Love is Possible

Love is possible. Without this knowing i am crippled. Without this knowing i am unable to be fully present, to see things as they are –in their suchness. Without this knowing there is no succor from aloneness.

Much is written about love, but words are simply not up to the task. It is as if one were to try to empty the ocean with a sieve –even if it held water it would be too small for the job. Part of this problem, this unwrite-ability about love, has to do with language itself. Whenever we say something, something else is denied. Language, with its vocabulary is rooted in duality; love is not.

Love is an aspect of the ever-present eternal, beyond time.

My relationship with Al, my father, was rocky. In my early years he was distant. Mother used to put my brother, sister, and me to bed before he got home from work. Being pre-boomer folks they held to the notion that children ‘were meant to be seen and not heard.’ There were but few moments in childhood when i actually felt close to him, like the spring day when i was perhaps eight. The wind was up, a breeze full of promise and warm adventure. And somehow i had obtained a kite to fly. And Al, for reasons unknown to me, opted to accompany me on an outing to do just that. He put his finger to his lips, wetting it, then holding it aloft feeling for the coolness that would send a signal to his brain that wind direction was ‘that’ way. How little i knew of physics, brain chemistry, or the scientific method that is so useful in the physical world. I did, however, find his doing so to be instructive –hence the clear memory of his presence towering above me. There was much comfort in his knowingness and strength so rarely experienced by me, especially at such close range.

I remember other times, when he would angrily say something like, “Come here you little monkey!” Then being grabbed by the arm, spun around, and swatted on the backside with his considerable hand. When i got older, the hand gave up its emptiness for the surer, more long distance punishment of his belt. One time he actually tried this stunt while he was driving and i was in the back seat of his black 4-door 1936 Pontiac sedan. Being predisposed to protect myself, i took defensive action -quickly scrambling up on the shelf in that old Pontiac between the top of the back seat and the rear window, in an attempt to flee the blows. Such were the risks he took, like drinking while driving and cupping his hands to strike a match to light a Phillip Morris cigarette while steering with his knee.

As i grew older i came to see that Al, was at heart a sensitive, alas one born into a land of brutals. Once he told me that when he was nine, he went to work in the mill. And then at fourteen he said that he was old enough to do a man’s work and went down into the mines to dig coal in his native land. It was a damp, fetid, and dark place, full of danger. Canaries were carried into the bowels of the earth so that their death might give warning of noxious gas that could prove fatal to humans. Theirs was piecework. He was teamed with one of his older brothers who cut the coal, while the younger Al, did grunt work like pushing loaded coal cars to their point of deposit. Dressed in clogs, a sort of footwear, and shorts they worked in tunnels that were cut so low as to give just a few inches of space between the tops of the coal cars and the roof of the tunnels. This meant that youngsters like Al were forced to push their loaded carts, with backs bent to the task, arcing their spines, where in low spots of the tunnels the skin covering their vertebrae was often scraped away. Tally of the piecework was accomplished by brass tokens. When a cart was emptied, Al received a token that was then added to a sort of necklace he wore, the sum of which at day’s end was redeemed for wages for the team. Yet through the brutality, his innate sympathy resonated sufficiently for him to willingly attend rescue school, where volunteers were trained to go to the aid of fellow miners who had succumbed to the awful fate of being trapped in the place of their livelihood. At twenty-one, he felt mature enough to leave the mines and home and emigrate to an English speaking country, ocean passage to Australia or South Africa being pricier he opted for the United States as destination, coming ashore at Ellis Island.

In my early years with Al, my experience of him was exclusively with Florrie his wife and my mother. Only later was i to discover that his tendency was to be one person when he was with her and another person when he was not –just the sort of tension that a drinker like Al, would attempt to mitigate by trying to find courage in a bottle. Yet he always maintained enough limit on his consumption to hold a job all the days of his life. Imagine my surprise to find the other Al, who seemed to exist in a world separate from the only one i had known –via days spent in Florrie’s world; astonishingly as much as i disliked the Al he was with her, i came to more than admire the Al he was when he was not.

He was musical. And in spite of his fingers broken in the mine, he enjoyed playing the old upright piano in our modest living room. The piano was equipped with a bench. It had a lid that opened, exposing a compartment in which sheet music was stored. Sometimes he would take out a sheet from within it, place it on the piano’s rack, sit on the bench facing it, and invite me to join him. So we would sit side by side, and he would play, and sing some old tune like, “The Bells of Saint Mary’s”. And by tuning into his pitch and cadence my boyhood soprano joined his, in song. “The young loves, the true loves, who come from the sea.”

One day in my late teens Al and i were seated in his car waiting for Florrie just outside the church that served as center of the devotions that offered her succor from her fears, much in the same way that Al found his in the bottle. I suspect that of his three children i was the one who saw sufficiently into his being to recognize the basic goodness that guided his aspiration, that inspired his efforts, his willingness, and ability to provide for us. I told him so, about how i felt, and that i had come to love him. And while words fail, both then and now, the effort that goes into their choosing and attempted expressions are nonetheless worth it; truth lurks in such paradox. Just like this!

Nine months before the heart attack that killed him he told me that he would not much longer be in this world. I passed this information off as not serious; but i was proved wrong when a phone call came informing me that he had been stricken and was in hospital. His final days were spent connected to the monitors in an intensive care ward. The last time i saw him alive he was flat on the back that had been scarred in the mines of his youth. All those years of both toughness and sensitivity had come to this. Even a massive heart attack took three days to release him from his body and the constraints of this world.

It was a Sunday morning sometime later. I was busy setting up a ladder to reach the roof on the little house where i lived with my then wife and two small children. It was the sort of day that Al might have come to visit, especially so as it was Sunday morning when the bars were closed. It was for just such times and visits that i kept for him a special bottle of aged Scotch whiskey – a treasure that his habit much enjoyed. On such occasions he would, hold the ladder, give fatherly advice, and open the beer that he liked to use as ‘chaser’ for the stronger stuff. So this day i climbed the ladder alone, mounted the roof, and went about the needed repair. It was overcast, as i bent to the task. The sky seemed full, almost pregnant with expectancy. Suddenly, i was fully taken by a sort of opening, almost a sense of presence. It had a totality about it. So awesome was it that if the heavens themselves were to have opened revealing something i would not have been at all surprised. They did not; but i was so overwhelmed by the fullness of that moment, that i was concerned i would lose balance, fall from the roof, and break something important. So gingerly, and carefully, step-by-step i returned to the ladder and descended a rung at a time to the known comforts of terra firma.

Al and i were saying goodbye. And if today, i recall those songs we shared, and muse on these events, the tears that fall into my lap give ample evidence that, birth, travail, and death notwithstanding, love is possible.

Moving On

Beyond splendid, it’s
Truly the name of the game:
Our evolution!

Undermining Belief

The carrot and the stick of fundamentalism is belief. It’s at the front and back of the herd mindset, shaping and channeling it into something odd and increasingly dangerous. Holding to a Big Belief means that its opposite Big Doubt must be repressed; in fundamentalism doubt is equal to sin.

Let’s take a closer look at this thing called Belief. Here is my working definition: It’s the assertion that a thing is true without knowing it to be so. This phenomenon called belief is the strength or glue that binds fundamentalists to their mythical worldview with its dogmas. Belief hides as much as it reveals, those who cling to it tend to repress their doubts, which when well examined hold the precise key to cut through the cloud of unknowing, allowing humans to find truth for themselves –as did the sages of all major traditions of the past.

It troubles me deeply that folks insist on inculcating the young and innocent with dogma, with insistence on belief, rather than being more honest; trusting that the young can, will, and do best to honor their birthright by finding truth for themselves –especially as this is the only way it can be found. However, for adherents of a mythical world-view this is an insurmountable obstacle because at the very heart of fundamentalist teachings and practice is the notion that one MUST believe. A more all-encompassing worldview sees that belief, when defined this way, is the chink in the armor, the Achilles Heel, of fundamentalism.

Belief, as underpinning to a more all-inclusive worldview, is simply not sufficient; it’s the rough equivalent of building one’s house on shifting sand, or below sea level as in New Orleans. Crack belief hard and i suspect that the whole structure will fall, sooner or later the dike of belief will be overtopped, and the long repressed doubt will surface, sweeping away its partial and ultimately foolish pretense at security.

Be invited to join me in cracking belief hard, as befits the occasion. And be ready to fill the breach with a more honest view, one where the opposites are no longer seen as antagonistic but as effortlessly complementary.

Dance of the Eternal

Opposites at play
Each and every day, in each
And every way. This!

Telepathy

I remember standing on the east side of Michigan Avenue, just north of the Chicago River, looking across the street at Margaret as she disappeared into the crowd of the big city. The thought came, “There goes the mother of my children.”

We had met at work, my first 40-hour a week job after high school. I had moved up from chores at the mailroom, euphemistically called the “Communication Center” at the Tribune Company, publishers of the Chicago Tribune –the self proclaimed world’s greatest newspaper to the credit department. She worked there too. But this day was her last. She and her husband were off to California. Margaret had ambition. She wanted to teach school and needed credentials in order to do so. Relocation was part of the plan to acquire the schooling needed.

About a year or so later, she returned from the west coast and to the Tribune Company looking to take up her old job. She was rehired and we began, very slowly, to get to know each other. Little by little, bits and pieces of her story came out. The relationship between her and her then husband was in serious trouble. On campus after campus his psychological state prompted him to do things that were both illegal and embarrassing to him, to Margaret, and to the various school administrations.

She left him and after a divorce our relationship deepened. Eventually she bore two children. Some of the best times she and i had in the course of getting to know each other was to recount to the other details of our pasts. I told her this story. It was a summer Saturday afternoon –a day in my mid teens, spent hanging around the small city park near home. Jake was a connected city worker. His efforts for the machine that ran the big city resulted in his acquiring a job at the park. Unlike professionals in the field any interest he had in organized recreation was secondary. Closer to his heart was gambling. Somehow he had managed to place a bet on a horse that was running at Arlington Park that afternoon. His duties that day were to close the park offices, after which he invited me to drive in his old car out to the track, where he hoped to see his favorite of the day run. After the sixth race the track waived its admission charges, allowing Jake and me free entry. We elbowed our way to the rail not far from the finish line, just in time for him to root for “Stan”, the horse of his choosing –who proved to be an instrument of a dream come true. Stan flashed by us, with Jake whooping and hollering as he came up a winner! Jake and i waited until the race was posted as official, and returned from our outing happily.

I had never before or since been in attendance at a racetrack. In our recall of pasts it came to light that Margaret was there on the same day, never before or since being at a racetrack.

A year or two later about the time of high school graduation, some boys from the school invited me to go with them –a rare occasion because the boys of my technical high school were not from my neighborhood, where i enjoyed an entirely different set of acquaintances. We were off to Navy Pier. In those days it was the home of the University of Illinois in Chicago, not the tourist attraction it is today. Just west of the pier was a gymnasium building. This day it was the site of an exhibition given by traveling Swedish Gymnasts. This was long before young Romanian women at Olympiads raised awareness of the genre.

In our recall of pasts, it came to light that Margaret was there on the same day, never before or since being at an exhibition of traveling Swedish Gymnasts.

Looking back on such things it seemed as if the hand of fate was bringing us together. One summer day, when our boys were old enough to fend for themselves for an afternoon she and i were invited by two friends to picnic in a forest preserve. The four of us piled in to our 1968 Volkswagen Squareback, and with me at the wheel we took off for a day’s adventure. After eating i was introduced to play with a Frisbee. It was good fun. But the real adventure happened on the way home.

This time Margaret took the VW wheel. I sat directly behind her. Our two friends took up seats to the right of each of us. A picture of the route home was clear in my mind. It was less clear in hers. Somehow, perhaps because of the special closeness between us, we entered an altered state of consciousness. Without any effort or surprise, it seemed completely natural to be able to communicate with each other without speaking. What fun! We would come up to an intersection where our route home required a left turn, i would think left, and she would turn left. Sometimes she would cast a quick glance over her shoulder for confirmation of the message sent. Eye to eye contact accomplished this. This transmission business was repeated several times. There was no mistake, no accident about it.

Then in true back seat driver fashion i noticed that the gas gauge needle on the dash of the VW was approaching empty. We needed to refill the gas tank. Up ahead i spotted the sign of a service station for which my pocket held a credit card. So i sent a thought to Margaret, to turn into the gas station and to pull up to a pump. We did so. This was in the days before self-service so in a few moments a uniformed attendant arrived, carrying a towel and wiping grease from his hands.

Leaning down to the drivers window, he asked, “Can I help you?” No one spoke. But i sent him a clear telepathic message, “Fill it up, regular, please.” He evidenced no recognition of this attempt, and repeated saying, “Can I help you?”

Then it dawned on me. Taken up with the telepathy between Margaret and me, i failed to consider that it was not possible to do so with just anyone. His look of perplexity softened, as i slipped out of that altered state, reclaimed voice, and spoke aloud the words, “Fill it up, regular, please.”

Musing over the incident i wondered if such psychic transmissions require a carrier. Maybe it’s akin to radio waves, which are altered by Amplitude Modulation to produce A M signals, or Frequency Modulation to produce F M signals. In this case the carrier being closeness, being affection, or love. If so, i cannot but be in awe of the marvelous mystery that allows us to drop the barriers to our interior space, and let go of our privacy, only to find ourselves protected by the surrender known as love.

Telepathy and Intuition

Transmission puts the
Lie to our foolish notions
Of separation!

Princess Kunti

Once i worked in a cosmopolitan place where the hiring of workers from all across the globe was common; over the course of a quarter of a century they came in waves, responding to troubles in their homelands and the possibilities offered for succor here in the United States. Among these co-workers was a young fellow from India; occasionally he and i would chat about bits of Indian lore that i had stumbled upon in my readings and practice. Maybe something about the courtroom scene of a young Indian man, falsely accused of sedition, who at trial, came to realize that the judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney were revealed to be the three aspects of the Hindu divinity, Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva; later this defendant would be known as Sri Aurobindo, my favorite yogi: the modern day initiator of Integral Yoga.

This co-worker returned to India for a visit, and while there thought of me with kindness, enough so to purchase a gift, which he gave me when arriving back to work in the States. This is how my little home library acquired copies of the classics of Hindu Literature, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Maha means great as in mahatma (great + atman or soul); Bharata is another name for India. The Mahabharata is a big deal in India. When a dramatic production of it was mounted for television and broadcast nationwide, streets were deserted, shops shuttered, and parliament adjourned early lest legislators miss the showing; exceeding perhaps the cultural phenomena here in the States when ROOTS was first televised.

Eventually the epic Mahabharata concludes with a great battle as described in its final chapters often published separately and known as the Bhagavad-Gita, or Song of the Blessed, the source teaching of karmayoga, an instrument of inspiration to Gandhi and onto Martin Luther King Jr., and many others.

Early in the Mahabharata is the story of princess Kunti, a name she took from the king who adopted her when she was orphaned as a girl. Young Kunti was sweet and attentive to her adoptive parent, and was rewarded with a special mantra; the recitation of which was said to call to appearance any of the gods, each of which could, without intercourse, impregnate a woman with divine seed. In her youth and innocence Kunti repeated the mantra, and Surya the sun god appeared, and despite her protests of her unsuitability the virginal Kunti became pregnant.

So both Kunti and a latter day Mary were said to have been virgins yet giving of birth (the Mahabharata is often dated at 3700 BCE). In Kunti’s case the birth caused sufficient consternation for the ensuing child to be abandoned -set afloat in a basket in a river, much like another latter day counterpart -Moses.

Later in life Kunti had occasion to repeat the mantra several times, resulting in additional births only to be forced by circumstances to infanticide. Needless to say, apparently a great ambivalence grew up around this cultural icon; blessed by great fecundity and cursed by destructive circumstance.

My guess, my felt intuition, at the time of reading her story in the gift copy of the Mahabharata was that women in general have come to suffer from this ambivalence. Virgin or whore; Mary or Magdalene; this ambivalence is deep and includes besides the cultural issues it raises of non-equality of the genders the physical attributes of women as well. Romans called the female genitalia cloaca, their word for sewer. Over many millennia her name Kunti, the name of women have suffered, often going underground, and being passed down by word of mouth, even onto our day.

So now i honor her and all women everywhere as daughters of the great mother with this haiku.

Princess Kunti: A Mother of Note

A virgin became
Pregnant; her name gave birth to
Common usage: Cunt!

Two Aphorisms

It’s easy now to take the Way for granted. But that wasn’t always the case. In the early days i often found myself in untoward situations –like being floored by some hothead in a men’s room and having my head bounced off of a urinal and forced to beg for mercy.

Gradually, over time, i noticed something quite extraordinary. These troublesome situations had something in common; part of me was warned beforehand of danger. Yet, despite these dimly perceived and unacknowledged promptings i went blithely along, allowing my ignorance and cocky attitude full rein. But getting my head banged on that porcelain hardness made me take notice of what proved to be an emerging phenomenon.

Nowadays i might choose this aphorism to summarize that heedless attitude: He who will not see will be made to feel.

The repeated occurrence of such hints, or warnings caused me to muse, “Well, if that is how things work, just show me the way.” And from that day to this, albeit with much backing and filling, replete with fits and starts, what i now see as intuitions are wooed, courted like a lover his intended.

Such self-induced blindness with its concomitant violence is at one end of a broad spectrum; the opposite end of which are increasingly subtle phenomena. The forms of which are varied, their triggers many –and might be any one of the ten thousand things. This myriad falls into place only as an increasing awareness grows; call it discrimination if you will. It means to see things as they are in essence rather than through the all too common lens by which we distort impressions; warping them through the bent glass of our fears or desires –the twin slayers of innocence.

Nowadays, if choosing to summarize this heedful attitude, i might use this second aphorism: The wise horse moves at the shadow of the whip.


Ends of a Spectrum

Heedless to heedful,
Cursing or kissing, daring
To embrace fullness!