Through all of my previous sentences about pinnacle feelings, reverence, and transcendence, I have been remiss in mentioning “beauty.” Here, I mean beauty that the soul recognizes, separate and far deeper than social fads like,
“Fancy jodhpurs you’ve got there, Ken!”
I suppose that it takes an emotional cracking, a push from a death, or some hard event that compels you to feel around the edges of your life, maybe in your 40’s when for example, you might find yourself arranging pearl-hued tomatoes on your kitchen window sill because you can’t take your eyes off of them– they are just so damned lovely! This is you tucking in to your vulnerability, the same ability that makes possible our three subject words up there at the beginning of this paragraph.
I can’t tell you your version of beauty–that’s up to you, partner. It could be the softest spot in the world that is the divot next to a horse’s nostril. It could be the Pacific Ocean, the sound of the human voice–or the relief of the silence after a human voice off key. That heart-swelling that you feel is a part, a potential of this presence, this pinnacle presence. If you turn it over, you’ll see the sticker for “creativity;” it’s all connected. I’ve been poking at this over the last few days–well, since I went up and checked on my mother the other morning, if you want to know the truth. I admit that I was not in pinnacle mode, but down in the shade, out near the edges… parking lot, perhaps. Making my way through the mood crushing art design of the hallways, I found myself pining, brooding, knowing that one of life’s sincere joys is to meet another soul, fully present–and good GOD WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG? This would all be so much easier with another person, wouldn’t it? In this morning’s less than stellar moment in the upper apartment, I felt my mother to be an energetically empty carapace; found myself being drained further, more exacted from me than is evident in the digital readout on the scale if that’s possible. How am I not a vacuum?
Damn.
This is not my idea, but I grokked it as fresh:
If we saw each other as pure light, we would be free of our narratives and no longer subject to assumptions and judgements.
Also, we would not be human, with all of the fun that that entails, right? To be clear, I was kind to my mother, offering her tuna salad, the universal symbol of “making an effort.” She declined.
“No thank you,” then,
“Thank you very much,” when I left.
No, “I love you,” as per our deal.
Saying “I love you,” has become a game. Now, she laughs whenever I say it first, which is 99.9% of the time. This was not what I had in mind, so I stopped, leaving the way open for sincere words, so far not forthcoming.
Here’s the gold, the message that I was hoping would drop in the writing of this: I do not see beauty in my mother, but part of this struggle has been that I was expecting to. I felt that since I had put this healing into motion, and had felt the pinnacle feeling, shouldn’t I see beauty in her? ‘Not how it works, it seems, and I suppose that this is a revisit from the first pinnacle essay where I spoke about our relationship not morphing to spiffy just because we had a conversation. I don’t want to sound arrogant, or narcissistic, or just like a real jerk, but the more I sit with this–thankful for Mooji who talked me down–the more I am learning that we can’t expect anything from another. This is all us, at the same time, not us; just the light in between–the tiny waves/particles.
On this day, I was running at a deficit, but the Mooji meditation helped. Through all of this, and here’s another solid ingot, it’s important to decide if you’re going to clock all efforts towards healing, or simply go through the motions. In the initial moments of the Mooji meditation, I was like a busted irrigation system here in this chair, and so tired that I figured that I would make like I was being grateful and all of that, that I could continuer comme misérable because who would blame me? I reminded myself of the point of this, and challenged myself to step up. Something shifted and I quieted immediately. I heard the guru’s guiding words, and took them as truth: I didn’t want to just go through the motions of meditating. I didn’t want to turn all of this into nothing. I needed the refuge and reset of meditation. Committing to it brought the good, good vibes. Going deep here, making the hard choice, made it seem like I had someone on my side, even though this was all via the intertubes.
Do I see beauty in Mooji? Absotively. Do I see beauty in myself? Well, I feel it in the efforts to go deep. That’s a rush. It’s a risk, and a rush. ...wait. It isn't a rush. The decision to go deep is really hard. I suppose the beauty comes in... the alchemy, the metamorphosis of that difficulty into whatever crystallizes.
Further up the page, I wrote, This would all be so much easier with another person, wouldn’t it? It would be different, I think. There would be relief in the distraction of another, and possibly the lessening of the gravity of decisions I must make on my own, but there is the possibility that I would not be learning as much. These days since the conversation on June 27th have been more intense than I could have imagined. I feel like I am approaching a lysis, though I will admit that I thought that after the 27th, my balcony was going to be jammed with unicorns. I was not ready for things to become more challenging. One breakthrough begets the next.
Grateful.