I am having a pristine moment, slowly rambling my feet through the grass, rolling, lifting, moving, placing, as I walk in meditation. It is day 7 of a nine-day silent retreat and here in the hills of Northern California, my only job is to meditate – to mindfully sit, walk, eat, and sleep – and of course to listen. There is endless listening, to the reels and reels of mental footage from the archive of my life. It is probably more accurate to say that I am watching a movie, because all of the pictures are there also – it is a visible internal dialog, and it has been incessant since I arrived here. Now, on day 7, my senses are crisp with a clarity akin to the way they might have been at birth…unfettered by the filters of my various identities and absent the copious scratches and dents that now adorn my 42 year-old ego. Right now, I am here, rolling, lifting, moving and placing each foot. It is clear that a step is a marvelous achievement, as I study each of them, count them and revel in both their masterful complexity, and their beautiful simple elegance.
My gaze is set softly dead ahead, on the rolling landscape of this foothill retreat center. This place is soaked in a silence that is empty up front, but gently textured with a symphony of birds and other wildlife off in the distance. The weather is so perfect that it is hard to describe – sun shining a bright blue sky decorated with puffy cartoon clouds, a slight breeze cooling the air to 78 degrees or so…that figure a guess of course since there is no media available, no weather reports, news paper or even a thermometer on the wall – a guess will suffice on a day this perfect. On this seventh day, the colors are brighter, the sounds crisper, and the thoughts more vivid than any that happen back home.
After all, this is the 7th day of the rest of my life. I place my feet and feel the grass smush down, and contemplate what possible forces of the universe, what incredible alchemic twist of karma and my own skillful action have conspired to deliver me on such a clean slate. I turned 42 a couple of days ago, and I am standing on a cliff, preparing to jump off into a sweet unknown. At this moment, I have no bills, no residence, no job, and only one day marked on my calendar. I am off of the treadmill, and it feels like an enlightened state to have seized for myself so much freedom. That’s it! I am liberated. It is indeed, freedom at point zero, and in my joyful stillness I savor each detail, trying to reconstruct the story of exactly how I arrived here at this place - Slightly nervous that I could slip backward if I don’t remember.
Just a few days ago I was selling off the pieces of my household on Craigslist. My phone rang off the hook with obsessive looky-loos, sleazy lowballers offering less than half the posted price…sight unseen, and then finally nice folks arriving to take my groovy stuff away. When the big stuff was gone, I prepared for two days for a bonanza yard sale, upon which I watched with quiet amazement and only faint attachment, as the traffic clustered in front of my house. Strangers, friends and neighbors picked through the big chunks and even the finest particles of my life, swiftly repurposing those particles into their lives. For a brief time, cash seemed to fly at me, and my pockets became overwhelmed with one, five, ten dollar bills stacked and folded, forcing me repeatedly to run inside and stash the booty for safety’s sake.
My sense of struggle was being replaced with a sense of abundance. My sense of identity tied to those chunks and particles evaporated with the re-discovery that I was not them. The part of my heart that was not ready to let go of my beautiful things, and my beautiful home, was left standing on the curb like a smelly hobo, as my life roared on up the road, double-clutching and revving hard into the sunset. I kept trying to slow the experience down, to be sure and feel some of the loss that I expected myself to feel, but I had unleashed a synergy of aw-inspiring positive energy that quickly snuffed those impulses, and tipped the scales, in favor of leaving town with a nice bit of savings, and a sense of purpose.
Just a few weeks ago, I was tilling up the largest part of my backyard to plant a garden. I worked the soil, sifting in organic fertilizer and carefully shaping my beds to be ready for seeds. I was scrambling to get planting before the hot weather of June, and the joy of laying down roots – both figuratively and literally – was intoxicating, as I finished the beautiful spring afternoon with my dog and cold beer in the yard, looking out over my new garden. At this moment, the sweet smell of summer was in my nose, and moving was the furthest thing from my mind.
Just a few months ago, I was operating a handyman business, or rather, performing CPR on my once lucrative handyman business. After grinding two tough years away in a ressession-drenched economy, grieving the slow grief that never gets to fully happen, I clung to a trickle of work that kept me believing in the viability of my business. This business that started as a fluke and behaved like a fluke for the entire time, as I discovered strengths and skills I didn’t know I had, and continuously attained new levels of personal satisfaction – as I walked with faith through each day and each week, trusting that the phone would always continue to ring. This business that busted my knuckles and lined my pockets, kept me working into the evenings and eating drive-thru hamburgers. After five years, this business that held my identity hostage for better and for worse was finally being scuttled. My loyal truck had sold just a few days earlier and only narrowly escaping repossession. Mo more Happy House Handyman Service.
Several months ago, I had taken a part-time job managing the office of a new-age “church,” cobbling together a living with my sprinkling of handyman gigs, marshalling every dollar to keep a rented roof over my head, and finally finish paying off the lingering credit-card debt that had been shadowing me for an ugly number of years. Yes, now - this triumphant moment after two years of recession, I was the tortoise inching across the debtor’s finish line just a few serendipitous days before being informed that hard times would force the elimination of my position at the church. Alas, no time for celebration. This startling but obvious news was made heavier by the punchline; I was not eligible for unemployment benefits, because spiritual organizations are exempt from paying into that system. A moment of shock bled into an hour or two of contemplation, and by the end of the day, the full reality had jammed my frequency.
But it was a good frequency jam! It was not the reality that I might have embraced a few years previous – this was a new kind of response to adversity. Somehow, my heart had scroIled past the desperation channel and landed on the opportunity channel. I found myself feeling an explosive resolve to sidestep the experience of struggle, and instead to let go into something new – something life-affirming…”not sure what, but something exciting,” I thought. My mind was saturated with the jolting realization “I am fucking free, to do whatever I want to do, right now, and straight away.” It took me awhile to fully comprehend this. It took me awhile longer to compose myself and focus my energy. This magical afternoon that I lost my job, I spent the day researching ways to travel abroad…like teaching English, or joining the peace corps. At first it felt like a simple coping mechanism. But I knew for certain that I wanted to do service work. It was clear that I needed to re-establish my fundamental connection to work as service, as an expression of love coming from the core of my being. A pretty lofty goal, but clearly the path I was being called to. I had met a friend for Chinese food after being terminated just before lunch. After the meal, I cracked open my fortune cookie, and read that “A sudden change would broaden my horizons.” That’s what I’m sayin’.
And so here I am on retreat – taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha – sinking deep into each still quiet moment. The world is my oyster, and I feel like a swashbuckling pirate with a sharp sword and a fast ship. Freedom at Point Zero. No mouths to feed, no mortgage to pay, no where to be on the proverbial Monday – well, that’s not entirely true. Remember that one day marked on my calendar? More on that coming up. Let's just say it’s good to have to be somewhere.
