Enlightening Nonsense

© July 16, 2010 and some touch-up on February 21, 2011

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A man spit in the face of the Buddha. The next day he came to the Buddha and begged his forgiveness. “I cannot forgive you,” said the Buddha. “For the man whose face in which you spit yesterday is long gone and the man who spit in that man’s face has also passed on. Today we are both different people. Let us greet each other anew.

Alexander The Weak [http://rebelyogi.com/alexander-the-weak] ordered $100 worth of supplements from me and then kept dodging me when it came time to meet and make the exchange. Several, “I’ll call you on Friday”s came and went without a call and soon he stopped answering the phone for me. I finally called from a different number and, lo and behold, he picked up. I asked him, “Dude, what’s going on? Is it too much money for you? Did you change your mind? It’s fine, just let me know.” He assured me that neither was the case. Later, after more dodging and me going on a campaign of daily calls, I found out that he thought I was trying to rip him off! I was perplexed, as I had specifically asked him if money was the issue and he said no.

About three weeks ago, after a year of not hearing from Alexander The Weak, he gave me a call. “You probably don’t remember me,” he said.

“Oh, I remember you, bitch. You’re the one who welched out on me on the supplements.” It was at that moment I was glad I didn’t live in Wales and have to deal with the Welsh.

He told me he always felt bad about what went down and that he just got a new job and wanted to send me some money. As I had just committed my energy to be more focused on my art, so to speak, and told the Universe, “Now fuckin’ provide!” I found this total out of the blue call to send me money a direct answer to my commitment to the Universe that I would stop pissing about, at least for a couple of days. It was about as direct as the letter to Dear Abby concerning another topic of urinary concern regarding a neighbor complaining about the two boys next door pissing off our—I mean, “their”—backyard ledge. [http://rebelyogi.com/dear-abby-is-a-gang-bang-whore]

Now $100 wasn’t going to make or break either one of us. For him, it would mean that he would have one less week of Double Mocha Lattes at the Starbucks; for me it meant I would have one more 9-hole round of fuck with Ninja’s mom and feel good about myself for providing her not only with a load of semen but also with enough money to feed her family garbage can soup for a week.

In my experience, all these money debates and negotiations and screwings are rarely about the money. They’re usually about one asserting their need for respect for their time and the services they provide, or sometimes one expressing anger at their need for feeling in control of the situation being obliterated by the thought that they are being overcharged and have no say in the matter. Sometimes it has to do with the “worker” being pissed-off that he is forced daily to partake of his shitty job and fuck you for hiring him. Often power trips are involved. But rarely is it just about the money, for the headaches that both parties receive are in no way ever even worth the valueless Federal Reserve Note with a picture of a dead President on it; upon that both parties would most probably agree.

Once Alexander The Weak allowed us to discuss the particulars of the issue, which he hadn’t allowed us to in the past, we both understood better from where the other person was coming. And we both felt heard. And my anger immediately dissipated and his feeling of guilt would pass once the cash was put in the mail and received. I doubt that either one of us really gave much conscious thought to the other person over the year of silence between us, but the tweezers of forgiveness removed the splinter of angst.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: He ended up sending me $50 and then never responded to my follow-up calls for the other fifty. Douche.]

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After Paki Sam and my relationship went sour, we would still occasionally see each other and hang out, usually when I was tired of eating twigs and berries and wanted to use her for a restaurant meal. After she took me to a restaurant where I flirted with our waitress in front of her, she stormed out totally angry. I didn’t mind so much that she was upset but more so that I was stuck with the bill! She ended up text-messaging me (as every girl I ever have dated communicates best in under forty characters) that she wanted the $600 I had borrowed from her that was on “Pay me back whenever” payment plan as soon as possible. I told her that I would be deducting the price of the hummus platter from what I owed her.

There were times when she would unconsciously cord me, which is like sending out an energetic leeching tube to suck me dry in the non-spermoidal way, and I would feel completely drained. After I got clearance from the doctor that I wasn’t being left untreated with syphilis like a black man [see The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762136.html] and then used my intuition to see where the energy drain was coming from, I would remove the cord and usually feel instantly more energized. I would always be angry with her for this, even though that was kind of silly, as “she knew not what she do.”

I gathered all the money I had stored in my pillowcase and in books and in change for laundry and sent a postal money order for $600 the next day. I wasn’t sure I would make rent at the end of the month but I just wanted to be done with her. As one final practical joke, the Universe made the check never get to her in order for our ordeal to drag out another month and a half while I had to locate the receipt stub for the postal check, take it to the post office where I would fill out some paperwork and have to pay for the check to be tracked in order to see if it was cashed, and if not, get another check cut to me, which I would hand to her in person, as I didn’t want to have to go through this whole ordeal again. After the new check arrived in my postal box, I arranged the hand-off with Paki Sam so I would finally be done with her.

I think it was during a drunk email, the Internet equivalent of drunk dialing, that I reached out to her to see if she’d like to bury the hatchet, and by “hatchet” I meant my 14” cock into her pussy. We didn’t screw but we talked on the phone, which was a little awkward, as I haven’t communicated with a girl in any other way besides text-messages in about a year, where typing the six characters “OOOHHH” has been the closest thing I’ve had to an orgasm.

Today I did a training session with her because I figured it was easier to separate her from her money this way then to have to wait for the next time that twigs and berries became painfully tedious for me and I needed a treat. As we were walking away from each other, she said it was nice to be friends again. She then gave me the middle finger. I don’t think we’ll be hanging out, and by “hanging out” I mean sticking my 14” cock into her pussy, but it is nice to know that we are done holding onto the energy pattern of “Fuck you!”

There seemed to be a shift in how I felt on receiving a call from the girl I thought was my soulmate, from one of excitement to one of, “Jesus, her again?” I wrote a piece more for myself than for anyone else and made the foolish decision to send it to her. Because she was Russian and as we all know Russians are good for nothing but being spies and drinking vodka, she didn’t quite “get” it and instead of providing an enjoyable read, the letter killed anything she was feeling towards me. The relationship was like a stuck pig, slowly bleeding itself out and ready to become bacon.

I hadn’t seen or heard from the Red-Haired Devil in about a year. I was talking to some young cutie at one of the GYNO yoga dances and a girl walking by stopped and said hello. I said hi and not much else and she ended up leaving. It was midway between a sentence that was going to end, “So, what say you about finding ourselves a yoga mat and playing a little ‘downward dog’?” that I realized that the girl was the Red-Haired Devil! I had mistaken her for a friend of one of my friends I met only once.

Later that night we talked and shared some long overdue dialogue. I told her that while I understand that at the time all she could think of was to stay distant, I could have really used a sit-down to help me in my healing process. She understood and apologized and soon our hands were on the crook of each other’s arm in a Mongolian wrestling hold that was more designed to feel connected than it was to break the other’s spinal cord.

We ended up walking out of the event together and, while I knew we were not soulmates and would never reignite the Duraflame log on the fire again, I had hoped that maybe I could get blown. Long story short: didn’t. But it felt good, if not to my loins than to my heart, to feel a sense of closure by saying what I needed to say and to have the other person acknowledge my feelings and voice how hurting me was not their ideal. I’m still not erasing THE RED-HAIRED DEVIL IS A BITCH from the truck stop bathroom wall.

[We talked about getting together but after what I felt was a moderate effort on my part and her being flakey, it never happened and I ended up re-erasing her newly added number from my phone.]

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After my post “Surface Story” [http://rebelyogi.com/surface-story], M&M, a girl who had a transformative experience after coming to me for energy work, wrote me a frantic email. And then another. And then another. There was more substance to the email but one aspect involved her telling me how she had totally forgiven her ex-husband for screwing her and her current boyfriend told her that she’s wrong for forgiving him. I wrote her back a long email whose gist was, “Make him an ex- too [get it “Ex- #2] and I’ll stick my 14” cock into your pussy.” I also told her that holding onto anger is poison and while different people have different tolerances to poison, it still eventually destroys the system.

I was feeling the blessings and power of Forgiveness, so I decided to send Roach an email, as the last time I saw her I basically called her a phony bitch and she said something to me in New Age-eze that, while it was spoken softly and had a big smile plastered over it and even included a few words like “love” and “Oneness,” after consulting my New Age/English Dictionary I found out it essentially translated to “Fuck you, prick!”

I wrote her asking her when she was next scheduled to be in NYC. Three days later I received an email that said

“I wish you well and have no hard feelings, yet I don’t have a desire to be in touch….

Best to you

While my old patterning would have shared with her that if she had “no hard feelings,” why wouldn’t she want to meet with someone who she had told my parents was “the most sensitive person she’s ever met” (uh, as in a good way and not calling me a pussy) and who has felt my magic firsthand? (And by “magic” this is the first time that I am actually not referring to my 14” cock) I could have written, “I didn’t want to see you, quite the contrary—I wanted to know when you were coming so that I could leave town to prevent your humorless energy from sucking me as dry as your mouth used to!” I might have even added, “By ‘no hard feelings’ I’m assuming that means that no man’s stuck his stiff one in you for quite some time.” But that would just be immature. Funny, but immature. And as my loyal readers know, Roach and I don’t really see eye to eye on the humor scale, the bodyweight scale or the cocaine scale either. [See “Lighten Up, Francis! at http://rebelyogi.com/lighten-up-francis]

Instead my response was the Buddha story at the top of this piece that my beloved Osho shared with me. I’m tired of fighting—despite the fact that I’m so good at it—I’m tired of being “right,” I’m tired of holding onto anger—even when I hear nonsense like “no hard feelings.” Obviously there are hard feelings (okay, here I meant emotionally as well as 14” cockally.)

Roach is so into her “mission” to save the world and is so structured in her schedule:

6:00 a.m.            Wake

6:05 a.m.            Shower

6:12 a.m.            Fresh green juice

6:15 a.m.            Bowel movement

6:16 a.m.            Masturbate thinking of Swami X

7:16 a.m.       Conference call with co-dependents in her cultish program…

Because of this, by contrast she saw me as a complete flake, as I have no mission, no purpose, no schedule, no class, and rarely anyplace to be. She was embarrassed to be seen with me in her circles and did a piss poor job of hiding this fact. And she didn’t accept the whole me but just the aspects that she liked.

I held onto a lot of anger for a long time about this. Because with all the bullshit preached in the New Age/Yoga/Raw Food world to the contrary, you can be totally judgmental and insulting towards someone while still donning a smile on your face and a Namaste on your hands. Regardless of whether the other person’s lips are curled up or down, it still feels shitty on the receiving end.
But I would love to see her and bury the hatchet, along with her dead body in a pit in Jersey where I’ve dumped the others. All kidding aside, I would love to see her again and bury not her dead body—as that would get my hands dirty (okay, maybe not all kidding aside)—but bury the dead bodies of the two silly kids who had conflict and held onto hurt and anger for so long, despite there being “no hard feelings.”

With all the “good works” she does for others, Roach doesn’t realize that maybe her scheduling me into her two free minutes between her afternoon OM’ing and her broccoli sprout lunch salad might be useful for me to release any residual anger that is still circulating in my light body auric prana field—oh sorry, I was looking in the New Age/English Dictionary again—I mean, in my penis, that a good piss and tap still won’t shake.

But, as I’ve seen by entering into all of the aforementioned cults, the “love” seems only for those who drink the Kool-Aid and look up adoringly at the “leaders” like a doe-eyed poodle, which can be a little freaky as, first of all, to think that some sick surgeon is extracting the eyes of a doe and putting it in a poodle (and I’m the sick one!) and, secondly, because it shows that cutting through all the bullshit-speak, when it comes down to brass tacks, these New Age “leaders” are just common Old Age “followers,” and what they are following is the mantra, “I serve only myself.”

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With all our “chakra clearing” exercises and all our “imagine a pink bubble around the person with whom you are in conflict” and all our “just forgive them,” without some eye-to-eye, body-to-body, mano-a-mano contact, most of these “techniques” are us just rationalized avoidance of dealing with the difficulty of standing toe to toe with someone and saying:

“I’m sorry for any pain or hurt that we caused each other. That is where I was at that moment. And that is where you were at that moment. But that moment is gone and this moment is here. So whether you took me for a douche or whether I took you for a douche, I love you and myself and want to remove anything that is inhibiting us both from experiencing the full joy of our processes, or processi as it may be, whether we remain in each other’s lives or not.”

Instead we say, “No hard feelings. Have a nice life,” and pretend there aren’t hard feelings and that we don’t wish the other slips on a melted ice-cream cone and cracks his head open on a hard sidewalk.

“Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”

Matthew 18:21-22

Most cheesy Jesus freaks think this is akin to shouting with outstretched arms and an open-mouthed smile, “I LOVE EVERYONE!” No. But let’s explore three reasons to choose Forgiveness.

(1) The “other” is a product of his conditioning and challenges and dysfunctions and is doing the best he can giving that he is, if not innately fucked up, then nurtured into such a state of despair. “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.” How uncompassionate of us to not take in this whole person, to really see them with our heart’s eye, and love them as rough stone of perfection trying to transform itself into an even clearer diamond.

(2) We don’t know the Universe’s greater plan. Maybe it will be five years from now and $25,000 in therapy later that we will realize the great leaps and bounds in our own consciousness and understanding that that bastard helped clarify for us. If you don’t trust in the Universe, you believe you are a victim and everything is random and the other is a douchebag. If you do trust in the Universe, not everything feels like a friggin’ massage, but you trust it is still somehow giving your soul the nutrition it needs to grow into a, uh, I’m not sure what soul’s grow into, trains? (Get it, “Soul Train”? Weak.)

(3) While we hold onto the concept of an “other,” we tend to think the forgiveness is for the “other.” Sure, but as far as our soul is concerned, it is mostly for us. Holding onto the poison of anger, pain, hurt, fear affects your entire experience. The anger casts a pinkish hue over everything. Your pain makes bending over to smell the roses just a pain in the back. Your hurt flavors all your food with the salt of your tears. The fear makes your world shake like L.A. during an earthquake, making the butterflies in your stomach say, “Not only are we screwed to be in a human’s stomach—but now the shaking?”

How the hell are you going to share your gifts, your love, your heart, and your beauty with another if you can’t flush down the energetic toilet all the smelly etheric poo that is floating in your auric toilet water?

Remember, forgiving another doesn’t mean you need to stick around. The abused housewife would be a moron to keep repeating her mantra of “I forgive him” while every day her husband beats her mercilessly. I think I read in a Battered Women’s Center brochure: “FORGIVE—but get the fuck out!”

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Saying, “I’m sorry” can often act as the butter on the hips to get the fat lady of forgiveness through a tight doorway [NOTE TO SELF: refer in a future piece to the vagina as a tight doorway and perhaps the rectum as a rusty hinge. I could even call breasts knockers! Oh wait, that’s been done.] And even if you are not totally sorry for what you said, surely you are sorry for either party—whether you, the other, or both—still holding onto pain or hurt? No? Dude, seriously, make an appointment with a shrink today. But sometimes even an “I’m sorry” is too little, too late and the fat lady is too far stuck and will die a humiliating death in the doorway.

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After my Ginzu knife sharp and slicing response to my friend Dizzy’s comments to my piece Ash Holes [see “Responses” at the end of Ash Holesat http://rebelyogi.com/ash-heads.html] about the morons who copycat Indian dot heads by getting ash placed in the center of their foreheads on Ash Wednesday, she was a little less than amused. While I didn’t apologize for thinking Catholics to be fairytale-believing fools, I voiced being sorry for inadvertently sledgehammering a wedge between our friendship.

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I sent her invites to yoga classes I was teaching. I told her I would pay her way for a yoga hike I was guiding. I even suggested we just get together for a sit-down and chat. In return I received either silence or short messages of the equivalence to “Kindly fuck off.” One of her last text messages to me was short and sweet: “Swami, I don’t want to be your friend anymore.” Well, maybe it wasn’t sweet but in my defense, I drank some scalding hot chocolate recently and my tongue’s taste quadrants have been all screwed up.

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I share this story not to point out what hypocrites Christians are with one of the main teachings of Jesus being forgiveness and that while they can quote the man up the wazoo, they sure have a hard time following his teachings. (Well, although not my point, I’m still glad I got to plug it!) I share this with you to let you know that some inflicted hurt may gouge another too deeply for the relationship to heal and to suggest you take a lesson from a retired samurai who has left many battered and beaten on the battlefield, there comes a time when you grow weary of swinging swords and words, of bruises and beat downs and severing limbs from bodies, and you see it’s time instead of cutting heads, to cut the shit instead. I suppose if one is a shithead you can kill two birds with one stone. Often this realization comes at the price of a dead heap at your feet whose life you valued dearly. Place your sword on the mantelpiece to remind you of a dead past, forgive yourself, and step into a new present.

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To all I have hurt on my journey, I ask your forgiveness. Not just so that you can tiptoe through the tulips that much more gaily—but for me as well. It pains me to see you holding onto any hurt and especially any we created together, like in an alternate hateful universe version of the romantic scene in the movie Ghost where Patrick Swayze ruins the clay vase Demi Moore is making on the potter’s wheel by being all romantic and loving her to death. I am doing my best to forgive you—and myself—but sometimes I could use your help as well…even if it’s just to feel you beaming your love and support from a distance.

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Let us pray that we all open our awareness enough so that we can no longer “know not what we do” and finally stop crucifying our fellow travelers and ourselves on the magical mystery tour of our individual and collective journeys.

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FIVE STEPS OF FORGIVENESS

© February 19, 2007 by Swami X

(1) Forgive Yourself – For feeling angry or sad or happy or jealous. We think we are wrong for feeling what we label as “bad” or “negative” feelings or thoughts. We can never be wrong for feeling.

(2) Forgive the Conflict – Understand the conflict as nothing more than energy, perhaps a little chaotic and not in harmony. How can you get mad at energy? Accept it for what it is without judgment.

(3) Forgive the Other – For not being the expression of perfection that you envision they should be. Accept their process: who they are, what they are and where they currently are.

(4) Forgive the Universe – For only giving you the information that you can handle at the moment. Perhaps it hasn’t given you the answers you seek because you haven’t been brave enough to ask the questions that will bring them to you or ready for the answers.

(5) Again, Forgive Yourself – For not being brave enough to ask the hard questions and accept the difficult answers. Love yourself for who you are, what you are, and where you are. Accept your process and say: “I forgive myself for being afraid. Bless me with the courage to hear and accept the answers I seek. I love me. I love you. I love all. Ameyn.”