of local Kirtan walahs.  I've drummed and sang with Native Americans.  OMMM'd with 10,000+ Hippies at Rainbow National Gatherings.  I've sang, danced and drummed with Sufi Universal Dances of Peace gatherings and with other Spiritual Circles.  In full confession, I've also danced freely at Dead shows and Raves (sometimes with, sometimes without medicinal herbs or concoctions in my system. LOL).  In all those times, places, and spaces I've often felt the Grand Connection to my fellow human beings in the embrace of Universal One Love. 

 

Yet A Different Tune

 
Ten years ago, when I was still blogging as weekly mindfulness practice, the Universe graced me with an unexpected, deeply healing, musical incantation just before I sat down at the laptop to begin.   Then, like now, I had recently returned from an unsuccessful attempt to help my older brother through a life crisis in Oklahoma.  It was a tough time in my life.

 

The source of this healing music wasn't one of the mystical spiritual traditions.  This music didn't come from one of compositions of New Age music that I sometimes use to inspire me or chill me out either.  Emerging spontaneously in my mind's memory lane theater were the voices of a quartet of young women from New Jersey. singing the refrain of a 1961 recording.  It just as well may have been a heavenly chorus of angels.

 

Instantaneously, a grin emerged on my mug.  My heart glowed. The quality of my consciousness became brighter and lighter.  The Mystical Magical Musical Chant that altered my state of mind was the from the Shirelle's:

"Mama said there'll be days like this

There'll be days like this mama said."

"Duh," I thought with a grin.  "Of course!  It's just Life being Life as it is.  I can live with that!"

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Blowing in the Wind

"O-o-o-klahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain,
And the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet, 

When the wind comes right behind the rain."

― from "Oklahoma" by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein

"The water’s waves are churned up by the winds, which come and go and vary in direction and intensity, just as do the winds of stress and change in our lives, 

which stir up the waves in our minds.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

 

I don't know how much research Rogers and Hammerstein did as they wrote the musical, "Oklahoma,"but they sure nailed one thing: the winds in the South Central Plains are amazing.

 

Unlike the powerful winds that show up for a good old New England Nor'easter, or the intense but relatively brief blasts accompanying the squall lines and whizzbang thunderstorms of the Midwest, the Oklahoma prairie winds even sweep their way through high pressure systems -- for days and days at a time!

 

The National Weather Service characterizes this type of weather as "fair and breezy." Without a cloud in the sky, steady winds often clock in at 20+ mph.  With gusts ranging 35 to 45 mph, "fair and breezy" seems like an understatement.  After chasing my hat down the street a number of times, I finally learned to secure it more firmly to my bald head before stepping outside.  

 

And to be sure, the South Central Plains of Oklahoma sweeps numerous severe thunderstorms and tornadoes across the landscape as well.  It may well be that the Answer is blowing in the wind down there.  Most everything else is.

 

The Winds of Fate

 

A few weeks ago, I returned from a three week long stay in suburban Oklahoma City attempting to support my older brother.  At age 86, Skeets (his family nickname) had spiraled down into living in filth and squalor as a hermit.  For a long, long time, it appears that he'd spent most of his days and nights laying on his couch either sleeping (often with his C pack mask on), watching TV, or listening to NPR.  No longer preparing meals, his daily bread faithfully delivered to his house by the local meals on wheels program, he eats on the very same couch.  Sometimes he'd jump in his car and augment his food intake with hamburgers from a nearby drive-in.   

 

When I arrived, several inches of paper and plastic bags, cardboard food containers and decaying food covered the coffee table --and the wall to wall carpeting of his living room.  Misha, his somewhat feral cat, hadn't been confined to using a cat box for ages.  The windows were closed. The shades and curtains drawn.  The air in the shuttered house stung my eyes.  Skeets resisted my attempts to open the windows.

 

As I had discovered in a series of telephone calls before I came, my brother had been hospitalized, then referred to a rehab center.  My brother's longtime next door neighbor, friend -- and landlord for the past seven years -- was quite concerned.  Skeets appeared no longer willing or able to take care of himself.  He had trashed the house and property.  Steps were underway to evict him.

Yikes.

 

As fate would have it, I blew into town just in time.  I arrived at my brother's once beautiful, now trashed, four bedroom home in a rural/suburban cul de sac of high priced  homes and large lots just about fifteen minutes before two workers from Adult Protective Services knocked on the door.  The Sacred Serendipity gave me a chance to, perhaps, forestall what my brother characterized as his "worst nightmare" -- spending the rest of his days in a nursing home.  

 

In my dreams, I thought I could actually be enough of a Bodhisattva to forestall that nightmare.  Yet, as it turns out, when called on to be my brother's keeper, I don't know if I'm able.  Skeets started raising Cain whenever I appeared to be "telling him what to do."  

 

My attempts to help him face his situation, get his affairs in order, and move into a safer and healthier living situation usually evoked agitation and anger.  Like many deeply wounded men in our culture, my brother  can't readily see past his own ego-sense of "independence." His arrogance and intellect are his ancient shield against feeling sadness, insecurity, or confusion.  His anger is his sword. 

 

My time in Oklahoma was exhausting, frightening, frustrating -- and profoundly sad. 

 

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother -- Not.  (Sigh)

When I was a kid, Father Flanagan's Boys Town was quite famous.  An orphanage founded in 1917 by a Catholic priest with five boys in a house in Omaha, Nebraska  grew to a village of hundreds of boys and staff on a farm outside of town. Then, in 1938,  a fictional story inspired by Father Flanagan's effort became a blockbuster Hollywood movie.  The movie provided Spencer Tracy with an Oscar, a young Mickey Rooney with a role -- and brought Boy's Town to international prominence.

 

For decades, the centerpiece of its quite successful fundraising campaign was a painting of a child carrying a younger child on his back.  The caption read, "He ain't heavy, Father. He's m' brother."  By the time the Hollies recorded a song with a similar title and theme in 1969, most Americans knew of Boys Town.

I sure did.  

 

As I grew up, it seemed like a utopia. I yearned to experience something approximating the idolized form of brotherly love and supportive community that was portrayed.  

 

I didn't.

 

Instead, my three siblings and I careened through an ever-changing kaleidoscope of tenement buildings, apartments, hotels, detention centers, and the unofficial "foster homes" that my father found to care for us as my mother was swept into the Hell Realms of state mental hospitals in Elgin and Chicago.  

 

Throughout our childhood, my mother disappeared from our lives, then reappeared to take custody for a time, then disappeared again in the grips of a rotating list of diagnoses and treatments.  Our childhood was chaotic -- and traumatic. 

 

Obviously, a secure sense of home and belonging was not part of our physical or emotional reality.  As best as I can recall, Skeets, the oldest and seven years my senior, first went to live with my dad when he and Mom separated as I entered kindergarten.  My younger brother and I went to live with a family in nearby a nearby town. Mom had been hospitalized and then, I believe, was sheltered in a Catholic convent as my younger sister was born.   Then, Skeets returned to live with Mom and the youngest three for awhile when she surfaced from the hospital.  Then he left to be with my dad again.  Then he joined the Navy.  

 

Later, after living in Alaska as a communications radio tech rep,  then fixing TVs and being a theater lighting tech in Greenwich Village in NYC, then in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, Skeets circled through to live with us again.  By then, Dad had rescued the three younger siblings from a detention center near St. Louis, MO in the summer of 1959.   Moving us to Lake Zurich, a small town about 35 miles northwest of Chicago, dad got a factory job, and our life began to approximate some semblance of working class normalcy -- at least in outward appearances.

Each of us bears the scars of our collective trauma. Each of our personalities were formed as adaptations to a lack of fundamental emotional stability.

 

I'm grateful that I stumbled into the practices and the support that I have at this stage of my journey.  The spacious graciousness of the Universe has  allowed me to encounter my conditioning with an increasing degree of compassion, insight, and skill.  My heart aches with the realization that Skeets appears to be still driven by his demons -- and there appears to be nothing that I can do to help him.

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