I once read a famous writer say that he wished he didn’t have to write but that it wasn’t a choice, as if he was James Caan in “Misery” and the psychotic Kathy Bates had him tied to a bed and just sledgehammered his feet. It was someone famous, of the caliber of Stephen King (who happened to have written “MIsery”.) I thought to myself, “This guy’s full of shit.” But as I’ve immatured in my writing, I see that perhaps he had a point.
Words are my vehicle to express the Wisdom teachings that come through me. This is not me patting myself on the back and saying, “Look how great I am!” It is somewhat the opposite. In fact, when I understood not in theory but in practice the nauseating New-Age phrase often said by yoga posers: “I am not the doer,” it kind of pissed me off–how was I going to take credit for all this great stuff now! Dr. Christopher, a Master Herbalist and the founder of The School of Natural Healing, said that he could boast about the herbal formulas he put together, because they were not from him but from God. I’m still going to boast like I did before…the only difference is now I know I’m full of shit.
Since I was a young lad, I always used writing as a tool. I remember in elementary school writing a piece in which I had my handheld Mattel Electronic Football game, a game that by today’s standards is like an abacus compared to the latest Macintosh trillion gigabyte computer, speak and share his wisdom; I don’t remember, maybe it was, “If you push my buttons, I’m going to light up!” or “Yeah, you love me now but when the Gameboy comes out you won’t even be able to sell me on eBay.”
I remember in high school going on a date with a girl from my acting class and we had a really good time and it seemed that she didn’t want to pursue more and I was feeling a bit hurt. So I wrote an original scene that I performed in class with another girl that went something like this:
BOY: Hey, I wanted to tell you that I had a great time last night.
GIRL: That’s nice.
BOY: So, would you like to go on another date with me?
GIRL: Not really.
BOY: You’re a bitch!
It was a way that I could express, if not Wisdom, then at least feelings. I was very theatrical even back then and have continued to manifest drama to surround me like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s day.
When I was at the ashram of Aurobindo and his spiritual partner The Mother in India, two beautiful souls devoted to the creation of a spiritual community and a better world, I lined up to kneel by the side of their mausoleum, a blanket of flowers-covered marble tomb, and placed my forehead on it as was the custom. I only slightly paused to think, “Man, if a thousand people a day put their head right on the spot where mine is right now, that has some serious head lice potential,” before I got on with my prayer.
I thanked them for all they had done, for the beauty that they had shared of themselves and for the betterment of the community. I asked if there was any advice they had for me. Aurobindo himself came through and said, “I would wash your hair thoroughly, the guy before you had lice.” It was The Mother who told me, “Don’t listen to him, he’s just fucking with you. Write. That is your gift. That is your meditation. Rather than sitting cross-legged each day and thinking about your falling asleep legs–write!” I lifted my newly itchy head and wasn’t sure which one of them was telling me the truth. I told her I would commit myself to write but it wasn’t the first time I would fall short on a commitment (in my defense, we were only dating for five years and the other girl I cheated on with was really hot.)
A couple of weekends ago, I was part of a Native Ritual Weekend which involved a sweat lodge and an ayahuasca ceremony with an amazing egoless shaman named Manuel. He was clear in explaining that it was not him but the Wisdom teachings of the ancestors that should be honored and if you thanked him he responded in a way which most would consider socially inappropriately–because he saw what he did more as his duty and his honor and not like something he was doing for you as “a favor.” It was like thanking someone for breathing. Thanking someone for loving. “Thank you for loving me.” “Don’t thank me, if I had a choice I wouldn’t–you can be a real pain in the ass–but I can’t help the overwhelming love that pours out of me when I think of you, see you, share with you.”
Ayahuasca is a wisdom plant and a great teacher and early on in the trip she communicated to me that the written and spoken word is my gift. So whenever Wisdom came a-knockin’, I had my pen and red marble-patterned notebook in which to capture onto paper what she was sharing. Since I was writing in the dark, and also a bit high from the ayahuasca, I wrote over many separate pages so as not to write over some brilliant insight that I was hoping to bring to the light. Only a couple of times did I write over previous entrees and I am still trying to decipher whether the sharing was the hopeful “We are all one” or the doomsday “We are all done.” More than any specific insights which she shared with me, it was the vessel that I was going to take home with me and commit myself to utilize to share her wisdom. And that was the word.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” –John 1:1
Once when talking to the immortal 2000-year old yogi Babaji in my head and transcribing all this “deep” stuff I was receiving onto paper, I asked, “How do I know that this is you and not just from my head?” He replied, “It is the teachings that are important; who gets credit for it is not. And if that’s not clear enough for you–you’re not that wise, jackass!”
So after the very impactful Native Ritual Weekend, I started writing about my experience, planning to include it in this “blog,” or whatever the hell this is. So many words were pouring out of me that when I cut and pasted what I had so far into a Microsoft Word document it filled twenty pages–and I wasn’t even halfway completed!
When I was on the plane flying to the Rawspirit Festival this past weekend, in between watching television for hours with a boner because I had disconnected my television a year ago and forgot how friggin’ fun it was to give my brain away to a flat screen, and not due to the jar of Viagra I had to swallow before going through security because of the new regulations due to another made-up “terrorist” (ooh, I’m so scared now! Please take away more of my civil liberties to protect me!) who was supposedly caught trying to bring down a plane by punching holes in the walls with his Viagra-induced hard-on, I wrote a piece in my notebook called “Bomb Samaria” about a good samaritan who crawled up my ass uninvited (and not John McCain’s latest campaign promise.) It flowed out of me like diarrhea after Gringo All-You-Can-Eat Night at Mexico’s Montezuma’s Chicken in Guadalajara–ten pages.
When I came back from the Rawspirit Festival this past weekend, I started writing a piece I entitled “Love At The Rawspirit Festival–Better Than Cacao?” I wanted to get it done and posted so that the people who I met at the festival and told to go to this site would get a taste of Rawspirit that wasn’t offered as one of the many free samples from the venders. I wasn’t nearly done and after another cut and paste into Microsoft Word–thirteen pages!
When I came home from the Rawspirit Festival, I went to pick up my bitch from my friend who was taking care her. I found out that she had chewed up three things of extreme value to her host: a book of devotional chants that she uses every day and has so for the past fifteen years, a wooden Hanuman idol that had importance to her, and a 1920s Cartier ring box that was irreplaceable–and in pieces. And while it was a frustrating “Welcome Home!” to receive after one of the most enjoyable weekends of my life, I can imagine it was extremely difficult for my friend not to strangle my separation anxietied dog and turn her into stew.
The next day I wrote her an email and the words started flowing and I knew that it was going to contain many sharings from Wisdom and that I couldn’t withhold the sharing from you, my beloved readers. A future entree.
And then the first full day back, I witnessed some shouting and insulting and when I approached to share with who appeared the main shouter, it ended up with him telling me to get the fuck out of there and threatening to fight me. I came back later to offer myself in fight and what ensued was one of my most beautiful teachings to date. I thanked Wisdom for her sharing, and thanked my martial arts instructors for giving me the tools to kick this punk’s ass.
Walking home from my meeting of the heart with the Shouting Young Man, I felt so grateful and knew that it was my duty to share through the gift that was given to me of words what I had learned, even if it comes through in my silly, “South Parkian” dialect. Earlier in the day I was begging the Universe to shut off the valve, telling her that all these words in my head make it rattle and it was giving me a fuckin’ headache. Now I understood that it was my duty to be a human rattle and to shake things up through my words and unique perspective. Like Manuel the shaman, I realized that this is not something to be praised or self-ascribed, that this is just what I came here to do. And I couldn’t wait to share it with you!
So here’s the challenge: I don’t want to hold back anything from you, my beloveds, but I understand that if I write a twenty-page dissertation on how I went to the sex shop and bought a big, black dildo, no matter how amusing it may be–and life-like, as it was taken from a casting of Long Dong Silver himself–this may not be the venue for such a sharing.
Now before you think I have gone soft on you, or should I say “flaccid,” to stay with the penis imagery, let me clarify that It is not the subject matter or the gutteral language that I use that may be inappropriate–those are just vessels unto themselves and, to quote Bruce Lee plaigarizing from Zen to his student at the beginning of “Enter The Dragon”, “It’s like a finger pointing to the moon–don’t look at the finger–or you miss all that heavenly glory.”
When I competed for seven years in Chinese full-contact kickboxing–which included punches, kicks, leg kicks, knees, throws, chokes, grappling, an occasional fold-up chair and hidden pipe that you stowed under the ring–my New-Age associates whined, “When are you going to stop the violence?” not realizing that kickboxing was just a vehicle–and just as useful as yoga, tai chi, meditation, smelling daisies or whatever else the New-Age pansies do–that was immeasurable in helping me to better understand my current fears and limitations at the time. They were just focusing on the finger, and so I gave them the middle one.
Over the past two weeks I have decided to commit myself to utilizing the vehicle that chauffer’s me around in order to share the Wisdom that is the real driver of the car. I have decided that it is time to share my writing, if it is really “mine,” to a larger audience. I am preparing to put together several books and the twenty-plus page pieces will go into those books, as well as many smaller pieces. I even have some good titles already chosen for my books but I will have to withhold those because there’s probably a prick or two out there that would buy the domain name and then try to sell it back to me for some extortionist rate. I also see creating some instructional dvd’s and cd’s using yoga as the vessel.
I remember telling my parents way back that I wanted to write a book. My dad, ever the practicalist, told me that one had about as much chance of getting a book published as he did of becoming a professional baseball player. What he didn’t seem to grasp is that humans each have their own unique gifts and if someone is gifted with words, his percentage goes up tremendously. And if fully commits to his gift, the Universe will conspire with him to make it manifest, even if you don’t believe in “conspiracy theories.” Or in the case of baseball, if one only has a moderate amount of skill, they can still take steroids and break records and think they’re something other than a pussy.
On this “blog” (I keep putting that word in quotes because when in the past I have read some others’ personal blogs they were mostly like, “Today was a sunny day. It was so sunny I was inspired to write this poem: Oh sun. You are shining on me. What a sunny day.” and I don’t really consider myself a weatherman–unless that involves blowing shit up) I will try to keep my thoughts contained to a few pages at a time. This is hard for me because when I start to write, my pieces are already complete in another place and it is just about me pulling them out of the water and slapping them onto the frying pan (for a vegan I sure have some doozy metaphors!) This doesn’t mean I don’t edit here and there but, unlike God, it is difficult for me to break wholeness into pieces and still keep it feeling whole.
Because I don’t believe in repressing or withholding anything (I once tried a taoist technique of not ejaculating with my girlfriend at the time and after a few weeks I had pain when voiding, went to the proctologist, and the next thing you know he had his finger up my ass and was singing “Moon River”), I will probably share with you shortened versions of the longer pieces; we can call them “teasers.”
Maybe you’ll buy the friggin’ books and help support my lazy swami ass. Maybe you won’t. Either way, I’ll love you just the same.
REFLECTION:
What are your gifts? How does Wisdom express herself through you? What is alive in you?
If you are having trouble finding an answer, don’t worry–that just means you need to explore a little more!
MEDITATION:
Imagine yourself living and expressing your gifts every single day, every single moment, allowing Wisdom to flow through you. See each moment of your day connected to Wisdom. Start with your current daily routine and fill it with your connection to your gifts and Wisdom. Feel yourself alive from the first moment you wake up in the morning to the last moment when you lay your head down on your pillow. Imagine how your life would transform…perhaps you would be guided to start a new career…or attract different kind of people to you…or travel to different places.
When you finish this meditation, if you don’t have a smile on your face then you didn’t connect to the image of your gifts and Wisdom but something else based on your conditioning of what you think you should be doing and feeling. It is time to release your own authenticity! What are you waiting for?