How Can You Hold Against-ness and One-ness at the Same Time?

So, it is all complicated…

Here in Santa Fe people often say “Everything is perfect, just the way it is…” And “Everything happens for a reason…” And “We are all One…”

Except then when something happens that people do not like, or really do not like A LOT, that seems to blow the old “Everything is perfect” all to smithereens. And a lot of people do not feel like One with certain high profile people, that seems pretty clear.

So that leads the conversation about Consciousness to some other, actually more INTERESTING level.

The Big Teachings (in my mind) need to be practiced no matter the setting or circumstances. I suck at it, but that is how it supposed to go. When I was on Vision Quest, doing my 4-day solo, out on my own, on top of a mountain, I was holy as hell. You can’t believe how holy I was, and One with Everything (I know, the Dalai Lama’s hot dog order…). I would have kicked Pope Francis’s rear end for holiness.

But here’s  that dealio—I need to be holy when some horses’ arse cuts me off on Airport Road, or when people I work with are being difficult (thank God I never get difficult, just Them…………) Those are the times where your midterm grade in life come-a-tumblin’ down. If you get an “A” up on the mountain, or an “A” at a local Kirtan, but you give some dude the royal salute on Cerrillos because he’s going way the hell too slow, I’m sorry, you are not getting a very good grade at this stuff. It’s like “Participation” in the Southwestern College classroom. You can memorize all the reading, and blah blah blah, and have a million IQ points, but if you do not “show up” in class, with, and for, your fellow learners, or if you just need to keep demonstrating how unbelievably smarter you are than everybody else in the room, well, hey….flunkeroo….

So anyway…If we still need to have somebody out there who is our personal Satan, or our self-assigned Joe Stalin, well, that’s not a hard game to play. Lots of candidates. Especially at this point in time. Dollar a dozen, November special.

Hard to know how to take the Big Teachings, then. Do they only apply when it suits us? Or when we are happy about how things are going? Are we only One with the Ones we choose? Can that be how it works? I can’t imagine…

So that is why this week will be huge for all Buckeyes, as they take on the Wolverines in the Horseshoe on Saturday…

Oh, you thought I was talking about…?  Oh, Oh, I get it. Yeah, that, too, man. Yeah, that’s a big one too. All of them things. All the Big Monster Guys. Apply this one where it fits in your life…I have my own list of Personal Satans I am trying to transition to “fellow humans who make me nuts sometimes…” It’s a hard job. For some of us, it is the job.

Jim