by Judy Kennedy©

An Imaginative Interlude to "East Meets West"

October 29, 2000

The Vajra Master

Tightly together she presses her lips – a nervous habit inherited from her mother.  Then without thinking she rubs the tip of her left index finger nail with her thumb.  Another annoying habit.  All the while she continues to sit, looking at the blank computer screen, saying to herself, “I don’t know what this is!  I don’t know what this is!   Something wants to come through, but what?!?!?”  She’s been meditating practically all day.  She even went on a spiritual quest to seek out what brother coyote had to say about a couple of things.  To ground herself, she worked out and played with her cubs.  But a presence was permeating every single activity – no matter what it was, no matter what she was thinking – the Vajra Master.

He had come to her last night in her dreams more strongly then ever before.  Though there was no “sex” as most humans understand it, there was a spiritual merging so indescribably intimate and complete.  Beyond words.  Just being together but not.  Afterwards she was telling him all about her recent paintings, about how many included him.  He smiled and said, “I know.”  “Then you’ve seen them?” she asks.  He replied, “Of course.  I have a loop working.”  “Then you found the others too?”   His eyes sparkled affirmatively.  Then he sat back, and just let her tell him all about it – like a wise old friend who knows that sometimes just listening is the best cure.   They were going to go skiing together.  But she couldn’t decide what to wear.  An amber covered jumpsuit over a white blouse, or to dress in her traditional solid black.   

So she sits there, as if lost in the dream again, contemplating their history.  “I wonder if there is any way possible that I could translate the true depth and mystery of this unique kind of relationship to the outside world?   How can one explain it?  How do you tell someone, ‘Well, he’s just inside me and all around me, that’s all.  He sees through my eyes and sometimes I see through his.  But that’s not really accurate because it’s not like we’re talking about two separate identities here.’  It’s like …..”  And the words begin to get tangled together and nothing seems to make sense, and she begins banging the keyboard with such a fury that all tyoue seek tp wmeprojkq]\]ew w[rfoplwker 1@!!!!!!!!!1    That must be what it is!     HA!

The nature of reality is typos.   Blurred vision - shared vision.  That’s what it is. There’s no magic about it.  It’s just a shared vision.    And it doesn’t matter whether it’s real or not.  What matters is that we see.   

She contemplates these ideas as she remembers another part of the dream.  She was telling him that she was currently reading Edward Plotkin’s The Four Yogas of Enlightenment:  Guide to Don Juan’s Nagualism and Esoteric Buddhism.   “Are you familiar with his work?” she asked timidly.  “I am,” he answered.   “Then you know it’s all about how similar Don Juan’s teachings are to . . .”   He was smiling that all-knowing smile again.  You know, like how parents sometimes indulge children when they are so excited about something they’ve just discovered, even though it’s so simple or common place.  But it wasn’t a patronizing smile.  It was an expression of his joy in response to hers.

Alright.  Let’s get to work.  “Back to the real world,” she tells herself.  Yet what is so real about this?   She opens up to page 56 of The Four Yogas to a passage from Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan:  

 Plotkin translates,

She thought, how remarkable.  That might be a good way to describe this relationship.  She reads on. 

Plotkin talks about a scene where Don Juan is instructing Carlos on bringing a pebble and a boulder together.  Carlos cannot do this.  In his vision, the two remain as separate objects.   Don Juan tries to explain that to look at the rocks is “doing”, whereas to really see them is “not-doing” – that physical objects are fabricated from our concept of doing.  Another excerpt:

Oh, and those last four words are vital, she thinks to herself.  Seeing is touching.  When we see something, we touch it with our eyes.  When we see through something, the object becomes the vision - perception itself. 

Plotkin summarizes,

Or the awareness of mastery, she says to herself.  Actually, it’s both, she concludes.  As everything is.  There goes another version of that divine paradox again . . . .   AH – HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!  cackles the Wicked Witch of the West.   “I’ve GOT you my pretty, and your little dog too!”

Unmoved, she dismisses the ferocious firefly with a wave of her hand and returns to her reverie.  “I suppose that everyone has this kind of experience to some extent,” she ponders.  But they can’t put it in words.  That’s why they resort to art – music – story-telling. That’s the closest personal self-expression ever gets to reflecting direct knowing.  Like the divine poetry of the mystics.  For example, take Rumi’s musings about two friends:

Flashback:  They were in the forest.   All the other creatures had fled.  Only she and he remained.  She pulled out a special stone that her brother had given to her for this long-awaited moment.  She said, “My brother asked me to ask you if you would be so kind as to inscribe a blessing on this stone for him.”  The Master did not hesitate.  Then he turned to her and said, “How about one for you?”   “Me?”  she said a little surprised.  “Well, okay.  Let’s see what I have here.  Oh.”  She pulls out two pieces.  “You pick which one you think is most appropriate.”   He chooses the mountain, snow, and water.   He takes her sword out of her hands, and with the blood of her heart, writes,

Nothing to do.   Rest in the view.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..........

Okay, so now she’s crying.  Again.  And still rubbing the tip of the nail of that left index finger.   This is not about attachment, she assures herself.  This is about shedding skins.   And something else, because it’s that time of the month...  ouch. 

Tears carry creative power.  In mythos, the giving of tears causes immense creation and heartfelt reunion.  In herbal folklore, tears are used as a binder, to secure elements, unite ideas, join souls.  In fairy tales, when tears are thrown, they frighten away robbers or cause rivers to flood.  When sprinkled, they call the spirits.  When poured onto the body, they heal lacerations and restore sight.  When touched, they cause conception.[vi]

Oh she has conceived so much lately.  Surely – a great birth is about to occur.   Must be patient, she tells herself.  The child needs room to grow.  If the flower is picked too soon, it will not yield fruit.  Ye must be ripe.   The image of a “V” arises in her mind’s eye.  “GIVE ME A HIGH FIVE,” shouts the cowardly lion.  The paw - the hand – the star – the fingers in the cookie jar. 

In Tantra, the interplay of the five elements is called kyil-kohr.  The five elements are akasha, vayu, tejas, apas and prithivi.  In the west we call them ether or space, air, fire, water, and earth.  Theses types of energy expression correspond to directions, colors, and all sorts of interesting archetypal images.

She opens to page 80 of Ngapka Chogyam’s Wearing the Body of Visions and reads:

With kyil-khor there is both the sense in which everything can be seen as the radiance of our own awareness; and, the sense in which we simply participate in the radiance of everything else.  There is the sense in which we can flicker in and out of existence.  This tree can be the centre of the universe, and then you can be the centre of the universe – both perspectives are equally real and unreal at the same time.  The sense of kyil-khor completely dies when we experience the world as if we lived inside this skull container, as if our body were some sort of moon-landing probe that’s reporting information back to a central bureau of administrative adjustment.  This is why the form of the khil-khor is not rigid; why centre and periphery change places.  ‘In here’ and ‘out there’ is only one style of orientation – and really a rather constricting one.[vii]

 She thought about the experience again.  It was like a flickering – but a rather constant one – strobe like – so much so that the on and offness appears to be one. . .   Much like those tears.  She thought she was done with them, as it pertained to this particular issue.  Of course she was done mourning the “imaginary loss.”  She concluded that chapter over a year ago, thank the Goddess.  Then what were these new tears all about?  The taste is bittersweet.  Like the birth of a fawn – shaking off the placenta – and in only moments she is leaping in the meadow.  Yes, a snake is most sensitive after it sheds its skin.  Yet it is most medial and iridescent as well.  The rocks serve as tears for the cold-blooded serpent. 

Tears are a river that take you somewhere.  Weeping creates a river around the boat that carries your soul-life.  Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better.[viii]

 Feeling stronger now, her fingers begin to stabilize, fewer typos appear, and she takes pride in the fact that she is a thriving member of Estés’ ‘Scar Clan’ and has lived to write about it. 

“That’s right,” she thinks as she types.  “And I could really get into trouble for sharing this one!  No one writes about this stuff!”  But some secrets are slayers and so must be slain.  Though she knows better than to reveal names, unveiling the experience is a different matter.  She feels safe.   

 Continuing, she reads,

But in truth, for the sake of a woman’s wild soul, it is better to cry.[x]   

Why?  Because the tears wash the hands and make them clean.  The tears wash the eyes to make clearer vision.  And the tears mingle with the blood to create new life...

She thinks about her journey and how her tears have helped to keep her awake.  And that’s what this is all about, right?  Becoming aware of awakefulness?  Or becoming awake of awareness...  Again she recalls the voice of the Master:  “Aware of awareness...”   Be aware of awareness?  BEWARE of awareness is more like it, she mumbles to herself, as her fingers pound a bit fiercer...  

The gray clouds are heavy and I was going to take a hike.  I still need coyote claws for my medicine pouch,” the young warrior complains.   Again she feels the presence of her dangerous friend.

La Loba resounds, “Who is the Vajra Master?”   “Well,” she picks up a book, “according to Chogyam, he or she or it is . . .”

. . . the ecstatic, wild, and gentle figure who short-circuits your systems of self-referencing. . . the only person in your life who cannot be manipulated. . . the invasion of unpredictability you allow into your life, to enable you to cut through the convolutions of interminable psychological and emotional processes. . . the terrifying compassionate gamester who reshuffles the deck of your carefully arranged rationale.[xi]

 But what if a card or two gets lost in the reshuffling, she wonders.  Well then that’s another reason to water your heart.  

Tears are part of the mending of rips in the psyche where energy has leaked and leaked away.  The matter is serious, but the worst does not occur – our light is not stolen – for tears make us conscious.  There is no chance to go back to sleep when one is weeping.  Whatever sleep comes then is only rest for the physical body.[xii]

She remembers how fully rested she felt when she arose this morning – even after all those vivid dreams.   The beauty.   How can she ever describe the beauty?  The beauty is what makes her cry most.   Most women get so tired of crying that they want it to stop.  But Estés reminds us that it is our souls that are making tears, and that they’re for our own protection.  Crying keeps the predator away because it’s noisy and keeps us awake.  Sometimes putting on a beautiful piece of music or watching a beautiful sunset can unleash those tears, and this is helpful if your soul has something to say to you.  It is one of the wisest expressions of the soul.  So never suppress it, La Loba reminds her. 

She again feels the presence.  She weeps at the beauty of the mystery.  But how can she convey this?   She struggles with the thought.   Searching for an answer, she returns to Rumi:

There’s no way to ever say this.

Let’s return to the two friends whose thread

became single,

    who spell with their two letters

the original word,

            BE.

B and E tighten around subjects and objects

that one knot may hold them.  Two scissor blades

make one cut.

                        And watch two men washing clothes.

One makes dry clothes wet.  The other makes

wet clothes dry.  They seem to be thwarting each other,

but their work is a perfect harmony.

Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine

and practice, but there’s really only one work.

Someone listening to a millstone falls asleep.

No matter.  The stone keeps turning.

Water from the mountain

far above the mill keeps flowing down.

The sleepers will get their bread.

Underground it moves, without sound, and without

repetition.  Show us where that source of speech is

that has no alphabet.  That spaciousness.

Where we are now is a narrow fantasy

that comes from there, and the actual, outside world

is even narrower.  Narrowness is pain,

and the cause of narrowness is manyness.

Creation was spoken with one sound, BE.

The two letters, B and E,

                        to record it,

came after.

                        The meaning of the sound

and its resonance

            are one.

There’s no way to ever say this,

in so many words!  And no place

to stop staying it.[xiii]

“Oh but you have, dear Rumi, and there is!” she types fervently on the keyboard...

Meanwhile a lion and a wolf were fighting. . .[xiv]

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