the habit of being

There is no saying how the door opens. There is no saying how the wind is sucked out of the world and you with it, through the door, which, as one can see clearly from the other side, was never closed in the first place. One can see clearly, from the other side, that there is no other side. There are no words to describe a change which is not a change from one thing to another, a movement which is no movement at all. But because writing is what I do, I will try to write about this.

The funny thing about enlightenment is that people think it is a state they should strive to achieve. It sounds like a good thing: enlightenment. It sounds like laying down burdens. The problem with this, thinking enlightenment is a good thing, is that you might then suppose that burdens are a bad thing. Everywhere, there are people who want to be enlightened so they can stop suffering… so that they can get rid of the bad stuff and be free. But that is not how it works. Enlightenment is not about getting rid of suffering. Enlightenment is realizing that suffering isn’t something one needs to get rid of.

I think this is very similar to the saying that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. I think an elephant would have an easier time getting through the eye than a person who doesn’t suffer would have attaining enlightenment. A person who doesn’t suffer isn’t alive. Enlightenment, though it requires a kind of death, is a state of extreme alive-ness. Everything is more vivid in THIS, even suffering.

Of course, the other thing about enlightenment, the kingdom of God, or whatever you might call it, is that once you see that you are there, you also see that you were always there. You didn’t have to go through the eye of a needle afterall. All you had to do was open your eyes. This isn’t really something one can attain, because it is impossible to attain something you already have. This is why you can’t find God by looking for him. But this isn’t to say that looking for God or trying not to suffer is bad either. There’s no difference between saying that suffering is a bad state to be in and saying that trying to stop suffering is a bad state to be in. They’re both wrong. The bad state doesn’t really exist. The line between immanence and transcendence doesn’t really exist. THIS isn’t about breaking through barriers, it’s about no longer believing in them.

A lot of people might say they couldn’t be happy, because happiness requires believing in things blindly. Actually, it is being miserable that requires this. You really have to believe that you are trapped, that you are doomed, that you are worthless, that you have nothing to give, to be truly, deeply, miserable. You have to believe it no matter what other people say. You have to believe it even if you can’t prove it. These are the kind of beliefs that are hardest to let go of. Happiness is the absence of beliefs.

To find God is to see that one has been in God from the beginning. There is nothing new. I think another thing a lot of people expect from a big, universal, insight, is that it will be a new thing that changes the world. That’s not really true either. Yes, there can be a sudden, profound shift in how a person experiences the world. But it’s still the same world, and you’re still the same person. Nothing new is added. Everything was already there.

By pretending to be sick, I have made myself sick. This time it is only a fever, a scratch in my throat, but in the past I have caused myself much greater and longer-lasting illness. By pretending to be a scientist, I’ve fooled some smart enough people. If everyone expects me to be smart, I can keep up my end of the conversation. By pretending to be in love, I have fallen in love easily. It was simple, it took no time at all, once I committed myself to it, and I have all the usual symptoms. Someone, maybe my mother, said once that I could be an actress, and I wonder if I’m not just picking the wrong scripts. If it weren’t for the perpetual stage fright that keeps me from taking on the most fabulous parts, couldn’t I just pretend myself right into living the life I’ve always wanted? Can’t I just pretend to do something great?

When I am sitting in the car at night and it is raining and you are driving us to see someone and the drops are streaking down the windows and we are not talking to one another because talking would be too loud, I think that all the rain must come from women who have lost their babies, and if there were no more tears, if there were no more sadness, the grasses would become brown and the ground would become sandy and all the trees would go thirsty and the world would stop going. But that is not really what I think, I know it isn’t, because that sounds like a story and actually it isn’t like that until I try to tell it. It is a wordless hum and a hollow sphere of cloth in my head. From the center of the sphere, I am grabbing at the cloth and pulling it toward me from many angles all at once. I look out at the raindrops. I look through the raindrops. I look at the raindrops. I follow the raindrops as they leave the edge of the window. I look through the raindrops. I look at the raindrops and through them at the same time. I become the raindrops and the window and the blurry wet red tail-lights going and the blurry wet white head-lights coming and the highway and the sadness and the shadows of trees that I cannot see because it is too dark out but I know they are there. It doesn’t matter where we’re going or who it is we’re going to see, because I can already see them, I can see everyone, and I can hear you even though we’re not talking, and I can hear my thoughts even though they are wordless and I can hear the silence and the hum and the engine and the crying of women who have lost their babies. I see now that I am not the only such woman. I leave the raindrops with my eyes but I do not leave them and I look at your thigh. You’re wearing new jeans and they have lighter stripes on them to make them look older than they are. I put my hand on the denim and I can feel the heat of your skin underneath and I look at my hand on your thigh and I cannot believe how beautiful my hand is, how it seems to glow more brightly even than the little blue lights on the dash or the red tail-lights going or the white head-lights coming, and you know not to talk to me because that is how well you know me.

Flipping through my old India ink drawings and M says I’m really a lot more interesting than I act. I say I used to act it out all the time, it was all I ever thought about: how to do more than simply make art, but to live it, every minute. How to be the story that needs to be told. It was palpable, my sense of who I was: it covered my space, dictated my dress, consumed me always. I was naive, a drama queen, but I was someone specific, someone intense. And now, I tell myself that’s all shoved in boxes, hidden in writings that no one ever read unless they were there, and there were so few people there, buried under my schedule.

But an artist, he says, doesn’t need to be an artist on the outside, she can look and act like everyone else, as long as she’s got it on the inside. The inside and the work are all that matters. I can have any mopey persona I want, as long as I don’t stop making things, as long as I don’t stop completely.

Just take one day of that 17 year old’s life and break it up into 2 hour chunks and live it out over weeks. In between getting Marian’s memory span experiment going and studying the properties of retinal ganglion cell receptive fields, I could still paint, I could still wonder about all the things I wondered about before I was so worried about all the things I’m so worried about. I tell myself it’s impossible but it really isn’t. That’s just something I tell myself, so I don’t have to think. Adulthood is all about making things go on automatic, and that’s the opposite of living.

It’s not that she’s producing incredible work that’s so amazing, says M about MJ, it’s that she’s producing incredible work as an adult.

And maybe it is true that you don’t realize you need to make a change until you’ve already made it. Maybe something has shifted and it’s only a matter of time. But no.. no waiting. Either it’s happened or it hasn’t. Or it’s happening. Is something different? I don’t know. Maybe. What if I just pretend it is? Is that enough?

One, no, two, of those India ink drawings, five years old, mentioned the word serenity. I wrote a story called Serenity only four months ago. (Four months feels like an infinity to have not done anything.) It is odd that we can have so many recurring themes in our lives without really realizing. A concept engulfs you and you feel like you’ve never felt such waves before, when actually the same resonance has lingered for ages, building up and backing off again and building up until the ringing is all you can hear.

And if I haven’t actually changed at all? If I was always, am always, okay?