I was in the line at the supermarket a few weeks ago. In front of me was a woman with her grandson, about three years old, sitting in the cart. She was in her fifties, with tattoos, and long blonde bleached hair. I noticed, as we stood in line together, that I had made her into someone separate from me. It was easy to notice this, because my heart and my body closed down. It was as if she was standing outside a boundary, a line that I had constructed.
As soon as I became aware of the separation, I became very curious about it. What was it about this woman that made it difficult for me to include her in my own being? What was it about how she appeared that moved me to exclude her, to treat her as an object?
After a minute or so, I realized it was the Pepsi bottles in her cart, the Pepsi that her grandson would probably be drinking.
As soon as I realized this, I could feel myself begin to relax. I began to engage in something which I used to call inquiry, and which often feels to me more like prayer. It’s a willingness to see beyond the filters of my own conditioning, to open to conscious presence, to that which is true,
“Okay,” I said, speaking to the love and intelligence that live in every being, and that are always available to us, when we call on them. “Help me to see this woman. Allow me to see her through the eyes of the heart. I am not going to let a few Pepsi bottles stand between me and the magnificence of who she really is.”
As soon as I began this inquiry, this small prayer, everything started to change. The reality that we construct in our minds, with edges and lines and boundaries, is really so fragile. It can disappear in a moment.
I heard her speaking to her grandson with such love, about how fast he was growing up. Then her husband appeared, a beautiful man, tall and bright. They stood there together, right in front of me, sharing a stream of sweet love with their grandson.
By this time I wanted to speak with her, but she already at the cash register. Then I saw how wrong I really had been. This woman spoke to the young girl behind the cash register with such a natural warmth, as a fellow human being. She did not put a barrier between them. She paused, looked her in the eye, and took a few moments to really connect with her.
Then she and her husband strolled gracefully away, with their little grandson and those bottles of Pepsi.
I love being wrong like that. I look forward to the next time I am wrong like that! “I don’t know anything, “ I told myself, as I left the store, thinking I might get myself a Pepsi to celebrate the occasion.
I don’t know anything, and yet I do know that I no longer need to fall for the stories my mind makes up about how people appear, on the outside. The ideas, the stories, happen so quickly. In one split second, that wall comes up, and someone is standing on the outside of it.
I don’t expect that my mind will give up this practice. I am no longer waiting for that. Because the opportunities are endless, to see through the stories, and meet who is really here, face to
face, in the raw and beautiful place where we are all equal.
Our whole conventional reality is not displaced by the openness of presence. I still function as a person, with a name and a form and a location. I recognize this whole world, full of boundaries, as the world we all live in, when we are functioning in our day to day life. In the radical freedom of this place without boundaries, nothing is thrown away or denied. Everything is included.
In this openness, I have a chance to explore, to investigate whatever I might have pushed away. That which feels too painful, too overwhelming, too difficult to face into. I find myself writing this Lifeletter just after September 11, the tenth anniversary of this day that seems to have permanently impacted our collective consciousness.
One of the women in the twin towers that day was working at her desk on the 80th floor when the first plane hit the building. The wall on the far side of her office moved twenty feet closer. After she managed to get into the hallway, she and a large group of people were guided by the rescue workers down a long narrow flight of stairs. They made it down to the 7th floor, where the door was locked. So they had to wait there, in the dark, with the smoke and the fire, until a fireman got the door open.
When she finally stepped into the mezzanine on the ground floor, the second plane hit the south tower. She was thrown high into the air by the force of the explosion, and landed on a dead and mangled body.
That’s a very wild journey for a human being to take. It took her quite a while to heal from the trauma. This woman has been with me, over the last few days, living in my heart and mind. I’ve been looking at the violence, the separation, that seems to be escalating in our world right now.
How does a human being engage in the kind of behaviour that happened on September 11? If I stand back and condemn such actions, it doesn’t seem to bring much benefit. I am more interested in a deeper investigation.
In order to become a ‘terrorist,’ it feels like I have to totally distance myself. This is how people are trained in times of war-they have to make living, breathing people into objects, into the enemy, If I know you, if I include you in my own being, it’s not possible to do such things.
I might face you in battle as an honourable opponent. That’s a different kind of fight. Where I am connected with you, not trying to destroy you from far away.
This used to happen to me a lot when I was younger. I would be very angry with someone, full of judgements and self righteousness. Sometimes I would be holding an air-tight case against this person. But when they showed up in front of me, my whole drama always started to unravel. I could not hold my story together when directly confronted with the reality of who they were.
This violence, this separation, can only be healed inside each one of us. It begins in the moment when we cast someone outside, at the supermarket, on the highway, in the classroom, maybe even in the bedroom.
If I knew you
if I could feel
your heartbeat,
if I could see
the endless thoughts
you live with,
the deep losses
you never speak of,
the ecstasies
you have long forgotten,
how would I meet you?
How would I speak to you
then?
If I knew for sure
that you are
as tender
and foolish
as I am
inside,
would that not be
a blessing-
to allow love
to have it’s way with me?
with love
Shayla
