The Antiomygah

Yesterday morning, a pair of orioles passed through the yard. It's always exciting to see them; especially in pairs, because this indicates a breeding couple in the neighborhood. The bright orange of these birds seems very nearly tropical; and indeed, they winter over in the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, where we frequently see them in January or February. To us, it's a week of midwinter vacation; to these nomadic birds, it's half their life.

We also have a pair of wrens nesting on our hillside. These perky little birds are tiny; and like chipmunks, who are also small creatures, they seem to have an indefatigable optimism about their affairs. In the chipmunks, it's definitely misplaced; our cat Marlowe has a thing about chipmunks, and it's not a good thing. At this time of year, when the chipmunk population is peaking, their corpses turn up almost daily basis at the doorstep. I think the cat is hoping we’ll put them up in the freezer for later. When outside, I frequently warn the chipmunks they don't want to live around us; to no avail. I'm accustomed to playing the role of Cassandra in this way. Not just with chipmunks. I've had a lifelong gift for seeing the inevitable and predicting it, only to watch people shrug it off and go their merry way as though the catastrophes being crafted, both personally and as a society, can be effectively managed through denial. Perhaps it comes from being a recovering alcoholic; after all, we alcoholics are more well schooled in the arts of denial than most, and intimately familiar with the catastrophes they so effortlessly engineer.

The mind receives life, interprets it, analyze it, and manipulates it to its own ends. In this sense, we're all self – willed, an expression usually used to describe the single mindedness and impulsiveness of children. We pretend that adulthood frees us of these qualities; but I'm not at all sure that's the case. Any careful scrutiny of average adult behavior reveals that these two qualities are still right there, plastered over with the attractive wallpaper of improved sophistication. We haven't grown up; we’ve just redecorated. Along the way, we learn to relabel: now we call it ego, which sounds more important. The authority of Freud is ever at hand to lend our childishness greater weight and importance than it actually has.

When I use the phrase single-mindedness, I use it to describe the way our thought, which has far less direction than we think it does if we examine it carefully, constructs and rationalizes most of our action and behavior. We generally careen from one set of unrelated thoughts to another in what is called association; I think of this, which makes me think of that, and that, and so on. It's far more like bumper cars than the organized traffic of an interstate; I infer firm directions where what’s actually happening is thoughts driving around in circles, smashing into one another and enjoying the stimulation. 

That's denial for you; it begins with me believing in a directedness that's actually far more random and chaotic than I understand. Following immediately on its heels is impulsiveness, the engine of desires which keeps the foot on the pedal and the car accelerating and turning so that it can continue to crash into other cars in stimulating alternate bouts of delight and consternation.

These two parts, the intelligence and the emotion, don't really live on the ground floor. They have great views; but they don't really have direct access to life in the way that the body does. Everything in life has to go in and out through the ground floor of the body in order to do its errands, get groceries, invite visitors, pay bills, and so on. The body, furthermore, doesn't come with the same set of opinions and attitudes as intellect and emotion. It has an objective quality that goes underappreciated most of the time. 

Its capacity for sensation is actually far greater than I understand; and because it doesn't interfere with everything it encounters (the thought and emotion are the guilty parties there) it can just be where it is and know what can be known. 

Although the body fidgets a lot and has all kinds of scratchy, itchy needs that need to be attended to, it also has a capacity for utter stillness at its core, a stillness that receives life objectively. 

It's quite interesting to discover that place, because it's mostly unknown to us. If we do encounter it, however, it provides a refuge from within which to live. It reminds me of the orioles. To me, a connection with the body looks like a midwinter vacation; but from the perspective of life itself, it's a dwelling place for Being, a repository that takes in a vast amount of what it means to live, on the ground floor, where all the provisions are obtained. I don't just mean the food that I eat; it includes the air I breathe, and all the other impressions that flow into me. 

If I begin here, on the ground floor, I begin to experience myself before the prevarication and the denial begin. 

It raises questions. 

What is actually happening here? That particular question is perhaps the most important question I can ask myself today – or any day. Usually, my intellect simply gets up in the morning and says, "this is happening! That's happening!" because it already has a set of associations and consequent assumptions at hand, ready-made. Then the emotions come in and say, “Oh My Gah! Oh My Gah!” 

And we’re off to the races.

This expression, “Oh My God,” has become so ubiquitous worldwide that you hear people from every nation saying it: South Americans, Japanese, Chinese, you name it. They may not speak a word of English, but they definitely know what OMG means. Essentially, the phrase – which is now emerging phonetically to become a single new international word, omygah – describes our life as a life of reactions. We don't dwell in the stillness of our being and receive life in our body with simplicity before we act. We never get there. Everything is one Omygah after another.

Omygah.

Gurdjieff had an exercise he called "STOP.” One could say a lot about that, but we might call it the antiomygah. 

The moment the STOP action takes place, however it is deployed, the first thing that happens is one asks oneself, what is actually happening here? I'm not sure anything is more important than this question. It can be used anywhere, at any time. It's the trade version of my teacher Betty’s adage for practice: what is the truth of this moment? 

If we stop, and become much more simple within our body and our Being for a moment, it is certain we will discover questions we didn't know we had and see things we didn't know were right in front of us.

Go. and sense, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.