In the Spring of 1988, I was finishing up my Ph.D. at
UT-Knoxville and I had a few job interviews, one of which was at the University
of North Carolina – Asheville (UNCA). While I was interviewing, two people who
taught what I would be teaching there and were leaving, asked if they could
meet with me. They told me they had learned UNCA had no intention of ever
tenuring anyone to teach what we taught. I chalked it up to them being bitter
for not having received tenure and so when I was offered the job, I took it
knowing there was no one on planet earth that would not absolutely adore me if
they got to know me. I think I thought; look how far I had come and how far my
potential projected me to go. How could I not get tenure? I was lovable and destined for
greatness!
I worked hard, rising early, and throwing myself into
anything they asked me to do. The students seemed to like me and I loved the thought of being a university professor. My wife, daughter and I were not going to be wealthy, but we would not be poor and I would go down in history - if nothing else, as that little crooked-nosed boy from Beattyville that made a University professor.
Then, just before the department Christmas party in 1992, I
was told by my department chair, he would not be supporting me for tenure, and that
I should look for another job. My wife and I went to the Christmas party, but
we felt awful. Suddenly we were outsiders, not accepted by long tenured members
of the group. We felt rejected and unwanted.
I struggled to keep my spirits up enough to meet my classes
that Spring - looking for another job. Then, in March, 1993; Tanga, Stephanie
and I were at our favorite little bookstore, just up from the Fresh Market in
Asheville and I was browsing books in “spirituality” or some such section; and
I came across one entitled: Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, by
Chogyam Trungpa. I bought it, and to say I read it would be an understatement.
I poured it over my soul. Or, to say it another way, I set up camp in its pages.
After I read it a few times, I returned to favorite passages to deepen my
understanding. I still read parts of it 21 years later. Looking back, it’s clear: phase one of my life ended with
the reading of that book.
One way of thinking of the first phase of my life is as the
instrumental phase. In phase one, everything was there for me to use: people,
time, material things, and even what most people called spiritual things. For
example, I got saved and surrendered to preach to win my father’s love, not
because I had some deep reverence for the Bible’s teachings. Even my wife,
daughter and family seem, in retrospect, to have been there for my edification
or as an accomplishment of mine to be pointed at. I had married a sensible,
steadfast person – to cover for whatever extent I might not be those things.
Any evidence on the part of my daughter that she was brilliant, offered a
chance someone might say she was like me. My father and mother became early
benchmarks – since they had not finished middle school – indicators of how far
I had come by getting the Ph.D.
Phase two did not bring perfection; instrumental me still
exists; and comes back with a vengeance from time to time. But phase two gets its
name – available me – from the fact that there seems to be a trustworthy person
inside me to which I can go for insight, wisdom and restoration. Since March of
1993, around 7800 days have passed and I have meditated at least thirty minutes
a day, every single one of those – 45 minutes a day for the last 10 years or
so. I might have missed a day or two and if I did, I made up for the loss by
meditating the next day. Beginning in October, 2013, at the recommendation of
my daughter, I began doing yoga poses as I remain in a state of meditation. This
combination of yoga and meditation will remain with me for the rest of my life.
I will not quit it, although it may get adjusted or something added to it.
Let me see if I can describe this “available me,” I
mentioned. I say it is available me, because it always seems to be there if I
can get instrumental me to shut up or leave. Instrumental me remains, as I
said, but in phase one; instrumental me was on his own, he had no available me.
What does available me offer? Meditation and now
meditation/yoga, is the place I go to be alone with available me. Sometimes
when it’s just available me, it feels as If I have gone home. The peace and
contentment opens my eyes to mistakes instrumental me is prone to. One of the
big mistakes instrumental me makes is to ignore anything that does not pertain
to whatever goal I am pursuing at the time. Even when I am not meditating/doing
yoga, available me will show up randomly, asking instrumental me to leave for a
while; and I will smile inside, sit quietly and just breathe.
In the last month, I have seen the movie Boyhood, twice. I
seldom see movies. Tanga does not like to go to the theater and I cannot stand
any sort of violence. I had begun to be that way regarding movie violence, even
in phase one, because in 1991, during the first Iraq war; I walked out of the
movie Dances with Wolves, because I could not stand the violence on screen that
reminded me of the people being killed somewhere in the middle east.
But now when I see a certain type of movie, the world is
left outside the theater and it means instrumental me is left to pace back and
forth in the lobby while available me pays mindful attention to what is on the
screen. The first time I recall being aware of available me in a movie was when
we saw Forrest Gump, in 1994. As the movie is coming on, there is a feather
floating through the air and the camera follows its meandering path. I began
crying following that feather, knowing it symbolized paying attention to the
non-instrumental parts of life, such as feathers being carried by the breeze.
That was the beginning of a wonderful relationship between available me and the
sort of movie that asks you to pay attention to the non-instrumental parts of
life.
Boyhood is such a movie. The first time I saw it, instrumental
me stormed out within minutes of it starting, leaving only available me.
Forty-five minutes of available me, is rare; even in the best meditation/yoga
sessions, but here was a movie two hours and 45 minutes long and instrumental
me left available me alone the entire time.
The movie is about a boy growing up over the course of 12
years. All the members of his family age with him, just as the members of our
real families do. Being able to see the movie a second time, was like being
able to go back home and see a young man and his family grow up again.
Available me loves paying attention to the little things, it empathizes with
faces, minds, bodies - with life itself. I cannot go back and see myself grow
up and see my family age with me. I cannot even do that with those I love. But
this movie was perfect for available me. Every scene, now familiar, became a
chance to savor each detail, to feel it more deeply than I had been able to the
first time.
A lot of people have come into and gone out of my life.
Instrumental me has been there through it all, but during phase two, available
me has been there too. Available me has a tendency to fall in love with
everyone and everything, he comes to know well. This past summer when I wrecked
my car of 11 years, I took a picture of it with my phone to send to my wife and
I realized, it is running. Hot water and other fluids were streaming out,
but it was still running. I got in and turned it off – for the last time. The
wrecker driver brought me home and took it on to the junk yard, while available
me had a good cry.
Available me can be that way about cars, movies and this
past summer, in Alaska; when I had time to sit by a quiet pond in a forest, instrumental
me stomped off and available me sat there for several minutes. Finally,
available me began to repeat: I can’t stay here, I can’t stay here; and it
brought me to tears, because available me was not only saying he could not stay
there, he knew it also meant: we cannot stay in this world.
But it’s people available me loves the most and this is the
part that tends to get me in trouble. Instrumental me knows people as a means
to an end, but available me studies them like an artist. Available me attends
to every gesture: the way they say words, their marvelous faces, their lovely
qualities. Pretty soon, available me becomes attached to people and wants
them to stay. It is not an exaggeration to say available me loves people almost too deeply, pulls
for their life to turn out well, even wants to become one with them.
Seeing Boyhood a second time, unlike life itself, gave
available me a chance to study those people more carefully, to see their life turning
out again. I think available me cried throughout the movie, not only because of
the opportunity to see “these beautiful lives unfold one more time”, but because it
reminded available me: I will never be able to live the wonderful moments of my
life again. It made me want to spend less time with instrumental me and let
available me do all my living.
