To Church on Mondays - Part 2

(Click for PART 1)
  
The heavy oak door with wrought-iron handle closes shut behind me.  Silence.

I take a step forward.  “Clunk-tap.”

A few more steps.  “Clunk-tap, clunk-tap, clunk-tap…” echoing through.  Silence.

No patron appears to greet me.  I am the only one here.

I begin my first-ever private walking tour around the inner sanctum of Christ Church Cathedral on Quadra Street.  I walk.

“Clunk-tap, clunk-tap, clunk-tap, clunk-tap...”

Five minutes.  Ten minutes.  Just me.  Silence.

I circumnavigate with senses taking in all that I haven’t paid much attention to until this visit… The immaculately chiseled edgings of massive stone columns.  The mild odor of worn leather pew cushions and polished wood.  The drone of seemingly distant cars passing by, which I experience in the same way as a forest hike at Upper Thetis Lake (I have to be very still to detect the highway in the far background).  The variety of windows-as-Saints constructed from cut stained glass pieces, filtering sunlight.

Symmetry and balance.  Order.  The sheer height of the domed coral-coloured ceiling with its criss-crossing patterns.  The sensation at the base of my neck as I look up into it, letting my head fall back into a cradle of observing.

Mostly, I love the softness the wall hangings around the perimeter bring to the Cathedral… The way the light picks up the glimmer in their fabrics.  The ones with the universal messages of peace.

It seems the church belongs to me right now. I select a pew and sit.

*   *   *

Pure Consciousness has a hum-like quality to it that is not heard as sound per se but rather directly experienced by one’s entire being, by one’s very nature of being, itself.  My teacher, C, liked to call it “the Current.”  It is profound, boundless, and whole – without shape or form.  Always here and available, it is graciously empty and abundantly full at the same time.  Fulfillment.

The recognition of this ever-present opportunity for fulfillment is precious, because it points to what is actually living as that which is referred to within every sentient being as “I”... living as All.

How to recognize it?

All the great prophets, the great saints and mystics since time immemorial have been telling us ‘how.’  All the Jesuses and the Buddhas and the Ramanas end up arriving at the same conclusion.  The greatest Teachings and Dharmas the world over give us this sublime instruction:

“Be still.”  Be exactly as you are.  Self/God alone is here.

*   *   *

Sitting in that pew quietly, as the firing of thought-creative neurons comes to rest (for now), it becomes effortlessly obvious that I am this empty fullness – moment for moment.   Before, during, and after every perception of thought, feeling or any other sensation, the Current remains the same.   In waking state, dreams and deep sleep, in life and in death, here it is.   Existing equally inside and outside, infinite in all directions, indescribable yet spoken of, nothing compares to the peace of surrendering oneself to this.

In the deepest waters of surrender, it can be seen to have already been the truth of oneself, all along.

The truth of oneself is the only thing that is not conceptual.  And undressing such a statement, one discovers the “divine paradox” in the fact that concepts are being used to describe this thing, which is not a thing, either.  Which is the kind of mess that can make a mind crazy for decades while lugging around the identity of a spiritual seeker…

My apparent separateness was a very convincing hallucination.

*   *   *

I take a moment to glance up at the pews in front of me, at the books dressing up their backsides.   At all the bibles and hymn guides.  So many books!  So many concepts!  So many reference points!

The books remind me of how much I enjoy words, reading and writing, and especially making music with other people.  When gathering for the purpose of being thankful together, “the Word” spoken and sung is definitely awesome.

But here I sit.  Just sitting, no big deal.  I keep quiet for a bit.  Mentally grasping at some reference point to define or understand – to identify myself as ‘this’ or ‘that’ – feels irrelevant and rather exhausting.  So I don’t bother.  The moment is as it is.  Soon I’ll go back to the office and maybe decide I like the drama of the “temporary insanity” this job seems to be causing me, so much so that an as-yet-not-dislodged attachment to masochism will re-engage my dance with drama.

Meanwhile, countless trillions of universes are spinning, in this very moment, as ‘me’ and everything – with no scientifically provable distinction between the two.  Same same.   It spins as all galactic events:  Milky Ways, supernovas, black holes, big bangs.  Spins as each living cell, as every fellowship of atoms and particles in a perpetual diversity of moving configurations.  The Moment will always be as it is, this Infinity.  Drama or no drama, the Current is indestructible.

The thinking mind is not a suitable instrument for apperceiving the Infinite.  In Zen, they say: you have to take the backward step.  This means that to recognize what is eternally present one must completely let go of every point of reference and fall hands-free off the cliff.  Not literally, of course.  But it’s a good metaphor for stubborn, busy minds like mine.

Such a complicated search!  How contracted and small did I feel my whole life while I worked towards what I imagined would comprise my happiness, my fulfillment?   "Be still" was much too simple an instruction.  As long as I got to keep things complicated, my suffering was nobler somehow.  Special.

What Grace pours in (and not from somewhere else) in stopping all my effort, my seeking… when I stop trying to get something!  Inwardly, what if I permit myself to not interfere with “things as they are” while I sit here?  What do I think is going to happen to me?  What if, for an instant, I don’t reach for a single concept?

Free of all referencing activity, what is left over?  What am I, then?  ‘Where’ am I?

“In Church,” obviously.  How about “everywhere.”   “Nowhere?”

Take your pick.  Same same.

*   *   *

These words are very BIG concepts.  A single instant of absolute trust in the incomprehensible bigness of true Reality shatters everything one once thought to be real.  Waiting here, allowing the Bigness to be the Bigness, what arises in the next moment can only be unknowable.  The freedom of letting go makes not knowing such a relief.

But you can bet it will keep getting bigger.  It is like this.  This is “normal life.”  In the most ordinary of events, and the most extraordinary, there is nothing unmiraculous about it.  The awe that saturates the heart of such a realization inevitably leads to creativity, commitment and responsibility, passion, joy...   Ah:  future writings await subject matter.

*   *   *

As I sit, breathing is happening somewhere.  There is repetition.  Expansion and collapse.  Like worlds forming and disappearing, maybe, or waves rushing up on sand then drawn back again.  Waves drawn back into the ocean, which they never left.

… Ocean, which they always were, and could never not be.

This photo was taken in Parksville, BC, from the back deck of my favorite place on Earth:
"Uncle Don's Cabin"

To Church on Mondays

I’ve decided there’s only one thing about my new job that isn’t completely unsuited to me:  the fact that it’s temporary.

A funny thing happens when I’m engaged for a period of time in any kind of energy-depleting activity with a (thankfully) pre-determined end.  The mind begins calculating duration with a particular degree of willful shape-shifting I wouldn’t require under other circumstances.  Maybe you have experienced something similar to this nature of cognitive trickery.  

For example, I just finished the fourth week of twelve at this job.  It seems a miracle I’ve completed one third of the work!  Even better, in only two weeks – just half the amount of time I have already marked – I will be at the “half finished” point!  If I can make it to half finished, I am positive I’ll have what it takes to survive the last half.  

And just two weeks following the halfway mark I will be two-thirds through, etc.  So you see how over-the-top this line of reasoning can become...

Now that I think about it, I’ve observed the mind adopt the same strategy for opposite purposes, too, especially when I’m doing something I really love and don’t want to end.  “How could it be half over, already?  I feel like it just started!”  A music festival is always a good excuse to entertain this form of resistance to the natural progression of time.  Or a rendezvous with a foreign lover, of which there were a few during my years as a Canadian woman traveller...

But I digress.  

Now employed in the Public Service, perceiving these weeks as bearable is also intimately linked with my 1-2pm lunch hour.  A cup of Earl Grey tea taken sometime between 9:45 and 10:30am is the first saving grace of the day, and then at 1:00 I get to escape the building for an entire hour.  My office is located on Fort Street east of Blanshard, a groovy neighbourhood of Victoria that benevolently extends a wealth of creative eating and window-shopping opportunities.  I find myself becoming a “tourist in my own town” within these elegantly cultured blocks, or Antique Row as the locals have affectionately dubbed them.

But most afternoons breaking away from the office at lunchtime, I opt for the relief that overtakes me when I walk one block south down Quadra Street and enter Christ Church Cathedral.  Sometimes I spend almost the whole of my precious hour there, just sitting quietly.  Consumed in the palpably alive silence of this place, I shut the door to the city – and to the inevitable feeling of dread that will begin creeping into my throat around 1:55 – behind me. 

*   *   * 

Stepping in, the dissolution of streetscape acoustics has taught me that masses of pure vaulted stone make for a remarkable sound barrier.  The polished floor shines and invites me to a pew.  On days when I’m wearing my fancy thift-purchased office shoes, I tippy-toe down the aisle to avoid the reverberating ‘clunk’ of my heels through this immense spaciousness.  Surely, tapping is more forgivable than clunking in the House of God.

I typically perceive a range of intermittent sounds as I sit.  Today included the sobbing of grief, and then a cell phone ringing (oh the irony!).  A patron will greet incoming tourists and explain in low tones that this version of Christ Church was built in 1929 – others existed at nearby locations prior.  It amazes me that such a lasting feat of elaborate architecture was constructed here within the past century.

Yesterday a school teacher gave a tour to young students of the attached Catholic school.  All in red shirts, the chattery children were shuttled en masse between the different alcoves of Christ Church, receiving their tutorials in the particular religious element being accentuated at each one.

One day there was an organ lesson going on above my head, perhaps in preparation for the regular Friday recitals held at the Cathedral.  Admittedly, I don’t imagine myself gaining an appreciation for organ music in this lifetime…  

During one of my first visits, in solitude a man played the piano.  I’m not sure exactly what his gig was.  He would play a few lovely bars of music, and then hammer down on a high octave key (F sharp?) for thirty seconds or more.  With great feeling and purpose.  Over and over, the same key, then a few more bars would come.  Then F# F# F# F# F# F#...  That f*%!king note defiantly proclaimed itself throughout every inch of the church's interior, as well as inside me.  It felt like a gavel kept slamming into my eardrum – I understood in those moments why they call it a sharp.  Could I perceive this annoyance as a reminder that what I call 'noise' and 'silence' have the same ultimate source, that the “right conditions” for meditation come in an infinite diversity of forms?  

In the end, I could no longer contain my laughter and had to leave the Cathedral.

*   *   *

But a week ago, something extraordinary happened.  Or didn’t happen.  When I entered the building that lunch hour, it was deserted.  For a period of time, I was all alone at Christ Church Cathedral...       [“To Church on Mondays” PART 2]

*   *   *

Since I began my current employment I’ve reflected a few times on that highly-quoted observation (who made it?): Most people live lives of quiet desperation.  The pervasive effects of hating one’s job cannot be understated.  I feel that Monday must be the most difficult day of the week, for millions.  In fact, do I remember at one point reading about Monday having statistically higher suicide rates?  (Or maybe it was Sunday?)  Working for the reward of your lunch hours and your retirement pension does not constitute meaningful work.  Being chained to a computer desk and governed by mountains of documents that sit on lifeless shelves is not a life. 

 

But soon, I’ll be halfway finished…   

At least I am grateful to have found a remedy for getting through my back-to-work blues.  You can bet you’ll find me at Church on Mondays.