World Turnin'

There's a Zen saying:

Before enlightenment, I chopped wood.

After enlightenment, I chopped wood.

Or maybe it's cut vegetables or breathed in, breathed out. You decide. Either way it's the same. The point is that enlightenment is pretty much who you are as opposed to what you are. I don't know that enlightenment is even anything more than those flashes of insights that come after a lot of hard work on your inner space or just the place we live before we add a ton of baggage in our minds and after we remove the baggage.

Now I don't know that I'm any more enlightened than the next guy (or any less for that matter) but I do know that I have had marvelous moments of enlightenment. And then I go back to cutting vegetables. I mean, really, what else can you do? The cutting of the vegetables is what brings you to the next moment of enlightenment. It's funny how that works.

I have recently suffered a large let down consciously. I had to make some very mature decisions based on my enlightened self and my refusal to let ego rule. It was very painful and very necessary and I feel like I did the right thing. Sort of. I could have done more but am not quite there yet. So for the me I am now, I did the best thing. I sat with sorrow. I sat with anger. I took clear action based on reality and fairness. Yep, I did all that. Things have come full circle and the problem revisited and I was able to experience it consciously and without ego emotion and from a witnessing standpoint. Woo... big enlightenment. And you know what?

It's still very sad. And I still feel ..... I don't know, like I'm chopping wood. It just is what it is. There's a finality to all of it. An inevitability. Sort of the yin to the yang. Non-action vs. Action. When you realize that no action on your part will create the action you want. That there is nothing you can do to help the suffering of others sometimes. Sometimes people are determined to suffer. No matter what. And the bigger picture is that their suffering is necessary. Just as you watching it is necessary. Sometimes. And when you take action to end suffering, it doesn't mean the suffering necessarily ends... just your involvement in it. Your playing of the game.

Like my good friend Kim once said, "you just pull up your big girl pants and go home." Kim the Zen master... LOL! But that really does capture enlightenment in a way. When you realize the ego is enjoying the game, enjoying the suffering, sometimes you just have to cut your losses and stop playing. That's exactly what I did. But the game goes on. And the ego really wants to play-- it says things like, "how could you be put through all that and it not even matter?" Silly ego.

Makes me sad. So I go back to chopping my vegetables. In the Light. Suffering is inevitable. If you fight it, you just stay stuck in the mud. As Eckhart Tolle says, "First you have to accept that you are in the mud." Then you can get out.

I'm out. Sometimes it's hard to get it all off you though. Mud is clingy.