Sunday, February 25th, 2007
Yesterday I almost cried in Costco.
It wasn’t for the human condition on the whole, or because of the impact stores like that can have. What I nearly cried over was the incredible seduction of what we think we don’t have. We become enslaved by a lack that perpetuates itself.
I am not an anti-materialist. I would be one of the first to advocate pampering yourself in whatever fashion suits when it is a part of a healing force…and so often I see the way in which it can be. What I am talking about has actually nothing at all to do with things or money, and everything to do with what we think is missing and our obsession over it.
We focus on what is missing in our lives because we think it will bring it to us, but instead it blurs our vision of everything else…robbing us of the very opportunity we are waiting for. It is when we shift our focus to what is not missing that we begin to draw to us the energy of what is. All we can see is the hole in our hearts, and so we wake up every morning and look into the hole…we gaze into it, we fall in love with it, and we wait for the miracle to come from within it. And while we are looking at the hole, the rest of our heart, where all the answers lie…is ignored.
Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes we must fall in love with the hole to not let its pain consume us, but it is the intense strength and reserve we call on to shift our gaze that eventually frees us from the fixation with the empty space we hold for something to come and fill.
As creator beings, dripping with the sparkles of stars and emanating the glow of the moon and the sun, we do have other options and, as cool hand luke said once, “sometimes havin’ nothing is a cool hand to play.” Meaning, in this reference, that we have to go back to basics before we can break a cycle of lack. We have to start with feeling that just being able to breathe freely is a big gift, and that even five minutes of totally free time is an extension of a great power of being alive. We have to re-embrace the gifts we have neglected and lost touch with in favor of the great and seductive empty space of what is missing in our lives.
There have been times in my life where I was down to my last three dollars, and, mind you, I certainly “needed” a good deal more. But when I went out to spend those last three dollars on a double tall latte it was always one of the best coffees I ever had. This is because I may not have felt full of choice about the things I couldn’t do with my last three bucks, but I sure felt empowered about having them to spend on that sweet elixir that gave my mind the freedom to sit back, relax, and reflect on what to do next.
Yesterday I almost cried in Costco, but it wasn’t because there were too many things I wanted…it was because, since I don’t go often, there were literally thousands of things I could have used, and not one damn thing I needed. I literally had waiting for me at home every single thing I needed to have a perfectly joyful life…and yet things called out like sirens in the night wanting me to crash into some rocky shore…and I was free. Not because I didn’t buy anything, I did buy a few things, and it would be missing the point to think that was the reason why. I was free because I knew I had everything. Anything added on top of that was gravy, and maybe even gravy I really wanted, but gravy nonetheless. My treasury was so full, my heart so light…I knew, that just like after Tibet breathing oxygen would feel like more of a luxury than it ever had before, I would always have the love of god, the love of the goddess, my own god-given free will, every joy my soul had ever known, the promise of heaven, and though often much more, I would always have three dollars for coffee…and, as it is for all of us, even if we hit bottom there is only one way to go from there, and that is up. And we can always build castles, out of coffee grounds, compost, or sand. Sometimes nothing is a cool hand to play.
May you be blessed beyond even the greatest wish you could ever make…may you be given what you never even thought you could ask for, and may you be relieved ultimately by the graciousness of the universe at every turn. Love, Jennifer
