A tribute to honesty

For Erika

Occasionally, I am stunned... stunned right into silence.  Tonight though... I am stunned into writing.  I have to write, and I have to express my gratitude to all the teachers out there I have had.  Some of them have known they were teachers to me, some have not.  Some serve as my upa-guru... my voice for me in others.  We all mirror each other, and sometimes we need to hear our own voice through the closest guru of all... our Self.  The upa guru is close, closer than your breath, closer than your own lips.  The upa guru speaks to us through others, usually those we are close to or identified with closely.  The upa guru can also speak to us in that still, small voice.


That voice says to me, "Shh... stop... come home.  Just be still and come home.  I am waiting."  Just like that.  I have never had such a gentle voice be so firm, so loving, and so sure... and so lashingly honest.

Tonight, I read something from an upa guru who never knew she was a guru to me.  I would read her blog, watch her adventures, laugh inwardly at what I was sure she would encounter, and cheer her on as she walked her path, bravely, through all the sordid bullshit that serves as advice in the Pick-Up Artist community.  Odd place to find a guru... or maybe not so odd.  It just proves that Truth is everywhere, and unreality is nowhere.

She bowed out recently... in a rather dramatic and completely honest way... I guess her heart just dropped out of the whole thing.  The trigger, well... the ego in all of its sordid little ways.  Apparently, at a pickup artist convention (yes... there are conventions), a person was displaying their ego in all of its glory... I am laughing as I write this so the words are coming slowly.  He displayed non-consensual footage of his "conquests" having a go with him in the sack... as proof that he could get laid.  I congratulate him on his great prowess.  I don't know him... don't even know which pickup "guru" this was... but I know that seeing a naked ego can be really disconcerting... often disgusting.  Sad... little... so limited in scope.

I am astounded sometimes at the depth of the sadness I feel at these things... sometimes it just seems all so weird, so fucking kooky... but this is what the ego does.  It is what ego is.  It can do it with anything from sex to meditation in Tibet.  It just wants to be displayed and admired or shunned... anything that helps produce separation, attack, concealment, guilt, terror, lasciviousness, noise, distraction... anything but one thing, silence.  Anything but wholeness, completeness, not-two.

To Erika, all I feel for you and the depth of desirelessness you are feeling right now is complete and utter gratitude and joy.  I am sorry that you are not writing anymore on your blog, getting comments, being "ultra magnetic", because I enjoyed all those things in your blog and Facebook page.  But... I know this... you are honest (as you always displayed in your writing and your interactions).  You showed me a couple of things tonight that I will forever be grateful to you for.  I cannot be that which I am not.  I have considered it, been tempted by it, lured into thinking I could for a while, and while I read your rather not-heart-felt, because there was no heart left for it, goodbye, I simply sat there stunned.  Then I got this huge light opening up in me of gratitude and joy.  It was the way you wrote it, the almost off-handed and complete surrender to an obvious fact.  It was the hard line you drew in the concrete with a hand that suspects and may know that the concrete is not concrete at all... but an insignificant line in a plastic world that really holds no meaning whatsoever. 

See... I contemplate not being who I am, because I desire many of the things you desire:  a real sharing with someone of the opposite sex, a life of joy with that same person, exploration and fun in Spirit and in wholly encompassing gratitude, and a breaking free of all bounds that bind my soul.  These things cannot be found in not being who I am, for it is only who I truly am that desires these things in wholeness.  Real communication in wholeness is immense, satisfying, mind-altering, and blessed.  When I pick who I am not, I cannot have the joys of who I am.  I think that by pursuing the outside, I can change the inside.  It cannot be done... there is nothing on the outside that will satisfy... now and forever this will be true.

The heart of my heart, the joy of my joy stems from me.  I am That.  That I am.  I am the Cause, not the effect.  I cannot find my Cause through my effects.  There is only one heart, only one mind.  There is only One.  Come home... be still... seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven.  The rest of it is a train with no passengers shooting through an empty landscape with plastic trees. 

Thank you, Erika... that was stunning!