Thursday, January 27, 2011

Everyman's Journal 2011, # 21

© 2011 Rev. David Seacord

January 25

"The degree of our reaction/contraction in the moment reveals the degree of our ego in the moment".

It's a lesson I didn't wish to learn yesterday, as I finished changing into my swim trunks and, shivering in the cool morning air, turned around with the intention of entering the hot springs soaking tub that I had just driven a couple of hours to get to, joining the several inhabitants already there before me. But instead of being welcomed, (this is my ego's version) "I was rudely commanded to stop, and go take a shower first". This was delivered by one man, apparently a self-appointed local guardian of the waters. Did it matter that I knew I was clean and didn't need a shower? Nope. Not to this man. "It's the rules, and everyone has to follow them all the same..."

I surrendered to being controlled (this is still my ego) but I resented being deprived of the pleasure of a dry plunge into the warm waters. As I took my medicine (the shower), all that was running through my head was a stream of "make wrong's/ put downs" that I wanted to attack this guy with. I knew that was stupid, and that the 'rule' was appropriate given the numbers of users, so I didn't let myself open my mouth. I did spiritual work instead.

I tried to remember the guy was my brother, but I was reactivated enough that it took a while to do that. In the meantime, I didn't enter the pool, but instead just let myself be drummed and pummeled by the warm waters of the 'shower'. I was able to remember that actually, this outdoor shower was my favorite part of this hot springs.... a well pressurized horizontal pipe beside the soaking tub with a line of holes drilled into it that resulted in an endless arch of hot water going first upwards to it's ten foot high zenith, then crashing down upon all the bodies standing on the cement deck under it with a therapeutic body-relaxing splash. When I had first discovered these springs, I had lain flat out on the deck under this hot waterfall for a half-hour, and after that, the few minutes I had soaked was anticlimactic.

So I knew my only real problem was my own reaction to this guy's attitude, which of course, eventually I was guided to see was one that (in other situations in the past) was the exact same attitude that I was guilty of having towards others myself. In fact, just two nights before, while waiting outside the San Diego's People Coop, I found myself breathing the second-hand cigarette smoke created by a man smoking directly in front of a sign that requested 'No Smoking on Co-op Grounds'. At the time, I had also wanted to say something (I 'passed' on that one too), which certainly would have been received as resistantly as I received my lesson yesterday morning.

By the time I was ready to be social and enter the pool, my 'adversary' was gone, and again, a few minutes of soaking was all I wished for. But the ego event continued to live in me as a trigger for inquiry.... why had I so completely lost consciousness and lowered my awareness by resisting? I have known for years that these kind of events are like 'surprise tests'. Many times I have stumbled, sometimes flat on my face in the mud even, but I have always found a heart in me that was bigger, and more willing to forgive, than my desire to go to war and mentally murder a brother. Yesterday's test was for some reason tougher, perhaps I am hearing, because I have asked to be 'well prepared'.

In any case, in what Ram Dass would call 'grist for the mill', the spiritual mileage gained from breakdown is often greater than that available from easy good fortune... if the authentic inquiry of the heart is followed. And while the ego in me that still loves to look good did not want to share this 'adventure', I knew as it was happening that this lesson would be my dharma to share.

And where it has led me is to taking a new look at my own sadhana practices, with an eye toward developing greater remembrance moment to moment. For it is simply true that I was not thinking with equanimity of the limitless perfection I/we exist within in the moments before getting hooked.... I was habitually believing once again that I was a body/mind, and excitedly anticipating a physical pleasure about to be indulged in. Now there is a 'jewel of a clue' for me/you to examine.... :-).

Namaste,

David

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My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on its way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.

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Rev. David Seacord

Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag

david@davidseacord.com

www.davidseacord.com

(my fine art website)

www.davidseacord-everymansjournal.blogspot.com

(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)

www.davidseacord-acimcommentaries.blogspot.com

(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)

www.everymansjournal2011.blogspot.com

(archived entries of this years Everyman's Journal)

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