sʃʃıɥ ǝɥʇ ɹoɟ pǝpɐǝɥ

Cynicism looks bad on me. Let’s face it, it really looks bad on everyone. For me personally, I have been described as both the consummate cynic, and a disgustingly soppy idealist. Derided both for my deep and compassionate love for humanity, and abandoned for my biting sarcasm. Scribner’s editor, and American literary critic Edmund Wilson described Cynicism as “the last refuge of the idealist,” and in many ways you can add me to the list (Will you hand me that pen please? Thank you.) I am as in love with the world, and its people, places and things as I detest them completely. Sad but true.

Yet, is this what they mean when my teachers and mentors suggest that I strive not for “perfection,” but seek balance, the golden mean, equality, and compassion? I don’t think so… makes a funny face… I think this is a state of being which can only be described as defensive, unwieldy, so subconsciously rooted in the depth of my human psyche that it isn’t even fair to place any kind of blame of judgement on it. I am who I am, the sum of my parts, and thankfully it’s obvious to me that I have been enjoying a period of deep growth, and change. I consider the people I know (some I love, some I can’t bear to be around for more than a few minutes… Gee, what a surprise…) and I find that we are all just mirrors for one another. For in the eyes of my comrades I find a measure for how far I have come, and just how much farther I have to go.

The relief comes, not from hiding under my desk, or struggling to frame things correctly in my mind, or put more appropriate words to use, this is only self-will… and as popular as we have begun to make the notions that you can get what ever you want out of life by editing yourself on the fly, and only thinking positive things… I remain an advocate for acceptance, and truth being the only process by which one can truly grow. The realization that it’s only fear is a blessing indeed. If I can sit with myself long enough to simply be with fear itself, I see that I bare no grudge against anyone, no bias against anything, rather… gulp… I covet these things, and crave the acceptance of others, approval, harmony. I love very expensive things, and while I find that scarcity remains some form of twisted virtue in my head, in my heart I know that the abundance of love and light in this world is the truth of it. I can not choose the vehicle by which awakening, enlightenment, or love arrive at my door step… more struggles with self where the beast and the brain stage entertaining battles with sporks on my stoop for the trappings of cultural evangelism, and imaginary celebrity… But surely I can stop, and return to love. The sting of realization, and the process of acceptance is temporary. The genuine benefit of this work is freedom from fear itself, and an improved self esteem by taking right action, correcting my thinking, and walking again among the living.

We are not on some limited journey where the road ends shortly and soon we will revel in the benefits of our travels. No, the solution is to open my heart even more. Yes, not just when it’s easy, or obvious, but always. There is nothing to fear in change, or growth, progress or even opposition. These natural, and sometimes beautiful fits of growth are the true joy of living in my experience. While I wish that it felt like I made any progress at all, I suppose I am verging on unbearable most of the time as it is, and so it may be a true virtue that I have no idea whatever about where my push-pin is stuck into the evolutionary map of our collective progress. We are, it seems, despite our amazing capacity as beings, little more than birds in our subconscious life… forever chirping “Are you there? I’m here!” over and over and over to one another. Looking for connection, checking to be sure we are still here, and have not been abandoned by our flock. Perhaps that’s only Darwin’s way of expressing what Jung believed was our eternal isolation from God, and how finding true connection with one another was what it means to awaken to a spiritual life. I agree that on some level I am always running my emotional and intellectual sonar… and also agree that the root of fear is my forgetful mind. I have forgotten that I am not separate, rather, we are all one, and the Spirit of the universe is the fabric from which all things come. There is no undoing this. We are what we are.

I am grateful today to be so frail, and so natural. For all my aching, all the yearning in my soul is to be in and of the sensual world, connected to God herself through a sea of millions and millions of beautiful little mirrors reflecting Her light right back at me.