Within Me

I touched the rock
    Upon the mountain
To know of its strength

I picked up the pearl
   From the mouth of the clam
To gain knowledge of patience

I breathed deeply
   The tender breeze
To understand how to be gentle

I drank slowly
   The calming water
To understand how to soothe

I  observed the toddling child
   Who loves without question
To understand how to love

But the thing I didn't observe
   And all that I seek
Is within me
Ready for my call.

Seeing Beyond the Spoke to See the Wheel

Quite often in life (the small amount of life I have experienced), I have found myself questioning why things happen the way they do. Why was I, of all my siblings, the one to be gay? Why did the bullies pick me to haze and torture? Why was I the one to suffer from depression to the point of wanting my life to be over and for my heart to stop beating? Why was I the one in my family to not serve a full-time mission (two years for the LDS church), come home early, and question the family faith? Why did all of this happen to me and leave me suffering?

In the previous post, I quoted from a book called Think on These Things, in which the essays/talks of Krishnamurti have been translated and published. In the essay "Freedom and Love," Krishnamurti is talking about life and our need to understand it. He says, "You must understand the whole life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand; for all that is life" (25). To Kirshnamurti, everything about life is in the experience and in understanding of every single part of it.

In the same essay, Krishnamurti talks about seeing life like a wheel. He says we try to understand the wheel through one spoke, but that one spoke doesn't make up the wheel. The same can be said of life. We try to understand life through one single event, but one event, one moment of suffering cannot explain what life is and what is meant for us.

All my questions amount to singular events I am trying to explain life through and question why I was chosen to suffer. What I have come to see through the words of Krishnamurti is: why NOT me? Every event in my life has brought me to this moment in time. I am who I am because of the experiences, the sufferings, and the events in my life. I am the man who I am blessed to be because of each spoke on my wheel that allows my wheel to turn. So, the new question I ask is why NOT me? What am I going to learn about life that will free me someday from the cycle of suffering?

As each new sun rises, I will "read," "look at the skies," "sing," "dance," "write poems," "suffer," and "understand." I will sing praises to the universe for every experience. In my attempt to understand and live freely life, I will strive to see the wheel and not just a single spoke. Namaste.

Changing Yourself for the Comfort of Others: When Changes Cease to Be Necessary

It has come to my attention that for the sake of others, I change things about myself, my mannerisms, and even the way I write to appease others. I'm not completely sure why I do it. Perhaps, it is a coping mechanism that I have developed from years in the closet. I have a tendency to make others feel comfortable, even at the expense of my own comfort.

When I was in one of my fiction classes, I was writing a dark fairy tale. I had it all planned out and I was excited to write it. I used the voice of the narrator in a southern accent throughout the story, dialogue, and all. When it was reviewed, my professor told me the way it was written was confusing and since I'm not a published author, I can't just write a story the way I want to because I have to prove that I can write first. In addition to this, my professor told me she doesn't like fantasy, so I needed to make it more reality based.

In spite of my desire to keep it the way it was because I knew that it would be a great story, I changed the story to a dark story about a murderer neighbor and only left the dialogue with the accent. (I still didn't understand why my narrator couldn't narrate in her voice, accent, and all. After all, Mark Twain wrote like that and now David Mitchell, in Cloud Atlas, did the same thing.) I changed my story for the comfort of my teacher and the story lost its flow and wonder.

In the book Think on These Things, the writings and essays of Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti is discussing education, knowing yourself, freedom from conforming, and other subjects. In one of the essays, The Problem of Freedom, Krishnamurti writes:

The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time. And this is the most difficult thing to do whether you are beautiful or ugly, whether you are envious or jealous, always to be what you are but understand it. To be yourself is very difficult because what you think you are is ignoble, and if you could only change what you are into something noble it would be marvelous, but that never happens whereas, if you look at what you actually are and understand it, then in the very understanding there is a transformation. So, freedom lies not in trying to become something different, not in doing whatever you happen to feel like doing, nor in following the authority of tradition of your parents, of your guru, but in understanding what you are from moment to moment (11).

Krishnamurti is saying that it is important to know yourself and to understand what you are. In education and in other aspects of life, we should not want to be anybody else but who we are at all times of the day. We free ourselves when we refuse to become someone other than who we are and knowing who that is.

This is the problem with changing yourself for the comfort of others: you take the flow and wonder from life and from the beauty of difference. In changing yourself, you allow the world to change you at its pleasure. You become a chameleon; you change your appearance to protect yourself and to appease others. By changing yourself, you conform to the standards of others. If we all conform to a standard, the differences that make us beautiful and wondrous, become monotone and drab. Don't change yourself for others. You are a diamond and you are perfect. Be your difference and shine for all to see.