HALF MAN, HALF BEAST

I am a satyr, half man, half beast. I feel my man as a beast. I am tied to it, yet I long to be free of it. I long to be untethered from its galloping goatish legs, its lusts, its desires, its ridiculous tendency to take offence, and worry, and be afraid, and try to control outcomes and protect its poor self. As much as I feel the emotions of my man part flow through me, so much more quickly do I wish to be rid of them. I want no more time for guilt, or jealousy, or any little subtle gradation of fear. I want none of it.

Half human

Is there a way to live in a human body, in time, and to be at peace? Is peace possible? That is the question. Is it conceivable? Let us start on the level of personal experience, because what else is there? So, in my experiential world, is peace possible?

Do you think you can imagine something that couldn’t exist? Are you more than God? What is not possible that you can think of? If you can imagine it, it exists.

Infinity is all around, in directions you don’t even know of. Peace, of course, exists.

How do I manifest peace? Because that, really, is the question. What else would I want to know? With peace, comes everything else I could desire: a sense of completion, of rest, of having no more desires, of escaping time, of releasing outcomes, of surrender. With peace, there is nothing more to want.

How does one have peace?

By choosing it over every other thing. By refusing to pay attention to complaining, to superficial matters, by refusing to spend time arguing about details, by refusing all forms, however subtle, of ego and fear. You have fought with them long enough, and they have decimated you. Now lay down all your weapons, leave the battlefield, and from this moment forth, become peace.

I will fight no more forever

Chief Joseph, Nez Perce

COMPLAINING: YOU DON’T NEED TO LISTEN

Life is full of stories. How much attention you pay to any of them is up to you. Complaining does not have to be listened to. By listening, you only validate it. It asks you to make judgments all the time.

All you hear when you listen to complaining is, “This is bad, that was terrible, I hate how they acted, that was wrong, I am angry about something, I am afraid of something.” As painful as it is to listen to, the more you listen to complaining, the more of it do you invite into your experience.

Who would do this?

Resist not evil

When you see something in your experience that is unwanted, you push back, which creates resistance and conflict. Rather, when you see something unwanted, withdraw your attention from it. Endure no negative feeling-states surrounding it.

Deny the weeds of discord

Deny the weeds of discord any of the water of your attention. When you resist evil, you are paying attention to evil, treating it as though it were real and worthy of your attention. That is why it is better to resist not evil.

Would you invite discord and depression into your experience? If you knew you had invited them, would you not choose instantly to invite differently?

I would like to uninvite discord and depression from my experience. I would like to disable them completely.

You do that by withdrawing all attention from their direction. Where attention goes, experience follows. Think of complaints as negative little harbingers of grief and sorrow, poor little mine canaries heralding woes to come. Send these sad little birds away when they try to alight.

Photo by Mehdi Sepehri on Unsplash

Do not embrace complaining, indulging it with your attention. Starve it instead. Do not take its concerns seriously. Remember its only purpose is to distract you, to keep you endlessly involved in ego’s web.

Neither do you get angry with complaining, and go on campaigns and crusades against it, complaining against complaining. No, the only way to disable complaining, as anything else you may want to eliminate from your experience, is to lovingly withdraw your attention.

Say the conduit prayer over the situation, and then dismiss it with love. Do this each time a negative feeling tries to land on you. Very soon, they will stop trying.

Complaining is the language of decrease;

gratitude is the language of increase

Frances Scovel Shinn

CONDUIT PRAYER

For any situation that is causing you unease:

Onto this situation, as onto all other situations I observe, let me shine the light of my holy, dispassionate attention

Let me contemplate it with love, and may I be conformed to its highest purpose

Doe eyed and velvet skinned, six years old Somalian child looks into the camera with steady compassion in her eyes.

Photo by Muhammadtaha Ibrahim Ma’aji on Unsplash

By bringing this situation to consciousness, and consciousness to this situation, I have given it to God, where it must find completion

All attachment or emotion I had surrounding this situation, I now dismiss, along with the ego which engendered them

As I am become a conduit between the situation and God, who was waiting to bless it in every way, and lacking only a conduit

* * * * * * *

* * * * *

* * *

There was a Door to which I found no Key:

There was a Veil past which I could not see:

Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE

There seemed – and then no more of THEE and ME.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

OBSERVER, NOT ACTOR

You must cultivate the attitude of an observer. You are pure energy and consciousness, manifesting here in a physical plane.

Become an observer

Think of all that you see, all the interactions, the altercations, the business, all the movement and the changing, as a puppet show. The world is putting on a puppet show for you.

An array of colorful puppets in different guises: a chef, a baker, a masked Venetian dancer.

Photo by Ray Harrington on Unsplash

The clumsy, wooden puppets declaim loudly, lack grace, fall down, and refuse to do their master’s bidding. Their wires are visible, their motivations transparent.

Photo by Umut Yilman on Unsplash

Still, you watch the show. You willingly suspend disbelief for a while, pretend not to see the artifice and enter into their little world. You want to see what animates them, what pulls their strings. As an observer, you witness their emotions and consider their reality. You wish them well and want to see them happy.

At the end of a puppet show, the observer forgets about the small world of the puppets and re-enters the larger physical world in which he lives and moves and has his being. Compared to the puppet world, his is more flowing, subtle and colorful.

And so it is with your eternal Self observing the puppet show of physical bodies inhabited by egos. They strut about with importance, worry about how they are seen, fight, and hit each other with truncheons, nightsticks and whatever else they can get. They get caught up in mighty dramas.

But at the end of their day, their story is told, their use is over, and the eternal You returns to a world inconceivably larger, more flowing, beautiful, colorful and subtle than any the puppets could imagine.

For in and out, above, about, below,

“Tis nothing but a magic Shadow Show

Played in a Box whose Candle is the Sun

Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

A single flame illuminating intricately carved candle holder, depicting Hindu god, praying figure

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

RESOURCES MUST BE MATCHED

A verse of Epictetus:

As time goes by and you build on the habit of matching the appropriate inner resource to each incident, you will not tend to get carried away by life’s appearances. You will stop feeling overwhelmed so much of the time

It’s true: many of us feel overwhelmed most of the time, wondering what’s coming next and how we’re going to manage. Who would not want to escape anxiety like that?

The answer, says Epictetus, is to cultivate the habit of matching the appropriate inner resource to each incident you observe, in yourself and in others.

Matching the appropriate inner resource

Photo by Juan Rumimpunu on Unsplash

If your day seems to fly away and be lost on trivial pursuits, if you feel scattered and unfocused, use this day to practice patience.

The day after, you can practice focus. Write the word ‘focus’ somewhere where you’ll see it, say the word a few times. Determine to remember focus when you experience the least anxiety as you go through your day. Taking these actions creates the presence of focus in and around you. It coalesces focus into being on all levels seen and unseen.

Thank you for this opportunity to define what I really want, which is focus and calm. Let me learn what this situation would teach me, so that I will have the feeling state of patience as a memory and a resource.

When there are too many people around and too much energy dissipated in talking, let me learn from this to seek out solitude and give thanks whenever I meet it.

If my son goes to jail and I lie awake worrying about him, may I learn peace from knowing its opposite. Having learned it, may I then spread peace, which blesses any situation. The pursuit of peace is an alchemy that turns all baser experiences into pure gold. It redeems.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Matthew, 5:9

If someone dies and leaves me bereft and off-kilter, I can look within for a resource that would correct all this. I could realize that death is no more than stepping into another room; they are with us as often as we think of them. Simple as that. I could learn that sadness is a ridiculous indulgence, a babyish reaction to the vicissitudes of this giant, endlessly evolving and mutating mechanism we call life.

After just a short practice of calling out the appropriate inner resources to match each situation, I would have a library of resources to draw from: patience, acceptance, resignation to a higher purpose, peace, a sense of perspective. It would not take me long at all to realize that I have endless inner resources, and that the more I call on them, the more are they renewed.

Epictetus is right. I would very quickly drop the idea of being overwhelmed. There would be nothing to call it forth. I would gain equilibrium.

Balance above all

EXAMPLE, YOUR ONLY TOOL

Example is the only teaching tool you have.

Would you not use it?

Who do you wish to help?

You cannot manipulate, arrange, or cause them to come to whatever you would have them come to. You cannot make them go back to their partners, or lose their fears, or stop fighting, or choose happiness, or – in short – put themselves into God’s hands. None of this can you do.

Whenever you arrange something which it is not your business to arrange, plans go awry. Nothing is used the way you intended, and the help you give serves only to magnify a stale situation.

People don’t change because you see the changes they should make.

Stop

Stop trying to control people in any way. To be in the “should” business is to set up vibrations against the very outcomes you want. It’s a waste of time; no one wins. People will do what people will do. Do not get attached to any of it.

The only tool I have to do good is my example. If I want them to finish what they start, then let me finish what I start. Do I want them to speak their part clearly, without rancor? Then let me speak my part clearly, without rancor.

If I would see them happy, let me model happiness. Let me be content wherever I am, led to activities that give me joy, open to good that could be done by me.

If I would see them harmonious in all their relationships, then let me model that also. Let me forgive all people for whatever I think they have done to me: there’s a long list. Let me start by forgiving them now.

Above all, peace

Whatever it is that I would see, that I must become. Above all, must I become peace. My breathing must be slow and measured, my brain rhythms deepened, my vibrations longer, fuller, more resonant.

All this can be accomplished by merely thinking of it, picturing it, allowing your mind to have this image for seventeen seconds or more. Do that now.

When you want a person to be different, ask yourself only: how can I incorporate what I want for this person into my own example?

Image of a lighthouse at night, casting light on the stars