I went out to a small remote farm near the Little Colorado River this week for a couple of days and one night. I go there to help out the farmer on various projects that involve a lot of labor and love. The farmers are Sufis, and so I borrowed their copy of Coleman Bark's The Essential Rumi during the night I spent between our two workdays.
With strong intention, and a virtual certainty that Rumi's poetry would never, will never fail to press my soul to the window of God's eyes, and bathe me in their tears -- in this knowledge I opened the book "at random" somewhere and read Chapter 14. There are three poems in that chapter, and the first one, entitled "Love Dogs", ends with this:
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.
Rumi puts his finger on my cry button even when I'm just selecting the portion I want to blockquote. But they are always literal tears of joy, so nothing to get hung up on.
I'm a love dog. Some money is necessary -- the Sufis give me some money to work with them, unless I'm milking the goats and minding the animals during their absence. In that case, in return for a quiet retreat which happens to include tending animals and eating really excellent natural food, freshly gathered eggs and fresh raw goat milk, I just have to feed and milk twice a day for a couple of days at a time, while I am there and they are gone. Both exchanges are very equal, I can assure you.
And how can you put a price on communion with Rumi (via Rumi?) in a cabin next to a camel pen, listening to the similarity between the chewing of the cud and the ticking of the wall-clock? I cannot do such accounting. I have no need of it.
But if we have food and covering, with these we will be content. - 1 Timothy 6:8
Who is content with contentedness will always be content. - Tao te Ching
The farm that I live and work on obtains from me the very best of my broad skill set, everything I can muster to offer, in return for food and shelter, fuel, and tools and space to work with. I've got a degree in Business Administration, production machining experience, production management, software development, web development, mathematical investigation, carpentry, and a healthy hardworking body and mind. How much should they pay me to operate the screw-cutting lathe? How about writing a grant proposal? How about designing a database with a graphical interface representing the garden beds and the varieties of plants that we cultivate, for managing the growing season? How much are any of these things worth? How about trenching with a mattox? What's the going rate for this? I cannot do such accounting.
I have no need of it.
I recently heard an interview on Coast to Coast AM in which the participants were discussing the development of the organs in the womb. The heart develops and begins beating, for its own mysterious reasons and by no discernible outside impulse -- before the brain similarly and mysteriously "turns on" a few days later. The heart beats before the brain commands it. Furthermore, the assertion was made, that in monitoring the nerve signals transmitted between the heart and brain, 70% is initiated by the heart. Which explains, among other things, the irrationality of falling in love. In both of these physiological facts, the heart is preeminent to the brain.
The spiritual path -- there is only one, and it is the one you are on -- hopefully marks the crossroads where the heart opens. Every spoken word and parable and poem and verse are designed to intersect with a moment of clarity and love. It is a balancing of our energy centers in our bodies, wherein the heart rules them all. A love dog is open at the heart, and everything else basks in her heart.
But eventually I have begun to feel the physical flow and balance of the heart of love, of lovingkindness, of the giving of my life in joy to works of mind and matter, out of love for whoever is in the vicinity. This is something that has happened in my body and that I feel very strongly after a year and a half of whatever it is that I am doing. It is, I suppose, spiritual, but it just feels like a body thing -- I can explain exactly what it feels like to work from the heart, without any esoteric concepts. And I know that requiring payment for my work somehow extinguishes the light that making a gift of myself brings to my world.
Jesus said, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of heaven. -The Gospel of Thomas.
Putting our whole heart with love into our working with each other is a natural state. It is a wellspring of surprising beauty in our shared experiences. The brain is subservient to the loving participation of the heart in everything. This brings to mind the sad ending of the film, "Into the Wild." The dying stranded traveler writes, "Happiness must be shared to be real." It's true. Nice marginal note to come across, as well.
I cannot think the old way about jobs, salaries, careers, credit, money any longer. But I think I may be forging, one of many who is always trying to forge, a new way of being in the world, which is based on useful participation in a community with an open and loving heart. Seems to be working.