“ If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”
William Blake
Recently I spent a week in the small beach village of Jiquilillo, (pronounced “hee-kee-lee-yo”), Nicaragua with my wife and daughters where one of my daughters works for Growth International Volunteer Excursions (GIVE – givevolunteer.org) a Seattle based volunteer service organization that unites international service, adventure travel, and experiential learning to connect cultures, inspire meaningful change and improve lives. GIVE also runs programs in Tanzania, Laos, and Thailand.
In Jiquilillo , I was impressed with the college kids who came from all over the world to build new homes for Nicaraguans displaced by the rising seas associated with human-caused climate change. I also visited the large school they built – the walls fortified with sand-filled plastic bottles – next to blacktopped basketball courts and a baseball field (fieldofhopeblog.wordpress.com). And I watched my daughter and others teach English to about thirty eager, excited children and teens.
I was equally impressed with the Nicaraguan people who are among the poorest people on the planet and yet are incredibly happy, gentle, grateful, kind and generous. I fell in love with them and long to return and immerse myself more deeply into their culture.
Not everything went perfectly fine, of course. We’re always being tested and we don’t always pass. On one occasion, I was given an opportunity to practice patience. I failed that challenge but I learned a lesson I won’t soon forget.
My wife and I had retired one evening at 9:00 with the intention of rising early to enjoy the majestic beauty of the mystical, astonishing ocean that – like a carpet of liquid glass and foam – relentlessly rolled in and out along the beach that fronted our simple, thatched-roof cottage.
Nearby, the college kids were enjoying their raucous music at the outdoor saloon at Monty’s Surf Camp (montysbeachlodge.com), where GIVE is based. Unlike my wife, who can sleep easily and quickly anywhere, I laid awake listening to the relentless drum beat that seemed to vibrate and pound within my chest; waiting for the curfew of silence that never came.
After a few hours of futility, I finally arose about midnight to stoically accept my wakeful fate and resigned myself to beach reading with my cell phone flash light, hopeful “the kids” would eventually wind down. About 1:00, I thought my prayer was answered. I could still hear music, but it seemed to fade into a distant rumble that I thought I could ignore as I sought the peace of dreamland. I crawled back into bed and slowly sunk into sweet oblivion.
Until around 2:00, that is, when the music beast suddenly and rudely erupted anew and jolted me awake. The steady, driving beat was back as loud as ever and quickly snapped my mind like a dry stick. A momentary madness seized me as I leaped from bed, burst from the cottage and sprinted across the soft sand toward the saloon. I was not conscious of any rational thought at that moment. Pure rage and adrenalin drove me forward. I had no plan. I really had no idea what I was doing or what would happen next.
I deftly clambered over several large boulders that gave me quick access to the back of the outdoor bar where I could see the only people present, three dark figures sitting in chairs in the shadows near the lawn. I rushed past the large speakers over to their table – like a road-raged warrior – relishing my chance to spew righteous indignation at them.
It was only then that I discovered my ingenious “plan.” Before I even knew who “they” were, I found myself slinging f-bombs like a drunken sailor, demanding to know what the hell they were thinking. I lost my mind. I have no clue what I actually said. I just know it was vile, hateful and mean.
As my eyes finally focused on the familiar faces before me, a sick feeling began rising from my toes. One older Nicaraguan gentleman who I knew and respected spoke in perfect English for the others. He calmly apologized several times and promised to turn the music off. “No problem, no problem,” he said reassuringly.
I froze a little then and blinked as a slow-motion tsunami of shame collapsed over me like an ocean of leaden bricks and I realized how completely crazed and depraved I must have looked and sounded. I had screamed out my murderous venom and suddenly felt spent, exposed and foolish.
I don’t recall ever doing anything like this before. It was like a monster stole my body and mind for a moment of twisted insanity and then returned it, leaving me to deal with the consequence. I could only sheepishly nod my thanks to the sincerely remorseful man as I slunk from the room wishing I could do the whole scene over.
Just then my logical self showed up and futilely informed me that my tantrum was not necessary. All I had to do, he said, sounding like Spock from Star Trek, was simply ask them to turn the music off and they would have complied. Why had that thought not occurred to me before?
In his book, Falling into Grace, Adyashanti explains that until we find our inner stability, “we’ll always be pushed around by the next experience, by the next thing…by the next person or situation that we encounter that is difficult or challenging.”
How do we acquire this inner stability? For the next few days, I struggled with the deep shame that comes from the realization that I had fallen far short of what I expected from myself. And it was hardest as I looked into the eyes of my wife and daughters, who quickly forgave and forgot. Only I couldn’t let it go. How could they?
Adyashanti tells us that we need to open up to our “interior silence” if we truly wish to overcome the bully within and avoid being “pushed around by our minds.” First the tyrant inside egged me into rage and then he switched sides, reviling me endlessly with complete contempt. How do we win against an internal judge who is never pleased?
Adyashanti reminds us that our instability arises from our need to resist and argue with reality. He writes, “To tell ourselves – to tell life that it shouldn’t be the way it is, is a type of insanity.”
At some point (like now) it is helpful to remember that all our suffering arises from our pointless need to constantly judge and evaluate reality. Instead, we could decide to fundamentally change “our relationship with life such that our experience is not based in conflict, judgment and constant evaluation.”
It is not necessary to change who we are. Instead, we are seeking to change how we relate to who we are. To the degree we deeply understand, we do not blame. To the degree we condemn, we do not understand. We will never understand (stand under) that which we stand apart from and hate.
Adyashanti explains that inner stability, emotional peace or “spiritual freedom” involves a willingness at this moment to radically accept everything as it was, is or will be and seek instead to simply see self and life “as it actually is,” without adding our interpretive embellishments.
He tells us that “all of the various ways that we argue with existence, although they seem very reasonable at times, can only lead to suffering and conflict.”
As we “surrender to what is,” we can “let go of trying to control the moment.”
I notice that most of the time, I view external and even internal reality as a potential threat. I push back. I vote no. I struggle with it. I resist. I seek control. I argue. Why? How does it help to spend our lives in the ring, exhausting ourselves shadow-boxing ghosts we can’t change?
What if we could bless all we see? What if we could allow all to be?
Adyashanti explains, “The greatest generator of conflict, both internal and external, is our addiction to interpreting and evaluating each and every moment of our experience.”
Look at the world. What do you see? As you give up resistance, who will you be?
What if Adyashanti is right? What if we could “open to life in a completely new way”? What if we could suspend judgments of self and other and “hear” the silence of “grace.”
Adyashanti writes, “All of a sudden we wake up to the fact that the entire way we viewed our lives was just a very thin veil that obscured the greater reality.” He states that as we open to the possibility of a world in which we refuse to fight, resist or condemn, “we begin to fall into the grace of a different dimension of being.”
There we discover “Magic and mystery…as our old conditioned view of reality breaks apart.”
When we see how we see, we see how our seeing separates us from that which we see.
Adyashanti writes, “If you’re very, very quiet and you open your senses all at once, you just might be taken. You might be taken by a moment of grace and fall into a sense of what it really feels like when life is not separate from you, when life is not other than you, when life is actually an expression of something indefinable, mysterious and immense.”
