This satsang is an attempt to teach Vedanta, in this case nididyasana, in story form.
It is impossible to succumb to sentimentality when you know what you are. To say what I am instead of who I am is to merely say “I am,” without implied modifiers. It is to see what is without comment, or if so inclined, to only say, “It is what it is” and watch the mind go silent. But a miraculous force somehow adds a body and a mind endowed with attributes, qualities, talents and abilities to this ever-present unborn “I am,” so adjectives and adverbs are warranted. Therein lies a who and a sea of stories.
Mom’s liberation from her momness was one of those attention-grabbing events that provides a good anchor for this story. There were other standouts that didn’t involve the parents directly but wouldn’t have happened unless they were involved. They evidently needed another someone to love once they were clear they loved each other, which happened after a considerable period of sexless good old-fashioned courtship. They really believed the death do us part vow, so one contributed a sperm, the other an egg, which isn’t difficult, and in due time the miraculous force that generates every object that presents itself to the all-pervasive unborn What generated a love object called me. They did it right. I was wanted, loved and pampered, which it seems is the exception, not the rule these days.
However, I realized at some point early on that the life we all love so much because it gifts this miraculous inner light which illumines an equally miraculous world, isn’t necessarily the bed of roses we might reasonably expect it to be. For fear of seeming ungrateful I won’t use the word perverse, but any reasonably conscious being can’t help but notice that the long journey stretching out before us is consistently peppered with obstacles large and small. Before I learned to gracefully hurdle, I tried to sneak around them when nobody was looking. If that strategy failed, I’d batten down the hatches, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, to use a metaphor I picked up from my affectionate and courageous Dad, whose stint as a Seabee contributed to the timely end of the war to end all wars and provided a wealth of nautical metaphors.
They loved us unconditionally so they didn’t need to question their parenting skills but perhaps they did anyway owing to my antics. My brother and I succeeded irrespective of the slings and arrows life hurled at us as it does. We were raised in a small town and had mother not planted the seed of knowledge so enthusiastically I may have discovered a certain satisfaction in trucks, the companionship of dogs and guns, pickup sports and my high school sweetheart, the girl next door. It wasn’t a bad life after all. In fact, it qualifies as a happy childhood.
I remember drunkenly lobbing an egg from the back row of an auditorium in Spokane that smashed squarely on Fats Domino’s grand piano, sawing down a huge billboard advertising insurance with my cronies, regularly downing several six packs of Ranier stubbies on the banks of the Snake river of Hells Canyon fame on Friday nights, purloining unattended gas-guzzling gleaming chrome behemoths just for the hell of it and engaging in other various and sundry sophomoric pranks too stupid and numerous to mention.
Let’s just say I was locked into the boys will be boys Zeitgeist, which I learned wasn’t all that bad. When I asked Dr. Water Puddy, the only shrink in a three hundred mile radius in whose company I spent a fair amount of time for subsequent transgressions, he said, “Well, Jim, “At worst I’d say you are slightly maladjusted, but considering the times I’d say it Is a good sign.” And some people these days want to dial the clock back to the Fifties?
In any case, I was a rebel without a cause, a Jimmy Dean among Jimmy Deans. The event bubbling up from the depths of the past to tickle my mind and kickstart this stream of consciousness today happened in geometry class when I was seventeen. It changed my life forever. I arrived in Daddy Meyers geometry class with shackled pants, my duck tail carefully promenaded and the short left sleeve my immaculate white logo-free T-shirt tidily wrapped around my trusty pack of Lucky Strikes just above the bicep.
Daddy Meyers was a drunk who owed his job to his wife, the principal’s secretary, who ruled the school with an iron fist. Sober, he was competent enough to teach a bunch of small town yahoos, not so much hungover. On this fateful day, brain fog prevailed. He dutifully wrote out the quotidian proof on the blackboard, unaware of a glaring logical mistake in the penultimate line and asked, “Any questions class?”
I don’t know what got into me…actually I do…but how could I let such an egregious error prevail? My head turned sideways and my best friend, who was sitting right behind me and must have seen it coming, put a cigarette between my lips. I dutifully ignited my Zippo, inhaled, stood up, walked to the front of the room, pushed Daddy into his chair where he cowered in terror behind his big oak desk, erased line six, entered the proper symbols, turned toward the class, took a deep drag on the Lucky and said, “Any questions class?
Needless to say, this small drama mercifully saved me from the pulp mill, 2.2 offspring and life in small town picket fence America once and for all. Nothing wrong with it if you’re suited for it, but it is not my cup of tea. My brother never forgave me; he ended up doing all my chores.
Since we’re in the age of pop psychology here’s my two cents for what it’s worth. Most of us don’t rebel because fear of authority is necessary for survival. Freedom, however, is the number one need of all human beings, young and old, and emotional attachment, which is usually but incorrectly called love, puts the mind in a bind. Consistent use of power…”Because I told you so!!!…creates suspicion and distrust. Is it any wonder that the family unit is a first rate conspiracy incubator for little people? They long to grow, which is accomplished by succeeding and failing and useful information, but they don’t grow if they slavishly act out the desires of two big children masquerading as adults who purport to love them. The Ku Klux Klan, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Q-Anon and the ring of billionaire-funded vaccine-loving pedophiles tirelessly foisted on us as the root of all evil play second fiddle to none other than the nuclear family.
Anyway, time passed and the little rebellions kept adding up until I crossed a big line. I fell in love with a married woman. I won’t go there; you already know the drill. When that love of my life, along with an inordinate obsession with the realm of the senses, specifically sex, food and alcohol, mercifully ended in complete disaster…thank you Jesus…I was willingly suckered into psychedelia which is to say, I “tuned in, turned on and dropped out” to employ the argot of the time. Those exploits are chronicled elsewhere so I won’t repeat them. Yes, I enjoyed the psychedelic extravaganza…learned a lot as they say…until I didn’t. One morning on a peak in Morocco’s Rif mountains it became crystal clear that I was actually the all-seeing eye of consciousness, which put an end to the psychedelic extravaganza and pointed me in a more hopeful direction.
Time passed again as it does. There were other incidents but one day I met a wise person who said, “You know, James, you are what you are rebelling against.” Evidently I was ready to hear it because the rebel shuffled off the mortal coil leaving no longing when those words were eaten by the stillness.
