Where I’m At

Realizing My Life’s Passion

 

“The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything. We can never say that we are simply falling to pieces or that anyone else is, and we can never say that about the world either. Within our lifetime there will be great problems in the world, but let us make sure that within our lifetime do disasters happen. We can prevent them. It is up to us.” 

-Chogyam Trungpa

In the last few weeks of writing this, and really the last six months of talking about writing this, I have been struck, consistently, by lightning bolts of passion—or, as the sarcastic pun-ster on my left shoulder just whispered to me: “enlightening-bolts”. They are hard to describe, just little bursts of light in my otherwise cloudy sky. I love them – they literally shock me into feeling the bliss that life is. Then they fade, of course. But they give me profound hope—hope for the most insignificant desires of my own, or even my ego’s ‘crown jewel’: the desire to be a timeless hero. Hope even for the whole planet, that we really will win this battle that we have waged.

I have spent so much time lately stewing in the immense suffering going on around the world and the futility of any of my efforts to alleviate it. The system just feels rigged against fixing, even just addressing, the issues. I have been so put off by my seeming inability to penetrate any of these issues. This, coupled with an impatient, self-criticizing personality, leads to a lot of suffering.

But lately, writing this blog, I have just been in utter awe of how light I feel each time I release this weight through my fingers. All of a sudden, one thing just turned around. And since then, things are beginning to make sense!

It was the simple realization that rather than dwelling in the negativity, the futility, of our socio-enviro-econo-politico-cultural predicament, I could, instead, re-define it as the dharma for my personal and our collective awakening. In other words, realizing that everything is relative, generated by our perception, we are in control of our reality more than we think. Instead of giving in to the discomfort of our big-picture situation, I can consciously choose to be enlivened by it.

 

During my Yoga Teacher Training Course, we had to sit in cross-legged meditation. I had not sat cross-legged since third grade, and was about as flexible as a piece of wood. I approached the Swami, telling him it was just too painful to hold the position. He responded: “you have a block.” This infuriated me, as it seemed like he just didn’t empathize with my predicament at all. It was only when I dedicated myself to sitting from start to finish that I realized what he meant. I was in control of whether I moved or not, and by embracing the “pain,” I began to notice its nature. We are in our own meditation and are giving in to what makes us uncomfortable (for me, it is the gross physical suffering of the world). But should we decide to sit with the discomfort, to be with the suffering, all of a sudden, it can become a tool for awakening.

I encourage everyone who is emotionally engaged in the state of affairs in the world to join me in this journey of re-definition. Let’s form a Sangha of souls determined to awaken ourselves and be vehicles for an awakened society.