Not a Path, Nor a Choice

A year and half ago, it was beginning to look like I would go on my spiritual journey, and maybe in the process I would figure out a good way to bring my partner and I together, naturally. We do fine apart, which has actually helped us grow gradually and more soundly than most. He has a good job, and asked me to move to Asia to be with him. But, I felt that we needed to somehow seal our relationship that would allow an easier passing of the torch, when I die. Sure, I have a will and trust, but as a married couple it would be more financially wise. Plus he has never got a chance to see my life with no visa.

Continuing as we have while exploring how best to link us easier, like a making a home here in Asia, closer than the U.S. to him. With my brain injury, it is damn near impossible with the damage to speech and tone areas of my brain to facilitate learning a language. Jeez, it took my 5 years to get to the lousy English I speak now, stunted and truncated. I speak like I have been drinking, a lot, and even one time a police officer in my own business accused me of drinking when I called them for a theft. That is another story. So, with this in mind last trip I explored other English speaking places to live. I went home last time here, unsettled with no clear answer what or where to go next. I felt a couple of times I acted out my frustration of no clear answer. My spiritual path was a turning into a kind of avoidance in some ways.

While home I did another 10-day Vipassana last May, and upon completion the news was coming out that gay marriage was winning in the courts. DOMA was struck down, and Bill Clinton is still trying redeeming himself of his connection to this discriminatory law. I worked on this for over 20 years, protesting, writing emails, joining campaigns…and here it was.

There was a now a choice, and now I can chose to run with it or not.  The decision to marry would take my original intention further to a new level of giving my partner more opportunities. Because he has shined with everything, when I have helped ...and been very appreciative. It was never a hand out, it was more like a hand up. And beneath all my flaws, he saw a good heart.  If I did not marry him, and chose my own spiritual path over him, than I have not learned anything at all. The choosing mirage was disappearing.

My mother gives all for her children, and if I take after her, I should at give all to my partner. So, I hired a lawyer and got on with a fiancé visa, a month after the news. All along the process, I have given him an out, and still do if this is not for him, but at least he can try life in my house. It was a year’s process and it was never easy, and at the last minute they asked for another document.

It will be huge change for him and at times, he acted like it was not serious. Which would confuse me. It seemed now… looking back, his background of being abandoned by his parents at birth, made him able to cope with life’s drive-by's by not putting it all in one basket, so if his visa passed... he would prepare mentally, then. He thought it would never happen, so he postponed any feelings attached. Now, that it is concrete, and his ticket booked, and marriage planned he has relaxed being while being excited. We get to experience a whole new level of appreciation of each other, even after 13 years. Naturally bonded. To think we talked about this for years and exchanged rings in 2008. Now, I am only scared of crying at my own wedding.

Stretched Between...then a Release.

It was a sunny on a warm white sanded beach. I stood in the sand, between two taught stretched white cotton panels, hung between two coconut trees by ropes. I was supposed to meditate while standing up, and the two tight panels hugged me front and back to support me in case I relaxed and fell back or front. I could, if I opened my eyes see through the loosely woven cotton to the ocean and the light slope of the water. Playing in the surf were others who are not part of my history of familiar people, signaling forced seriousness perhaps.  I guessed the panels referenced the suspension while I wait for my partner’s visa, but I have never felt I was missing out whenever I meditate.

With this dream in the back of my mind, I wanted to go back to the south of Sri Lanka to just chill out. My partner said, “Go!,” since he was busy days and offered to pay for my flight, but deep down I was torn. We still don’t know about his Visa to come back to the US to marry and live with me. The embassy has his passport and their last request, “a single certificate” was not on our checklist from them, nor had our lawyer heard of it. He found out how to get one, with his Mom’s help from his home city government, completed it and sent it in. These are only good for 6 months, and if the embassy drags this out longer our visa fee, and other stuff will expire. They can demand anything, I heard from another chap who finally got his partner's visa. This has been frustrating to say the least.

If I take off not knowing, I may be shortening our time together if his visa doesn’t pass. Surely, we have thought about this and have a plan b and c and have dealt with our separation remarkably well for 13 years, but we have strengthened our bond these last 5 months over all the paperwork driving home our history. Looking into increases to almost all costs of this trip, to do alone it really felt selfish. There is a whole new appreciation for the other, which makes an upcoming potential separation seem even more difficult. We can do it, as we have in the past, but then it will push me in making another decision reflecting on the visa's failure. With all this in mind, I decided at the last minute not to go and in my partner’s formally stoic reply... to go ahead and go, he radiated the love that we felt. We try not to mess with each other’s idea of happiness, but when the hearts meet again it is lovely.

Two hours after I posted this ....and after a whole years process my partner received his fiancé visa. Our 13 years are finally recognized by our government. And I was around to see his reaction!

Are we hallucinating the belief that we are separate?

Perhaps a wakeup call. The ego, when fully purchased conjures up some weird stuff. I would find myself thinking I have been through so much suffering. Not my suffering, it was just suffering that we all experience our own version of. That same suffering that propelled me on this path. A perception believed in when you look at it, when it just is life ....unfolding. Or it could be a concept taught by others, perhaps society or family that we grab and just run with it until our grave. Why? Because… it gives us a feeling of being alive. Jeezus, could one just pinch out a couple of candles for quick feeling and be done. I feel like I have reinforced the idea by being or feeling unhappy and that I am a suffering separate person from others, at times. It may often give me the illusion of specialness because the ego demands a firm ground from which to stand on…. to maintain this individualized separateness.  For sure, the positive that came out of this was my meditation to look at life, as it is.

Now, tell me if you don’t, like me, can watch a tearful reunion of family members totally not related to you and feel or exhibit some emotion. It is not just pulling up some old baggage that you have put in deep storage, but real connectedness to others that we share.  Our I is their I and we had better wake up.  It divides us and blocks our happiness. Joy that exists in nature, and it's free! Your I exists, sometimes far from your body, enough so that when you walk into a room carrying some unhappiness people will turn away. I should not ask for validation when I am unhappy either because it was my ego demands. All I am doing is unfurling the pathetic flag that smothers my ability to connect with others suffering and do something as simple as raising the vibration of a room. The only separateness we perceive is others' conditioning from the culture or society that supports this hallucination.

Today, I watched a young boy who was about 5, draw a shark in the condensed water on a 7-11 cooler door he opened. I gave him the thumbs up, and I immediately had a friend. He played hid and seek among the shelves of grocery items. I joined in the fun. I realized his mom works there, and she smiled at our interaction.

You are not going anywhere

Life showed up at the door with another test. Frustrated, I told my partner which is silly.  What really he supposed to do mimic my frustration? It doesn't involve him and he has own problems. By not mirroring it, he with his own wisdom did not meet it head on. He let it die on its own. He reminded me that we all die, and this won’t be the last. Saying again, “All we leave when we die are the good deeds we do while alive, that are important.” Really, the frustration rose out of the fact that I was still there, and could not run out of the situation…..I was not going anywhere. Plus, no fairy with her magic wand would come and fix it. I would go into what it was, but that would distract others from finding their own innate wisdom. We all encounter such things and what we bring to the table is a history of reactions we may have learned in the past with our unique combination of traumas. If you did not have any, you would be dead by now. No one is immune.

Later, I watched the film, “All is Lost” and I went for a late night walk alone to get some air. I told my partner it was to get ice cream. Enjoying the night winds, I churned up some thoughts about being confronted with one’s upcoming death every second, and the natural survival that one gravitates toward even when it all seems hopeless.

We all die, so do we struggle with life’s dramas just to avoid this reality? Is it survival instinct or avoiding contemplating our death almost every second, like we should. Hopefully it will arrive onboard, and dictate how we treat others.

On my walk, I thought about my troubles, and then the actor in the film.  I knew to get out of this space,  it would come down to getting busy and helping others. It is not always about you and the gibberish your mind throws.

I knew where to look, and saw the couple again. I bought dinner for the blind couple who sing Isan tunes for spare change on a road overpass. Just in time because they were packing up for the night. Later, while sitting I watched a late night street vendor sit down, with a swollen knee bandaged, and smiled with compassion once I noticed his pain. I took off quickly to a late night pharmacy without saying anything to him, and bought some cream that has pain killer and anti-inflammatory while being cooling and hurried back to give him. I expected nothing in return, I just said hello, and pointed to my knee and gave him the cream and walked away. Immediately, any ideas of “me“ and my difficulties disappeared.

On the way back from giving the vendor his pain cream, I bought my partner two of his favorite taro ice cream bars. This wasn’t walk for me…it was for others. Little did I know, because I was gone long, my partner went looking for me, and while out he bought me two dark chocolate bars. It was funny when I came home, we exchanged ice creams.

I Know Who I Am, Because I Know I Am Not

I’m not a terribly optimistic person, I have a lot of major bad things happen to me. But that is not unique to me, many others have too, and this awareness was my first lightbulb moment to speed my healing. I am not a blameless clean slate either, but most all of it was not done to hurt others. So I have been lucky with a few long-term relationships and have a few close friends and family. I don’t seem to carry it around with me anymore in either a grumpy manner or too much negativity. I am instead more of a realist, with a smidgeon of compassion mixed with good intentions. I have overcome a lot, so one might be surprised that I am not a more a kind of whatever person. I see through people’s bullshit pretty easy, and despise being thought of as being stupid. This happens more often now with a speech disability than you could imagine. I wish I could laugh when people pull stuff like this, but to me it is never laughable because it is built on valuing the other less.

More often now, do some nice things for people or strangers as a kind of surprise when they least expect it. Someone might call it paying forward, and it is never done for others to feel indebted to me. I just remember that whenever someone surprises me with something unexpected, that I like the feeling of time stopped by it when the realization we are all one.

So when I sit down to meditate I am working the “me” apart from the ego and inching it towards just “I am.” Just being. This profound intimacy I have with the self, in meditation, only seems to provide with more relaxed feeling about who I am. This translates to less need to compare one to others, our paths are so unique that there is no way …I could be you. I know who I am, finally ...because I know who I am not.

Bliss

Where or when we see our true nature 
is not important.

^click above sentence for an audio treat^

One of them, years ago, 
like the day I shot this photo,
 sent me on my path,
 and it wasn't my near death.
Although that
helped.

It has not been a straight line, 
but the pins of delusion are quietly falling
 with more awareness.

Want a easy pointer?
Start with awareness of our death.
That was the main wake-up call that day
 that started me off.

I looked over a great valley view
 from a ancient site's pointed precipice,
realizing that it existed before me and it will after me.
So do “I” exist now?
For about 20-30 minutes, my “I” did not.

It was not scary,
it was an unbelievably freeing.

Countdown?

I tell my partner, "Go ahead to the pool, I’ll pick up the wet laundry." He replies, “Jai Dee!”, a title I recently gained with my meditation and relaxation into what is. Of course, it is not permanent, and I have to work on it constantly, with my many years of being over-reactive, generously conditioned by growing up with alcoholism.

Earlier today, he started singing near me while watching a youtube concert with headphones on….while I was meditating. I was just 25 minutes in and relaxing in my body. I felt anger arise in my body, but just watched it like it was an enemy of happiness. So, I took this opportunity to have some fun, because it was a subtle sign of him needing attention. He was facing me sitting on the bed, actually enjoying the quiet body near him. Then from a totally silent unmoving body, I just made a scary, “BOOO!” and a wild face. He loved it, although it scared him making his hair stand up on his arms.

I smiled and said, “It must be time to eat!” He motioned with his hands near his eyes, like horse blinders, “Gin Kao.” It was an inside joke, that I created when I noticed when he wants food, he wants it now, not 5 minutes nor a half-hour later.

If I am committed to our happiness, it can not be only a passive observation, and it has to be flexible and bend around every new obstacle. Even if is self-created. It can be as simple as relaxing and dropping any expectations. It is often observed as difficult at the moment, and believe me I still can beat myself up over this, but I'm learning and re-learning through observation. This is a great fast forward into the difficulties of aging happening all the time regardless of which age you are. To be sure I write about this mainly to remind myself, and if it helps others that is a plus.

Last night we walked up to the roof to see the year end fireworks, it felt like a foreign experience...a sober observation of others joys. I wondered if the others on the roof celebrating could see our causal relaxed interactions that have took over a decade of commitment to develop?