All we have is now

Exposing one's self through writing is not something I'm used to.  It's easy to get cerebral about the whole thing and hear my voice changing for an imagined audience or perceived reader when in fact, I want to write for me.  For the me that is saying the words in my head and hearing them, not for anyone else.  But I am a harsh critic of myself and want to add disclaimers and footnotes that let me know that I'm in on the joke, that "I get what he's doing here" and that that wink and a nod absolves me of any of the trappings that come along with it.

So, without further ado, Michael's brain, here is your disclaimer: I grant you permission to write freely, to process your words and thoughts in a setting that might or might not be read by other people, but can be a safe place to enjoy the now.  The "you" of now needs to do this, feels a compulsion to revisit a 10-year old blog and it's not important why.  And also, dear Michael's brain, you will kill the specimen if you dissect it further.  Enjoy the process and be here now.

I've been listening to Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now." It comes on the heels of reading Pete Holmes' "Comedy Sex God" which was unlike any memoir I've read before.  I went into it thinking I was going to read a humorous account of an ex-Evangelical comedian and emerged from the other side having an entirely different perspective on the human experience and perception and time and space and it all.  It blew my mind.  I cried reading it.  I laughed at some parts and cringed at others.  But his search for understanding resonated with me.  And at the end of the book he recommended further titles and "The Power of Now" was one of them.  I finished "Comedy Sex God" in a few days; "The Power of Now" requires all of my brain to process and I can only handle a few minutes of listening every so often.

I can't just hear phrases like "Time is an illusion" and continue on my day.

I've been ruminating on those words and others like them and every so often I'll have a flashback of the church I grew up in, Pastor Kent speaking from the pulpit and saying things like "Pray without ceasing" and then currently wondering if maybe, just maybe that ties to a guru's mantra.  (Pete Holmes made that connection for me; it's not an original thought.  It's probably not even his original thought.)  Or I'll remember myself crouched over a Bible on the APU campus reading Christ's words to "consider the lilies of the field" to know that they don't worry and wishing and praying that I wouldn't worry about things.  Then I'll flash-forward to the present and hear Tolle saying the "ego" is a creature that feeds on the past and projects into the future but causes pain and I'll wonder if maybe just maybe Christ was an enlightened guru who understood these things and was trying to guide people towards something inside themselves, a true spirit that is free of worry and doubt and the trappings of conscious thought.

And then I hear my thoughts and realize, "My God, I've become a goddamned hippy."

It's difficult for my analytical mind to understand some of this.  The part of me that worships the accuracy of language and logic and reason and thought cannot comprehend how to accept the language (let alone the meaning behind the thought!) that these exercises encourage.  The metaphors that abound are repugnant to my erudite sensibilities.  People who traffic in these words sound ridiculous.  Here is an actual Eckhart Tolle quote: "What a liberation to realize that the 'voice in my head' is not who I am.  Who am I then? The one who sees that."

What a crock of shit!  How does that make sense?  How can one tease apart that sentence to mean anything?

And yet...

And yet, it was those words that made me weep.  I cannot hide the visceral reaction that the "me" who saw that sentence had.  According to the book of Acts, when Saul was on his way to Damascus he ran into a ghost of Jesus who made him feel real bad about persecuting Christians and he was blinded (Michael Schoon translation of the Bible).  After three days, a nice man came along and prayed and "something like scales fell from his eyes" and he could see again.  He changed his name to Paul and then did other stuff (still my translation).  And now the phrase "scales from fell his eyes" is used to represent a rebirth or a moment of clarity on which one can hinge their life.

What I mean is, it is entirely human to have a physical response to something as you confront the "truth."  In this case, I responded to something I didn't (don't?) understand and am drawn towards it.  I can't explain it, I don't have words for it, and the words I do have make me sound stupid.  I'm not used to sounding stupid.  But I'm willing to now and maybe that is one of the differences.

The me behind the actions and words and occupations and titles and personality tests is there.  And the spark of consciousness (or whatever it's called) is amazing and wonderful and somehow connected to the rest of the universe in ways I can't know/understand/believe right now and maybe I never will.  But if I can grasp a fraction of it, if I can appreciate the now and live in the now and begin to drink in the connection I have to stars and trees and people who are all made of the same scienc-y stuff, I will be an active participant in this life.  That's what I want to be: an active participant.