Gratitude survives... even me.
Two years ago, I had the great good fortune to spend a week in Hawaii with Krishna Das and Ram Dass doing a heart opening. Was sort of leary to attend as my overly-sensitive big gay heart is the one thing I have ferociously guarded, building up layers of defense and excuse in order to avoid pain.
Self-induced pain is the worst kind there is.
But hey, at any given moment, I believe we are doing the best we can, given what we know, and we are fulfilling out sacred role in the Dance of the Multiverse. No wrong choices, things unfold as they will.
Believe me, though, there have been times when I wanted to take a gun to the lotus' precious head and say, "Bloom, mutthafukka!" but that really wouldn't serve any purpose other than making the lotus nervous... All things in their time, do without doing.
Back to Ram Dass. We are definitely karmically entangled. Its become so unbelievably apparent that it DOES make me believe in the notion that Higher Intelligence has a very dark sense of humour. Merry Prankster is playing tricks on Hermes the Trickster--is ANYTHING more archetypally perfect?
God/Goddess/Love/It in my understanding, which is probably completely wrong while being absolutely right--paradox--, is that Said Intelligence is more Sondheim, Sarah Silverman, Daniel Tosh, Harvey Milk, Jimmy Wales and Wavvy Gravy than it is Charlton Heston, Jimmy Swaggart, Pope German Boneyface. At least that's the corner of the Multiverse I'd choose to live in. (I'd throw some of Anderson Cooper in my Godman for good measure...obviously).
This thread could go on ad infinitum, but I do hesitate from spending too much time away from junking up my friends' Facebook feeds. The reason I started writing is that I was reminded of Ram Dass at Kalani, laughingly relating a story about "how we werew all grokking, our minds blown.."
I did a Fugee headcock. (When Fugee didn't undestand something, he'd tilt his head and give the perfect, "Huhhhhhh?" expression). I didn't know the word grok, and I wanted to know what it meant. I've maintained enough of the child to be curious about things I don't know.
So today, I turned to an old friend, the repository of human knowledge--WIKIPEDIA--instead of Fox News, the suppository for Human Knowledge.
Wikipedia reads: grok (pronounced /ˈɡrɒk/) is to share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity. Author Robert A. Heinlein coined the term in his best-selling 1961 book Stranger in a Strange Land. In Heinlein's view, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed. From the novel:
Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man.
Heavy Stuff, but I get it! That explains all the weird synchronicities or at least my awareness of them. Why so many like minded crazies are so thankfully woven into the fabric of my being.
Do you see? We ARE it. We're writing the story--each and every one of us. Perfect in our Human imperfection, worthy of love even as many of our actions can be quite hateful. Yes, I WOULD kiss Sarah Pallin--right on the lips. She has, in this incarnation, chosen to teach us about how being a self-righteous, condemning asshole can cause others to become more powerful, more self-accepting, more exactly right just as you are. Thanks, Sarah. You really did volunteer for a shitty assignment in this whirl around the coil. I appreciate your more timeless selflessness in choosing such a crap persona this time around.
So. Don't you see? What is the greatest thing you can give this holiday season, regardless of credo, religion, economy, nationality, psychology? Give of You. You are precious beyond compare and You are important.
Tipping the hat to Ram Dass--that jerk who is teasing me with thoughts of his retreat this year in Maui--jerk-this is my riffin' on Ram for You:
Ram, you popped into my head as I thought of this. Are you lurking in my heart and mind? Welcome to Crazyville. *Presence is a present. Give without limit or logic, just Be love. Just be.* Thus Spake Hermes Alchemist. Aloha--wish I were there.
Thank YOU for grokking with li'l ole me.
> > Gratitude survives. Even Me.
