Jetty Jacks

In the middle of the bosque, the forest parallel to the Rio Grande, seventeen-mile bike path and large irrigation ditch, there are rows of large jacks. Like toys for giant children, they are made of eleven-or-twelve-foot-long steel beams and laced together with cables. Marked on the trail map by XXXXXXXs, they look just like that. Relics of the past, no longer needed since the river has been “channelized” to prevent flooding, they were installed in the floodplain to capture debris rushing downstream. These “jetty jacks” reminded me of a humorous lesson from a spiritual teacher about thoughts moving through the mind, and they helped clarify my resistance to finish reading a book.

The spiritual teacher, Val Jon Faris, was a high-school graduate with five PhDs in the school of life. He produced events with Werner Erhard, was a protégé of Buckminster Fuller, studied with Swami Muktananda and worked with both a Zen master in Japan and a Hawaiian kupua, or shaman. Incredibly present, awake, aware and skilled, Val Jon was not only extremely intelligent, but also had a great sense of humor. He used a box of Kleenex as a visual aid to illustrate a point about the working of the mind. Pulling one tissue from the box, holding it from the center, he moved it up and down, like someone waving a hankie at the queen, while it traveled from left to right. It was a thought, happily traveling through the emptiness of mind – until – his other hand reached out, captured it, and made it his own. He inserted the end of the captured tissue into his right ear. Another tissue, pulled from the box, followed the path of the first – until – it too was captured, the end stuck in his left nostril. Left ear and right nostril soon followed, a captured tissue hanging from each as Val Jon grinned. Thoughts just travel through mind, the universal mind, of which our mind is a part, since we share the same energy field. Like clouds moving across the sky, the thoughts pass through, unless we stop them, capture them and make them our own, like jetty jacks stopping debris as it moves downstream. When we capture thoughts and make them our own, we are stuck with them, and they influence our lives. We sit there, oblivious, with a big grin on our face, Kleenex sticking out of our ears and nose. 

I had a close call with wearing Kleenex in my nose and ears this week when I found myself resisting reading Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Chris Hedges’ book, Death of the Liberal Class. “It’s depressing,” I told myself. A thought. Would I capture it and claim it as my own? Certainly, the 2010 book is about the rise of the corporate state at the expense of the working middle class, the poisoning and pollution of the ecosystem, dismantling of the democratic state, decimation of the manufacturing sector, looting of the U. S. Treasury, waging of imperial wars and the gutting of laws that protect the interests of ordinary citizens. Why would I read it in the first place? 

I respect Hedges’ perspective as a New York Times journalist for fifteen years, many as a war correspondent, his knowledge of history, literature and philosophy and his ability as a writer. He documents what he writes about and details our current social, economic and political ills. I’ve never been a student of history but am happy to benefit from the insights of someone who is. As a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Hedges believes in the power of love. In fact, he ends his book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by saying, “… love, in its mystery has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has power both to resist in our nature what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal.” 

I decided to finish reading Death of the Liberal Class once I had a larger perspective. I saw it as part of the unity or oneness that is. There is a lot of duality thinking in his books: corporation/population, haves/have nots, Republicans/Democrats, power elites/working class victims. Even his conclusion that we need to resist implies duality. Resist what? The darker aspects of ourselves? There is nothing to resist if there is only one, just clouds moving across the sky of universal mind. “I will resist resisting!” I proclaimed in my morning pages. Then I grinned. Morning meditation offered a different perspective: “Do not resist (and thereby enter the world of duality).” Love and accept everything. Practice nonattachment and non-reaction to the world of duality, the world of appearances. “…if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light (Matthew 6:22)." Don’t grab that Kleenex and wear it in your ear.