You've got to take life by the cojones and let it sweep you up
in its extravagance. There's generally too much "me" -- too much
ego -- trying to take life and chew it up. Relax and let life
smother you. Life will consume you if you let it. You're the ring
on the carousel and life is coming around to grab you. Don't shy
away. When life comes around to grab you, throw yourself out there.
Just the colors in a room and people's faces, which are all
treasure houses of impressions, can elevate you to states of mystic
clarity. Watch even the nastiest person carefully enough, once or
twice a week, and you'll have to be moved to compassion and
tenderness.
You cannot let life consume you by a muscular effort of will. I
have a fair degree of experience and I can't do it by an effort of
will. I'm used to falling into it by default. You know how it is in
car accidents -- usually the people who are drunk don't get hurt
because they are limp, mellow. The car goes over the cliff and they
think, "Far out." They bounce when they hit because they're so
relaxed. When you tense up that's when you break an arm or a leg.
So cool out. Be gentle, easeful, melt into life. Let it wash over
and through you like a sweet soft breeze.
Life is bigger than all the limitations we tend to put on it, and
you need to be in an ongoing romance with life, otherwise it is
easy to get buried by your own peculiar circumstances.
It's easy to become an automaton who gets up, works hard, even does
spiritual practices, but all merely as a mechanical habit. You can
easily get the idea that your spiritual work, or whatever you are
doing, is all-important and that you must give your life to it,
while at the same time you forget what "giving your life to it"
actually means. Then you can become even more mechanical than you
already are (if such a thing is conceivable), but in a different
form.
The Work [used in many spiritual traditions to refer to the Work of
God] wants your life -- but only when you are in a love affair with
life itself, only when you are bright, strong, confident, capable,
in short: ALIVE. The Work does not want some kind of dull,
dispassionate, struggling, agonizing humanoid. To give your life to
the Work is to give breath and activity to the Work everyday; to
give passion to the Work everyday. You have to have a childlike,
eternal beginner's mind [approaching each moment as new], a belief
in miracles, like, "Any day anything can happen!"
To consider entering into an intimate relationship that could be
for the rest of your life, and will most likely involve children
(whether you want them or not), you've got to have this passionate
kind of relationship to life. In a deep, and hopefully meaningful,
commitment with another human being, when giving your lives to one
another, you need to realize that life is bigger than your own
intense little chamber. There will be times in which you are going
to want to really tear into one another for some minor or even some
imagined slight. There will be moments in which you think, "My God,
I'm only forty. I've got another thirty years of this misery." You
may think that it is absolutely impossible to make your
relationship work. That's when you will most need to have this
attitude of innocence -- the belief that anything can happen.
You've got to remember what LIFE is and always will be, no matter
what your personal circumstances.
You can always access the largeness, the unlimitlessness of life,
no matter how hopeless things appear. You don't get that by
romancing your partner. You get that if you have a love affair with
life itself -- a passionate life. Then your relationships will be
passionate and juicy too.
I recently listened to a radio interview with Henry Miller, one of
my foremost heroes. He was eighty-five years old, with crippling
arthritis, and he couldn't walk without a walker or even get out of
bed without help. Still, the man's voice was just like his motto:
"Always merry and bright." He said, "When you're my age you've got
to consider sickness," and then he laughed. Practically every other
sound out of his mouth was a laugh.
Now, here was Miller, unable to use the typewriter, barely able to
see anymore (he was blind in one eye and half-blind in the other),
so full of pain that he was up all night unable to sleep, yet still
he was constantly full of passion, full of "spit and vinegar," as
they say.
Miller said, "Americans don't like me, but the Europeans love me.
I'm not popular in America." It's no wonder. Americans don't have
any taste, one reason being that we let seeming problems dictate
our moods and our opinions. We let circumstances define our
relationships. If we don't get exactly what we want, when we want
it, if we don't get exactly the food we want, if people aren't
exactly the way we expect them to be, we get depressed or angry or
abusive. You have to have a passionate fling with life to be bigger
than such pettiness.
I've often discussed other alternatives, but it is entirely
conceivable to me that we might only get one shot at life. So make
it a wild, passionate fling! Make it real, total, rich, and full of
possibility. Life should be a grand, majestic affair -- the good,
the bad, and the indifferent. If one day is a misery, be miserable.
If you're "in the pits" one day, don't take it out on everybody
else. Feel it, taste it, exude it. Don't bitch at your friends. If
life is lousy one day, it will be great another day. That's
beginner's mind. Anything could happen tomorrow. If for twenty
years that is your attitude, and if for twenty years nothing does
happen tomorrow, it doesn't matter. That attitude is enough!
If you don't have a love affair with life everyday, if you don't
expect a miracle everyday, you're always going to be looking for
God exclusively in what appears good -- in the attractive, in the
easeful, in the predictable. Most of you reading this are old
enough and mature enough and have had enough experience to know
that you should not expect appearances to convey everything.
Appearances are totally subjective. Instead, you should look to the
heart of things; feel through appearances to the Essence. Not only
are you capable of that, you all do that naturally anyway. You just
need to be aware that you do it, trust it, and make this awareness
more real than the illusions of your trained beliefs and opinions.
But you tend not to do that when the circumstances are making life
look a little grey. "What's going to happen when the bill
collectors start knocking on the door ...?"you ask. And on and
on.
You'll always have passion if you have beginner's mind. If your
passion starts to die, it won't be because of your spiritual work,
your friends, your lover, or because of life's down times. Your
passion will die because you have bought -- hook, line, and sinker
-- an attitude that was sold to you by your parents, your school
teachers, and this society. You've bought the attitude that you've
got to look like that Playgirl man (if you're a man) or that
Playboy woman (if you're a woman). You think you've got to be cool
and cultured, that you've got to dress right and smell like the
corporate world wants you to smell. If your passion dies it will be
because you've bought that appearances are everything, including
the appearance of your worldview, politics, opinions, and
beliefs.
To ultimately "make it" in this Work of Awakening, of
Transformation, you have to embrace the miraculous -- always. And
that miracle is you being so much at peace with yourself that you
can turn your energy towards welcoming and using the opportunities
that are always falling into your lap. To embrace and devour these
opportunities will make you free, happy, full of life, full of
passion. Then your circumstances won't affect you so
dramatically.
It is the nature of this Work that a revelation, a breakthrough,
could happen at any time, and has many times! But, how easily we
forget.
