brianburke.net

Last night I had a mind-blowing experience of communion at a Leftover Salmon concert with my new friend David and many other wonderful people. I started thinking about how important a role willingness plays in opening up the space to have such an experience.
Recently I was talking to a couple of friends at the yoga center about truth, and whether or not it’s something we even need to talk about, or really, whether or not we CAN even talk about it. And someone proposed that there is really no need or ability to describe truth in words, and therefore truth is always relative. Someone countered, however, that the reason we still believe it’s there, even if we can’t really describe it that well, is that we’ve experienced it, and furthermore that we’ve experienced it WITH other people. Like when we dance really well with someone else, or when a basketball team is all on the same page, communicating non-verbally with mind and movement to create something bigger than the individual players put together, that everyone is participating in. This is the kind of experience I’m referencing when I use the word communion.
Last night David and I moved our way into a rhythm in which we were dancing in call and response, without words, and continuously giving birth to a third entity in the space between us. Concerts are easy places to have these kinds of experiences, but it occurred to me that we don’t really need some certain kind of event like that to commune with each other in that way. This whole existence is poetry, is music, is a great ballgame and a dance that we get to play at, all the time, even when it seems the most mundane. It’s always there for us to see if we’re willing enough to look and listen with ears and eyes of humility and service.
So I think, rather than fixating on creating “the perfect evening” or “the perfect activity” to have a great time or a spiritual experience or whatever it is I’m looking for, I’ll try saying yes to what is present in the moment, as passionately as I can. I think about all the time I have spent in my life saying no to what the moment is asking of me, and all the experiences that caused me to miss, and how isolated I felt. And for what? For whatever reason we people have this habit of not letting ourselves go into the moment because we are afraid. Afraid that doing some certain thing will make us look stupid, or make us fall short of all the various arbitrary labels we are unfairly expecting ourselves to “live up to,” etc. So we end up with a bunch of people who never “look stupid,” but in the process we become isolated and miss out on all kinds of opportunities for intimacy. And so the cycle repeats itself, with fear in the driver’s seat.
I think that willingness, saying yes, on the other hand, involves trust, openness, vulnerability- all the ingredients needed for true intimacy. And when we can say yes to each other, in a spirit of love and acceptance, more and more deeply, allowing ourselves to go together wherever the moment is calling us, without limit, allowing ourselves to simply become two different yet equal characters in the larger story being written around us, playing together on the grand theater’s stage, there’s no end to what we can do, because every time we go there we enter the realm of magic. These are the places where our souls and imaginations live and breathe, and frankly I’m just not willing (ironically) to suppress that reality anymore just because it’s not convenient for a 9-5 work schedule. I believe the Muse will guide us to salvation over and over again, if we simply open ourselves to it and allow it to come through us. For me anyway, the intimacy of the moment is more fundamental to my humanness than the pursuit of material possessions.

I realized today, after a theological conversation with my sister the other day, that in regard to religion my only dogma is to have no dogma. I think of it like this: I know two things: myself and God. The rest I’m not really too sure about, so I do my best to figure it out in moments of grace, divine inspiration, etc. but mostly stay unattached even to those outcomes. It softens my feedback to others and it informs the answers I get about what serves. What I mean is that I think absolute Truth(s) can be felt and experienced, but cannot be adequately explained in words, and that reminds me that, even though I might give someone constructive feedback, I don’t know the “Ultimate Way” or “the Absolute Truth.” I only know what is true for me in that moment, and they only know what is true for them in that moment. But somehow we always unconsciously try to screw up that very simple arrangement because we are afraid or insecure and so we guard ourselves in various ways.
I think that’s where people get frustrated a lot; they may have felt and experienced the divine, the Truth, and they want to share it with someone else, so they try to do it in words and it doesn’t work, and then they get hurt because by trying to explain something so intimate to another, they exposed themselves and became vulnerable and then weren’t reciprocated or understood, and they got wounded. Any wound we have comes from a time when we were led to believe that we are not divine. And really, when people talk about wanting to feel seen and heard by other people, what they’re really talking about is that they want the divine within them to be witnessed and honored. They want their own connection with Truth to be witnessed by others who have done the same thing in a different way but nevertheless “get it” when they see someone else doing it. They want to be Grokked.
But it’s hard to grok and feel grokked in a social system that operates on fears and insecurities. In an economy that is driven by advertising designed to make you feel inadequate without a certain product, the wounding comes early and often. And I believe that those and the various other wounds are the birthplace of dogma. Because of the wounds, people unconsciously learn to protect the divinity within them, and these protections look different for everyone. But the most widely-used defense, in my experience of observing myself and the world around me during my lifetime, is dogma.
There are all different kinds, but I think that most of the internal suffering I see in people manifests itself in clashes between different dogmas. Democrat-republican, social conservative-fiscal conservative, Believer-Atheist, etc. And frankly, those three examples are even perfunctory, because they don’t have to be these big institutional dogmas of things like organized religions or political parties. We each make our own little personal dogmas out of all the labels we consciously or (mostly) unconsciously hang on ourselves and others. “I’m a _______ kind of person, and NOT a ___________ kind of person, therefore I will or will not do this or that.” And for each decision down the line we go, making mostly unconscious choices from instant to instant, never stopping to think or open ourselves to a different possibility. And at every stop down the line, our shadows grow and grow, and therefore exert more control over us, and our wounds morph and morph into monsters that we wound others with.
Well, I’m pretty much through with that cycle, it wasn’t very fun. So I thought of this little proclamation and wrote it for myself on the whiteboard in my room: Give everything in your life; every idea, label, bit of knowledge, structure, way of life, et cetera; give everything permission to fall away at any time, then watch what sticks as you listen only to your direct experience of Truth (God, the Universe, Gaia, Spirit…). I used to worry about what would stick, stemming from concerns over the goodness or evil of human nature. But in my experience, the things that stick are usually, by the Universe’s design, the good, the soulful, and the peaceful things. And this is an ongoing commitment to the present moment, a work that has no end because it’s not linear. The more this commitment is fulfilled within the moment, the less suffering there is for you, and the more light you can bring to the world, with less and less need for reciprocation and/or acknowledgement. When everything has the permission to fall away at any time, your capacity to Absolutely Love the things that are there in each moment, in a fluid and playful way, is so increased, and Loving this existence is the only task opposite of suffering. We will not be able to do it all the time, because we’re human, but may we live amongst an air of forgiveness for that.

dear reader, you are probably a close friend of mine already; nevertheless you have achieved an even more elite level of existence by being one of the first readers of my 1st blog post ever on the “internet.” doubtless this is a moment that will go down in history, and if you email me telling me that you read it, i’ll send you an imaginary commemorative print, individually numbered, for you to pretend hang on your wall (feel free to show it off to friends!). don’t miss the boat on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

seriously though, if you are actually crazy enough to want to follow my writings and happenings in life, well, you probably won’t find much here because of my general aversion to interacting with computers, but as my little luddite pea brain slowly continues to warm to technology, perhaps my posts will become more frequent and your dreams will be fulfilled. cheers!