Omega Man

Okay, so I'm not dead or in a coma. And I didn't have a motorcycle accident and get amnesia and begin a new life as a reclusive suburban hamster whisperer, secretly reconciling estranged owners and their rodents. (Though that would have made for an interesting entry.) I've just been seriously neglecting this blog. Apologies to the six of you who actually read this blog....and have apparently returned about 80 times each to see if I've gotten my butt back in gear!

So, back to the matter at hand: wrapping up my walkabout and the lessons it taught me.

I went back to the Omega Institute for a few weeks at the end of the last season. Omega is a retreat center in rural upstate New York featuring a smorgasbord of workshops throughout the year (excluding winter) offering everything from more traditional courses like yoga, meditation and art classes to the outer fringes of the new age culture ("Past-Life Therapy Training" or "Shapeshifting into Higher Consciousness").

In exchange for part-time work in various departments supporting the campus (kitchen, maintenance, guest services, set-up, etc.), we "volunteers" get room and board, access to various facilities and activities (sauna, tennis courts, lake canoes, concerts, daily tai-chi and dance classes,etc.), as well as a multitude of courses offered just for the staff. These are generally more modest courses than the workshops and are often taught by others on the support staff itself. These classes also run the gamut from meditation to sweat lodge ceremonies to psychic healing.

Appropriately enough, since I tend to cruise in to Omega for a few weeks at a time, I usually work in the "Float Department", which places us wandering souls in whichever other departments need more staff during the ebb and flow of work each day. An important element of the staff philosophy is an emphasis on service as spiritual practice. Karma yoga in action. But it's easy to lose sight of this lofty sentiment when I have to dice forty onions or make beds for three hours straight, or, on the flip side, when I'm gleefully zooming around the lush campus in a golf cart, ostensibly delivering luggage. So, as usual, it is largely a practice of remembering to practice.

And it's always great to get back in touch with the sweet souls that flit about the Omega flame-----some flying high, others spreading their wings for the first time, and a few on fire (interpret that as you wish). There is a core staff who make a career out of working at the institute, but us "seasonal staff" are a fairly transient bunch. It's a treat (and a challenge!) to rub shoulders with this colorful crew of multi-talented gypsies as we all work on opening our minds and hearts.

My artist friend Young whom I had met on my walkabout came up from New York City to visit me. As I showed her around the campus, we reminisced about her art show in Poughkeepsie that I helped her install and she caught me up on the activities of the other artists I had met. Although it had been only a year earlier, my time in New York City felt like ages ago. She generously offered to have me be a part of a multimedia interactive performance art piece involving the NYC police and the homeless, called MetroPols. But I felt that I wasn't quite suited for the New York art scene, so I turned down a role coordinating the homeless. Later, Young told me that the police got cold feet and pulled out, so she had to cancel the whole experimental event.

As usual, my time at Omega was an exhilarating mixture of work, play, and practice. Well, actually, between the work and all the play, my meditation practice usually gets a bit neglected. But of course there are ample opportunities for the practice that I try to implement in my daily activities: developing awareness, relaxing, accepting, and letting go. My results are fairly mixed, especially since each successive step is a little more challenging than the previous one. But my self-awareness has deepened somewhat and I have some small victories, like when I let go of jamming my schedule full of too many tantalizing distractions or when I relax into dicing those forty onions.

Speaking of playing, it was great to enjoy sports again, namely tennis, ultimate, and basketball. I'm usually one of the best tennis players at Omega, but I found myself in a humbling match with a visiting staff member who beat me quite easily. And man, did I suck at basketball! My first day back on the court, not only did I go scoreless, but I never even managed to hit the rim with any of my shots! After a while of this shooting debacle, I was matched up against a young woman (the only female playing, bless her bold heart!) to make the teams fair. She was almost a foot shorter than me, which is saying something, cuz I'm not exactly a Pau Gasol out on the court. (Think 'Spud Webb'.) And I still sucked really bad!

Through all the basketball games, I tried to enjoy everything (the competition, the camaraderie, my sucking, the indifferent Basketball Gods), but only managed meagre results. Afterwards, however, I did have a good laugh. I played on a couple of other occasions and still never made a single basket, though I did manage to throw up a few rim-rattling "bricks", which, I guess, was a minor victory in that I finally managed to draw some iron.

Which finally brings me to another walkabout lesson: Failure is my friend.

While one could reasonably argue that my walkabout was a "success" since I was able to live the better part of a year as a wandering beggar monk, I certainly experienced my fair share of "failures" too.

First up, I failed to free myself from my primal fears. (Again, I'll tackle these bogey monsters directly in another entry.)

I repeatedly failed at my relaxation practice ("letting go") during competitive activities such as chess, poker, and the sports I mentioned above. I also had some angry moments with several homeless guys. (Yet another one of the entries that I didn't write when I got behind in this blog.) And I lost my cool with some of my artist friends in New York and even reacted angrily during some tense moments with Carol and her mother during that difficult last month of her life in Los Angeles. Clearly, I've still got plenty of buttons that are too easily pushed.

This blog itself is a glaring example of my limitations. I have failed to stay up to date and had to skip several entries when I got behind. This blog has become an albatross around my neck (well, that's a bit much----how 'bout a seagull or a big pigeon then?) and despite my efforts to make this writing a practice in liberation itself, I still struggle mightily because I turn it into a grinding slog.

So it has become quite clear that my ego has claimed this blog as its own, another shiny bauble to agonize over and keep polishing, for it reflects me. My perfectionistic anal-retentive proclivities take over, constricting any kind of free-form intuitive flow. Where's the mental laxative to help me unblock my creativity? Oh yeah, it's the re-laxative ingredients of meditation itself. So, meditation in action, Monkboy. Breathe deep, be aware, relax, accept, let go, move forward. And don't forget to laugh, humor being one of the greatest laxatives!

So yes, I experienced failures big and small on the walkabout and beyond. But as a Taoist seeking to balance and harmonize the yin and yang polarities within me, I am called to embrace the dark and not cling to the light. This is a direct contradiction of my usual impulse to push away negative experiences (e.g., pain, insults, eggplants, the Celtics) and grasp at positive ones (e.g., success, knowledge, mint chocolate chip ice cream, bikinis). By unraveling my instinctual rigidity, I would be free to walk peacefully in the light or the dark, in harmony with the great Tao itself. And perhaps then I'd see that my delineations of "negative" and "positive", or "light" and "dark", might not be so accurate after all.

So failure is my friend. Defeat is my guru. And every foible and fiasco is actually a veiled opportunity, a secret key to the back door of liberation.

If I can truly embrace failure then I will free myself from the crushing weight and limited horizons imposed by the yoke of the failure/success paradigm. I will be free to breathe easy and be at peace through all my triumphs and disasters (Kipling's "imposters")----and all the ordinariness in between. When the vagaries of life no longer dictate my feelings and actions, then I can access true unconditional peace, happiness, and love. I can act from the heart instead of react from fear and craving. That's a pretty good definition of freedom for me.

So can I really live the wisdom imparted to me by a friend's young son that I quoted so long ago?: "If I enjoy both winning and losing, then I never lose." Can I truly imagine how liberating it would be to fail, and yet laugh anyways? To taste defeat, and enjoy the bittersweet tang of loss? To crash and burn, and still come up smiling, scars and all? To be the Fool, and keep on dancing?

Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I can imagine it. I can visualize shooting air balls, receiving criticism, typing a mangled sentence, losing an argument, getting fired, or being dumped by a girlfriend, all the while maintaining a relaxed and open attitude, appreciative of the play of light and dark, and keeping an eye on the greater Game of Life itself. I can almost taste it, and that's a great first step toward moving beyond these self-imposed games of winning and losing, and thereby achieve a much grander victory: freedom.

I can almost feel the weights falling away from my shoulders, my mind clearing, and my heart opening. With the internal struggle removed from my endeavors, I could taste the fruits of the Taoists' wei wu wei, or "effortless effort". I can imagine the reserves of energy and creativity that would open up if I could truly let go of my fear of failure. Yet I must be careful that any new-found effectiveness is not my primary motivation, or else I'm back where I started: grasping at success. It's a tricky process, for I am attempting to succeed at failing, and this requires an open and balanced approach to the nuances of "success" and "failure".

Hah! Time to burst this frothy bubble! For I usually lose this game too. I fail at embracing failure. I am still piqued by defeat at the chess table. I juggle humiliation on the basketball court. Criticism directed my way still carries its barbs. And I continue to bang my head against this keyboard in frustration. I want to win, to succeed, to be right, and the sting of self-judgment still accompanies defeat. Failure is still a bitter pill to choke down. (Don't get me wrong----I'm a good sport, win or lose----it's just that I'm a long way from enjoying losing as much as I enjoy winning.)

It's a tough goal, this trying to succeed at failing, for it runs against ALL of my genetic programming and social conditioning. I am designed to win at all costs, to experience a heady rush of endorphins during victory and corresponding depressive chemicals when I lose. My genes scheme for me to be an alpha male in the tribe, claiming status, power, territory, mates, resources. Exacerbating these pre-programmed impulses, our society indoctrinates me further in the cult(ure) of victory. We pay lip service to the notion of sportsmanship, yet we idolize those who actually "win"----in sports, in our literature and movies, up the corporate ladder, in politics, and on the battlefield. Losers aren't lionized.

Our culture pushes us to achieve our "highest potential" with the not-so-implicit message that we are somehow less of a person if we don't attain these lofty goals. Personal progress must be ever upward. I'm having difficulty unraveling all this inherent hard-wiring and downloaded social software. How can I hope to swim against such a strong current that flows all around me and even within the genetic core of my being?

Ah, but here is another opportunity: I can embrace my failure to embrace failure. And if I fail at that, then I have yet another opportunity to embrace that failure. And so on and so on. This line of failures and the opportunities they provide can go on and on. Ma Universe is infinitely generous with her remedial lessons for knuckleheads like me. Somewhere along this line of practice and failure, my brain usually cramps up from all of the mental gymnastics.....and I let go. I chuckle and sigh and manage to accept failure at some level, sometimes even enjoy it. And if I don't, well, ultimately that's fine too. And there I am, smiling at failure.

So while my ego still tends to sweep me along in a flood of testosterone and adrenaline during the heat of battle (chess, debating politics, chucking air balls, watching "Survivor"), I have managed to loosen up my previously rigid notions of "defeat" and "victory". Perhaps I have even learned to take both a little more gracefully. So who cares if my glass is 98% empty or 2% full? For if I embrace both emptiness and fullness, then I'll savor my Absolut 100% of the time! Drink deep, Monkeyboy.

This practice is a form of psychological sublimation where one uses so-called "negative" experiences to achieve "positive" results. Hence why I refer to it as sneaking in the back door of liberation. It's similar to practices found in various "left-hand paths" such as tantra yoga which seek to channel our energies---"positive" and "negative"---toward spiritual goals. Anger, fear, sexuality, intoxicants, death----nothing is off limits for a tantrika to investigate, master, and eventually use toward spiritual awakening. Left-hand traditions are willing to get down and dirty and mix it up with the shadows, for they teach that the Divine exists in the world and within us too-----and it does not limit itself to only the well-lit alleys of the world and our psyches. Not quite the "Dark Side of the Force", but left-hand paths definitely have their own special set of pitfalls. These traditions are clearly not for everyone, and so they tend to keep to the shadows, away from the glare of the limelight.

(This brief description doesn't do justice to the multi-faceted and controversial field of left-hand paths. Yoga tantra itself consists of multiple traditions with varying beliefs and practices. I feel compelled to clarify this because the word "tantra" has been appropriated by some in the West where it has come to be synonymous with "sacred sex". Indeed, there are sexual practices to awaken kundalini energy for spiritual realization, but these are only one aspect of the varied landscape of tantra philosophy.)

And what of right-hand paths or "front door" traditions? Well, these disciplines tend to view divinity as external to the material world. Personal transcendence is achieved through association with this divinity, usually in the form of deity worship. They generally have a more rigid perspective on dualism, especially "good" and "evil", and so they shy away from the "dark" and cleave to the "light", cultivating "positive" qualities. Their main practices focus on renunciation and purification as a means for transformation. These are the majority of practices, East and West, and are primarily embodied in the world's main religious traditions.

Again, these are broad generalizations. Separating traditions into left hand and right hand categories is a dubious undertaking at best and many would chafe at these distinctions. As with all dualities, there's a lot of gray area and overlap between the polarities. While there are some clear differences, many of the practices are very similar. As I've said before, the left-hand practice of embracing aversions is the flip side of the right-hand practice of letting go of cravings. (E.g., embracing criticism is a practice in letting go of self-image.) Both paths seek self-mastery to transcend the limitations of our conditioning. And ultimately, the goals are pretty much the same: Liberation, Salvation, Divine Communion, Transcendence, Awakening, Realization, Enlightenment, The Cosmic Hoedown, whatever you want to call IT.

Whether I enter through the front door or the back door, the House of Liberation remains the same. I'm sure there are plenty of other doors too, for it's a big ol' open house. The servant's entrance---Karma Yoga---is another door that comes to mind.

And I'll bet there are a whole bunch of pretty windows we can break into too!


(To be continued...)



"You're the man, Zum!"
---Omega basketballer, mocking my court skills


"Yeah, I know that and you know that, but I think everybody else is gonna need some convincing."
---my response


"He who has the most fun wins."
---Izzie, Omega staff member


"Meditation: it's all fun and games until somebody loses an I."
---spotted on a shirt at Omega


"Humor allows me breath and space to pursue my spiritual path."
---Steve, Omega staff member


"We couldn't figure out how we could afford to staff Omega, and then we realized that we could just get slaves!"
---Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute, joking about the "volunteer" staff


"Success is the proper utilization of failure."
---anonymous


"That by which we fall is that by which we rise."
---Yoga Tantra aphorism


"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."
---Abraham Lincoln (I love this quote, though I'm pretty sure that Lincoln is concerned that we not be content with failure----the opposite of how I prefer to interpret the quote.)


"How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?"
---Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)