Later on, before bed, I was reading No Self,No Problem by Anan Thubten and there was this passage:
"Part of us wants to hold on to that last attachment. We want to awake a little but not completely. It's convenient for the ego to not awaken completely but this is the only way to liberation. Sooner or later we have to completely awaken. That means that we have to completely dissolve into that great emptiness, the ultimate truth of nothingness, without holding on to anything, not even enlightenment, not even confusion about liberation or truth. We have to let go of all of it. How do we do it? When we try to get rid of it, it doesn't work. It backfires because who is trying to get rid of it? There is nobody there in the ultimate sense. So this is about melting; this is about dissolving the self, and when we know how to dissolve the self, then liberation becomes effortless. It is like drinking nectar rather than working hard. In general, this is a way of dissolving the self ecstatically and without any struggle, without any resistance. Devotion plays a very important role."
Just like that, out of the blue.
He goes on:
"When we pray, what we are doing is evoking the spirit of devotion. Devotion is about no longer resisting anything."
Yesterday was a long, exhausting day of obsessing over the events from January to now, back into a maelstrom of thoughts and memories like white hot daggers, assailed pretty much all day, no matter how I tried to turn it over, let go or reset my perspective. I went to a church to attend an Al Anon meeting and walked the labyrinth they have in the back.
While walking those turns and recursive folds, I realized I get into the habit of prayer but without devotion-- that is, the form of prayer without the substance of it. The words rather than the "spirit of devotion." I have some fancy prayers memorized that I throw out there every morning. But walking the labyrinth it hit me that I can get devotionally real and just flat out cry for help.
A prayer: I am fucked. I am a fucking mess. I need help. I can't do this anymore. I can't bear it. I'm lost and fucked. I need help. I have no idea what happened or why. I feel like I'm dying. Please help me.
That is the spirit of devotion I have been missing. Beyond the fine words of fancy prayers, or the high concepts of tonglen meditation or enlightenment or dissolving the self. Or step work or step 4 or bodhichitta or any of that shit. Just flat out absolute abject misery and the honest, desperate opening up to the universe for help. Nothing fancy. Not exactly like drinking nectar, but down on the ground, ass-kicked, broken through and through.
The non-linearity of my trip trough Hades is more apparent as more time goes by. Because on Sunday I felt real peace and acceptance. I slept through the night for the first time in a while. But it is a mistake to think that moments of respite will be permanent, any more than moments of abject misery will be permanent.
The Al Anon meeting was about the slogans. Being a sophisticated intellectual, I have always resisted the slogans of recovery in general. But lo and behold, some of them hit home and came in handy later in the night, when I was still obsessing, unable to sleep. I got up and meditated for 20 minutes and then I kept thinking about Live and Let Live in particular. The first part opens the way for the second part. When I am a ghost in my own life, the choices, behaviors and attitudes of others take on enormous power. When I go into my own life more and just do the next thing that has to be done, sometimes one minute at a time, obsessing over the lives of other people diminishes, sometimes substantially.
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