It sounds foreign and strange but the word dakini sums it up.
Dakinis remain in flight, never landing.
Why? Because they have become emptiness itself. What is emptiness? It is the presence or the fullness of the totality unimpeded by the filter of “self” that automatically pre-sorts all experience—rejecting this, locking onto that, ignoring the other.
It’s called flight because that is the sensation conferred. This mind is granted wings to elevate into higher-order sensations. Joy, humor, clarity of vision, meaning, the trembling heart of compassion. Heaven is right here.
It’s in the middle of the calamity, the heartbreak, the really shitty blow. You not only are granted levity, but gravity, because the mind, not having to manage all the roadblocks and traffic jams of an identity, has the capacity to move into a vertical plane. You can move through a cloudless sky, and swoop into the ocean at will.
A rainfall of meaning floods the sense of drought. Richness and saturation are part of the landscape. Again, amidst terrible circumstances (and good ones, too). It’s like getting a mind-heart transplant that sees with a coherence rather than a fracture. Like seeing through a clear windshield, not one that is cracked and dirty. It is decidedly not the magical ‘get a parking place’ wand spirituality.
You aren’t a failure if you can’t make that person love you, or explode that business. Only spirituality designed by the ego promises things like that. But you are profoundly clear.
You are clear that we are all connected in a very tangible way and the implications of that. Because you can fly you can look from overhead and see the grid of human connection, the illusion of “boundaries” or “territories,” the beautiful power and fragility of the earth.
The body remembers. The codes are accessed. You are not merely given the jewel, you become part of the wish-fulfilling jewel itself. You become the flow of enlightened activity. You do not take on the arduous task of “doing good things” or “helping others.” That is that many words too many for the activity of tending to. You have the wind at your back, no flapping those do-gooder wings. You are carried by the natural process of care on the wings of love. You have become the activity of love itself.
And yes, sometimes love is fierce with a sword cutting through the bs, kicking ass and taking names.
Sometimes it is letting the consequences train someone you love rather than buffering them. Sometimes it is turning up the amperage in order to subdue forces that have taken another over.
Sometimes it is elevating the goodness in another’s life by appreciating. And sometimes it is letting the world suckle the
milk of your care.
So, no, you do not become the gentle magnanimous self-effacing Buddha.
You become all potential in order to express however is most beneficial. You love hard, with constancy and laser attention.
I marvel at the crap that is out there. The way that disassociation passes for peace and performance for compassion.
The way that doctrine passes for the path and ‘thou shalts’ make their false promises to get you home. It’s not the conditions, it’s not the conditions, it’s not the conditions. That is the mantra to break all spells. Again, it’s not the conditions.
It’s the ability to remain in flight, in humor, in joy no matter what. It’s the no-matter-what club.
The questions to ask—without denial, without suppression—are: What needs to go, what needs to be developed, what needs to be looked at in order to remain in the plane of joy?
It’s not that complicated.
It’s the cliche but true Mary Oliver line, “You do not need to crawl through the desert.” No, you do not need to abstain from anything. Why? Because it’s not the conditions. Yes, some things have greater pull and push and you’d better have control of your mind-vehicle if you don’t want to be tossed about or brought down.
We foolishly impute meaning.
We make hard and fast rules.
Then make assumptions and ‘shoulds.’ Billionaires are bad if they don’t donate money. Drunkards can’t be enlightened. Whores have no dignity (the Buddha himself returned as a prostitute). It’s easy to be entranced—in the trance of—the world of appearances and make decisions and judgments from that plane of reality.
However, it’s not an effective plane to make decisions from. It tends to make people stupid and righteous, filled with the notion that there is an inherent or immutable truth in a situation or a person.
We reify people into this or that rather than acknowledge the complex streams of karma in
which they exist.
To see that deeply seems tedious so to expedite the always and immediate needs of the self (ego) we bypass the examination. The non-flight world is dense and heavy so we are too exhausted to see beyond the immediacy of the situation and into causes and conditions.
Anyway, what I wish someone had told me is this: there is one game, one path, one way. Changing behaviors may help but may not be necessary. That is kind of ass-backward. The aim is simply this: Lock your eye on the prize. What is the prize? Flight. What is flight? The capacity to remain in joy no matter what. Is that selfish? No, precisely the opposite. It is selfless. It is only possible with the absence of self. That’s the punch line.
Harlem, where I live, has the right idea. The mantra here is “praise anyway.” That is the attitude. “Joy anyway.” How do I access joy in this very moment so that I can be an outpost able to spread the wealth? Only from joy (that includes grief and noting injustices, by the way) can the mind, heart, and soul, be abundant enough to do the one thing we are charged with in this life: To get out of suffering, the causes of suffering, and to help others out of suffering.
Or, as you discover in flight—to access flourishing, the causes of flourishing, and to help others flourish. Because once in flight you see the rapturous, seamless nature of reality. The faculty of true perception awakens.
My prayer is that we each and all get our wings today and that we each and all recognize the one precious thing; that we came with wings included, we need only spread them. It is not only our right, it is our imperative.
May you fly well today.