There are days when I wake up in the morning and my first thought is, "Oh my God, I wanna be with you." And without fail, those are the mornings that end with me throwing up my hands in defeat...
Okay, alright, I surrender!
Is this because God is cruel? (And let me just interject, for those of you who find yourself recoiling at the G-o-d word, that I'm not talking about a man-in-the-sky kind of God...I'm not really talking about a man (or woman) at all...what I'm talking about is the Divine, and that whisper of bliss that comes when you find the grace to sit in her lap, even for a moment.) Is it some awful jack-ass style joke that the more I want the more I NEED the affection of that whatever-you-want-to-name-it connection, the more separate I feel?
No, Shanti-towners, the Divine is not cruel. But, as it turns out, the Divine (just like us mortals) isn't so easily wooed by desperation.
Isn't it the case that the most beautiful works of art, the greatest performances, the most charismatic people, and the most breath-taking of sights...aren't they so, in part, because of their effortlessness? Isn't it their ease that draws you to them? The uncomplicated beauty, their raw-ness, their total lack of need for your approval? Isn't that the thing that makes you want to just melt into them, to hang on their every word, to spend hours drinking them in?
Well, it's how the Divine feels about you, too. It's not your struggle. It's not your effort. It's not your need, your necessary wounds, or your muscular attempt to Get Things Right that brings the Divine nearer. Because, do you know what happens when you start to want something a little too much? Your MIND jumps in. The little siren in the firehouse of your brain goes off, and a hundred men in hazard suits go sliding down a pole to the rescue.
Move aside! We'll handle this!
And suddenly the Divine (that inexpressible, irreduceable, unbelievably beautiful force) gets reduced to a series of ideas about who you are, who you have been, who you will one day be and in what way your connection to that which is greater than you might help you (finally) get there.
And the Divine, it turns out, isn't really interested in your ideas of what he-she-it is.
The Divine, she is sweet, and soft, and made of things like velvet and honey and things that shimmer. She's drawn to that which is also sweet and soft and honey-ey and velvet and shimmer-ed. She is lulled by your grace. When a muscle relaxes, she rushes in to fill the space that was once taken by tension. When you take a morning to do nothing but drink tea and stare into the tops of trees, she orchestrates only the best birds to alight there for you. And, when you are silly and you laugh and you say f*$% it, I don't care anymore how this looks or where this gets me or who says what about it, she puts on her dancing shoes and comes to join you at the party.
So, Shanti-towners, if you feel in the grip of a mind that has a serious need to connect, that has a lot of serious solid ideas about what that connection means, and that is quick to call frivolous the only things that make you soften, just think about your serious self as an old grizzled man nestled up to a bar, waiting for someone to come and cheer him up. And think of the Divine as a silk-clad red-lipsticked goddess who has just wafted through the door, and ask yourself if there might not be another version of you she might be drawn to more than this old man self. Say that cowboy with the look of mischief in his eye, or the bearded poet all choked up with beauty...even, say, that little petticoat-clad child, darting between the dangling legs of every patron, searching for some trinket.
Remember who you are, and then remember who she is, and remember, especially, that you don't need to take any of it all that seriously.
Wishing you a day of play, and wonder, and deep companionship with that sexy dame, Divinity.
