The Burn of the Inquiry

I'm sitting in a bustling Cafe Volan in Asbury Park on this humid Labor Day 2018. 

Free association - Labor of love. Laboring field workers, sweating in the sun while they pick the berries I devour by the pint. Laboring my daughter into the world on July 5th and 6th of the previous year. That look on my face of disbelief. Laboring over a keyboard, staring towards a screen of glowing pixels, faithful that it's not all in vain.

Beloved teacher, Paramatma Siri Sadhana, gave a writing prompt recently:

What are you good at that is actually bad for you?

I am good at being defensive and cutting people out of my life rather than working through the hard dynamics.

If I'd broached this subject, say, a year and a half ago, I think I'd really be feeling the burn of the inquiry. I've been working with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba and Ram Dass around the concept that we are all mirroring one another, that the other person is always you.

I try to live this truth, understand this truth, and realize how I'm hiding from myself. Rather than recognize the imperfections in myself, I see them in the other. I push them away, I push a deeper knowing of myself away.