You Have to Accept this Reality.
I have to admit that although I believe that the path toward any spiritual insight must begin with the concept that nature and the universe is ultimately trending towards good, I often find myself teetering on the edge of oblivion. The serious questions of: Why is there evil in the world? Why does an innocent child go hungry? Why is my life not turning out as I planned? And Where the hell are my damn car keys? Will always seem to confound and frighten us. However, it's in these very concepts of dread where we may find our larger view of the world and our place in it. It's difficult to know the mechanism in place that places one incarnating soul in a garbage dump in Mumbai and another on Park Avenue. It's also even more confusing to realize that the person coming into the world on Park Ave. is often times more miserable than the person in the garbage dump. Pondering these larger issues of existence often make normal people's eyes gloss over and cause them to check out intellectually but that doesn't deny the fact that there is something real and Karmic about each of our individual life paths and once you start to recognize that there is a reason that you are who you are in this life the better you will be able to cope with it. So I encourage all of you to take this larger view. While we'll be covering these topics in greater detail in future posts, right now I'd like to bring your attention to one of my favorite writers, Charles Bukowski. The first book I read by Bukowski was Ham on Rye and it's about his earliest memories into his 20's and it's honest, heartbreaking, and incredibly funny. At one point he discusses the painful boils he developed on his face and back, a form of acne vulgaris that are obviously a result of the awful physical and emotional torment he suffered at the hands of his abusive father. His description of how he had to have them drained with a needle is particularly heart wrenching. However, it's his ability to convey his particular reality in an honest way that also doesn't take it too seriously that I find comforting. That's why I'd like to highlight him in this post. Take a larger view of your life and most importantly accept it. Accept who you are for better or worse. You're here to learn some shit and this is the vessel you've chosen to do it in. So get on with it. Here's a poem from Bukowski to help you along, it's called be cool, fool and I think it speaks for itself.
Charles Bukowski: be cool, fool
you have to accept this
reality
whether you
sit at a punch press all day or
whether you
work in a coal mine or
whether you come home
exhausted from a cardboard box factory
to find
3 kids bouncing dirty tennis balls
against the walls of a
2 room flat as
your fat wife sleeps while
the dinner burns
away.
you have to accept this
reality
which includes enough nations with
enough nuclear stockpiles to
blow away the very center of the
earth
and to finally liberate
the Devil
Himself
with his
spewing red fire of liquid
doom.
you have to accept this
reality
as the madhouse walls
bulge
break
and the terrified insane
flood our
ugly streets.
you have to accept terrible
reality.
