Idaho Comes To Mind

 

Last night, In the middle of the night, I heard a motorcycle. The poor rider was having a terrible time with the fuel, or he was having fun. Every time he let off the gas, the damn thing would backfire. It sounded like a gun; sometimes firing three shots between revs. I say ‘motorcycle’, but it could have been one of those little cars with the pipes cut. In any event, my first thought was that this person was going up and down the street, shooting people or shooting at random houses. However, when minutes went by with no sirens, I dismissed that notion. However, whoever that was had managed to get under my skin. How could one person bug me so badly? He was the only person out on the street. 

So here I was, wide awake. I was no longer really upset at this idiot for waking up the neighborhood, but I started wondering how The I AM could be responsible for such another. As I would doze, I kept getting this feeling that the reflections would naturally be distorted as they developed further from The Source. This seemed to make sense, but then it occurred to me that I am also a reflection; and far from perfect. Naturally, this made me wonder about my place in the net; how far am I from The Source?

Then my thoughts took advantage of my awakened state to inform me that these ideas simply take me back to where I began on this journey. These ideas seem to allow for unrelatedness. I did not like this feeling. If true, this meant that I am a distortion of The One and so are you. If we are far enough from The Source – physically or spiritually – we may not be getting enough true light to properly reflect Love in any meaningful way.

Why did this thought give me some trouble? It pointed to randomness and it poked holes in my belief in purposefulness. When I woke up this morning, I realized my dreams had been trying to find a solution to this and all my thoughts could offer me was a headache. As I write these words, that headache is present with me; but the answer has not occurred to me yet.

How can I honestly say that I believe we are all One in one breath, and then, in the next breath, say that some people seem worthless to me?

This is a quandary.

With regards to being aware, I now see that I am missing something vital.

The problem might not bother me if it was a speck here and there, but the world around me seems cluttered with players I don’t love. We have a long stretch of road frontage here on the farm. On a daily basis, people throw trash out on our property and we have to go out and pick it up; or the place would begin to look like a dump. When this happens, two players drift from The Center a little: 1. The idiot who threw trash from their car in such a disrespectful way and 2. The idiot who thinks that idiot is an idiot.

If I insist that we are all reflections of Consciousness, then I need to find some way to make this wrong seem right.

If you are reading this, perhaps you see my dilemma.

I am sure the source of this problem lies in my ego. My egoic nature still needs to be right; even if this can only be accomplished by making others wrong. On some deeper, spiritual level, I really do try to correct my ego here.

It is so easy for me to believe we are all One when I see a child, playing on the beach or a playground. I see that beautiful innocence and that joy and I have no trouble seeing myself in that child. But then I come upon a personality I cannot begin to relate to; and I suppose, therefore, we aren’t related.

I just have to ask: what causes this? How can I dislike someone I am supposed to love?

As long as this question goes completely unanswered, I see it as a hole in my theories.

There is something telling me that I still have to play the part; even when the part causes division. I consider my private residence. I can go to Atlanta and see a homeless person and it fills me with sadness. I wonder how I could help; but to invite the stranger to come live in my home is out of the question. Love for others transcends otherness, but the intervals in the net are perceived as opposition. The opposition is necessary for this drama.

There is the ego-experience, where we can accept our part as a reflection; no matter how distorted it may be, but there is a background, spiritual-experience, where the partitions are removed. To remove all opposites would forfeit the play.

“For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” Ephesians 2:14 KJV

This seems to suggest that if we could see how we would appear without partitions, we would be a sea of crystal rather than fragmented jewels, separated by the fabric of experience.

“Before the throne there is a sea of glass: like crystal.” Revelation 4:6 MCV

After having a similar “vision” of his own, Robert Pirsig explained the paradox, “What you're up against is the great unknown; the void of all Western thought.”

In that particular essay, while sorting this out, Prisig went on to explain, “When traditional rationality divides the world into subjects and objects it shuts out Quality, and when you're really stuck it's Quality, not any subjects or objects, that tells you where you ought to go.”

These thoughts were the result of Prisig’s recurring dream of a glass door, separating him from his family.

Returning to the mechanistic, structured, dualistic, subject-object thought, Prisig begins to close Chapter 24 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by saying: “The engine drags, backfiring a little, and down we go.”

And now I know why I was awakened by a motorcycle, backfiring in the middle of the night. I know why I was stuck in thought, thinking about every part. I needed to understand the train in terms of Quality. The backfiring which awakened me in the middle of the night was Phaedrus, riding by in order to enlighten me.

The Quality is crystal clear, but can’t be found in any of the parts.

Quality tells me where to go.