I only see what I think I see

I’ve been read­ing a new OSHO book, called Emo­tional Well­ness. It’s basi­cally a dis­cus­sion about becom­ing whole. The part I’ve read so far is quite close to what we talk about here.

I’ll para­phrase.

While men and women are fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent, both pos­sess both Yin and Yang ener­gies, which, ide­ally, would be in bal­ance. Like the yin/yang sym­bol. Not only are the sides equal — they each con­tain aspects of the other.

OSHO argues that men oper­ate from rea­son and women from emo­tion, which is a bit of an over-exaggeration.

Any­way, each side has both use­ful and not-so-useful aspects.

Rea­son has given us sci­ence, inven­tions, cures, etc., but has also given us wars, weapons, and death camps. Emo­tions give us a felt-sense of what the world is about, but also cause us to so focus in on the sto­ries I tell myself about what I am feel­ing, that logic and clar­ity fly out the window.

If these two ways of view­ing life are in bal­ance, we would have access to a much more func­tional way of being.

How­ever, in order for this to work, we must dis­cover an addi­tional piece, which could be called con­scious­ness, pres­ence, or my per­sonal favourite, the Watcher. (I men­tion that it’s my favourite mostly because I wrote a free book­let by that name, which is avail­able to you here.)

One way to access the Watcher, or to be present, is through med­i­ta­tion. As I just sit, I notice the com­ing and going of thoughts, feel­ings, and emo­tions. The essence of sit­ting is not to try to stop any of this, but to sim­ply observe the aris­ing, the charge, and the pass­ing of each thing.

Thoughts, feel­ings, and emo­tions are real, in that they are observ­able (by me) and sensed (by me,) but have nei­ther mean­ing, nor power.

Mean­ing — all mean­ing is ascribed mean­ing. OSHO calls this ratio­nal­iza­tion. Rea­son, as a process, leads from a to b to c. Ratio­nal­iza­tion takes ‘a’ and demands that oth­ers see what I see. As soon as my way of think­ing moves from “what I’m think­ing†to “true,†I am in trouble.

Or, as an emo­tion arises, if I observe it, it comes, it waves at me, and it goes. If I latch on to it and attach mean­ing through panic, or up the ante, or blame oth­ers for it, I have once again moved into “stupidville.â€

Power — the things that go on inside of us are phe­nom­ena — things that are occur­ring. In my book, Half Asleep in the Bud­dha Hall, I describe phe­nom­ena as, “Look! There! A thing!†Not a thing with mean­ing, just a thing.

There­fore, feel­ings, thoughts, and emo­tions can­not leg­is­late behav­iour.

So, if I am notic­ing anger aris­ing in me, I can own it, and maybe go pound a pil­low. The anger, how­ever, can­not make me do some­thing, like yell at Dar, or be obnox­ious. Just becuase I think some­thing, I do not have to do it, although I could choose to.

The Watcher is what we are. Watch­ing is pure con­scious­ness. It’s that which says, “Wow. Are you ever mak­ing your­self angry†- in a totally calm, unat­tached “voice.†(The Bible, remark­ably, calls this the “small voice of stillness!â€)

The Watcher sees, hears, feels, yet does not react. It is the essence of us, and is uni­ver­sal, and there­fore not really us at all. The more you live your life from this under­stand­ing and way of being, the more rich, vibrant and juicy you become, because you see that you have feel­ings, for exam­ple, but are not your feelings.

Here’s a Story for You

Last night I was watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary on Har­vey Milk. Some­how, that led me to think about my first year at Elmhurst Col­lege, as I pur­sued my BA, in 1968.

I arrived in Illi­nois at 17.5, hav­ing grown up in Buf­falo. My par­ents were lib­er­als polit­i­cally and reli­giously, and they saw to it that I received a lib­eral school­ing — civil rights was as much a part of me as my blood.

Steve, Randy, ca. 1968

The school was a hotbed for anti-war and civil rights stuff, and I arrived just after the infa­mous Chicago Demo­c­ra­tic Con­ven­tion. Hav­ing been a Bobby Kennedy sup­porter, my nerves were a bit raw.

I ended up in a dorm room with 2 room­mates — Randy and Steve. Both were small town boys. Steve was right­eously odd. He’d race into the room 3x a day, and grab a can of Right Guard, and spray a goodly dose all over his armpits — while still wear­ing his tee-shirt. I sug­gested tak­ing off the shirt. He replied, “That’s the way we do it in Ankney!â€

By Octo­ber, Randy and I had moved to a dou­ble room, leav­ing Steve to a cou­ple of other cowboys.

Long story short, Randy and I became best friends. I spent time with him and his fam­ily, in South­ern Illi­nois, in Jan­u­ary of 69. First time I ate veni­son. While we were there, he broke up with his girlfriend.

In April, I noticed that Randy was leav­ing let­ters out on his desk, and talk­ing about going to Eng­land, “to meet some­one,†in the sum­mer. He was excited. I was curi­ous (nosy) and would glance at the let­ters as I (fre­quently) walked by his desk. It was clear the Randy was writ­ing to some­one, and was plan­ning quite the erotic hol­i­day in Eng­land. I was glad for him.

One evening, Randy was a work, and I was writ­ing an essay. I needed his dic­tio­nary, and wan­dered over to his desk. Another let­ter from Eng­land, wide open, on his desk, turned to the back page. I glanced down. It was signed, “All my love.â€

“George.â€

“George???????????????????????â€

I grabbed the let­ter, looked more closely, attempted briefly to come up with a “George†must be short for “Georgina,†and then col­lapsed on my chair.

Randy, I sud­denly real­ized, was gay.

I freaked.

I had met a lot of peo­ple in my trav­els in the Move­ment, but to my knowl­edge (silly me) never a gay per­son. Now, this was 1969, and some years before Har­vey Milk became the first openly gay city leg­is­la­tor in the US. Gays were clos­eted, mostly, and way, way out of my wheelhouse.

I had no point of ref­er­ence. At all.

In keep­ing with the top part of this arti­cle, my rea­son was over­whelmed, and all that was left was my emo­tion, which was panic, fear, and ter­ror. Randy had become alien to me, the “other,†and I was afraid of what he might do to me.

Thank­fully, my nascent Watcher got my attention.

“Call your favourite pro­fes­sor!†I raced for the pay phone. (This was pre cell phones, boys and girls. )

Dr. Rose was a friend. We talked a lot. So I had his home number.

He lis­tened, as I copped to spy­ing on Randy, and lis­tened some more as I almost screamed, “What do I do???â€

Dr. Rose said, “How long have you known Randy?â€Â Me: “Almost a year.â€

Him: “How long do you sup­pose he’s been gay?â€Â Me: “A while, I guess.â€

Him: “Has he ever made a pass at you?â€Â Me: “Nope.â€

Him: “So Randy is just as he was. What’s changed?â€

Silence. Then, my Watcher smiled.

Me!: “I changed. I got more infor­ma­tion, blew it out of pro­por­tion, and scared myself. He’s the same, and I just freaked myself out.â€

Him: “Yup. Now, all that’s left is to decide if you can expand your­self to include gays in your ‘nor­mal’ cat­e­gory. If you can get over your­self, you’ll stay friends.â€

And that’s what happened.

We talked when he got home, and I real­ized that he was the same per­son I’d known since Sep­tem­ber. We stayed close friends, and I real­ized that sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion or activ­i­ties were no longer issues for me. I learned to make “being human†equal to “nor­mal,†or something.

I saw Randy again that sum­mer, on a road trip I’ll have to describe some day, and then he moved to San Fran­cisco. We com­mu­ni­cated by let­ter, and phone, and he vis­ited once in the early 80s.

By 1985 or so, we’d lost touch.

In 1988, I got a let­ter from his mom. Randy had died of AIDS. She nursed him to the end. She wrote that he didn’t want to worry me, and didn’t want me hop­ping on a plane and see­ing him bedrid­den and dying, so he asked her to write after he died.

He was my friend, and still is.

Thank “god†for The Watcher, for Dr. Rose, for my par­ents, and for my will­ing­ness to have a breath. My rea­son failed, my emo­tions went into over­drive, and The Watcher watched, breathed, and offered me a way back into presence.

The Watcher has never failed me. So long as I stop, lis­ten, and breathe.

I owe Randy, big time.

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