A note to my readers: this blog is a direct continuation of contemplations from Contemplations from the 2015 Retreat : Priming the Pump for Insight with contemplations on security and preserving. If you have not already done so, head back and read that entry before you proceed further.

Slowly, I woke from my nap and I opened my eyes to see that the forest floor was covered in leaves. In fact, it seemed like more leaves were on the ground than on the trees. In that semi-conscious awakening moment I   thought to myself, “the trees, so big and beautiful and powerful, with all their tree life force can’t preserve the leaves.” The tree is even the maker of the leaves, and in my mind, should be their absolute “owner” and still, despite their efforts the leaves all eventually fall and die, in the end so does the tree itself. I am nowhere near as mighty as a tree, so why do I believing that I am somehow different, better, that I can be preserved and I can preserve things?

Fully awake now, I reached for a sip of water and I considered my water bottle: I had bought it a  gas station in Healdsburg and brought it up the mountain. I had actually laid it down in the great hall when I first arrived, and had a momentary worry I wouldn’t find it again amongst all the other water bottles on the floor, in peoples’ hands, on tables, in the kitchen…I knew that ‘my’ bottle was basically the same as everyone else’s, but it was special to me, something I worried about preserving, re-finding, just because it was mine.  I realized the water bottle and I are just the same; I think I’m special, exempt from the rules just because I’m mine.

I saw further that it is made of the elements like me it has form; It comes to be “my water bottle” based on causes (arising) – and many of those are based on desire- my carrying it up the mountain bc I want water, the clerk selling it bc he wants to run a business, etc. And it will cease, at first I thought it already had when I lost it (I later found it).  I see I have a memory of a certain me, a certain bottle, I imagine us both as unchanging, as somehow real and mine. The me-ness is what blocks me from seeing the truth, my sameness as water bottles and trees, neither of which can preserve. Its also where all the spinning and suffering begin (just like my worry over 1 particular water bottle, ‘mine’ and no others).

I then started thinking of ways in which I work so hard to make myself special and the pain of the effort (like becoming a vegetarian for 20+years to prove I was more special/ethical than my brother, or the way I had let ‘friends’ talk me into jumping off a bridge as a kid to prove I was cool like them, or the way I worried constantly on how to stay special to my husband). I considered the way I acquire things, like pretty clothes/ hippy shirts, to further build and support that specialness, and the ways I work to preserve those things. I see the changes to myself of course, but I imagine them as selected, curated by myself. Sure I changed career goals, but it was my decision, I chose something better, something more in-line with the values of my new self. Sure I moved past my ‘hippy style’ into something more refined and classy. By subtly adjusting, by glazing those adjustments with an illusion of control, I preserve a cogent sense of self. A uniform being that does change (no more hippy clothes), but only in strictly guarded and allowable ways. My desire to preserve this I is so deep I get exactly what I want — more rebirths to keep this I going — the whole system supports this goal.

 

The Tuk Tok Pie (i.e. suffering): The peril is so clear too…this is why the sponge in the woods, or my disappointment with the jazz singer not singing “my songs” arises and creates such a problem. Because I think I’m so special I believe others/situations either conform to me or they are wrong (present Alana says, “just look at the whole New York hate, I think a whole city of 8mm people deserves fiery death just because they don’t conform to behavior I think is appropriate”) . It’s the main source of frustration and disappointment in my life.

Additionally, by creating and reinforcing “me” in relation to “mine”, I assume a burden to what’s mine, the burden of finding the water bottle, of placating my husband of preserving my company (its so striking too how this burden changes when we no longer perceive something as ours-for example I don’t give a second thought to placating ex lovers).

Worse of all though, I see so clearly how me is the foundation for the horrible stuff I do to others too. I behaved so badly towards my Mom for so long just because I needed to cling to a particular narrative, an identity as a victim and as the person more deserving of my Father’s love (my specialness).

In the end though, I will decay like the trees. I am the same as the water bottle, as everything in this world. And I suffer because I think I’m not. Because I work so hard to weave stories of how I am special and different, I have forgotten I am the author of these tales, so I have become overly invested, I think they are true.