“Did you think these whirlpools; this longing feeling was going to disappear forever? Hahaha!”
I hear my teacher’s voice say in my mind with a laugh.
“No! Of course not! They still exist, they will still show up, that’s human; that’s alive.”
I can’t just push it away, resistance equals persistence, so I yield and soften. Finally realizing the futility of that resistance, I begin to gently inquire, “What is this experience, so familiar and painful to me?”
I begin to see that a whirlpool is just a whirlpool and will only continue to be whirlpool; will only lead to more whirlpool, because that is its nature. And wanting is simply wanting and will only lead to more wanting because that is the nature of wanting. And longing is longing and nothing other than longing; it will lead to more longing because the nature of longing is never satisfied; it has to create duality to exist. That is its essence, and it’s energy. The miracle is that its only energy passing through; a dust devil swirling through a desert; an eddy in a stream, a dance of subject, object, subject, object waltzing.
I can be like a boat passing by and flowing onward or get mired in it trying to make it what it is not, and whirl around and around wandering in an endless thought process of, “If only.” I then get stuck on the rinse and repeat cycle, living reactively all the time, falling blindly into the holes of my history, until I give up altogether and get stuck on the riverbank of hopeless despair. OR, I can see. Recognize. Steer clear. Float over. Dance through. On, into the vast river of life. Mistaking the whirlpool for the river, I am doomed. And yet the only way out is to realize that the whirlpool and the river are made of the same substance, dancing. I am whole.
Instead of attaching a STORY, which I have identified with; the phenomenon of experiencing longing/wanting, which longing/wanting co-arises out of; which longing and wanting WANTS me to do because believing the story is what creates the continuance of this longing ghost of me identified. It is familiar, thus “safe,” (though in pain), what if I DROP the story/person/place/thing that I automatically attach to this longing pain? What if I drop the addiction to stinking thinking?
Because what’s happening is I THINK I will get satisfaction sometime in the future. I THINK I will get the longing satisfied by my addiction to the person/place/thing, and endlessly thinking about it, trying to solve it, or having it doing exactly as I say, because if only XYZ would have/could have/should have happened; if only I could control this, then the longing will be satisfied and disappear forever.
That is not what happens. The STORY of me that I tell myself is making the longing grow bigger and bigger. The story is the fuel to the fire and perpetuates it’s continuing existence of me in this moment, this story. The person/place/thing gets automatically associated with this sense of longing and lack, and continues to swirl further and further away in perpetuity because the nature of longing and lack is not to have “it.”
I am whole. Less than. Lacking. Detaching the object/person/place/thing from the story leaves only energy passing through. An old wound or a ghost from the past, passing through to be melted by the love of presence and seeing and feeling and embracing and knowing what’s genuinely true. All these ghosts can cross over the bridge that was shown to me how to build, into the present moment fully integrated; completely HERE.
So here’s what I do:
Show up.
Let go.
Have faith. (Not in me/small me/my story. But in something much, much greater, beyond what I can see. I am the only one in the way of myself.)
When I am out of the way of myself, I float…everything possible.
There is room for God’s Grace.
Anything can be manifested.
All I have to do is show up.
Do the next indicated thing.
Whole.
From this place, there is true choice.
And this old invisible coat of victim that I mistook for my own skin, suddenly appears as clear as day. It is too small, is all, and it falls away. And it’s clear what has happened. It was my mind playing tricks on me.
From this place, everything is miraculous and always was. It flows before me, from me to me. The giant white windmills churning up the desert mountain mirage, the millions of gold light flecks bouncing, dancing, ricocheting across the speeding freeway unfolding in front of me. Every single thing calls out, “Pick me! Pick me!”
It’s truly so.
Photo Credit: Daxis Flickr via Compfight cc
