Surrender is a touchy subject. Acceptance is a touchy subject. I grew up learning "Never surrender!" Maybe you did, too.
On Tuesday I return to Mexico for 25 - count 'em, 25 - tooth extractions, about half of them surgical. O what fun I am having! A temporary denture will be provided. That's tomorrow, as I write this - exactly 28 hours from now. The clock ticks out like a dripping faucet - tick tick tick. And I'm terrified.
It's the beginning of slaying a few dragons that my self-neglect and denial have allowed to grow until they are dangerously large. Mouth infections are beginning to affect my health more generally - more systemically - which I have been warned about, and I have said "Yeah yeah - someday maybe." Well, today's that day. Or tomorrow, technically.
And I'm terrified.
I could also say, "anxiety is present," which is objectively the case, but honesty demands the full report: I'm terrified. No sense beating 'round the bush. Anxiety is just a three syllable word for fear. I am momentarily "identified" with the sense of being an organic pain collector made out of meat who is ever-so-tediously, in slow motion, hurtling into oblivion. Suppressing this, denying this, claiming to be free of it - like some sort of floating guru or Saint, or sage - isn't helpful, and it isn't honest either. Wisdom says "Surrender;" Wisdom says, "Acceptance."
And I am terrified. I have been terrified for a while now. The increasingly strident tone of my last several posts, or "screeds" really, for that is what they were, reflects this disturbance.
Not to put too fine a point on it, my answer to Wisdom right at this moment is "Fuck off." That's my answer to everything just at this moment - advice, encouragement, commiseration, sympathy. Fuck off.
These are just thoughts... Bullshit... It's true, but it's bullshit... All truth is bullshit at some point... These are just thoughts... as someone might say... As I might say... As I have said, again and again, and again... And I know it to be true... I have seen that it is true - to whatever extent. But, I'm terrified.
Pity the Cowardly Lion...
The fact that there's a struggle going on in the mind - like a storm - a tug-of-war between thoughts, back and forth, is... just a fact. This is what's going on right now. This is what I am doing right now. This is where spiritual practice is actually practiced. It's not about sitting in some deep meditative state, and earning some kind of prize for not "existing" anymore. It may sound like that sometimes when I listen to spiritual teachers. Right now, I want to say "Fuck off" to all of them, too. I cannot lie.
I do not want to do this. That's all.
But it's going to happen. It's going to be uncomfortable. It's already uncomfortable and it's not even happening yet. "Surrender to what IS" says a voice I'd like to smack into silence. "Acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today."
"O, why don't you just shut up, will you? I'm trying to suffer here..."
I anticipate all kinds of potential events that I cannot actually anticipate, such as taking my meals in secret privacy for the next few months, or putting cheeseburgers into the blender. I'm "spinning."
Tammy calls it "spinning." She's my partner. "Spinning" is thinking useless thoughts about the past or the future repeatedly, or becoming stuck in thoughts, or being hypnotized by them as though they were a particularly annoying tune you can't get "out of your head."
That's called an "earworm," as you probably know. Every morning Tammy and I tend to share two things with each other - two experiences. We ask one another about the content of our dreams, or what we may recall of them, and then we tell each other what song is playing in the mind. It's often something like, "Yummy yummy yummy I got love in my tummy," or something just as dreadfully funny. It's a graphic example of what thoughts are - that a song you haven't heard since childhood can just pop into consciousness with no perceived cause, and it just plays in the "background" just as if a radio were turned on. It isn't "my" thought. I did not think it. I did not choose it. It just IS.
The fear is like that song. It's just playing in the "background." Bullshit - again! - it's very much a foreground experience right at this moment. But it doesn't matter - foreground and background are just more thoughts. The point is, it's easy to sit and meditate, and realize this, and realize that - or talk yourself into this realization or that - but that's not the "real" spiritual practice. The real spiritual practice is Life. Meditation cushions are soft and comfortable. Life is dirty, life is painful. Life is uncomfortable.
I'm living the Proverb: "What I fear the most has come to pass; what I dread befalleth me." I like the word "befalleth" very much, don't you?
My AA sponsor, many years ago - a fellow named Richard - used to be a cop before he got sober, thirty years before I met him. He used to tell a story about a moonlight gig he once took as a security guard for a famous Christian faith healer who was touring the area. He'd tell about how he watched this guy in action, on stage, with a kind of contemptuous, detached interest. Richard was an atheist at that time, of the sort who doesn't give it much thought but just sort of scoffs, but he said he "saw some things" - that's the way he put it - things that tickled his beliefs a little bit.
So, the time came for the tour to end, and the famous faith healer was packing up his medicine show and moving on to another region. Richard's gig was over. He had gotten to know the faith healer over the course of the week or two, and approached him just to shake his hand and say goodbye. And he asked him, "Do you ever doubt yourself when you're up on stage? I mean, how do you know if healing has really happened? I've been watching. I see that you're sincere. You look like the real deal. You look like you're being sincere. But, don't you doubt sometimes?"
The faith healer said: "Richard, the fact is that doubt just happens. It's not a thing we do. It's not my doubt or your doubt, or anyone's doubt. No one owns it. It's just there, trying to get my attention. Someone approaches me for a healing, and sometimes I seem to know something really has channeled through me - the Holy Spirit, divine energy, Love... whatever we want to call it, and sometimes I just seem to know that nothing like that has happened. It just seems like nothing has happened. No healing has occurred. But, do you know what I do, in that case?"
Richard was very keen to know. He said, "What do you do in that case?"
The faith healer said, "I do this." And, by way of demonstration, he cupped his hands around his mouth as you might if you were making a general announcement to a group of people, and he shouted, "Next!"
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As a Confessor, St. Ambrose of Milan is famous for saying, "May your sin be mine." This was brilliant because it was true. Your sin is mine.
*
Peace, friends.
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