Well, they are coming thick and fast right now. Today may not be the right day for this, but I must do my best to bear regular witness to my experience of this path...
I was on a city bus yesterday to go to a smaller local city. A man got on, with seemingly everything he owned bagged up in a baby carriage. This kind of thing happens almost every time I take the bus, and sometimes it doesn't faze me. But sometimes it takes me to a very dark place indeed. It's like my own private "event horizon". For ten years or more, I've been circling the edge of a strong eddy, trying desperately to avoid being sucked in and disappearing completely. It's on the bus that I sometimes swirl closest to the void, which was what was happening in real time.
I'm at a place in my spiritual development where I literally cannot stand negative feelings for very long, so I gave myself a good inner talking-to. What was going on here? The very first layer to emerge was old-fashioned, unpleasant snobbery. My upbringing and education should have sent me in a different direction. What was I doing with "these people"? (Goddess, forgive me.) I felt, what?, distaste. Superiority. (Not hatred, I don't think.) Ugh...complex, old, extremely yucky emotions. It was painful to realize that despite this long personal spiritual journey, it wasn't yet natural to feel immediate compassion, solidarity, or love towards this fellow human being.
Suddenly, in a literal "aha", I remembered that in this duality construct, there are only two things, love and fear. And so no matter how this event manifested initially, deep down what I was feeling was fear, pure and simple. Not anger that no one should be forced to live that way, but the narcissistic fear that this man's plight might represent my future.
Over the course of the bus ride, every possible related issue surfaced. Riding through a suburban/exurban wasteland, and looking out, I realized I was still feeling distaste. Nothing about the endless rollout of car dealerships, fast food places, hair salons, doughnut shops, and dying farms-about-to-be-razed appeared beautiful in my eyes, nor the small green lawns and parked RV's and boats. Middle class America is as psychically hard for me as the world of extreme poverty. And yet at my destination, I encountered any number of very well-off and "successful" people and was reminded that I don't belong with them either. I don't find their world particularly beautiful. I fear them, yet perhaps in a very different way than some of the folks on the bus.
It was overwhelming to realize that, if I love so few aspects of this variegated manmade scene, then I must fear it. What is that all about? After all this enlightenment work, I am still torn with duality -- loving a small sliver of beautiful, mystical, and natural experiences and people, and profoundly uncomfortable with all the rest. How can I consider myself even remotely spiritual?
So it was a freaky day and, as it turned out, a violent one. For over an hour, there was a torrential rainstorm with extremely strong winds. Running around on errands, feeling quite dazed, I couldn't help but get soaking wet, despite sheltering for a while at the library. I was grateful to know that at least I would have a place to really dry off later in the day.
Shortly after getting on the return bus, it stopped at a corner, and who got on but the same man from the morning?! Still with his overflowing carriage. His situation hadn't changed in four or five hours. Had mine? The pendulum hadn't swung from fear to love that quickly. I didn't yet feel warmth or compassion. But I found myself in a softer place of "appreciation" -- he has found a way to just barely survive a system whose currency is money, not love. Ditto the people who build tacky one-story coffee shops, and potential customers for swank apartment buildings starting to be put up. We are all trying to survive.
I haven't lost my personal fear of slipping over the event horizon. But by the end of the day, I was able to see the whole thing from a larger perspective. We are entering a new age where money will no longer dictate our station in life, where we will all love one another. We will outgrow the duality hell of judging each other's success or failure -- much less (on this Juneteenth) anything else about who we are. We will understand that we are all, literally, one. (Today, I feel quite ashamed of the snobbery that has beset me on and off over the years, but I think yesterday's "aha" served as a pin in the balloon, a bucket of water on the wicked witch.) Aha.
