ONE

My tiny guru

One day last summer, fresh out of the shower I sat down to meditate. I began by asking the question: What it would take for me to Love humanity? Not in the intellectual abstract, but, y’know, for real.

Because let’s face it. We suck, right? We’re a tough bunch to Love. And yet many times in meditation, I had experienced firsthand the God-self-ness of human beings, individually and collectively. I had felt our divine Light, our timeless innocence. Where’s the disconnect, I wondered? How do I experience this purity of self and other in my daily life?

Just then an incredibly persistent housefly began buzzing and buzzing around me, landing periodically to tickle its way across my bare arms or zip back and forth around my wet hair. I smiled and acknowledged its God self, which of course meant nothing at all to the fly. He knew what he was. He was also thirsty and I was a bountiful fountain of recently showered moisture.

No amount of shooing had any effect at all. I tried slipping into conscious Awareness and meditating on the inconvenience of his behavior, seeing the behavior itself as God. Seeing my own mild annoyance as God. It’s all true of course, but the buzz-tickle-stop, buzz-buzz-stop-tickle was so random it would have taken a meditator far more masterful than I to manage it.

And yet I had long since realized everything arises as an opportunity to shepherd me along my path of awakening. So I checked in with my higher self: Is there a lesson here? Does this fly have something to teach me?

As if in answer, the fly turned and flew straight at the tip of my nose—bop!—with a force that startled both of us. Okay, I’ll take that as a yes. What am I missing? What’s the lesson? I paused to allow an answer to arise from the depths of divine inner wisdom.

I was invited to notice that greater vision, greater Light and greater Love are automatically limited by the habitual action of seeing through the lens of the personal self. I was viewing things from my own perspective. (Of course! Who wouldn’t?) That perspective naturally included my own needs and wants: I wanted to meditate. Meditation was important to me. It’s what I do, it’s who I am.

Yet this fly, this outsider, was ruining my meditation because its own needs and wants were, of course, its primary concern. Were my needs and wants actually more important? Or were they just more important to me?

I wasn’t really wondering whether flies should be accorded equal rights. I was asking this question to investigate my own egoic assumptions about life. I was beginning to notice my own agenda was not necessarily more important than anybody else’s. It just felt more important because it was mine.

This was a question I’d pondered before, most recently while tending my garden. I was the one growing the veg at great effort and expense. What was the right attitude to take toward the beings who were busy decimating my lettuce crop? I couldn’t bear the thought of waging war; that was the complete antithesis of where I wanted to be in my life. It was just too damn painful to cultivate enemies anymore.

I decided I valued inner peace more than I did my lettuce. I also valued peace more than I valued my ingrained assumption that my lettuce belongs to me. So I blessed these slimy little creatures, then plucked them off my leafy greens (ick) and repatriated them to the other end of the garden. They came back, and back, and back again of course, until no lettuce remained.

Bugs, birds, rodents, slugs. I was sort of willing to entertain the idea that I was not automatically entitled to harvest what I grew. And since all of Nature seemed to passionately and emphatically agree with that conclusion, I figured there must have been a lesson in there somewhere. But that was as far as I’d gotten on this particular question.

So this new bit of wisdom was highly pertinent to my daily life at this time. Although I had already been experimentally looking outside my me-centric ideas about life, it was still me doing the looking. The ‘me’ self was chewing over the idea of stepping outside the viewpoint of the ‘me’ self, in other words. I hadn’t thought to examine the fact that the ‘me’ lens itself is the limiter of wisdom.

The higher self’s implied suggestion was a delicate one: Why not play around with viewing the situation from beyond the limiting lens of the personal self? I realized this exploration would offer not only an answer to the housefly-meditation thing and even the garden pest conundrum, but an answer to the question I had posed at the start of the meditation. Where was the disconnect between the recognition of God in humanity I experienced during meditation, and the ability to apply that knowing to the actual human beings we are?

I immediately checked in with the personal ‘me’ self. Gone are the days when I would take a unilateral battering ram to its defenses in the name of spiritual progress. I was only too aware this suggestion of stepping outside the personal localized viewpoint, would strike at the very heart and purpose of the personal self. If I wasn’t viewing the world through its subterranean lens, then what exactly was its job description?

What do you think, I asked. Would you be willing to allow this exploration, to help me understand better?

The fly’s buzz-tickle-buzz-buzz antics had become too much at this point. I moved into the bedroom and closed the door. When I checked in again for the subterranean self’s response, I realized I was feeling no inner resistance of any kind. It had quietly backed away, leaving me free to explore outside its usual boundaries. I was overcome with a wave of deep admiration and gratitude for the subterranean self’s bravery and (ironically) its selflessness.

* * * *

I’d been working patiently and steadfastly with the subterranean self for several months by this point. It had taken quite a while to build mutual trust and respect between us. Even though I had dropped all my jaundiced ideas about the intrinsically destructive motivations of the subterranean self before I approached it, I found myself unable at first to extend it my authentic trust, affection or respect. Even though I wanted to. Heartbreakingly, for its part, the subterranean self seemed far more eager to trust in me, far more willing to give me the benefit of the doubt than I could offer it in return. Progress, genuinely desired on both sides, was steady but painfully slow and awkward at first.

I’ll include here a representative example of my early attempts to reach out humbly and sincerely to this aspect of the self, just to give you some idea of the collaboration’s rocky beginnings. I was not in the general habit of writing letters to the subterranean self, but I found myself doing so as I sat down to pen this diary entry.

January 5, 2018

Oh, sweetheart. Can I call you that? I so want to be able to offer you my love. But when I try it feels fake, to you and me both. And I want to trust you deeply and completely, because I know you deserve it. But no matter how hard I try, something within us (within me) just won’t go there.

It’s tricky. On the one hand I know in my heart the teachings about you are correct. You do block out true peace. And that hurts. How can I trust deeply in anything that blocks out God? But I also know you’re not to be blamed for that. I know you’re not evil. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

Maybe my feelings will change as I get to know you better. In the meantime, instead of love or trust, I’ll offer you everything I can right now. My honesty. My loyalty. I’m here no matter what. I want to learn what you truly are. I don’t know why you do the things you do, but I’m interested. Whatever you want to share with me, I’d be honored to learn. So let’s start with that and see where it takes us. Okay?

On this sunny summer day six months later, as I found myself preparing to meditate from outside the personal viewpoint, my relationship with the subterranean self was already one of ever-deepening trust and mutual respect. By this time we were routinely working together with the divine Light of Awareness, and could clearly feel the rapidly growing inner illumination, clarity and wisdom that is a natural hallmark of such a divine partnership.

Having taken refuge from the persistent fly behind the closed door of the bedroom, I sat and prepared for meditation. Sinking deeply into present moment Awareness, I marveled at how remarkably easy it felt to step completely away from any sense of personal viewpoint. For the first time I could ever recall (other than during awakenings), the ‘me’ point of consciousness held no gravitational pull.

Since the ‘me’ perspective was temporarily deactivated, I took advantage of this gift by focusing on the truth of what is. What does...