THESE NEW OLD TRADITIONS

Yesterday’s piece on menstruation by Abby Roan challenged the pharmaceutical practice of numbing (read: sweeping under the rug) the uncomfortable bits of a woman’s moon cycle. Today we bring you a piece by semio-mystic explorer, Baraka B, who looks at pain as an opportunity to expose the blind spots of the self. —We Revelers

If you are wounded, know that people have been wounded likewise. Those are the days of changing fortunes to which We subject humankind, that God may know those who disbelieve.
—Qur’an 3:140

When disconnected from the sticky web of emotion, pain remains a mind-body response to something discomforting. In conventional terms, pain is considered to be the direct result of something that hurts and is therefore not good. In unconventional terms we know that pain is the result of what is perceived as not good, and it is only after investigation when we can determine if this perception was accurate—useful—or simply a crutch for the ego to balance on.

If I were to place my hand in a bear trap and have someone activate it, the pain I would experience would be a direct result of something that is not good for the longevity of my hand’s life. However, this pain differs considerably from the pain I experience when, say, I am not given what I feel I deserve. Here, the pain I experience rests on my expectations. “I deserve your respect.” In all seriousness, “I” deserve nothing. The only thing that deserves anything is the personality that shelters the primordial “I” that is God, Love, Truth. The I never deserves. It never expects. Nor does it count on, deliberate, question, react, like, dislike, prefer, or have a hunch. I Is. Always has and always will be so help me God.

That does not mean, however, that you or I do not deserve respect in the conventional material sense. As sense-creatures, selves, personalities (or “people”) walking around, we deserve whatever it is we and the collective self-world determine is righteous for us to deserve at that given time in history. If we are lucky enough to materialize in an era of relative egalitarianism, or an era that allows us to force some aspect of egalitarianism (big or small), than great! Let the revolution begin. However, as history (and present state awareness) has shown, if we materialize into an era built on the backs of slaves (both institutional or wage) than what we expect out of life takes on a very different level of importance. Thus is the topsy-turvy nature of the realm of self.

But what if we are not ultimately the personality? What if we are not ultimately this body? What if, provided we break through the veil of illusion, we realize that I am neti neti? Not this. Not that. What if, as stated in Qur’an 8:24, God, Truth, Love “comes between a person and his/her heart” having “breathed into the human from [It's] Spirit” (38:72)? Where then, if my True nature is comprised of the Infinite, do the daily punishments I experience (i.e. someone stole my seat on the subway) take place? The fire takes place within, and is made up of the self that I naively present as It, Me, I, Us.

Unfortunately, it is not.

When you have buttons in you that can be pressed by others they will press them. Just look at the playground and how children treat each other. As soon as they figure out what can set someone off they set them off over and over and over. This is actually part of the divine order of things to assist you in becoming conscious of your own self so you can be free. That is why your family does it to you—so you can see the areas in your life that you have not gotten right, that you are still not facing correctly, where you are still attached. As you have already discovered avoiding doesn’t do the trick. In the end it follows you. Hence the expression “wherever you go, there you are.” You can not hide from your own self.
—JD, answering a question about visiting family and maintaining stillness

What are the buttons I make available for pushing? Buttons are the areas of my self where I have allowed for disconnect with Divinity. Frustrations with others not meeting my “standards,” the wanting my life to be different in some way, and the wishing for more of one thing over another are all blind spots. They are “tender buttons” (to borrow a phrase from Gertrude Stein); aspects of my self where I attempt to cover my lack of trust in What Is through inaction. Yet, God manifest as Krishna calls me to act otherwise:

Why this cowardice in time of crisis, Arjuna? The coward is ignoble, shameful, foreign to the ways of heaven. Don’t yield to impotence! It is unnatural to you! Banish this petty weakness from your heart. Rise to the fight, Arjuna!
—Bhagavad Gita, ch. II, vs. 2–3

A stagnant self is a dust collector. Like abandoned silverware slowly tarnishing over the years, the self looses it’s shine and is unable to reflect the radiance of the I. Same too with the human body. Left immobile it becomes heavy and lethargic. In order to cleanse a once catatonic self it participates in physical activity, slowly over time shedding the sleeping skin. The heat of yoga cleanses the physical and subtle bodies. The fire of God, whose mercy extends beyond Its wrath/justice burns the self-centered toxin from the human leaving only the center, the soul, the I, Truth, Love to remain.

Fire transforms solidity into emptiness and shows us the empty nature of the material world. [It] is a fascinating element…both tangible and intangible. You can’t pick it up—you can only pick up what is burning. [It] burn[s] away illusion [and] can reduce our hard and fixed substance-oriented concepts to ashes.
—Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche, Wearing the Body of Visions

Like Rabiya’s bucket and torch brought to drown the fear of hell and emblazon the promise of heaven, the I respects neither the threat of punishment nor the just-out-of-reach carrot on a stick. The fire promised by God is the fire of refinement, brought upon the self attempting in vain to turn away from the Light of Truth. And it is this Light that makes the path more visible.