"Nothing is ever too easy in life - thank goodness. It's not good to have an easy life you know, no matter what they tell you. Life isn't easy. It's not meant to be easy. It's not meant to have easy answers."According to my plan for moving here to Felton, I had hoped to spend the weekdays on retreat at home. I just spent the last three days doing just that.
- Christopher Titmuss
Overall, I'd say this experience was humbling and enlightening. Though, not enlightening in the majestic enlightened being sense... but more like it simply threw light on parts of my nature which were formerly in darkness. (And, perhaps they were in darkness for good reason.)
It was, as Christopher points out, not easy.
Being back in worldly life (job, home, etc.) I'm noticing old patterns of being that are coming back to life. Most namely is that old beast Stress. And with it comes Stress' seductive sidekick - Entertainment. This compulsive movement away from stress has come creeping back on the scene. All of this has made for quite an interesting unfolding drama.
On day 3 of my retreat, something unexpected happened. I started compulsively making art. Yes, quite compulsive. I couldn't stop myself, and I can't say it was all that pleasant either. It felt more like a desparate escape from the unknown that I was sinking into in meditation, rather than a bountiful expression of love. But, I must say that if I am going to have a compulsive vice - art is a pretty good one. Who would've thought!
I notice I've been inquiring lately into the nature of control. I must say that I quite enjoy the moments when I discover how truely out of control all of this is. Life, Me, etc. "Out of Control." - what a beautiful phrase. Even just the sound of those words seem to brighten my heart. What a full expression of what it means to be alive. Perhaps it could be said that to be alive is to be out of control. In fact, maybe that's why I seem to like mandalas so much lately. There's something so totally out of control about an intricate mandala, something that seems like it might never end. It could keep multiplying and multiplying with infinite variety.
And yet, there is also aspiration, intention, creativity, resolve... cause and effect. The patterns within the chaos. One thought can create endless heavens or endless rounds in hell (and boy, did I take a tour of some hell realms over the last couple days).
Technically speaking, my meditation remained mostly scattered for the three days. My mind didn't ever fully settle down. Likewise, there wasn't much "depth" to the exploration. But, on the flip side, I think I really got to explore some fields of experience which may have been absent over the last year of my homeless wandering - compulsion being just one of those.
Compulsion... hmmm... just a little conjecture here... it's nature is to capture us, take us away, break us of any choice or control. We become it's slave, utterly powerless. And, yet... it's whole motive is to impose control onto experience, to create and re-create the ordinary and the familiar, to keep us within the field of the known. We lose control to our own controling instinct. It kind of reminds me of operation Iraqi Freedom.
Anyway, judging by the way I'm writing, something must have opened up in me because I'm being all philosophical right now. But it definitely wasn't "how I wanted it to go" - Ha!
I'll put the rest of my compulsive art mandalas in another post.
Be well.
"The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes -- or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two -- is gone."
- Omar Khayyam
