“It may be that your whole purpose in life
is simply to serve as a warning to
others.” (Anonymous)
Dear ____,
How very insightful of you to really zero in on my
self-hatred. I’ve spent the last twenty years working with Katie on developing the
mechanics of compassion but I seem incapable of finding it for myself. It seems
to me the best explanation for this paradox is that my self-loathing is the guilt-price
I willingly pay to keep indulging; to not get off it; to not step through that
curtain of fire. You are like my friend Carl, who moved away from me at the bar
because he feared the person he was sitting next to, the one who’d just told
him about the incredible spiritual experiences he’d forsaken for sex and drugs,
was a clown who squirted whipped cream out his nose.
Arthur is like the man in the rising flood, driven
to the second floor of his house. A rescue boat arrives but he waves it away.
“I don’t need any help! God will provide!” A few hours later, forced onto the
roof by the rising waters, another boat arrives and he also dismisses it, saying,
“God will provide!” Finally, perched on top of his chimney, he waves off a
helicopter rescue with “God will provide!” The fool drowns and, when he
complains to God for not providing, God says, “I provided two boats and a
helicopter!”
Miracles and opportunities have truly been heaped
upon me. Why do I not benefit more from them? This, more than anything else, is
what I hate myself for. I have been given so many boats and helicopters, so
many astounding verifications of the truth…and I have largely turned away.
The manager of a band I was once in told me,
“Everyone else in this group argues with me when I tell them to do something,
but then they go on and do it. I tell you to do something and you immediately
say ‘OK’—but then you don’t do it!”
Fancy egoic footwork, indeed!
My crazy wiring has managed to convince me that
enlightenment requires hard work (horror) and forfeiture of the right to do
whatever I want (double horror). It’s madness of course but I’ve gotten away
with it for nearly seventy years.
As for my self-hatred being groundless, the fact
that I make mountains/felonies out of molehills/misdemeanors is true. That
quote from Thomas Wolfe about “Every boy, caged in from confession by fear, is
to himself a monster,” refers to adolescent males dealing with the sex urge and
masturbation. I, like, relate. I also believe that self-hatred is present to
some extent until we are enlightened (an absolute, home-base experience of
Oneness). But this doesn’t mean we should lie down and wallow in it, as I seem
willing to do. Self-hatred may be universal but it is never justified, just as
my own fucking philosophy says; it’s an expression of madness that motivated
the offensive thought or deed to begin with, and then blames the host forever
for having had the thought or done the deed!
I know this. What I need to do is experience and
thereby live it.
And maybe “Exposing Myself” won’t have a happy
ending but will resonate and serve as a warning about an unrepentant life. If
the goal of art is to evoke and provoke then, based on early reactions, I’ve
succeeded. As General Corman says to Captain Willard in “Apocalypse Now,”
…”because there’s a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the
irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph.” (I would
say “good,” which is truth, does triumph, though it takes many lifetimes. Maybe
I’m just hooked on this level of being and want to make sure I’m coming back!)
Your post has really given me a much-needed
kick in the ass. You’re right, my friend, I AM old enough to drop the
self-loathing shit. It may interest you to know that Katie has helped me with
the “I am a worthless shit” process from “the work.” I’m getting some very revealing
insights right away.
Who knows? Why not?
