Somewhere among the trials of innocence, lessons of winning and losing.

And then: that young mind, that open heart, has almost no distance to travel, from saying "I won" to "I'm right", and... ah! Then my dear hearts, dear children, you have lost your sight, your liberty of movement, and each step forward will be a step to be retraced.

I have taken a few lessons from another text. I traveled, I went as far as I was able, to Asia -- such gratitude to an early lover, who was my guide to losing self, how could I have done it alone? -- and stayed until I could not recognize my thoughts. They came and queued up at night, they spilled onto page after page of notebooks, they tripped out into the night over a bowl of gudeg and a cup of sugary tea, they danced back and forth from my west to their east, a blurry trance of who? who? who am I? I seeded doubt like a farmer seeds rye, deliberately, to defeat the ragged weeds. I embraced doubt, with love, like a man embraces his partner, or a woman embraces her mate. Ah, into that beautiful blindness.

I met a woman who looked strong in her mid-life, yet felt weak as a straw in wind. I met a woman as frail as age and ill-health could make her, battering her legs til she shook, beating her kidneys til she urinated blood, erasing her husband in a War, erasing her wealth in peace... and she was strong as the temples that stood in the ring of fire for 3000 years. I lost words. I found others that explained things better. I watched for myself in others' eyes, and sometimes... when the weather was clear... I saw both the other and myself.

I think what we lose, when we begin to believe in winners, is the ability to listen to our enemies. We lose the ability to trust there is truth, in so many shards and facets, in such ways... in ways that appear explosive, in words that sound destructive, recriminating... because we humans, you know, are not so skillful in finding coal and seeing diamond. It is only heat and time make the difference: coal is diamond. You are me. Life is death, yes, yes let's make colors out of whites and blacks, my eyes are sharper than night, and so are yours..

So the pages of the texts so difficult to decipher were those from minds seemingly so foreign from my own, that even to hear their thoughts leave the tongue was occasion for pain, such deep hurt, and the expected response of anger, or of retreat. Enemy.

I remember a time when I had thrown myself far out of my element -- ha ha!, and not the first time, nor the last, this desiring soul would step into jungle or desert or war zone to find that herb or spice or fragment of history that would help complete it! -- I had taken myself to a farm on the sprawling prairie of southwestern Minnesota to open the land, and seed it like a lover. I found the life of a farmer somewhat less romantic than that "lover" image. I also found that the landowner felt threatened by us in many ways. His behavior grew more erratic as the pressures of the season and toil began to deconstruct my Self. So many crazy words! He used fear and his palette and made demons that all wore my face. "You are dangerous! Dangerous!" He shakes with fury, with fear, he stabs his finger at me like the barrel of a gun, he is driving slowly at the end of the quarter-mile driveway, watching us, making us watch him, pacing like a trapped creature, trapped, somehow, on an endless, horizonless landscape!

Because I found the Mystery when I went to Indonesia, because in some way I left myself behind, I listened through the fog in my lessor's mind, and hear... a foghorn, why not? I heard the lesson that he held -- that insane son of a bitch -- the lesson he carried in his being, for me!

Tonight I received a similar lesson, from one whom I believed I would never accept a word again. Sometimes, those who challenge us most ferociously are in such close proximity. And because they share a space and time with you, with your body, with the currents of your mind... they know you, even if they call you "enemy", maybe because they do; even through their angers and their struggles, the mirror of the world is there, they are it, as scratched and muddied and fogged as that glass might seem: right there in front of you. Condemnation is the inability to use stillness and wisdom to dissect that stormwash of thoughts: condemnation is lack of sight and no great finesse, the ability to see diamond in a seam of coal.

So the lesson of my lesson -- no, I will not share it with you, though I am so grateful(!), to have been given a grain of truth about myself! Like one of those missing puzzle pieces you have been searching for all over, you want to finish this darned picture! and there that person is, standing beside you, hand open, with one more piece offered in an open palm...! -- the lesson of my lesson, the fact that I learned from an unexpected and personally untrustworthy source: that lack of trust closes your ears. The Teaching and the conduit for that Teaching, our teachers, they are all around us, and not always, probably not often, maybe rarely in a form we can recognize from within our fixed ideas. So I say (to myself, and why not you?): never stop listening. You can measure, but be most careful of your science when you see your mind begin to take sides. It will always side with what you already know.

Undecide there is a winner: there will be no winner, ever. It is true that in some voices, your skill may not be such (not yet?) to extract the information that you need. Leave it: you know how many voices are around you. All reciting lessons for you, an incessant mantra, a prayer, a brothers' chant. No need to waste your time, and don't waste others' time, if your ears aren't open to receive.

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And words, these words? Attempts to hold a few flashes of understanding, fireflies in tonight's jar. Whether we live better for our words, or worse, will be decided later, when those we did our best to love help us from this life.

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There are two kinds of roads.

I see the first so clearly: I can allow my eyes to drop from the horizon for a moment, and there are my feet, one before the other, one after the other, while the world slips away underneath a pace at a time. That's about two yards, if I am running, or one if I am walking with purpose, and maybe only a foot if I am sad and feeling slow. I can close my eyes and see that progress. I can close my eyes and feel my weight, feel the world's attraction, and the gentle roll of heel-to-toe that's like a dance, we learn to stand and swing to it, and make our lives the music of accompaniment. Those magical shoes you put on early and can't take off, that dance you to joy and to sorrow, from birth to death.

I guess there have been enough paths in my history, I don't need to walk to feel the walking: here's a path of black cinder from an old lava flow, with its chalkboard scraping sounds of almost-glass against almost-glass; another trail of tumbled granite at the top of the world; and then the stairway of stone (stone again!) worn down by the feet of countless pilgrims, on their way to some temporary salvation.

There were softer roads, that felt my passage and then quickly covered it up: maybe winter's wind blew snow across my way, or ocean's wind, loose sand, or leaves or other light debris sailed across my trail, and left my footsteps scuffed, untraceable. There I was: there I was not. There are two kinds of roads, and one of them is met by the bones and by the body's sinew.

The other kind needs a guide. And you are it.

Usually, when I am traveling inward, I walk along the lighted avenues that those before me cleared so well. Usually, the inward road (where my calloused feet cannot wander) is to remembered places and comfortable benches and sunsets and glasses of sipped wine and smiling eyes... smiling eyes and those little gestures of affection, a hand that reaches just for the joy of touching me, or the play of minds as a joke unfolds like legerdemain, as much surprise for the speaker as it is for those who listen.... Usually. It is fine, really, to have places we remember here inside, where we felt warm and safe, sanctuary from the winds and waves outside, where everything is right, and our way of being and seeing is contented with small things.

The road inward has those broad avenues.

You know, though... what attracts me are the alleys and the byways, those twisting trails that lead perpendicular to my direction of travel, small tributaries or siphons that drop a few unique souls from the hinterlands onto the main highway, or steal them away from these populous regions onto a wild chase into the trees, up and over the ridge, to heaven knows where! I am attracted to the unexplored, because there is something much larger than me, larger these small ideas I carry like a moth-eaten comforter around my shoulders. Oh, there are edges of the universe too large for my conception, and an endpoint to this my life which is rather too difficult to grasp.

So, I think: there's something there will open my eyes wide. Maybe over that hill? Maybe around that curve of the road? Maybe in her arms. Maybe in the next song. Maybe tomorrow.

When I speak of the inward road, I am not talking about a particular way of going. Yes, sure, you can meditate; sometimes the eyes of the heart are more open when you are still like that. Or you can watch your feelings as they dash and spark through the mystery of yet another day alive. You meet someone, you shy away: what was that about? You meet another, and your hackles (should humans still have hackles) rise, ready for a fight. Or you can just live your life and do your best to notice what goes on, down the Well, what you can change, what you cannot; how you might open; how you might not.

I think that on the external road, you meet everything that is not you, and have to hear its echo and make its metaphor of yourself. And on the internal road, you meet nothing but yourself, and must find your echo and your metaphor in the ten thousand things that meet your eyes. If you do decide to stray from "I am perfect because I think it so", or even if you don't, sooner or later you must meet a self that is not as welcome, the tough teacher, the one who throws the windows open and shouts "Come outside!": see you, just as blind and hurtful as those you judge, just as fragile and just as strong... just such a sweet heart and just such a brute. What that road brings is a poignant clarity to all of your aches. You know what hurts: don't you feel it every day? Don't you dream it at night? The distance growing between you and your love, and you powerless to change it? The aging of your children as they become masters of their own lives; their departure from your home and from your influence... and from the warmth of your arms: no, far worse, those small and precious bundles of life that were like sunlight in your arms, you carried them as though you embraced the sun, and now... that time is past, and your arms feel useless, empty now, and cold.

What I find at times along the inward road is really quite anguished. I have to stop and give the sad creature crouched there some needed attention, some Good Samaritan nurturing, if I am able to evoke the Samaritan in me to tend myself. And other times, there are flowers and images of such beauty. Sometimes my eyes in that mirror are gentle, and so strong, and so welcoming of love. Sometimes the scars and lines on the face show a resilience and a strength of purpose that leaves me quite breathless.

Sometimes I just see a life, a stranger in the street, making his way to work.


What a preamble!

All I meant to say was that... on the inward road the other day I found another place where I was just human, after all, smaller than I imagined, and needing human help to rediscover trust, again, again, when the door of the heart has been closed against hard weather, and the body contracts like a shell around that stain.

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