Ready or not, here you come (the self approaches...)

I had a weird experience at Young Urban Zen on Monday night. After small groups, I made a comment about something someone else had said. Then another person referred to what I had said when they made a comment. I heard the words: “It’s like Eli said…” and I thought, “Eli who?” Not, like, which Eli are they referring to but, like, “Wait, Eli said something? Elli offered advice? Who’s Eli?”

It was weird to have this other person in the room, this Eli. It was weird to be separate from myself. And then I thought about it some more and I thought, “You know that’s you, don’t you? That Eli who offered advice? That’s you. You’re here. You’re at Young Urban Zen on a Monday night. You know when you saw people walking up the steps in front of you tonight and it reminded you of people going to church on a Sunday morning and it freaked you out? You were right behind them, and you walked in that same door. You’re here and you’re doing this.”

But it was a little too much for me to take so I stopped acknowledging that.

Then the leader for the evening asked me if I was still going to give my Way-Seeking-Mind-Talk next week and I said yes and then I freaked out some more.

I freaked out for a couple of reasons. The first one was the reality of it. See, I’ve been thinking about my talk since last fall, when I was first asked. I know pretty well what I’m going to say and I thought I felt comfortable saying it. But when he reminded me of it, I looked around and saw the room that I would be in, and the people, and I thought, “Oh @#%$, I’m really going to do this. I’m really going to say what I’m going to say and these very people in the room, they’re going to be there, listening.”

The second thing that freaked me out was the fact that I was going to be giving a way-seeking mind talk. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the phrase the way. It makes me feel like there’s only one way, and that I’m on it.  I don’t want to be on a way. I don’t want to accept what I’m doing at the zen center. I have no idea why I don’t want this, I just know that it terrifies me to see who I am and what I am doing.

So then I started to make myself different.

“It’s not fair,” I thought. “Everyone else came to the zen center. They were studying Buddhism or they wanted to meditate. I just showed up. I didn’t know it was a temple. I didn’t want to meditate. I only came because my friend told me to go to church and I didn’t want to go to church.”

But then I thought, “Yeah, but you kept coming. And you took classes. And you started meditating twice a day. And you did the summer intensive on line. And you did a practice period incognito. And then you signed up for a real practice period. And, well, I don’t mean to be rude about it but you write a blog about coming to the zen center. I’m not sure who you think is writing that blog, but that person is definitely coming to the zen center.”

Then I got really mad, ‘cause my real self was walking toward me. It was tall and it was comfortable with itself. It had no problems with what it was doing and also, it wasn’t stopping. It was walking right to me, slow and confident and deliberate.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run away, that would be silly. It was going to catch up with me no matter what I did.

And I thought a little more about myself, and how much I wanted to be in the building, how much I wanted to be a part of the zen center and was but still couldn’t feel it. And I thought about my post about feeling alone- how that came from not accepting myself, from not seeing myself for who I am. And I thought, “You should just give in on this one. If you really do want to be a part of the zen center, and you do, you have to see that you really are a part of the zen center. You have to accept it instead of trying to label it or seeing it as anything other than it it. It just is. You’re just here. This is you, no matter how much it freaks you out.”

And so I’m here. I’m about to be approached by myself. I don’t know what I’m going to do when It gets here, and I'm scared of what it's going to feel like. But I’m not turning around and I’m not running away and I'm totally frightened by this decision to stay still.