COOKING WITH THE WIND

My view at this computer skims over brick buildings of the local hospital and tries to penetrate the the thick cloud layer hugging the Sapphires. The roads are piled with snow, and water runs along the berms. If there was a warm wind from the west we could say "chinook," a phenomenon that often occurs in January. But those soul-lifting winds aren't present, just a drizzle of rain and opaque skies.

My inner world has been grappling with judgement once again. Not just the natty nit-picking voices asking why someone talks too much, or doesn't do things my way. No these are old, deeply grooved judgements that have been turned up, like the dark soil in a harrowed field, and they are fecund with life. I'd like to do the best work regarding these old hungry ghosts instead of turn my back and pretend they aren't there. In my wisdom years, I know to be in the presence of someone I'm holding against doesn't feel good, and I'm likely to do something very strange entirely unconsciously, like spill hot coffee on him, or back into his vehicle. No, I'd rather embrace those ghosts that have lurked beneath the surface in a timeless place, feed them some cake and bid them farewell.

In the Sufi tradition, there's a process for forgiveness of this kind. It's four layers, beginning with acknowledgement that there's some work to do. The next step is likened to using melted beeswax to mend the split in the leather water container. (Remember, these are based on Arabic, where water containers mean life and death on the desert.) I like this metaphor because my life energy, like precious water on the desert) leaks away as I gnaw on the "should haves" and damning vengeance that can keep me awake at night. The third layer is one of alchemy, the biological transformation from negative to positive, from "hard lesson" to "compassionate understanding," from temporal to eternal impressions. The fourth layer also comes from the desert metaphor: the wind sweeping away all evidence of disturbance. This brings to mind the complex and lovely sand paintings that Buddhist monks (including the Dali Lama) take days to create which are then poured ceremonially into the rivers.

Does this mean some kind of pseudo amnesia takes place? That the events that seem to be seared in my mind will be tucked into a cave, with a huge boulder barring entrance? My experience is that's where they've been, for years and years, and now I'm willing to move the boulder (step one), let the light of Divine Presence flow into the cave. Once the process is complete, only sand and wind will remain.

I'd like to greet this being whom I've marginalized with genuine excitement, open-hearted, in the spirit of two veterans of foreign wars home again in their families' embrace. Thankfully I have a fair amount of time to work through this transformative process, like yeast rising in bread takes time. There's no hurrying it, but one must put the ingredients together in a safe, warm atmosphere to ever have a beautiful baked loaf. So on some level, I'm cooking using ancient tools to bring myself into the everpresent place of Divine Forgiveness, for myself, for him, and for the whole planet.