Enlightening Nonsense

I met Herbie at a New Life Expo. I was working a friend of mine’s booth about learning at a speed of a million words a minute while he was off putting money in the meter of his handicap spot, a sticker he acquired for being mentally retarded. It was at this time that Herbie came up to me and listened to my snake oil sales charm.

But I wasn’t selling the Sound Barrier Learning program, which I paid my $400 for and am still a bozac, but something that money can’t buy and if it can it will be from some charlatan. You see, rarely am I actually selling what my booth, or table, or exercise class is billing as “for sale.” I am usually selling destruction of your old conditioning, awareness and consciousness.  The mystic Osho said in a discussion entitled “Meditation: The Only Medicine” that whatever problems or concerns people come to him with, he has only one medicine to offer them: meditation. I am a pretty one-hit wonder as well and my song is called “Consciousness,” which is still #2 in Germany, right behind David Hasselhoff’s latest musical crap sandwich.

So I started into one of my diatribes on how we have been spoon-fed a diet of fear and competition and that this has kept us all looking over our shoulders and pissing on the other guy’s cornflakes. Herbie was eating it up like a freshly urinated upon bowl of cornflakes. His eyes even started to mist like the air of a sunrise walk at the beach. I told him I admired that he was courageous enough to look like a total pussy and cry in front of everyone present and that while he was a pussy, he would probably never see the inside of an actual pussy other than the model in the gynecologists office when he went in for his seasonal pap smear.

I found out that Herbie was also a personal trainer and freelanced at a gym out of which I, too, worked. He told me that he’d like to support me doing what I do. I wasn’t sure exactly what it is I do, besides calling individuals “pussy” and “douche,” but I didn’t want to golden shower on his parade. I figured he could hand take the freshly spooged towel after I was done masturbating to the laundry basket for me.

I told him that money was tight at the moment and if there was anyway I could get some of his cold hard cash without having to put my hand on his cock in the stairwell, that I would be amenable to that. He told me that he had an overflow of training clients and he would hook me up. I was excited and pissed off. I was excited that I might have access to a new source of cash flow and would be able to once again feed my dog. I was pissed that I had just jerked-off a guy in the stairwell only minutes before.

It was later when I was no longer working the booth and pretending to sell their latest, “Neo Knows Kung Fu” program, that I talked to Herbie without a table between us. After being drenched by a bunch of New Age platitudes, not only did I need him to pass me a towel, but I was also ready to strangle with it!

He went off quoting me the syllabus of Spirituality 101. I think he was misreading his notes that said, “We are all One” and told me, “We are all the same.” As a recent graduate of the Apex School of Spirituality, not only was I up on my Spiritual-eze, but I had also been given a righteous toolkit to boot! And so I went to work.

“No we’re not,” I said with my spiritual hammer. “Are you telling me that we all have the dexterity, basketball skills and gambling addiction of Michael Jordan? Do we all have the business sense and prowess, not to mention the hairstyle, of Donald Trump? How about the musical brilliance of a Beethoven, Mozart or John Denver? The huge cock of a John Holmes, Ron Jeremy or Swami X? We are NOT all the same and anyone who tells you we are is a ‘lesser than’ trying to pretend he’s an ‘equal’.”

Herbie looked like he was comatose from the Tryptophan coursing through his brain after eating too much Thanksgiving turkey. “I’ll have to think about that,” he replied sheepishly.

“You do that, bitch. And if you come back to me with the same, ‘We are all the same’ bullshit, I’ll make you cry again, but this time by pulling out my cock and making you realize just how ‘not the same’ we are!” I power drilled home.

In a future joint teaching we did together, involving how to both roll and smoke a joint, his “We are all the same” nonsense transformed to “We are all equal.” I had to pull out my spirit saw and cut his fuckin’ head off in front of the group, which marveled David Copperfield at his best.

“We are NOT all equal. That is the loser mindset of Communists and crazies. Some people are taller, fatter, stronger, smarter and wealthier than others. For example, probably all of us in this group are smarter than anyone stupid enough to say that we are all equal. We are all equal in our worth as humans, which is not dependent on what we do or how we contribute. But other than that, life is very inequitous.”

There are many reasons why people come to spirituality. Most come to it for one egoic reason or another. Maybe physically they are a pussy and when they failed at excelling on the intellectual front, they decided that the only other gathering ground for pussies was in spirituality. Maybe they weren’t hugged enough as a child and so they are seeking company with the only freaks who will give you a 10-second hug besides men in trench coats at adult movie theaters. Maybe their lives are just so miserable and like a slave on the plantation, they think to themselves, “If there isn’t something more than picking cotton all day and sucking off my mass’er at night, then what is the point of even living?” I went into spirituality for the chicks and had no pretensions of finding God.

I wouldn’t even mind all the patheticism if these douchebags could just fess up that they’re fucked up, miserable, lonely, wimpy, egoists who look at spiritualism as just another gig to help them hide their Authentic Selves of which they are ashamed. But no, these bozos have to pretend that they’ve seen the light, that they are the façade that they wear on their face in a brazen smile and blissful eyes, that if you look hard enough reveals strained cheek muscles, stifled tears and anger at the world for the fact that we are not created equal and that they are the “all the crap” Danny DeVito twin to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s genetically perfect one. But they don’t. Most of them have actually convinced themselves that they are Arnold Schwarzenegger, as they walk around four-foot two, bald and with a ponytail.

Herbie was typical of the newbie on the path of spiritual discovery. He was wide-eyed and reading a million books and taking a dozen classes and workshops and going on retreat after retreat while his empty glass filled with nothing but cut-and-paste quotes and sayings and phrases and terms from all the so-called, self-proclaimed experts out there. I was just glad I didn’t have to jerk him off him for cash, that I could do this strictly for the pleasure of it.

The next time we saw each other in the gym, he gave me some Namaste hand salutation. I nodded refrainedly, not wanting anyone to see me acknowledging this act of phonery but also not wanting him to burst into tears again. I was focused on my client and when he did a good set I shouted out, “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!” and then mockingly apologized to the gym for my outburst.

“Don’t apologize. That’s just your Higher Self,” said Herbie the pussy. What the fu—? To all of you who haven’t taken Spirituality 101, which is a blow-off course for which you only have to show up for the final and if you don’t pass by random guessing you are either a moron or were using a pen to fill in your oval circles when you needed to use a number two pencil, the “Higher Self” is considered by some to be something closer to your soul, your access to higher wisdom, your part of the God pie. How the fuck me shouting out like a lunatic was the expression of my God pie is beyond me. Maybe my cow pie (for those of you who haven’t taken Hick 101, that’s cow shit.)

Herbie started sending me some clients and although after taking his cut I was making only about half of what I do with my own clients, I basically had only one or two clients at this point and wasn’t going to bitch about it. Apparently many people prefer training with tree-hugging, “Higher Self”-touting pussies to someone who has as many inappropriate outbursts as someone with Tourette’s Syndrome. So I put up with some of his nonsense but I was very aware that it could be any minute before I exploded into a Higher Self rage against the machine.

He invited me to a diner for a Pow-Wow about business. I went solely because I thought I could get a free meal from it. I had to listen to him throw cheesy terms at me left and right and do my best to use my Vegan Shield of Invulnerability to keep from smelling like a blue cheese coconut [See http://rebelyogi.com/blue-cheese-coconut.html].

It started with him telling me, “I am a Visionary.” I glanced around nervously checking the walls for a poster illustrating the proper procedure to enact the Heimlich Maneuver, as I was fairly certain that any minute I would be choking on my own vomit and I always said to myself that if I’m going to die from regurgitory asphyxiation, I would like to do so in the arms of a burly man.

I took the bait and said, “What is your vision?” I think if I ran out of the diner screaming like I a little girl who had seen a mouse I would have had a better chance of avoiding appearing gay.

He went on, as I new he must. “Community.”

“That’s not a vision, that’s a word.” It suddenly dawned on me that the vegan equivalent of Surf & Turf wasn’t worth the barrage of bullshit I would have to endure but it was too late, the order was placed and the lame discussion had commenced. And so I carried on. After some prodding by yours truly, Herbie talked to me about creating groups and offerings that were still too vague for me to make heads or tails about and told me that he wanted to partner with me. I prayed to my gods that this meant gay sex and nothing that involved more than blowing my load and telling him, “Get out.” Unfortunately it seemed like he wanted to be life partners or soulmates or some shit like that.

“We can meet each week here if you’d like,” he offered.

“Uh, I don’t like,” I said. “Let me think about the word—I mean, ‘vision’—that you presented to me and I’ll get back to you.” I wasn’t planning to get back to him. I was like a guy who tells a girl, “I’ll call you,” as he turns around and dogs her to his friends about what a pig she is and how he wouldn’t call her if he was Alexander Graham Bell and she was the only one with another phone.

But he did send me some clients and the look on Abandon’s face when I finally had enough money to fill up her food bowl was a mixture of confusion, as if asking, “Wait, what is that in the food bowl? Food?” and elation and seeing my girl’s face entrenched in her bowl and chowing down with reckless abandon was worth listening to all the lame New Age clichés I had to in order to keep her fed.

And so I put up with him telling me he would call me on a day and then not and having to give him a little teaching on integrity and making our word have value. And I put up with his bi-weekly text messages telling me that he would have money for me next week, which often turned into the week after that. And I put up with him telling me every time we had a moment together how he was a great speaker and knew God had gifted him with the ability to lead others. By the fifth time he told me this, I wrote him an email basically saying, “I feel like I am failing as a friend. If you are excited about something and want to repeat it a dozen times to me, I should be happy to hear you repeat the same fuckin’ story over and over again. But I’m not. Instead I pray to Jesus that you’ll die before you finish your next sentence.” Apparently Jesus was only good for killing himself.

It wasn’t until Herbie let me train one of his clients at 6:30 a.m., to which I naturally overslept, did I realize that Herbie wasn’t “the same” as everyone else in one regard, that he actually excelled in it.

Now I’m not a great liar, partly because I am too lazy to have to work at it. So when I received Herbie’s text message that said, “R u ok? Phil said u didn’t make it this morning,” I just came clean and said that I had forgotten that I already had an appointment with my pillow at that hour. I felt bad, as this was his business whose spoils he was graciously sharing with me and I had fucked it up as badly as a virgin asshole in a prison gang rape. I told him that I was sorry and embarrassed and that I would see if I could do a make-up session with Phil. His text message reply, “No problem. no worries” told me a lot about him, mostly that he didn’t care too much about capitalization or the fact that I didn’t have a text message plan and his four-word text messages were costing me twenty cents a pop. [See “The Text-Messaging Douchebag” at http://rebelyogi.com/the-text-messaging-douchebag.html]

But what I got from his messages, read in the spaces between the words, was that Herbie didn’t have an invisible tally like most everyone else does, that when he said, “No problem. no worries,” he meant it and that this incident would never be brought up at some future perfect opportunity for a power play.

It’s been six months since Herbie has been sending me clients of his to train on a semi-regular basis. He never has my money for me right away but I have always been patient and it eventually finds its way into Abandon’s food bowl. I have wondered why he is sending me his clients to train if he doesn’t have enough to cover the fee he pays me.

But I know the answer. While his mind may be filled with delusions of spiritual grandeur, his heart is definitely big. And whether it is real trust and faith or conditioned nonsense, he firmly believes that by giving to others he will receive in turn and that by supporting others his “vision” of community will come to fruition.

I hope his vision comes true and that his hyperopia turns into myopia. Because in my book a big heart is worth more than knowledge or success or even the latest new toy that Apple has to offer. Just don’t expect me to hang around his annoying community once it is formed!

Because my book doesn’t just contain flowers and sunshine, but dirty pictures of nun’s knockers and priests pedophiling and archbishops asses and popes peckers. And it also doesn’t contain cut-and-paste spirituality that can be bought in a classroom but handwritten notes from my own experience and understanding.

And when I turn over my book as my legacy and you flip it open, it will contain nothing but empty pages in which you can write your own journey of discovery. I will have erased anything that may influence your own story—which will be everything written. And when your story is as empty as the pages I left for you, it will be only then that you will realize that a full life is not one that can be recorded in words but only in blank space.