Consistency

Though I was only in Canada from Sunday night to Tuesday noon, I have six pages of notes from Cynthia's talks, with several sections circled and starred. One of those comments that particularly resonated with me was this: "Enlightenment has to do with consistency."

At first glance that seems very confusing; it reminds me a bit of the man at the retreat who admitted that he had read the Gospel of Thomas twice through and didn't see that it had any redeeming features. That made perfect sense to me; I reacted the same way the first time through Thomas. ...And would have continued to do so had Cynthia and Lynn Bauman not helped to unpack this amazing gospel for me.

There will always be things out there that do not reveal themselves to a cursory glance; learnings that do not come easily to the untutored mind. It's one reason we need teachers -- and I've always been sad that this society places so little value on its teachers. Sometimes we just need experienced guides to help open our eyes to the wonder around us.

Thankfully, Cynthia didn't just leave that cryptic remark out there, she explained it -- and once explained, I realized it was perfectly obvious. The question here is, how does your theology play out at a personal level? How does that which emerges in the meditation process play out in your daily life? If we were truly enlightened, our behavior would consistently reflect the values we claim to hold.

There's a song we used to sing when I was young that became, sadly, somewhat of a joke as I grew older: "You will know we are Christians by our Love." Yes, if we were truly Christians, enlightened to the core of our being by the words and principles Jesus taught, all of our actions would be guided by Love. But none of us is perfect -- at least, not yet -- and these days the word Christian seems to have more to do with hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness than with love.

This morning I was reading Jon Kabat-Zinn again, and he came at this issue from another angle, saying that we need a vision; that without a vision, goal, or objective, it is very hard to stay committed to a meditation practice. Having read that, I found it particularly hard to stay centered when I sat this morning: where is this taking me? Why do I do this? And is it enough to be meditating; shouldn't I be DOING something to make the world a better place?

Just as I was ready to give up in disgust, the clock chimed, my time was up, and I remembered Cynthia's comment about consistency. And it seemed to me that that's really all there is to the vision: I have a fairly simple mental construct about how I want to BE in the world: open, mindful, loving, compassionate, thoughtful, present -- all admirable goals, and common across the base of most religions, including Christianity.

And the vision that keeps me going back to my chair every morning is that I believe the time I spend there in the silence will help me to be more consistently true to those values, that what I know with my mind will become more deeply rooted in my heart; that what I DO would then fall naturally out of those entrenched values as I make choices along the way.

Because as long as those values are just floating in my brain, not grounded in the fiber of my being, I can't seem to rely on myself to be that consistent. I have lots of other less admirable passions, thoughts, actions and responses going on in my head which get in the way of being the person I long to be. The apostle Paul said it beautifully for all of us in Romans 7:19-20:

I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. (The Message version of the Bible)

Again -- it's the issue of consistency: I know who I want to be, but I can't seem to sustain that very effectively. Which is why I meditate; it seems to make that more possible.

Now it seems inevitable that someone, reading this, will remember that famous Emerson quote from his essay on self-reliance: "consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." Ah, but this is the value of education! What I learned in college is that the ACTUAL quotation is "A FOOLISH consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

So how would we define a foolish consistency? My guess, whatever smaller definitions or examples we might come up with, is that ultimately a foolish consistency would be the opposite of openness and mindfulness: I did it this way once, so I will do it that way again. When I eat chocolate I feel better, so I should eat chocolate all the time. I like it, therefore I'll ignore other foods that have beneficial effects at other levels; I won't pay attention to or be mindful of the needs of my bones or muscles or digestive system for protein, fruit, vegetables, etc.

Another kind of foolish consistency is to make broad assumptions based on small data points: some Muslim people destroyed the World Trade Center therefore all Muslims are bad. Some Christians declared war on Iraq therefore all Christians are warmongers. Christians say Jesus is about love but then there are horrors like the Inquisition and the Holocaust, so all Christians are hypocrites. Or, to put it on a smaller, more personal level, this person did a bad thing, therefore he or she is a bad person.

In choosing to stick with my meditation practice, even when days or weeks go by where I am twitchy and restless the whole time, I am working on a different kind of assumption: that by continually, determinedly, consciously working to connect with that part of me that is inseparable from both the Divine and all creation, that eventually that awareness will manifest itself more effectively in my daily life. I will make better choices, react with more compassion, listen carefully to those inner voices, and act in ways that are more consistent with my stated beliefs.

Now you could say that consistency is boring, predictable; like the arches in this image, a set of identical instances repeated ad infinitum over time. It makes me think of a youtube video my husband shared with me; a Chris Rock routine (distastefully littered with F-words) about how marriage is boring.

But I think that just as the sameness of the arches repeating across this image serves to set off the glory of the sky above, there is still another value to consistency; that by adhering to consistency at the personal level, our vision can be more open to the infinite majesty, variety, and possibility of the divine creation which surrounds us. Though marriage may seem boring from the outside, the fact is that the reliability and steadiness that partnership provides can, at its best, free us to pursue the larger, more creative purposes life has to offer.

And though it may sound like a week spent meditating in silence would also be incredibly boring, the fact is that I was looking forward to it, to the way I knew it would open my heart and reveal the Divine within. Instead my heart is being opened another way, here at home, as I wait with Pippa to see what our day will bring.

This can be boring, too, sitting around the house watching a cat. But she has things to teach me, I'm sure, just as Cynthia did. And I won't learn unless I pay close attention. Think of it as another kind of mindfulness practice.

It's all good.