THE HARSH REALITY OF LIFE. . .

I was stopped at a stop-light yesterday and all of a sudden I heard the high pitch squealing of tires; I looked up into my rear view mirror and saw a car attempting to stop…it did not…my rear bumper took the hit (poor bumper)…. The harsh reality of life woke me up.  In an instant I realized that I had been not been fully present – my mind was ‘lost in thought’ (there are many ways we can help get ourselves ‘lost’ and this is one of them – to be ‘lost in our thoughts’).

In spite of our best efforts we humans keep bumping again and again into life by life (sometimes in the form of ‘cars hitting cars’).  In spite of our best efforts we humans keep ‘getting lost’ in our thoughts or, worse, we ‘go to sleep’ and we sleep-walk through life (it is no accident that there are so many T.V. shows about zombies running amok in the world – an on the airwaves).  Some of us, it seems, rarely wake up, we travel through life zombie-like.

‘Getting bumped’ awake helps and yet there is another way: to listen.  This type of listening has nothing to do with ‘agreeing with the speaker.’  Agreements and disagreements have to do with concepts and theories and ideas; they do not have much to do with ‘truth.’  Much of the time ‘truth’ is not expressed in words.  ‘Truth’ is sighted suddenly (like getting bumped awake by reality).  ‘Truth-seeking’ is rooted in a certain attitude.  So, you could be vigorously disagreeing with me and still ‘see’ the truth.

Listening in this way requires that I embrace a certain attitude – an attitude of openness, an attitude of curiosity, and an attitude of being willing to be influenced.  This is, to generalize, an attitude of ‘searching and seeking.’  If I hold an attitude that ‘I have found the truth’ then I am not open to searching and seeking – there is nothing to search for, there is nothing to seek out.

Do we listen in order to ‘confirm’ or in order to ‘learn,’ or perhaps to ‘unlearn’?  Do we seek confirmation to what we already believe to be true?  Do we listen in order to defend ourselves from that which might influence us or challenge our truth?  Are we so fear-full that we are unable to listen in order to understand (seeking to understand is one powerful way of listening).

For thousands of years the great wisdom figures spoke the ‘good news’ and some listened and others rejected their words and then, often, rejected them.  Their words were not rejected because they were ‘good.’  Their words were rejected because they were ‘new.’  In order to consider their words, folks had to hold an attitude of searching and seeking or others had been bumped awake and hence were open to the ‘good news.’  ‘Good news’ does not necessarily bring comfort and solace.  ‘Good News’ is often quite disturbing.

A spiritual director once described ‘faith’ as being openness to the truth, no matter what the consequences, no matter where it leads you and when you don’t even know where it’s going to lead you.  That’s faith.  Faith is NOT Belief.  Our belief provides us security; our faith is rooted in doubt and in insecurity.  Faith does not involve simply accepting one’s words (say the ‘Good News’) without a challenge.  Faith promotes challenge and protects us from becoming gullible.  One challenges from an attitude of openness.

The Buddha helped us with this idea when he said to a few of his followers: ‘Monks and scholars must not accept my words out of respect, but must analyze them the way a goldsmith analyzes gold – by cutting, scraping, rubbing, melting.’

When we do this we are listening; we are taking another step to helping ourselves wake up – we are, in essence, bumping ourselves awake via listening.  Of course we can always count on the squealing tires of reality to prepare us for the bump of reality – the reality that will, indeed, wake us up.