Ideological Compassion

It was time to leave the house and begin my afternoon errand run. I intended to go to Saturday Market and meet with a zafu artisan, and inquire about doing a trade of thai massage for some zafus, and proceeded to walk up to Hawthorne to catch my bus downtown. I walked to the nearest bus stop, but the sun was fierce. As it was 90 degrees and my skin was melting in the direct light, I needed to find a shady spot to wait for the bus. Given the time of day and the lack of shade shelter, the only spot available with a foot of shade was around the corner, next to the Convenience Store wall. It meant that I was now in indirect sunlight for only a few minutes until the sun moved a few degrees. I kept peering around the corner to see if the bus was on its way. I looked as far down the road as possible; no bus in sight, just cars swimming swiftly in the sunlight past me. As there was no bus on the horizon, I crouched down in the shade feeling drowned in the impossible to avoid sunlight; it was the same hot, draining sunlight that I felt in the Yucatan. An all consuming intensity that stole the energy from me. And suddenly, the bus came breezing by at top speed, passing the bus stop I was at. I was confused and upset; hadn't I just looked down the road only 30 seconds before and saw no bus coming? I couldn't believe I had to wait for another bus.Now, with another fifteen minutes to wait for the next bus to arrive, I decided to walk into the Tibetan shop one door down from the bus stop. Feeling drawn to the shade, I walked into the store and began listening to the Tibetan singing bowls. When suddenly, a thought popped into my head, "I've been having wrist problems recently. I need to get a new pair of Chinese Medicine Balls, I lost mine a long time ago." So I walked up to a lady and two gentlemen sitting on the couch at the front of the store, discussing something. "Do you have any Chinese Medicine Balls, by any chance?" She told me there was none in the store. And so, I walked to the bathroom, feeling the moment, looking at the paint and the floor. Returning to the front of the store, about to leave, I was stopped by one of the men sitting on the couch."I have a pair of Chinese Medicine Balls at my office downtown. I'd be happy to give them to you for free. They were a gift, but I never use them. I'd love to give them to you. Do you want my phone number?"I was intrigued by his offer, so I took down his name and phone number and told him I'd call him within the week, and prepared myself to leave the store. When suddenly, he and his friend asked me where I was heading. "Downtown," I said. "Well, we'd be happy to give you a lift, if you want to ride with us, and we can stop and pick up the Medicine Balls right now."A bubble in my mind popped and I laughed. A free ride downtown, avoiding the bus altogether, and free medicine balls. Wow, what luck. We got in the truck and cruised downtown and parked near the Trade Center. The gentleman walked inside and came back out immediately, with a little box containing the Chinese Medicine Balls. I thanked him profusely, and he said goodbye to his friend and walked onwards down the sidewalk. I began having a conversation with the man who gave me a ride, the friend of the man with the medicine balls. He had just returned to America from six months travelling in Central America; my favorite subject of conversation. We began talking about Mayan Pyramids and Guatemala. He'd just been in Lake Atitlan, where I had lived for 3 months, a place dear to my heart. And we chatted about San Marcos and the lake and the Mayans. We both agreed that we couldn't wait to return and spend more time down there. Sharing goodbyes and gratitudes, he dropped me off a block away from the Saturday Market, my destination. I couldn't believe my luck, and yet it proved yet again the spiritual powers of the unseen are always present and situations that at first glance spark my frustration are often situations that lend themselves a more miraculous quality once I surrender.After browsing through Saturday Market, spending my time focused on connecting with the master zafu maker, I hopped on a Max Train to head home. As I sat down, I noticed two ladies sitting across the aisle, chatting voraciously about a subject I intended to ignore, when suddenly one of the lady looked at my necklace and asked if I'd made it. "No, I didn't make it. I bought it in Cusco, Peru, on the sidewalks where the young hippie street boys hand make the most incredible necklaces." She couldn't take her eyes off it, and yet I had to get off the train and transfer onto a bus to head home.The woman she was talking to followed me off the bus, asking as I stepped through the doors, "Do I know you?" I'd never seen this black skinned, grey haired, dreadlocked lady before. Suddenly her eyes expanded and she asked, "Are you Wahkeena Sitka? Did you write 'Can Sex Work Be Shamanic?'" I knodded my head. You got me. She congratulated me for writing that article, and gave me her support for my work. I thanked her and she wanted to initiate a dialogue about magic and shamanism, when I told her, "I have to walk down this sidewalk and get to the bus stop around the corner, do you want to follow me and we can continue this conversation?" She came and we started slowly walking down the sidewalk chatting about her fascination with magic since a child and her desire to learn to become magical. When suddenly, another bus came cruising by at top speed. It was yet again, the bus I was trying to catch. Second time in one day. I laughed. I couldn't believe it was happening again. I said goodbye and began running as fast as I could to catch the bus. Just as I ran up to the bus stop, the bus turned the corner and disappeared. Feeling defeated and mildly amused this time, I shrugged my shoulders and she walked across the street towards me. Continuing the conversation where we left off, we continued to speak about her work with a local shaman that she'd been exploring for a few years, when suddenly I heard a voice from behind."Excuse me, but do you realize that you have a dead animal hanging on your back?" Only one other time had I ever received a scornful remark about the backpack that I hand sewn while I was living at Lake Atitlan. A backpack made of deer skin, sheep skin and rabbit fur. A backpack that took me a month to make. A backpack that I literally bled into and doused with my sweat. A backpack that was an incredible journey in the process of making it; a journey in which every single stitch was literally a prayer that I put my heart into ~ a prayer to contribute to the healing of the world. A backpack that showed me that the energy of the Lake was teaching me about my strength, my power, and my discipline. A backpack that every single Mayan man, woman and child came up to, touched, petted, gazed at, and expressed appreciation for. A backpack that dogs sniffed and cats cuddled with. A backpack that police officers in Guatemala admired, as well as security guards at the House of Frida Kahlo in Mexico City. A backpack that had received a comment every single day that I wore it, usually an expression of admiration of its beauty. Oftentimes people asking me to make one for them. This backpack was made of my heart, and so far only one other lady in a grocery store had made a nasty comment about my backpack and the slaughter of animals, and I refused to respond. I simply walked away and didn't care to tell her that every single moment of that backpack's creation was a meditation and a prayer, created with the intention of being a medicine bag, to carry my stones, crystals and sacred objects ~ a walking alter. But I made a commitment to respond to the next person who made a disparaging remark about my beloved furry backpack, because I wanted them to know about the intention it was made with. Because I wanted them to know that it was hand woven with love and prayers, not commercially created in mass production by low wage workers.I have a strong affinity towards animal rights activists, and strongly support their cause of alleviating animal suffering. For years, I was vegetarian largely because I could not with dignity eat flesh that was procured from animals that were pumped full of hormones and mass slaughtered in such heartless ways. Watching videos of chickens caged with their beaks cut off, with their feet cut off freaked me out. I once went to a corporate pig farm and witnessed first hand the building that housed thousands of baby piglets and a mama pigs standing forcibly between metal constraints, sandwiched between two pens stuffed with fifteen to twenty piglets per pen, each one clawing over each other for a nipple. And there were 30 mama pigs doing their duty, and the ammonia stench was so powerful as to render the air unbreathable. It was a nightmare.And yet, I have a strong affinity towards that which is natural, that which is of the earth, that which is not man-made. I like the natural vibration of leather, fur, stones and wood. I have tremendous aesthetic and energetic affinity for Native American garb, having spent so much time as a child going to pow-wows; and their clothing often incorporates animal skins, feathers and quills to pay homage to the circle of life. I have respect for the animals that give their lives to become our food and furs, and do my best to pray with gratitude over every meal, for the life force energy that created this nourishment. I believe is is crucial that we humans become a more integrated aspect of the ecosystems of life on our planet, rather than disconnected from it.In saying so, I would like to recall a memory from years ago. I once worked with a client who once was a principal at a high school in a coastal town in the Olympic Peninsula in Northern Washington, a town that was predominately populated by the Makah Tribe. The Makah tribe was trying to establish their heritage rights of whale hunting in the modern era, where people believe that their ancient ancestral heritage rights to follow their traditions mean nothing in relationship to modern belief systems of whether or not it is acceptable to kill a whale. The Makah tribe spent years in court battle trying to establish their right to their ancient practice, and as a white gentleman and local townsman and observer to the spectacle, he was met by some very interesting people who came to his town to support the Makah tribe. He told me that one day a man from Kenya suddenly appeared in town, that he had read in a newspaper the story of the Makah plight, which mirrored his own tribe's current battle to hunt for the animals that his ancestors have been hunting for millenia. Another Maori lady from New Zealand suddenly appeared in his town, informed directly from her intuition that she needed to come to America, and discovered the story of the Makah in the newspaper and travelled to the Olympic Peninsula to support the Makah. She told the former principal that in times antiquity, her people would simply pray and chant to the oceanic animals when they needed to slaughter an animal. Their tradition was that they would spend hours praying and chanting on the cliffs overlooking the bay where the whales would come in, and when one of the whales had agreed to come into the bay, they would spear the whale and bring it to shore and it would feed their tribe. Since times had changed and the tribe had lost the relationship between the animals because of overfishing and unsustainable killing practices, the tribe was losing connection to its very ancient traditions that maintained its social cohesion. It is common practice for many indigenous cultures to communicate to the animals, through prayers and rituals, and to maintain harmonious relationships with the spirit of the land. And as a modern American culture, we have completely disrupted these harmonious circles of energetic wholeness that keep ecosystems of life force energy abundantly maintained.And so, owning all these stories and feelings in my consciousness, when rudely approached by the lady on the sidewalk about the dead animal skin on my back, I agreed to respond and entered a truly mind-splintering conversation. She wanted to know why I wore the backpack, what significance to me it had, and if i cared at all about the suffering animals and if i cared about the blood on my hands for owning such an atrocious article of fur. I did my best to explain to her that I had created the bag with the intention of creating beauty, of putting my love and prayers and visionary intentions into the bag. I did my best to tell her that for me, this was a creation of beauty, and that by creating this bag, I sought to offer my beauty to the world. She would have none of it. For every explanation of my philosophy, my feelings, my intentions & vision, there was always an endless repetitive retort of "Well the animals are suffering, and it's an injustice for animals to be slaughtered for your selfishness, and you're a bloody, guilty, disgusting human being for having made a bag with fur on it." No matter how hard I tried to appeal to her sense of beauty and healing intentions in the world, she could retort that there was nothing healing about wearing a bloody furry backpack, and that I had better options ~ to use fake fur. It grew more and more impossible for there to be a conversation, because she was endlessly drilling me with a flat line approach that was unflexible and closed to alternative perspectives. Might I add that she was a hardcore militant vegan lesbian, riding the bus with her girlfriend? I spent years immersed in the ideological perspectives of feminist lesbian activism. So I understand that hardline, all or nothing attitude of fierce militant ideological perspectives, when their view is the only view and it's impossible to have alternative perspectives.I got off that bus, deeply disturbed by the conversation. The conversation was so frustration inducing that I completely lost all sense of being centered and I got vehemently angry and defensive, and told her that I didn't care at all about her perspective and that it's not going to change a thing about my backpack. I sat down in a restaurant, ate lunch, and observed the workings of my mind. My thoughts were a whirling, churning maelstrom of what-ifs, retorts I wish I'd said, feelings I wish I'd expressed, wishing I hadn't talked to her at all. I observed the chaos of my monkey mind and began doing my best to breathe deeply and clear myself. My thoughts were out of control and I needed to begin being more mindful and present and relax myself from this consciousness chaos. I drank my water slowly, I ate my food slowly, I breathed slowly. I did my best to relax, and still my mind was agok in the maelstrom of things I wished I'd said, things I'd wished I didn't say, etc. And finally, I began to ask myself, what am I to learn of this experience. What is the medicine in this moment? Sitting next to the window, overlooking SE Hawthorne, I watched blonde preppy girls walk by with their Coach bags, their designer haircuts and cell phones. I watched people wearing unflattering clothes, bright colors, high heels, all in black.. The parade of fashion marched by. I observed my mind and noticed the tendency to react to each others visual expression, noticing the tendency to judge people. And I felt that it is as insidious & disrespectful for that lady to walk up to me and begin a judgmental attack on my furry backpack, as it would be for me to walk up to a complete stranger and tear them apart for their choice to carry a Coach bag. It is not respectful social etiquette to attack each other in public because we don't like the way another person expresses themselves.But even more than that, how can we as a humanity come together and create a harmonious society if we are so fragmented by our belief systems and by our judgments of each other? We could never create a common vision when we are so splintered by the way we are attached to our belief systems about material objects such as fur or cars or houses or real estate or fetuses. And we could never create a peaceful world when we judge each other and attack each other based on the assumption that my perspective is the correct perspective and everyone else's perspective is flawed. Everyone thinks they're on top of the ball game and that their perspective of reality is the standard truth, because their reality reflects that back to them. Watch a buddhist tell a millionaire real estate agent to drop his attachment to material possessions and the millionaire will think the buddhist is crazy. Watch a feminist tell a Christian grandfather of twelve about her abortion rights activism perspective, and you're likely to see a clash of perspective. Watch a Jehovah's witness try to convert a yoga practitioner and raw foodist, and you're bound to come into a conflict of realities. And every one of these people thinks they have the right perspective; the right religion, the right ideology, the right technique, the right livelihood ~ until we're humbled by our mistakes and realize our perspective is flawed.It then occurred to me that the medicine of the moment was to notice my own judgments and realize that we are all judgmental, and that it doesn't solve any problems, it simply creates schisms. Judgment does not create space for compassion, and allow each other to be truly witnessed. And that if I want to contribute to the healing of the world as I have prayed, I have to drop my agendas and judgments of forcing ideological or philosophical perspectives, because it doesn't help; it doesn't allow the truth that only mindful awareness and compassionate presence can offer.Learning to practice being conscious with our chaotic consciousness is the most primary work that these initially frustrating experiences offer us. We must begin by being compassionate towards our own undisciplined chaotic consciousness and learn how to work with tools when we encounter aspects of ourselves that are judgmental, critical, angry, reactive, defensive, and unconscious. This is why meditation is the most important tool that every one of us can ever learn how to apply to our reality. Meditation is truly the master tool for awakening our full potential. And it begins with mindfulness, observing our thoughts and forgiving ourselves when we make mistakes and slip into our typically unconscious patterns.