The longing of the heart. The sadness that prevails in the moment, when ordinarily there is only Now. But Now seems suspended as my attention floats backward to the afternoon, to the boy, to the missed chance. How is it that the mind stirs the emotions like this? Is this a lesson about attachment? The disappointment that is stirred was tameable at first, like a flood in the next moment, and now fills me with power and strength. May this experience teach me, may I grow from this.
So what happened? I walked into the local bookstore, and almost immediately my eyes fell upon a very beautiful boy, chin-length hair and chin scruff, indeed a fitting description for someone named Shaggy. But I never found out his name, and of course my mind wants to make up all kinds of stories about him, or what might have been. With the breath and weight of my body, I try to curb this urge and direct my attention to the present.
I go to the other side of the store to look in the metaphysics section for works by Gurdjieff. Specifically I am looking for the first volumes of All and Everything. I pause every now and again to look back over the racks and let my eyes follow his beauty. He comes over to my aisle, pretends to look in the Buddhism section. A woman stands between us. I wish her to move. She leaves. He and I stand next to each other.
So this is where the mechanism of Old comes in. Rather than turn to him, to engage him, I fix my attention upon the shelves, frozen. Wanting to turn, the demon within takes over. Knowing that I have the tools of breath and magick, they seem just at the edge of my consciousness, about to break through and come to my assistance but not nearly in time. He turns and walks away. I look at him, he pauses and turns to his side. His body language says that he wants to come talk to me but doesn't know how. Oh Gods how well I know this story, and experience it right as he does. He leaves, but lingers outside the store, looking up and down the street, as though not sure what he wishes to do next. Still I continue to scan the shelves for Gurdjieff. Oh, what Georges would say if he were aware of this painful process of mine! Can I really find truth in his writings, when I can barely even put them into real practice for myself? Yet there are powerful lessons here: nonjudgment and nonattachment.
Beautiful boy. My mind tells stories about why things happened the way they did just now. I try not to listen to them. Shrugging it off, I come home to have the waves of sadness flow over me. Were we to engage, and things not click, then maybe I would be disappointed but there would be some terminus. But this kind of meeting comes to me so rarely, and time and again I feel as though I "blow it." Is there any true learning occurring? If the body remembers, what role does the mind play in this remembering? The universe knows I will get this lesson mastered. In the horizontal plane of time and space, I wonder in which life it will be so.
I channel this energy into making my place tidy, washing dishes and cleaning the stove. Actions which I procrastinate and quite loathe become joyful and ecstatic. As I move to a dancing rhythm pushing the soap-filled sponge back and forth across the surface of the stove, my balls jingle freely to the rhythm. How can a simple movement become so erotic and ecstatic? It calls into question whether my boy worries are even real, and to what extent the mind extracts the lesson or just clouds up reality with illusion.
The situation presented to me today will arise again. Once again I hold the wish to break through the Old Pattern and be available for connection and ecstacy. Whether I fall down or stand squarely is not relevant in this moment. I wish for my tools to be available to me, ready, in the name of Power, with no hurry and no pause, as the knife's edge which cuts through unreal and shines its fiery blade in truth.
May all beings be fulfilled and aware.
10/28/01