Lightening Up! Coming Out of the Closet

The traffiic chugged on Van Ness on my way to a friend's private art exhibition (well, more like a party with all of his recent abstract art covering every inch of wall) because of the 36th Annual Gay Pride parade in San Francisco yesterday.

It reminded me of the touching snippet I'd read this weekend in my research into my favorite retail chain store (that's favorite chain), Anthropologie (the website does not do the experience justice). It reminded me how far we've come that snippets like this aren't taboo, but even celebrated today in story, film, parade, and life more and more:

In his office on the second-floor loft, which over-looks the entire ground level, [Glen] Senk sheepishly apologizes for the clumps of dog hair under his own desk, courtesy of his two beloved Welsh Pembroke corgis, Piper and Cosmo. They regularly visit from the nearby Dutch Colonial house Senk, 50, shares with Keith Johnson, his partner of 32 years. The couple met in Brookville, Long Island, when they were both 10, and Senk says his reaction to Johnson was “chemical”. Hearing this, the quiet Johnson playfully rolls his eyes and adds, “It took me a little bit longer to figure it out.” - Philebrity 5/23/2006 blog post

A January Knight-Ridder piece on "The Art of Retail" (alas now cached) tells us more about the couple: "An artist and former furniture designer, [Keith] Johnson started his global shopping excursions [for Anthropologie] soon after his partner, Glen Senk, a former Williams-Sonoma retailing executive, took over the Anthropologie helm in 1994."

I suppose there was a time when 'coming out' meant that besides placing the burden of possible 'outsider' status upon yourself, you're also under the intense scrutiny of being a representative, an ambassador of sorts, for all gays, those out and hidden and everything in between. Maybe people look at your every move to see what it is 'gays' do and how 'gays' behave. It's hard enough in this life just being yourself, much less being a symbol to uphold. And I can't imagine being an openly gay executive would be a very easy task back 36 years ago at the time of the inaugural gay pride parade either.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that the parade also reminded me that I feel a heck of a lot more comfortable being a closet mystic. And closet Awakeness. Yet to 'normalize' enlightenment, it's not going to do a heck of a lot of good for me to stay comfortably esconed in the closet. People have all sorts of fantasy concepts about awakening and the so-called process oof enlightenment process. Since I'm less restrained in off-the-cuff email, I'll share a raw tidbit I wrote to a friend this a.m.

Very very luminously content - whole, complete - esp after the striving/ struggling ceased early April. There is still lots of liberation and enlightening of the denser unpurified parts happening, but whew I don't have manage/direct it or effort it anymore.

There's a myth that awakening and the ever-unfolding enlightening is only for saints, Buddhists, someone holier than thou, someone special, someone-anyone-else. (Ha! I'm totally busting the saint archetype - my imperfections have never been more glaringly obvious and wholly okay.) We think we'd become something Other, maybe we'll morph into Mother Teresa or Jesus or Buddha or Joan of Arc or godknows. That's not it - we become more nakedly ourselves, without the burden of maintaining an awkward and cumbersome image of ourselves (we most certainly do not become anyone else).

Enlightening isn't a self-improvement exercise. It's more of a stripping away: who/what you are without the heavy weight of ideas of who/what we all are, each and everyone, obscuring our perception and knowledge. This sounds ho-hum but the world as you thought it was totally unhinges, and I mean totally, and you see the world as it is.

The Buddha's description of Nirvana, in the Pali Canon, as "visible in this life, inviting, attractive, accessible," is clearly true and makes perfect sense. So does Master Ummon's statement that the first step along the Zen Path is to see into our Void Nature: getting rid of our bad karma comes after - not before - that seeing. So does Ramana Maharshi's insistence that it is easier to see What and Who we really are than to see "a gooseberry in the palm of our hand" -- as so often, this Hindu sage confirms Zen teaching. All of which means there are no preconditions for this essential in-seeing. To oneself one's Nature is forever clearly displayed, and it's amazing how one could ever pretend otherwise. It's available now, just as one is, and doesn't require the seer to be holy, or learned, or clever, or special in any way. Rather the reverse! What a superb advantage and opportunity this is! - The Nondual Highlights, issue #2505, June 23, 2006

Many people read this blog for clues on how to integrate spirituality into their business, into their life. Doubtful you'd find anyone more stubborn than I, yet I yielded to the wisdom in one of my teacher's words:

Many people ask, "How do I integrate my spirituality into everyday life?" You don't. You can't. How could you integrate it? You can't stuff the infinite into your limited life. Instead, give your life to divine impulse...Throw your life into Truth. Don't try to stuff Truth into your life." - Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti

Just about every religion under the sun has informed me. Yesterday I witnessed a Christian baptism wherein the ritual a woman figuratively "died to themselves", and thereby gave her life to something greater than her sense of self, which she named God. (For nondualists, recall Stephen Mitchell's words: When everything is God, nothing is God. To me God is unnameable.)

I doubt I'll discuss awakening any more every than every couple of months. Enough to make sure I'm not hiding. And to remind myself, anyone reading, that a clear, deep wise Mystery is informing me and what I do and how I think and how I feel and what I write - so you might as well know that upfront. (It's kind of dry to talk about, write about anyway in comparison to the incredible voyage it is to live out. Hint: My last post was really enlightening too. Everyone's had moments.)

It's actually so simple you're missing it. En-lighten-ing. Lighting up. Lighten up. Incredible lightness of being. I see glimpses of it everywhere when people, kids, flowers, dogs, designers, architects, writers, entrepreneurs and other folks glimpse it too. Usually when they connect to silence, their heart, their body, their senses, their gut feel. When they aren't dead from the neck down. That's really what this blog is about: Pointing to that simple stuff which lightens. Enlightens. Affirms Life. In business, in life.

Full circle, speaking of enlightening, again I see the pointers to truth everywhere, little love letters to God everywhere, and I'm totally smitten by Keith Johnson's words and his sense of style (perhaps I'll share the whole piece later). Again, he's the curator of sorts for the thoroughly enchanting Anthropologie stores. Even what he says hints that our imperfectability is maybe what's so lovable anyway. Here he shares a little more about his design instincts:

A cork beehive from Portugal sits in one corner. In another, a huge empty frame with rococo carvings of birds and flowers leans against a wall.

"I bought hundreds of those in an old gilding factory, and we put mirrors in them and used them in store dressing rooms," Johnson says. "They were never gilded, so they got that wonderful, white weathered look. If they had been gilded, they wouldn't have been as interesting to me.

"We've periodically tried building store fixtures, but they don't have the soul of the old pieces. The old things give a life and resonance to the stores that just can't be replaced." - "Mastering the Art of Retail" (Google cached), Contra Costa Times (via Knight-Ridder), Jan 28, 2006

Bonus: "Spiritual people always think the Truth is hidden from them. It is not hidden. What gets in the way is the idea of what it is going to be. Find that place of what actually is. There is only One manifesting as everything. Ponder and meditate on this until you realize it yourself through and through." [You cannot accept it as belief as that'd be replacing an idea with yet another idea.] - Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti

image Flickr photo (I can spend days on Flickr mesmerized by the beauty people capture when they are present) photo by ohad*