PRIME POST! When Bodies Appear to Fail Us

Human beings live in fear of old age, sickness and death, although we are loathe to acknowledge it. Siddhartha Gautama’s belated introduction to these realities is what initially drove his highly committed spiritual seeking, which would eventually lead to his becoming the epitome of an awakened being—the Buddha. The first thing we want to note is that regardless of his strict spiritual adherence, Siddhartha never got over his fear and loathing of these things. Fortunately the Buddha never had any of that to begin with, so he didn’t have to divest himself of it.

Why the two opposite responses? Because two different views were being taken. One by a human being, and the second through a human being.

Siddhartha Gautama was viewing life’s journey, with its promises and pitfalls, from the eyes of Siddhartha Gautama, the young-but-very-mortal eyes of first a young prince and eventually a fully adult renunciate. The Buddha, however, was seeing the very same physical world, but he was seeing it from the eyes of Truth, through the Siddhartha unit. Consciousness witnesses, but it does so without any sense of judgment, involvement or “ownership.”

Everything is as it is. Period.

There is no alternative to What Is. Fini.

Where we see things from will always determine what we will see. The world literally arises to meet the view. The apparent choice between the two views is the only choice I have ever found that human beings might actually have. Happily enough, I’ve come to see that it’s also the only choice any of us need.

I predominantly work with people who are suffering when they get to me, and some are terminally ill.  Rather than make them special cases, however—which they certainly are not—I am always always quick to point out that the rest of us are, at best, terminally well. Any of my ill or injured clients could just as easily die from a heart attack or an automobile accident before the cancer or other condition takes them out.

For that matter, I might die before they do, there’s just no telling. Fredness could die before I finish writing this post, which might be just the sort of irony nature enjoys most. Who knows? I won’t be up late tonight fretting over it. Granted, it would upset Betsyness quite a bit. Until it didn’t.

In all candor, it would probably take Betsy about 10 minutes to find a worthy pinch hitter for me. She’d only have to start saying “Yes,” where she’s patiently been saying, “No.”  The sea would quickly fill the displacement. And frankly the death of this unit wouldn’t rock me—Consciousness—one bit. Why would it? I cannot be rocked.

I cannot grow old, because I am eternal.

I cannot get sick, because I am No-thing.

I cannot die, because I was never born.

You, of course, can claim these same divine privileges, because we are, at core, the very same thing. Both a gold earring and a gold bracelet are made of the same thing. In that same way, one could say that we are (more or less) maternal twins, just not identical twins. Although, of course, we are something of a strange “pair,” because in truth there’s only one of us!

There is only One Thing Going On, and any or all of us can correctly claim to be It. Claiming divinity is in fact the most difficult part of actualizing it. We will not accept our True Nature until we have no other choice. We walk away from it every time we seek it.

Seekers claim to be looking for their True Nature when in fact they can see nothing else. I was a seeker for 24 years; I know these things well.  And now, I tell you, this is IT. Once you stop looking elsewhere, you’re hung with looking here. You are this Here. You are this Now. Stop seeking and start claiming!

My terminally ill clients are simply at a place where they are being forced to come to grips with the denial of death they’ve always tip-toed around. No matter which way it goes, whether they wake up or die or both, their seeking is about to come to an abrupt end. At least they’re being granted some notice, so some last effort can be made. Even a Hail Mary pass wins a game now and then, or no one would bother throwing them.

We hear a lot about dying before we die. I don’t think that’s nearly so hard as living before we die. To live authentically, we have to live from where we are, with things exactly as they are. This is IT.

Again, THIS This, this very This, with all its apparent flaws, is IT. Yet we are so busy trying to escape or transcend it that we completely miss it! Our lives are not a collection of God’s errors. We are presented at every moment with exactly what we need to wake up, and waking up is the only thing that matters. Relativity counts, but the Universal actually matters.

I have helped the living die. And I have helped the dying live. Strangely enough, both end up in the same place.

Run this test on yourself. How high would your spiritual motivation be, how open your heart, how willing your ego, or persistent your inquiry if today was going to be your last? Do you actually know that today isn’t your last?

The only way I know to help anyone with their denial of death is to first help them come to grips with the denial of their Real Life—denial of their present awake state. Go find a crowd today. Look around. Everyone you’ll see is awake. If it’s a heck of a big crowd, you might even find someone who knows they’re awake.

By which I mean, of course, finding a being who knows they are Awakeness. The rest of them are also Awakeness—there is only Awakeness—but they are currently expressions of Awakeness in long-deep-nap mode.

I helped a guy wake up last week who immediately said to me in amazement,”My God, Fred, we’re all just in denial!”

At which point I grinned from ear to ear, slammed my hand hard onto my desk and cried, “Perfect! That’s exactly it! We’re not somehow “mystically separated” from our True Nature, we’re just in denial!” I love a quickly confirmed and expressed awakening.

A very insightful (and consciously awake) friend of this newly awakened being had told him before our session, “Fred was a sponsor in recovery. He’s used to working with people in denial. He’s doing the same thing he used to do.” And she was absolutely correct.

By couching awakening in spiritual trappings we have preserved the path of awakening, but we have not served the path of awakening. Authentic spirituality comes after awakening, not before. I don’t mean that seekers are practicing wrong-headed spirituality, I’m just saying they are barking up the wrong damn tree.

The tree they need to park themselves under is the one marked “Denial.” We don’t want to sit under that tree, because then we are charged with the apparent responsibility of becoming willing to tell ourselves the truth about the truth. So long as we insist on having a mystical experience we will continue bark under the wrong tree.

Whatever suffering it takes to bring you out of denial is worth enduring if you use it to discover freedom. I say this from experience. My life went completely to hell, then found a hell lower than that one, and then another. Every hell has a trap door. Then, and only then, right in the midst of all that chaos and turmoil and pain, Awakeness woke up through this silly, deeply flawed Fredness.

Why? Why not? Your case is exactly the same.

Every day I work with clients and students who’ve been driven to seek—and to wake up— via suffering. I certainly don’t wish suffering for anyone, and God knows I wouldn’t wish my story on any of you, and of course it’s unchangeable anyway, but just to let you know, from where I’m sitting now it was, hands-down, worth it. Acute suffering was the only way I could wake up. It was my only available means. We know that, because it’s how I did wake up.

Whatever this arising looks like, no matter how awful, no matter how painful, use it. We spend all of our time trying to change the picture, trying to alter the content of the present arising. Or perhaps we turn our attention to the individual who is taking in the content of the present arising. Neither path will work.

I know it feels like you have free will. Within the dream you do. But to take seriously the will or lack of will of a dream character is absurd. So be absurd! Use this sense of free will not to change either the picture or the viewer, but to change instead the view.

I have worked with quadriplegics, paraplegics, and people with every sort of grim disease —some so rare and strange that I’ve never ever heard about them. I’ve worked with drunks, drug addicts, sex addicts, and a plethora of food addicts. And every other client or student I’ve ever worked with was addicted to separation.

Illness and injury hurt! Addiction hurts! Being you in your situation hurts. It all hurts! I know this. Use it anyway. Use it as fuel to pull yourself out of the gravity of the dream.

Your life is not a collection of mistakes. Your poor health, or finances, or pained and strained family affairs are not in error. From where I sit, there is no error. I’m not saying it’s a part of some Grand Plan, but I am saying it is all part of The Great Happening, and it’s not all about me! Or you.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t a hell of a lot of stories being lived that don’t line up with my preferences. I don’t want them. I don’t want to suffer anymore. But I will. Suffering and its opposite is the foundation of the dream.

I’m not just the Vastness, I am also a human being. Being human and suffering are hand and glove. This is not a popular view, particularly in the West, only a true one. The Buddha’s First Noble Truth is generally, if not completely accurately, translated as “Life is suffering.”

And yes, it can certainly be wonderful as well—I am having a complete blast, and have been doing so for years. But as Betsy and I regularly tell each other, “These are the Good Old Days.” Where there’s a yin, there’s a yang in waiting. Whether you do or do not like what’s going on, the content of this and every other arising will change. Change against the backdrop of the Changeless is the very nature of the dream. That’s its purpose, so to speak.

I have seen Awakeness, though the people its working through, accept the seemingly unacceptable: death, disability, disease; chronic illness, acute pain. I experience pain from osteoarthritis every day of my life. Tasks that were once simple can now be difficult—and hurt.

I see and feel my body wearing out not just through arthritis, but through simple entropy. Two days a week at the gym slows my deterioration, but it no longer gets me in shape. In the last week I’ve started either weightlifting or stationary biking every day in hopes I can eat reasonably and not gain any more weight, which has begun to bloom around my midsection.

The times they are a changin’. Until I was 40 I could eat as much as I wanted of anything I wanted, never exercise, and not gain a pound. I can now gain weight by simply looking at a blueberry muffin! I am getting old; two thirds or more of this human life has already passed. So what? Who cares? Not me.

I care enough to take practical measures so that I can live in reasonably sound health and thus serve you more effectively. Pain is not pleasant, I would rather not have it, but I’m not married to that preference or any other. I find a way to love What Is, because doing anything else is just too damn hurtful. I’d be stupid as a stone to even try to resist What Is, but  I notice I sometimes still do it anyway. And then my friends, Pain and Suffering, drop by and I give up yet again.

I wanted to surrender once and be done with it. In fact I can only surrender to the present arising, to this here, and this now. But I have to do that every day, every moment, over and over again. Repetition is the mother of clarity.

Awakeness-as-manifestation, has unveiled itself, essentially flashed me. I have seen the perfect clockwork of the universe in falling leaves and blades of grass, in grave diggers and tombstones, and in the boundless blue sky that is so alive. I have seen it in the movement of wind, and the sound of birds, in the feel of a dog’s coat, and the taste of a fresh orange. Nothing is ever wasted, nothing is ever lost. It’s a closed system, while simultaneously being boundless.

I have seen it with my own eyes.

We are not bodies, we are not sick, and we do not die. We suffer in order to learn, and we learn in order to awaken. We awaken so that we may know our Self consciously, to complete some strange movement, some plotless, endless play. In the end, it is the only thing of true consequence.

We are not victims. All is well, all is well. Understand: a victim cannot wake up. If we treasure victimhood over freedom, we will get what we want most. We always get what we really want, not what we want to want.

Our precious stories of how things should and should not be as they are keep us from loving things as they are. Love this arising. Don’t put it off until the pain is better, until you get good news, until the world conforms to your desires. Conform your desires to meet What Is, to meet Life on its own terms.

This teaching is not meant to help us escape or transcend this arising. This teaching is to help us learn to embrace this arising, to live it with courage and dignity and most of all with love. The love we speak of in spirituality is not “out there” somewhere. Nor is it coming later. There is no “out there” and there is no “later.”

There is only This—this here, this now, and our unconditional acceptance of each arising as it shows up is the greatest living expression of that love. Like many prophets and sages before us, we sacrifice ourselves—our ideas of ourselves—for love. We reap what we sow.

Your life as it is, that body as it is, are your perfect engineers, and you are their perfect vehicle. Let them drive them you Home. 

No unit, no character, will ever be able to offload its desires and open itself up to What Is as it is. For that we need divinity, Conscious Awakeness. And for that, we need awakening. Our suffering is our most reliable guide.

I can see now that pain and suffering have been my dearest friends. They have brought me Home. Who knew that the back door of hell was the front door of heaven? I did not. But I do now. I wish for you this very same knowing, which came to me by way of unknowing how things should be.

All love,

Fred