This

by Michael Gungor

  I wasn’t just sad. I was angry. Angry at the patriarchy that tells little girls what they should look like and what makes them valuable. Angry at the shallowness and foolishness of our cultural values that make so many people hate themselves and superficially judge others. And you know what? I wouldn’t have traded that sadness or anger for any other emotion. I wanted to feel it. And I’m glad I felt it. Because now I can act on it.

  Contrary to what our cultures would often have us believe, the emotions that we often consider as “negative emotions,” such as anger, sadness, and the like, are not bad things in themselves. In fact, they are quite helpful. Like any other emotion, our negative emotions are our brains telling us what’s going on. If we feel happy, that’s because our brain is rewarding us for doing something it wanted us to do. If we feel hurt, confused, or bitter, it’s because our brain wants us to know that something isn’t right.

  Sometimes in spiritual circles (and especially for women), negative emotions are often seen as weak or unacceptable. It’s assumed that if you get mad, it’s because you’re not mature enough or haven’t done the spiritual work yet. And if you don’t mind me saying, that’s horseshit.

  While it is true that the direct experience of a nondual THIS allows one to be free from being trapped in suffering because one is no longer attached to the desire for the world to be other than it is, that doesn’t mean that enlightenment is equivalent to trading all “negative” emotions out for “positive” ones.

  Freedom isn’t experienced by completely avoiding emotional dissonance any more than beautiful music is made by completely avoiding anything that is not a C-major chord. In THIS, we may be less controlled by our circumstances and rooted in that “peace that passes all understanding,” but sometimes a completely unattached joviality is not the best way to experience this world.

  Imagine watching a romantic film that had a constant ticker tape running across the screen that read, “This movie is fiction . . . these characters aren’t really falling in love . . . they are actors and none of this is real . . .” It would sort of ruin the vibe, right? In the same way, I’ve found that when I remain completely detached emotionally from the suffering around me, knowing that it is all perfect, it doesn’t always help others experience their lives more fully or suffer less. Sometimes, other people suffer less when we are willing to “mourn with those who mourn.” Maharaj-ji, an incredibly enlightened being who was known for always talking about how all of it is one, and how all of it is perfect, also said, “I love suffering because it brings me so close to God.”

  God is not distanced from the pain of humanity, sitting on a throne somewhere or waxing his beard. God is on death row. God is an addict. God is jealous that her husband spends all of his free time with his friends rather than her. And when you love God, truly and deeply love God, sometimes it’s better to sit down in the mud with him and cry than to sing hymns to him about his glory.

  This world is full of so much shame, fear, hate, and violence, and to embrace that level of suffering within one’s experience, not simply as an unattached observer, but as a freely embodied desire, can be incredibly painful. Still, if that is how I (the All) become more free, what else could I do? An isolated detachment from desire is enough to save this particular organism from a life of suffering, but in that detachment, as I figure out who I really am (THIS ), love is the only natural response. Love throws me back into the fray where God becomes ever so close. Here, I am free to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. Here I am free to suffer as much or as little as I desire.

  This is something I’m still learning about. As an introvert, I’ve been happy enough in the past to stay out of the fray of relational drama, usually simply preferring a window seat in the spaceship and maybe a bucket of popcorn. Recently, however, I’ve been making an effort to be more emotionally present and vulnerable with those I love. So far, I have to say, it’s not going all that well. For example, in a recent attempt toward connection and emotional vulnerability, I confided some things to some friends that I wouldn’t normally have said for fear of being misunderstood. I hoped it would bring understanding and connection. Instead, it brought misunderstanding and hurt.

  In my attempt to minimize suffering, I actually just created more suffering. So what to do?

  It’s almost enough to make one wonder why Buddha ever bothered getting up from the bliss he found under that Bodhi tree. Why would one bother going back into the noise and suffering of human interaction and relationship if one didn’t have to? Why experience the foulness of sitting in the mud with the broken when the entire Kingdom of Heaven is yours? Why step back into the realm of maya (illusion) when one realizes one is God? Well, because, THIS is love. If I truly surrender to THIS, how can I help but be formed into the very image and embodiment of her love? The process may often be messy, reckless, and painful, but I’ve tasted enough of it to know that the true love of THIS is worth every bit of pain that it costs.

  So, yeah, I’m still learning about that. How can I, a man of privilege, spout off ideas about freedom to those who don’t have the luxuries, opportunities, and good health that I do? How can I embody love in a way that shares in the stories and suffering of others while at the same time embodying the peace that transcends those stories? I don’t know yet. But I think it’s worth the effort. And honestly, that’s why I’ve written this book. Because the more I’ve seen of THIS, the more my heart has been opened to how your freedom is tied to mine. Like I said at the beginning, this book has been my attempt at a love letter to you to remind you of who you really are.

  Our world is full of so much suffering. I feel it so acutely every time I open up my news or social media feeds. I feel it in the interactions among my family and friends and in the eyes of strangers on the street. It hurts so much.

  “Momma, am I pretty?”

  I feel the tension between the right and the left, the young and the old, the religious and the nonreligious. All the groups hating one another. The arguments all sound so complicated. Under it all:

  “Momma, am I pretty?”

  Yes, my love. You are beautiful.

  ___________

  20. Ken Wilber, The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions—More Inclusive, More Comprehensive, More Complete (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2017).

  21. Michael Gungor, The Crowd, The Critic, and the Muse: A Book for Creators (Denver: Woodsley Press, 2012).

  22. Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery (New York: Pantheon, 1953).

  23. Matthew 5:44.

  24. Deuteronomy 7.

  25. Galatians 3:28.

  26. 1 Corinthians 11:6.

  27. 1 Corinthians 14:34.

  28. 1 Timothy.

  29. Acts of the Apostles 17:28.

  30. Romans 11:36.

  31. Colossians 3:11.

  32. Other than, perhaps, a few notable exceptions like Aristarchus of Samos, who unsuccessfully presented a similar cosmological model eighteen centuries earlier.

  33. While atheism is usually considered a sin in Christianity, doubting the existence of God is not considered a sin, but a simple and common temptation. Many famous and beloved saints of the Church (St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, etc.) were known to doubt the existence of God. There is even an important spiritual idea known as “the dark night of the soul,” in which heavy doubt purifies the faith of the believer.

  34. Examples include, “before Abraham was born, I am”; “the Father and I are one”; calling God “Abba,” which was an intimate term for father; etc.

  35. Some sages and mystics claim that they do. And honestly, this is one of the only reasons that I remain “agnostic” about the afterlife rather than simply dismissing the idea altogether as ego wish-fulfillment.

  36. Matthew 25.

  37. Though some might find this open relationship with theological language frustrating or confusing, it excites me. For me, it’s sort of the theologica
l equivalent of Oprah’s, “You get a car! And you get a car!” If the lack of precision bothers you, please feel free to dismiss it or just focus on your own car.

  38. Spivak gender-neutral pronoun.

  39. Another gender-neutral pronoun.

  40. Gender-neutral pronoun.

  41. According to Watts, the Fully Automatic Universe is modernity’s updated version of the Genesis-based, Judeo-Christian creation myth. In the new, post-Christian secularism, natural laws replace divine fiats and physics and formulas replace the sovereign, powerful Word of God, but in both versions of this Genesis-based myth, the divide remains between humans and their source, between laws of nature and nature itself, between us and the universe that we study.

  42. In modernity, the truth is often thought of as being undesirable—“the cold facts,” “the hard truth,” etc. But why are we so sure that this should be the case? How masochistic are we as a species that we so commonly assume that the truest things will be the worst possible things?

  43. Calling the ultimate nature of THIS random isn’t exactly right—any more than saying a beehive is in the key of C minor. C minor is a greater abstraction than the concrete reality of a beehive, and the idea of randomness or meaninglessness is a greater abstraction than the concrete reality of isness.

  44. Mike McHargue, Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again through Science (New York: Convergent Books, 2016).

  45. A name used in certain streams of feminist or liberation theology in lieu of the more patriarchal “Kingdom.”

  46. To once again quote the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, “It isn’t things that enter into relations, but rather relations that ground to the notion of thing.” See Carlo Rovelli, The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy (Bucks County, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2011).

  47. G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co, 1909).

  8. Forgetting Both Ox and Self

  Fairy Gardens

  “Do you think we are going to transform the world by lifting all the pebbles off the walks and putting precious jewels down?”

  —RAM DASS

  Six thirty a.m. I’m stretched out with my two little girls on our oversized sofa that is too large for our living room. Amelie cuddles me on my left side, Lucie climbs up and snuggles across my chest. Two tiny human beings that are the very incarnation of my heart and soul. The Divine image crafted into skin, smiles, muscles, and little girls’ hair. And in the case of the little one, some unknown gloob pasted across her chubby cheek. I don’t even care. The moment is perfect.

  I think of all we had to experience to make it to this moment. Heart surgeries. Spa floors. Betrayals and disappointments. Broken hearts and blissful sex. Ketchup-loving pastors and megachurch coffee shops. White couches and embarrassing journal entries. Purity rings and shamanic ceremonies involving magic mushrooms. How marvelous can one life be? I love it all. I love Lisa, whose body knit together these magical little souls lying on my chest. Lisa, who stayed with me, who fought and loved me fiercely through it all. I love my dad, who always loved me, and who, even after the worst failure of his life, had the courage to not only come back but to keep growing and evolving. For years, my suffering had blinded me to the generosity, strength, wisdom, and character that he so clearly exhibits and embodies, but now I am grateful to more clearly see what a remarkable man he was and is. I love my mom, who has always given so much of herself for all of us, who in the most painful time of her life somehow had the courage and grace to forgive, to love, and keep our family together. I love my siblings and friends who have been such exceptional companions through all the madness. I love my Christian upbringing. I love Bloom church and all of the deep work and great stories that it gifted us. I even love my old best friend who tried to kick us out of our own church—at least the guy had some convictions and tried to stay faithful to them. I love the churches, colleges, and festivals who also had the integrity to follow their convictions when they canceled gigs on us. I love the nurses and their machines that kept Lucie alive in the hospital. I love my heart for feeling all of this love. I love my body for carrying me through the magical illusion of space-time, allowing me to experience all of the joy, sadness, bliss, and suffering that has made this life so visceral, adventurous, and heartbreakingly beautiful.

  I know that none of this will last. My girls will grow up and be too big to jump onto my chest and snuggle in the mornings in the way that they are right now.

  I won’t always have the good health that I enjoy now, and the remnants of my youth will continue to drain away into lines, wrinkles, torpor, and decay. Everyone and everything I know will pass into the night sky like the mist of a single breath. And that’s part of the beauty of it. All of the infinite glory of the All is within this very moment, waiting to be tasted and seen.

  I had lunch yesterday with a friend who is going through a divorce. He told me that it feels like the last eleven years were a waste that have emptied down the drain. I asked him why he thought that. Why would the end of a marriage mean that all of those years of his marriage had been a waste? Was there some end point in his mind’s story of marriage where everything would culminate into a single moment of success? Would there be some sort of award or freeze-frame moment that suddenly made it all worth it? He laughed and admitted that he didn’t know.

  What exactly do we expect from the toil of our lives, jobs, and relationships? For the credits to roll as we are hoisted onto the shoulders of the cheering crowd? For the frame to eternally freeze as the girl leans in for the long kiss in the rain? Our books and movies tell us stories of varieties of happy endings, but these are never the real ending of any story. They don’t show us Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming growing old and wrangling with degenerating bodies, dreams, and relationships. They don’t show how the leading man in the rom-com ends up dying of prostate cancer at sixty-eight and how his beloved wife spends the next thirty years lonely and sad until she dies from her third stroke. They never show how the football player who gets hoisted onto everybody’s shoulder eventually has a slow decline in his career until he throws out his shoulder and can’t play anymore. They don’t show him struggling with his crippling depression and sense of meaninglessness after he retires and nobody cares.

  Life isn’t a prelude to a perfect freeze-frame. A life fully lived in every moment is not some foreign concept about some other reality—it is simply THIS. You reading this book. Scratching your ass. Feeling a little tired, cranky, or horny. THIS is the All in All. THIS is Heaven. THIS is the freedom you have been looking for. It is not in the specifics of the myths that we make sense of the world with. It is not with the stories you tell yourself and others about who you should be or could be. It is just THIS.

  I asked my friend going through the divorce to remember what it was like during the “good times” of his marriage. How did those moments feel? What was he doing in the “good moments”? Taking a breath perhaps? Laughing? Sitting in a chair and talking to someone? Chewing some food? Were those married moments really all that different from these divorce moments?

  It’s our clinging to these stories and all of the “shoulds” and “coulds” that come with it that cause us so much suffering. We avert our gaze and our love from THIS, thinking that it should be or should have been that. We are imprisoned within these stories that minimize or even reject the present moment and instead pay attention to some illusory past or future narrative. We don’t love THIS. We want that.

  I am just going to school now so that I can get a job someday and finally get to my real life.

  I’m just working this job for now, so I can save up money and do what I really want to do.

  I’m just working so hard in my career right now so that I can buy a house.

  I’m just working on paying off this house right now so I can retire and not worry about money anymore.

  And then it becomes, I just miss the good old days when . . .

  Beloved, I hate to
break it to you, but the magic freeze-frame you’ve been wanting is never going to come. You’re in the perfect moment already. If this moment is always some sort of stepping-stone in your mind to some other ideal potential moment when you finally are happy and fulfilled, you’ll never be happy or fulfilled.

  Wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move against the earth and sky, the Beloved has bowed there– Our Beloved has bowed there knowing you were coming.48

  If we were to suddenly find ourselves in Heaven in our present state of clinging to desire, what makes us think that we wouldn’t suffer every bit as much as we do now? If we aren’t home in the present moment, why would we be home there? Heaven is right here and right now. The meaning of life is not an abstract set of thoughts or words—it’s simply and fully THIS. It’s the cold leather of morning couches and the slight floral scent of little girls’ hair. It’s sunbeams pouring through the glass of the living room windows and kissing our skin with yet another new day. It’s the coolness of our breath entering our nostrils and the warmth of it escaping from our lips. It’s the feeling of cool, damp grass under our bare feet and the shiver up our spines after a much-needed pee.

  As I lie on the couch, my heart feels wide open, and there is nothing to do or change about anything. All there is to do is experience it. No need to try to make meaning-making myths fit together or to exclude or fear any of it. All of it belongs. Here, I can love this moment and all the moments connected to it because none of this comes without all of this. The love. The suffering. The play. The adventure.

  I look out the window and see a small patch of grass. I could be disappointed that it’s not a bigger patch or dread that it needs to be mowed. I could also experience the wonder, remembering that from a certain vantage point, every one of those blades of grass is a universe unto itself with atomic structures like galaxies swirling and dancing through empty, God-drenched space. I could see it as a thou—the Godhead incarnating not only as the grass itself but as the fruit of an ecosystem of unseen life, energy, and mystery. I could even experience it as my very Self—every single blade of grass, reflecting photon, and swirl of emptiness within emptiness a part of my own body that is the All. In this perspective, the grass becomes part of my own skin. The morning sky becomes a bright expanse of my own consciousness. The birds chirping are the songs in my head, and the breeze is the great Spirit, my very breath. Or I could not think anything at all, and just be—letting all my mythical constructs fade from my mind and directly experience pure nondual, empty awareness where there is only THIS.