Sunday, June 7, 2015

FINDING OUR OWN WAY

                     "Each of us finds our own way."
                                                                          Pema Chodron




Finding our own way is what is most terrifying.


Old institutions have always crumbled.
(We just don't believe they will in our own lifetimes.)
From the Ancients of all continents to the Catholic Church, right here and now, whatever we have clung to has always disappeared. Yet, there is something fundamental in the human being which continues to cling.


Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun, relates a fable about humans being born as eagles--at first, noticing in the distance, how beautiful the horizon is--open and inviting. But over time, the nest begins to become our voluntary prison. It fills with "our stuff". We put on clothes and shoes and hats and collect ''stuff". Everything from new sneakers to sunglasses and I-phones weigh us down; altering our image--our true self--so much, that we forget who we really are. We forget we were born to fly.


Free falling is the first lesson. (Perhaps it is the most terrifying.)
To take that first leap into nothingness. To drop, unsure of what we really know or even how to use it...


No safety nets.


(The real deal...)


Letting go of what we've been programmed to accept, without question, is that free fall.
Willingness to step off, naked, over the lip of the nest, into The Unknown; to strip off "this is what your life should look like" and find out, once and for all, who we really are, who we were born to become. Not to accept that the only worthwhile existence is to remain trapped--no matter how familiar or entertaining or decorative the cage is. To risk all in becoming who we really are.


When my students graduated this past weekend, I listened to speeches that always say the same things: we are unique, we will make history notice us, we will always have each others' backs, we will never forget, we are a group of individuals the likes of which this school has never seen.


The faces were fresh but the sentiments could have been culled from my own yearbook, four decades earlier.  For these graduates, some of those words are true. (Surely the feelings are. No doubt.) But what I wanted to stand up and yell to them (and to their families in the bleachers) was that life will not see you in this way. History will not record you along those lines. You have not been given all of the truth. Much has been withheld from you for fear that you WILL learn to fly; that you WILL leave the nest--under your own power.


And then?  (What then?)


Perhaps, you will never return.
Or, upon returning, tell us something those of us still trapped do not want to hear. Or know. (Or have to live with...) How much safer to hide some of the harsher secrets...


In the final Lojong teachings,the student is instructed to walk the walk, even at the risk of losing one's life. (Jesus told His disciples much the same thing...interesting.) To walk that journey, you have to be willing to find the path that is your own. You have to leave the nest, falling freely, soaring above the ground to scout out a road to follow. Your road. (NOT the road of your ancestors nor your religious leaders nor your teachers.)


 Wowza.


It will feel, at times, like death. It will feel at times like gravity will grind you into the mud. It will feel at times like absolute loss and destruction. Yet, it's the only lasting way. No institution will save you. No pre-paid ticket will guarantee a free flight zone nor a secure landing strip. (You must risk everything.) This isn't about being a radical. Nor is it about protesting your parents' plans and dreams. It isn't about school or a job or marriage or politics or even your future success. It is about right now.  This moment.


It is about discovering your Authentic Self. Your absolute core being. (From every angle.) And how that self is connected to everything else.


"Risk it all to find it all."


That's what I wanted to yell.


No guarantees. (No matter what it looks like from the inside of the Nest.) No matter how great some of us look dressed up with all our shiny stuff and our puffed chests and bo-tox smiles. None of that really matters.


You have to risk it all to find your own way.


When you do, that's when you find everything.


Namaste.