PINBALL CHOICE

WHO AM I?

I have been rolling downhill on my old-style, electro-mechanical pinball life. I bounced from bumper-to-bumper, location-to-location, job-to-job, crisis-to-crisis, and person-to-person. Did I really control any of this or did I really only control my desire-flippers at the bottom?

I am now propelled by the gravity of aging and the inertia of my vanities. I am now realizing that I am unable to really alter the linear direction of my descent toward “Game Over” which prior events have orchestrated. Even the speed of my fall is cumulative. My rolling silver steel ball of personality appears out of my control. I watch all that is going on behind the glass game-top and wonder if I have become a “deaf, dumb blind kid” like Tommy.

Can’t I choose anything? Do anything?

Then again, do I really want to choose? Or should I simply let the events choose? That’s the easiest. Less effort, right? Watch my little steel ball go straight down and disappear out of sight. Then I can curse “what they did to me”, those stupid bumpers. Blame someone else for my fate, my lack of opportunities. The lack of wealth of my parents, genetics that gave me an “eecch” brain. Maybe whine about the obviously rigged game of life which is not on the level. Oh sure, there were inclinations, mine on the inner and the inclined game table on the outer. And, after all, I chose this game.

And I was inclined to try to affect the outcome. I shook the table, nudged it – hard (careful not to “tilt”). But, basically, a pinball life is three balls, flashing lights, sounds, points rolling on the board as you stand there somewhat confused, unaware, naïve, numb in my heart and alone. Yeah, I flipped my desire flippers and occasionally kept the ball in play.

Choose. Huh? Yeah, right.

WHAT DO I WANT?

Let me brood in my dull anger for a moment, okay?

Do I want to choose? Yes, I do want to choose. And, I realize that if I choose, then I will pay for my choice. I will suffer. I do suffer. Your extra replays don’t come free. But, I’m brooding already, right? I have a few more games racked up on the counter – a few more years before “Game Over.”

     Deprivation because when you choose, you only get one thing – not both. I have to pick one or the other, poverty because I can’t have both (or the many). There will be labor, conflict, looming fear, addiction (to my desiring. Desiring? Hell. Longing!), regret that things will not be harmonious, rejected divinity, failing physical capacities, pissing myself. Maybe denial is easier. Just let me stand here like Tommy – deaf, dumb and blind. But, Tommy could play. Am I a player?

     Suffering. Suffering to be myself. A warrior, a player, chooses to define her/himself from the others. Can I be hostile? Independent? Push back against the inclined table of life? I can be hostile to the amorphous, undefined!

     I long for the One Thing. The One Thing we have in our hearts, our True Self. The others told me that real success was getting my steel ball into the 1,000 Points Hole. Roll your ball into that Hole and score big time, lots of lights, sounds and chatter. Woo-hoo! (“You get a replay!”) And, then the 1,000 Points Hole ejects you, shoots you across the table.

That other thing which warms your heart? That True Love? Where is that? Don’t seek that. There is no choice, they say. Stick with the 1,000 Point Hole and replays. You are what you are, the game is the game, the table is what it is, and that is that. True Self? True Love? Not here. Not in this game. This is a closed system. There is no place to go for that.

WHY AM I HERE?

I am here to awaken the True Self before I die. Before you die.

“Time, time, time, see what’s become of me...” I am a child of the 60s in my 60s. What time is it? Am I late for a very important date? “When the Moon s in the 7^th House...” Is this the dawning? I have I missed it? When was that Millennium? Y2K?

Is it ever too late to transform? If you don’t transform yourself, life will transform you. So, you have to go from the closed system to an open system.

If I am a steel ball, I am iron. Iron is malleable with enough heat. With enough passion I will undergo the agony of change. I will stand between the opposites where I’m normally not inclined to go, and feel the power of resistance. Resistance to my passion cranks up the heat. With enough passion, resistance and friction, I can change. Form a blade. A sword. The One Thing to become, my new self. Someone who does not just roll mindlessly, who can overcome the inertia of the past. A blade does not roll mindlessly. A blade cuts you away from the amorphous which clings.  Change - the one precious thing to do - the act which grows more fierce with each sun rise.

True Self awakens in the sphere of cause. Outside the box. Off the table. Choose to be the gravity, your self-motive. This is how we roll.

Copyright 2015, Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved

TH3 SIMPLE QUESTIONS: Slice Open Everyday Life

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(LOVE) POURS INTO OUR EYES

WHO AM I?

I am standing in the ICU unit and actually it was hard to see him because of all the technology. If he had asked, I could not have said, “I.C.U.”. Five to six I.V.s, monitors, bags to gather fluids draining from lungs, bladders, chest cavities, an O2 canister all were part of the scene.

My son’s illness poured itself into my eyes and out of this force I realized I had to create strength to give him back what he needed to survive.

I did not wish to react, somehow, with the fear and dread at the magnitude of death which seems to be looming behind my back and over my head.

WHAT DO I WANT?

I wanted my eyes to be able to see and not be overpowered by the forces of the world and technology. I wanted to have the inner forces to hold the world forces back so that my eyes could SEE it all, discern the forces taking his strength and going toward death; and the forces going toward life. I want to be able to tell the doctors what I saw – what was pouring into my eyes.

WHAT DO I WANT?

I battled my heart for an opportunity to practice equanimity. If I failed and became sympathetic, love would fill my eyes and I would weep for my son. That would do no one any good. If I failed in the other direction, and was too cold or antipathetic, I would weep for myself and my loss and become an all too human but pathetic middle-aged man.

     I was not here to be blown about by the forces outside me, or by my emotions. I would make a time to weep later. At that moment, I realized this crotchety old anglo-guy must be a man and more, a warrior from a non-warlike-tribe that had to find it within himself to defend the space for his son’s healing.

This all poured into my eyes.

© Copyright 2015, Jean W. Yeager

All Rights Reserved

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TOWARD A ROSE CROSS MEDITATION PART III - PREPARING TO TRANSFORM OUR SELVES

TOWARD A ROSE CROSS MEDITATION PART III OF IV

     Preparation for meditation begins with these three simple questions – “Who Am I?” “Why Am I Here?” and What Do I Want?” Steiner urges us NOT to go ahead with the Rose Cross meditation unless we are really being truthful with ourselves. Do we want to change, or not?  Why be false with ourselves? If we are NOT really seeking to transform even a simple imperfection, come back to this later when we are ready. Self-deceit creates another imperfection.

     Clear?

     This is the preparation, the time to be honest. Don’t go into the meditation if you don’t want to do it. Read this section over until you are sure.

WHO AM I?

     Are you clear about the Three Simple Questions.

Step 1 – Visualize who you are as a human being compared to a plant. Visualize yourself next to the plant. Live with the visualization. Are you not way more complex, more “perfect” than the plant? The plant has roots and is attached to the ground. Has a stem. And leaves which sprout out of the stem and a blossom. And you? You are not chained to the ground. You have feelings and desires to move and then you turn your feelings into desires and then into actions – you move. What motivates you? Can anything motivate the plant to move?

Step 2 – The plant follows the pure laws of growth, follows the sun, and the seasons. In a way, the plant is chaste and pure – it lives its life without passion, anger, fear or desires. We have purchased our freedom by permitting passions and desires into ourselves. We can love and take noble actions or impure actions which sully our Human Spirit. We have choices and we have values and morals.

Step 3 – Visualize the green sap flowing in the plant. This is a passionless expression of the forces of growth. This is what plants do. Then visualize how the red blood flows through the human’s veins – through your veins. This is an expression of instincts, passions and desires.

     Who are you? Visualize yourself and the plant for a while.

WHY AM I HERE?

     The second phase – “Why are you and the symbolic plant here?”

     You are capable of free will. You choose why you are here. The human being is capable of evolution and change.  But, change requires that you, the human being, choose to change; to live at a higher, level requires we become purified, that we eliminate impurities in our action, feelings and thoughts.

     Impure feelings seem to arise on their own simply because we are free to have any and all sorts of feelings – as if to confirm we are free – an array of tempting feelings may arise. Like pride. Possible financial reward.

     Some feelings are familiar and we may have sought or struggled, to control them, and we may have eliminated these same impurities in our lives previously. They are part of our free life like the green sap is part of the plant life.

     The Rose plant transforms the green sap, its version of our  free feelings (which include impurities), into growth force which drive leaves and stem into the red of the Rose. The Rose becomes our symbol of transformation of feelings which may include impurities.

     Visualize the green sap transforming into the Red. The red is symbolic of the blood which carries our passions. You and the plant symbolically share the capacity for transformation.

WHAT DO I WANT?

     Phase three - we want the preparation to evoke in us deep feelings – “grave feelings” - as Steiner calls them.

     If the Rose can symbolically transform a chaste, pure, thorny past driven, by the natural forces of growth into a beautiful blossom of the Red Rose; is it not then possible for us to transform the impure or erroneous feelings in our free desires during such a symbolic meditation?

     Are we prepared to change?

We humans have freedom. We can evolve and overcome and eliminate some of our old, negative habits like harsh words or angry attitudes, or being too proud to acknowledge we are imperfect – or staying cold and distant. If we approach our transformations, no matter how small, with grave feelings of their importance, acknowledging they are what at once seems minor but has major implications for WHO WE ARE tomorrow; then, when we eliminate even the tiniest impurity we can feel “liberating joy” as Steiner says, that our red blood has become transformed into the bearer of inwardly purified experiences.

     Yes, this is possible for us!

     Visualize the green sap in the stem transforming into the Red Rose blossom.

     Before attempting the Rose Cross Meditation, we are asked to live deeply with these preparatory thoughts for some time. We are instructed to “confront” these thoughts because they are the architecture, the structure, of the meditation.

© Copyright 2015, Jean W. Yeager

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