Title from the Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. As I drove to the zen center tonight, I wondered what I'd write about today. In fact, when I woke this am, I wondered what I would write about.
The ad is back on my website, since my friend never said that she was offended. I finally found a source to sell a civil war flintlock that I've had since a kid, so now I can buy an ipad... and now wondering if I should wait for the next version. Nothing very interesting to write about.
After sitting tonight, the director of the zen center gave a "way-seeking" (spiritual growth) talk. I've known him for over a year, yet didn't know what to expect. In fact, I had such a premonition that I needed to go that I cancelled another engagement to be there.
He told his story and it was very beautiful. He knocked my socks off.
If he had more secrets than those he told us I'd be surprised. Imagine letting it all out. All your secrets. Out!!! How freeing that must be. Yesterday I talked about nakedness and clothes. When you tell your secrets you are naked, but soon people see that you are real, and you can then wear who you really are. And he told my secrets, and your secrets too. We do all have the same secrets, with just minute variations.
My favorite aunt Reggie (a psychotherapist) talked to me once about stories. She said that we all have our stories, but sometimes we need to look at the self behind the story. Maybe we think of the story as our secret, where really it is our self that is our secret. What does it really mean to be honest? Totally completely honest? Would it be about the candy you stole when you were a kid (funny, I remember thinking about stealing... but I don't remember if I did or not). Or would it be about something far more profound?
Stories, and then more stories, and then strip those away, and what's left? That's really naked. Who we are when our clothes are off, our confessions have be exhumed, and nothing but the truth is left. Nothing but who we really, really are. Naked.
2 comments:
Maybe secrets keep you warm sometimes. H.
Have I ever given you my "story" to read?
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