Student & Guru 2

One morning the Student and the Guru were on the Mountain among some boulders, a waterfall and a grassy meadow, having a brunch picnic and a mostly pointless dialog. The waterfall tumbled off into a dark and craggy crevasse, the top of which was surrounded by swirling sparkles that formed misty rainbows. There was a point at which there was a pleasant pause, and the Student filled it with something presumably meaningful.

Student: "This taking action business; I can't quite get my consciousness around it. If for example what I want is peace, I don't really have to act, I simply accept the world as it is and am therefore at peace with it."

Guru: "Is accepting not acting?"

Student: "True. True. Hm. I don't know…I…oh, thank you." The Guru had just handed her a small cup of some sort of liquid, some sort of alchemy the students were getting used to seeing more frequently. Perhaps it was fermented? That would be a delight!

They sat in silence for a time, and the Student began to feel a rush of energy flowing through her system, elevating her sense of herself. Then her vision shifted a little, at the periphery, as though the edges of reality were changing just out of her direct view. The Guru then leaned over and pressed a point near her brain stem and it all collapsed into kaleidoscopic geometry. She heard herself say, "Oh, dear…" as it all went blank.

When she came to she was completely astonished to find that she was dangling from a rope and hanging at least 100 feet below the opening into which the waterfall cascaded, certain that she must be dreaming. She shook her head, attempting to wake from this lucid dream. Wait, it's a lucid dream - I can control it! So she held her arm aloft like some avenging angel attempting to dissolve the rope and fly out of there. It didn't work. She tried to slap herself awake. Wow, if this is a lucid dream I'm in deep!

As the world continued taking recognizable form to her senses, she realized she was in a rough leather harness and the rope trailed away below her and off into the pitch black darkness of the crevasse below. This isn't a dream! If this is a dream I want out now! Please! Now horror set in. Now betrayal. She began shouting for the Guru, wondering if they'd been overtaken by mountain bandits. How does that make sense? These...these criminals would hang me from a rope for some stupid reason? Nothing made sense. Absolutely nothing made sense within these conditions. She yelled and yelled until she was hoarse and she no longer had the strength to project her voice.

Then she decided to piece together again what had happened. They were chatting by the waterfall, in the boulders. She was talking about action. The Guru pointed out that acceptance was also action…and then…and then he handed her a cup of something. Was that alchemy a drug? Did it knock her out? No, no...wait. The Guru touched me on the back of the neck. Is the Guru really a sadistic ghoul in disguise? How could such a great and benevolent being be a sadistic ghoul and put me in such a circumstance?

Soon thirst became a need, and she realized if she hung onto the rope and leaned out she could fill her other hand with a little water from the waterfall. Realizing that the day must be wearing on, she tried pulling herself up the rough hemp line, and as she tried wrapping her feet around the rope she became aware for the first time that her shoes were gone, and the rough hemp was very chafing. She steeled herself against that obstacle and realized that she would have to pull herself up 100 feet of this steadily, without stopping, as it would require energy to just remain stationary at each succeeding point higher. Between the sliding, which tore her skin, and the climbing, she realized, exhausted, that she'd managed less than five feet, so she let go the rope and jolted rather sharply back to her fixed position.

Looking down into the black and yawning chasm, into which the rope trailed, fear clutched her chest and she shook her head. "Absolutely not."

Forcing herself to be content for the moment, she waited. She waited for…something, whatever. Yes, she could wait. She waited for the Guru to come. No, no. The Guru couldn't haul her up by himself. So she waited for the Guru to come with help. But what if the Guru is bound and gagged in the boulders? Yeah, yeah, by the mountain bandits. Must've been them. Those damned bandits. I hate them. I'll get 'em, you'll see. I'll get those bastards. But wait…if the Guru is bound and gagged, he can't help me. So she had to think of something else to wait for, but, running out of ideas, she couldn't think of anything to wait for. So she waited for inspiration on ideas for just exactly what she could wait for. The Guru will come with help. You'll see. Mm-hm. You'll see. So she waited for the Guru to come with help. All she could do is hope that the Guru would come with...wait, the Guru put me here! How could such a great and benevolent being put me in such a circumstance?

Am I having a déjà vu? She shrugged.

I'll give it ten more minutes, she thought, and then I'll…what? Looking down into the ever-darkening chasm fear again seized her from stem to stern, and she shook her head. "Absolutely not."

After what must have been another hour, she realized there was no feeling in her legs, the circulation down to a trickle. She knew she couldn't hang there for even another half-hour, much less the entire night. In despair, she began to cry, railing at the circumstances, at the Guru, at the waterfall and spray for making her cold and wet, at her legs for going numb, at her feet for not having shoes on them, at the rope for being rough and devoid of knots on which she could get hold, at the rocks for being hard and black, at the opening for being 100 feet above, at the trees she could see above the opening for laughing at her with their annoying little flickering leaves glittering in the wind! Soon, she ran out of things she could complain about.

As she slumped forward against the taut hemp line, thinking she might sleep, she felt a pressure in her thigh. Leaning back, she saw that she had a knife and scabbard tucked into her belt. Where the hell did that come from? This was simply all too insane. What is this? She took the knife out and logically thought, there is only one thing this could be for! And so she raised it, set it against the hemp line, and gently pressed, but not too hard. One little fiber, then two, were cut.

Is this a test? she wondered. Is this like some radical Guru lesson on trust? Just cut the line and trust? Trust that the Master, the Guru, knows what he's doing, that he'll swoop in on a cloud of levitation and whisk me out through the top? Trust exactly what? My faith? Do I trust my faith? Trust my faith? Are you kidding? I don't even know what that means...trust my faith...huh! Aren't they the same thing? That's a question for the Guru, if I ever see him again, the rotten bastard.

Wait, I know right now I can't do what everybody else does, make an uninformed choice and blindly hope for the best. Yep! Here we go! I give it fifty/fifty that it's a test! If it's not, well…then I become a shredded mess on the rocks. That isn't what this is about. By the way, what is this about? She chuckled insanely to herself, laughing and crying at the same time. Would somebody care to tell me what this is about? "Oh, God, what the hell am I doing here?" She began to laugh harder, and harder, cackling like a madwoman, her laughter echoing around the cavern and blending with the waterfall, which actually sounded precisely like applause at the moment.

She laughed until her gut hurt. "Oh, holy Toledo…that's funny. That's so funny!" And she laughed some more. Soon she forgot what she was laughing about, which was even funnier.

Still laughing, she thought, So, my options: (a) I wind up a shredded mess on the rocks, (b) the Guru swoops in and saves me, (c) I lower myself, in intense fear I might add.

Thinking a few rather incongruous thoughts, they ran as follows. Why am I here? I don't know. But maybe the more important question is why is the rope here? What if the rope just runs out? Then I'm stranded in the dark at the end of this rough, miserable, unforgiving rope! But then I have the knife. O.K., so, if the rope runs out, I use the knife. It doesn't matter. With certainty, she nodded to herself, saying, "None of this is real anyway. I mean that's what everybody's saying these days, that this is an illusion. The guru says it most certainly is NOT an illusion, because saying it's an illusion is implying that there something that's not an illusion, and this most certainly is true. So that makes sense. The guru says that it's not real. Of course around here they're saying that nothing is real, and that that statement has two meanings. I get that intellectually...the word nothing's very clever with its duality, but...but what if they're wrong? Hm. Not real." Oh yeah? the devil inside mocked. If it's not real, then why are you afraid? "Good question," she said aloud. "Damned good question, actually. But right now I don't give a damn about why I'm afraid. Even if I don't know why I'm here, I know why this rope is here and this cold, wet, miserable waterfall has to go somewhere and I'm going to find that out dead or alive."

Her mind drifted to the white powder alchemy she'd been using for a few weeks, now believing what they'd told her, that if she wanted it to dissolve all of her conscious and unconscious fears, it would. The past few days she'd been pondering the fact that she felt freer, and just recently in her peripheral vision she thought she'd seen shifts in reality, like the charade that it is was having a hard time holding itself together in what was becoming only a semi-recognizable form. But, she thought, has it made me braver in this moment? Not sure, but it looks like I'm about to do what I would never have done until now.

Inspecting the configuration of the rope and cleats, she had simply to unwind the rope from the bottom one and feed it through the top one. Ouch! Her hands were getting friction burns. Screw the pain! she thought. Pain doesn't matter. What does pain matter? And wait till I get my hands on those damned bandits....or whoever the hell put me here. They're going to be sorry they ever messed with this chick! The devil inside said, Come on, do you really believe there are bandits? "There has to be some explanation," she said aloud. Down she went, little by little, then a little faster, terrified out of her mind and still laughing away and talking to herself.

Now she was in pitch black and stopped, afraid that she couldn't so much as see the rope eight inches from her face. "Screw the fear!" she said aloud. Fear doesn't matter. Why would fear matter? Who cares about fear? Even if this is all real, why would I care about fear? No shit. Just one less thing to be burdened by. I mean, the fear can exist but It's not like there is a requirement to be limited by it. I mean, what does it matter whether or not this is all real? In either case, fear is just fear, and is the only thing to fear. Whatever I'm afraid of isn't inherently fear-producing. Right? It doesn't exist to make me afraid. And so everything we do, so long as we don't let fear stop us from doing it, is designed to show us we didn't need to fear it to begin with. And poof. It's gone. That's a damned good point, Honey. I like how you're thinking. No, I like how you're learning right now. She smiled, amused by this talking to herself as though she were really two people. But the guru has told me I'm an infinite number of people, so two certainly is not much of stretch.

Hm, what if the rope just keeps going and going, never ending? Then what? I just stay in the dark, feeding rope and dropping until I starve, I suppose. No, I wouldn't starve; I'd just cut the line. But when would I make my mind up about that? Hm. Good question. It's not realy anyway, right? The devil inside chimed in, If it's not real, then why are you...

"Shutup," she said, "I'm still working through that one. I don't know where fear originates, but it's definitely something that comes from one place."

Well, better move, better than just sitting here now isn't it. Hm. Rope never ending - it certainly wouldn't be any stranger than this entire experience. "This is easy," she said aloud, starting to feel pride and fear at the same time. Yes, it's very easy. Wow, it's dark. Down and down. Hm. A lot of rope. Must be a thousand feet of it. Where did those bandits get all that rope? Can't see a damned thing. Oops, there we are. Hm. Fancy that. Solid ground. Ho! My feet hurt! Careful, rock's slick with the spray from that fucking waterfall.

She heard someone call her name, faintly, from somewhere nearby but on the other side of the rock wall. Now she could make out that there was some light coming in and crossing her feet. Her name was called again. She felt her way around the wet and pitch black rock to her left and saw more light. Getting down on all fours, she thought, No problem at all. This was easy - no reason to fuss at all. Crawling to the light, she got lower and shimmied through the opening, and blinded by the light she slumped to the ground. As soon as her eyes adjusted to the brilliant afternoon sun, the Guru's sandals came into focus. "Well," she said, filled with bravado, "that was easy! What's next?"

The Guru's voice came from within a blinding light: "What did you learn?"

Student: "Learn? Learn, you bastard?! I learned that I'll never take a cup of alchemy from you again!"

The Guru laughed heartily: "Come come. What did you learn?"

Student: "Hm. Let me sum it all up in my mind here, cuz I learned a lot. I learned that it's pointless to wait. I learned that the opposite of waiting is making decisions and acting, right or wrong, even in the face of fear.

"I learned that fear is the only thing to be feared, and that being the case, fear doesn't exist at all because there's no point in fearing a word, or a concept, or a definition in a book, or an emotion spawned by chemicals. I learned that we learn fear has no meaning at all when we do what we fear. I'm learning as I'm talking right this second that fear is what we use to create the thresholds to cross, raising us to..." a small and beautiful smile overtook her features '...to higher levels of being. Hmmm. Without those thresholds, we wouldn't have any system of recognition that we're succeeding in any way. Fear exists to show us what to face, what threshold to cross, and that once we have, we've succeeded. Wow. Is that the only reason fear exists?"

Guru: "Well...it also has its purpose in holding all of this in recognizably programmed form. Without it, none of this experience would be possible, just like without YOU none of this would be possible. What else did you learn?"

Student: "I learned that pain just hurts and nothing more, and that there is a relationship between fear and pain.

"I learned that you can't argue with what is, so accept it. Isness gives not shit one about how I feel and doesn't listen to argument.

"I learned that when there is only one choice; it's not a choice at all, but a decision waiting to be made long before I'm ready to make it and to therefore be at peace with it once made, and if you can't be at peace with it, to at least accept it."

"Ah!" shouted the Guru with great joy, "then on your feet girl, for you have also learned that there is no free will! Isn't it wonderful? Congratulations! You see, knowing that there is no free will is the most important one of all, because knowing that makes one recognize that fear and pain are a necessary part of the process, but," the guru admonished, lifting a finger, "knowing that also begets the process where fear and pain dissolve. Do you know why that is?"

Student: "Because if there is truly no free will, then it's all about acceptance of what is. It's like saying fear and acceptance are opposites."

Guru: "Eggzellent. Heh heh," he chuckled, rubbing his hands together as though he were some foul mastermind bent on world domination. "Eggzellent, my young apprentice. Come. Come come come. We have a great deal to do today!"