Liberation ("License") & Its Aftermath
Within a year after leaving the bible college and my return to the University of Washington to pursue a degree in philosophy, I was finally able to consciously and deliberately 'accept' my rejection of Christianity and the Bible as incoherent, contradictory (errant), and incompatible with practical reasoning, rational analysis, even common sense. The Bible claimed one thing and my experience of the world demonstrated another, exhibiting a cosmos comprised solely of natural events. Although 'supernatural' or 'miraculous' assertions could be written or spoken, these existed only within the artificial confines of language and were never experienced anywhere in the 'real world'. Religion was all about invoking words and language, whereas reality was what one experienced without needing to appeal to words and language. It became suddenly easy to differentiate between religion and reality: one couldn't exist without words and the other had nothing to do with words. In order to test whether something was 'real' or not, all one had to do was to see if it could be experienced without relying on language. Ah, so. How simple.
At this time I was still working at the Tiki Hut Restaurant as the head night cook (in total I would work there eight years while putting myself through college). After S and I broke up (see Chapter 13) I had no interest in pursuing other girlfriends, instead wanted to dedicate my time to school and studies. Of course this was not how things worked out, because the Universe eventually put TJ in my path, a collision that was deemed all but avoidable.
When TJ was hired at the Tiki Hut as a bus person (to pour water, aid the wait staff, clean and reset the tables) she was only seventeen and still in high school. I was twenty two, in college, with no interest in wanting another girlfriend, to say nothing about some 'kid' still in public school. Over the course of the next few months I would watch her off-and-on, found her cute and attractive, but a little shy and awkward, and not all that smart. When she graduated in June she was still four weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday, and it was during this four weeks that something began happening between us. We started talking to each other, even flirt a little, and I hinted that I might ask her out once she became 'legal' (turned eighteen). She hemmed and hawed but finally agreed in a half-hearted way, more because of her shyness than anything else. On the day of TJ's eighteenth birthday she was working the lunch shift. I remember waking from a fitful nap knowing I needed to send her flowers as a present. I had the florist deliver eighteen long stemmed roses to her at work—a flower for every year of her birthday. These flowers made quite an impression, to say the least, and forever sealed my fate. We've been together ever since, although our journey as a couple has not always been easy or thoughtful, kind or considerate, rational, responsible. On several occasions—due mostly to my many misbehaviors and disingenuous lapses in judgment—we were on the verge of breaking up, then divorce, perhaps even homicide, but because of TJ's enormous heart, strength of character, and great capacity for forgiveness (after proper penance, of course), she has always managed to set me straight, and allow me back into her good graces.
But what happened to me that I would eventually start 'falling from grace' and engaging in behaviors that were not only unthoughtful and immoral, but oftentimes illegal? It wasn't always that way or had become that way overnight? What was the impetus for my downfall, my drifting off the path of the straight and narrow, my occasional forays into the 'Dark Side'?
The answer is simple. I mistook 'Liberation' to mean 'License' and 'License' to mean 'Exemption'. Because I was 'free' this mean I was also 'free to fall'.
And fall I did.
A BRIEF EXPLANATION: Liberation, Awakening, Silence
Recently I realized that the often misunderstood (and misused) term 'enlightenment' consists of three parts (perhaps 'steps') which can occur rather quickly or may unfold slowly (some would say deliberately) over the course of several years or decades. These three are:
Some people believe enlightenment can be any or all of these three, but for me enlightenment is a three-step process unfolding in just this order. Please do not think that because I use words like 'steps' or 'process' or 'order' that I'm suggesting there's anything one needs to do or can do to manipulate or control the outcome to enlightenment. This is merely my interpretation of a process of 'undoing' or 'unfolding' that has nothing to do with words or language or practice or exercise, in fact my be just the opposite of all these. Liberation The first state, Liberation, is an enigma and a paradox because it can be both a blessing and a curse, a kind of trap or cul-de-sac preventing the next step Awakening from ever occurring. In order to awaken one must first be liberated, but what is one liberated from? Again, liberation is different for each person going through it, but for me it means liberation from dogma, the fear of judgment, the fear of death, and articles of faith. It means having the understanding that not only are each of us free to do anything we want, we have always been free to do anything we want, and whatever we are doing right now we have chosen to do, that the choices we make have always been our choices although not necessarily mindful, educated, honest, or rational. For many people—myself included—because Liberation frees you to do anything you want, because it gives you complete license, this freedom can be misused and abused. You can be seduced by your own liberation and fall prey all the various enticements that liberation provides. Once liberated, you can become a not-very-nice person, a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a complete jerk. For this reason Liberation alone is not Enlightenment, but a means that makes Awakening possible, however long such an awakening takes. One cannot awaken until one is liberated and one cannot be liberated until one has been freed from dogma, the fear of judgment, and the fear of death. For some the path from Liberation to Awakening only takes a couple of years, for others it may take considerably longer. Each person is different. Some are liberated but never awaken. Some awaken eventually, it's just that it may take upwards of thirty years. Awakening The second state, Awakening, follows Liberation and may take years or decades to unfold. While Liberation frees you to do anything you want, Awakening reveals that most everything you want to do—or think you need to do—is complete and utter bullshit. Everything. All of it. Bullshit. Everytime you second-guess yourself or chastise yourself or seek to alter your behavior or set yourself straight or get on the right path, whatever you imagine it is, you're effortlessly aware it's all motivated by bullshit. And you know it, you can't help but know it, and that's the Awakening part. It's like when you see yourself seeing yourself in the dual-reflection between two mirrors...it all keeps bounding away from you in a seemingly endless array, and every image, every stance, every face shown to the world is not real, it's an illusion, it's total bullshit. And this realization is the real eye-opener. At first, after becoming aware of your awakened state, you may think you need to start behaving like an Awakened Person and clean up your act, but how is an Awakened Person supposed to act? That's just it. An Awakened Person doesn't act, but is simply awake, and that's when you realize any desire to act or change or 'put on a show' of righteousness is also bullshit. It's like your awakening caused a long convoluted track of dominos to start falling over where each piece knocks down another piece, and so on and so on, until all you have left are pieces falling away as fast and as far as you can see, and there's nothing you can do to stop it, that anything you think you can do or need to do or have to do is just more pieces that will fall way. In time you simply sit back and watch the pieces fall and the universe unfold. Sure, it can be loud and noisy, but behind it all you begin to notice yourself dwelling in Silence, in a kind of effortless Repose that doesn't need to do anything or prove anything or change your behavior or alter your lifestyle. Silence The third state, Silence, is quietude, a state of being that may be interpreted as peace and tranquility, but these terms are something of misnomers (there are, after all, just words). The Silence in this case is to accept one's natural state unburdened from the artifice of words, the dogma of language, all the symbolic abstractions that reference things found nowhere in the real world, in nature, in one's surrounding environment. It is to be alive in the real world, to know the real world, to trust the real world unfettered from the billion defining illusions that exist only in words and the language of the mind. Simply and crudely put, it is to shut the fuck up and feel the sun on your face, the wind in your hair, the grass between your toes. You no longer have to talk about it or read about it—you're too busy doing it. There's 'reality' and there are 'words', so are you 'living' your life or are you merely 'defining' it or empowering somebody else (or something else) to 'define' it for you? [NOTE: This also applies as well to all the words on this site. Remember; you use a thorn to remove a thorn and then throw both away.] |
Over the course of several years—through Christianity first and then Eastern Philosophy—I eventually found myself 'liberated'. From Christianity I had been 'freed' to pursue other interests and studies that Christian doctrine considered 'pagan' or 'sinful', unfettered from dogma to examine other religions and philosophies and schools of thought that either terrified the Church (e.g., critical thinking, empirical science) or else scoffed at with smug righteousness (e.g., meditation, yoga, Zen). Like Gnossos Pappadopoulis, I began to envision myself as keenly 'exempt':
I am invisible, he thinks often. And Exempt. Immunity has been granted to me, for I do not lose my cool. Polarity is selected at will, for I am not ionized and I possess not valence. Call me inert and featureless but Beware, I am the Shadow, free to cloud men's minds. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? I am the Dracula, look into my eye.
— Richard Farina, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, p. 4
This sense of 'liberation' ("license", "exemption") conveyed me to the study of philosophy and beyond.
After TJ and I started dating I convinced her to try going to Edmonds Community College on a 'trial basis'. With a little bit of a Pygmalion thing going on (she being Eliza Doolittle to my Henry Higgins), I explained to her that I could help her with her studies, show her how to write school papers, and tutor her in whatever classes with which she might be having difficulty, if she'd just give it a try. Although she hadn't intended in pursuing an education after graduating from high school, she agreed to try the community college for a quarter. With a little hand-holding and paper-editing on my part, she got straight As. This was the incentive she needed to keep going. In two years she transferred to the UW to pursue a degree in Textile Design and moved to a studio apartment in the U District to be near campus.After graduating and earning my B.A degree in Philosophy I decided I wanted to return to school, not as a post-graduate, but to acquire additional degrees in History and English (Literature). Two years later, when I finally applied to graduate school, it was to pursue a Master's degree in English Literature. But unknown to me at the time, trouble was looming over the horizon.
After taking the GRE and applying to graduate school, I moved from my apartment in Edmonds and rented a small fourth-floor walk-up a block from the UW campus. I was excited and ready to start classes in the fall, but the UW Registration office somehow misplaced my packet of transcripts (this was the day before digitalized transcripts) so I was unable to start school in the fall. They eventually tracked down my transcripts halfway through the Fall Quarter, but because some of my classes were progressive (this means I had to take them in a specific order), I couldn't start school until the following Fall Quarter, a year later! I was devastated. I'd been going to school full time for over twenty years and now had no classes to attend, no school books to read, no term papers to write, no tests to take. All I had was work, and this big empty gap that had always been filled by the business of school—books, homework, research, study. Because I was forced to tread water for nearly a year, I quickly grew bored.
At this time I was still working at the Tiki Hut (although it was about to change hands) and TJ had left to work nights as a switchboard operator near the UW campus. I'd get off work and join my co-workers in the cocktail lounge to drink beer and play backgammon. Because I didn't have to get up early to attend classes, I'd stay out later and later, eventually closing out the bar most nights at 2:00 AM. In the end, it caught up with me rather quickly. By the time classes started again the following year, I was well on my way to developing a serious drinking problem and my heart was no longer in graduate school. Although I attended two quarters and did relatively well (a 3.5 average), I no longer had the drive or mental fortitude to continue. I dropped out in my third quarter and would not return to school for another fifteen years.
- What Is Enlightenment? by John White
- Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions by Lex Hixon
- Face to No-Face: Rediscovering Our Original Nature by Douglas E. Harding
- On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious by Douglas E. Harding
- The Myth of Enlightenment: Seeing Through the Illusion of Separation by Karl Renz
- Being: The Bottom Line by Nathan Gill
- Oneness by John Greven
- Das Energi by Paul Williams
- Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas
