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One thing we are sure to meet when accepting life as adventure ~ confusion. One of my first memories of confusion was as a little boy, being raised in a Christian home and hearing much about God. I recall looking into the night sky, thinking, "If God is the first thing, where did God come from?" I was already being introduced to a question I could not answer, to confusion, but I was okay with it, not feeling a need to press toward an answer. I still love the questions beyond an answer, this invites me to live in wonder.
Yet, confusion, I was taught, was not a good thing, was a bad thing to be overcome, or ignored as a threat to faith. I once was enjoying a conversation with my paternal grandfather. Tommy Arthur was a thinker, he cherished questions that had no answer. I was then a teenager. We enjoyed our sharing about some religious matters that left us both befuddled, while my dad listened quietly. After leaving granddad's house, on the way home my father sternly informed me, in a disparaging way, not to get into such tasteless discussion like that with grandpa. I could not understand why, it all seemed honest to me. I did not see it as a threat to faith, but an enjoyment of it, an invitation to explore it, and life.
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Reading Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's Orderly Chaos many years ago, I was invited to see confusion as neither good nor bad, simply energy, energy providing opportunity. So, confusion is rich with potential, living and fertile. In fact, we do not overcome confusion to awaken to Life, awakening to Life and confusion are one, as Trungpa writes in Illusions's Game: in Mahamudra, a tradition of nondual Buddhism, confusion and realization are simultaneous, coemergent. Prior, in dualistic teachings, one seeks to overcome confusion in order to evolve spiritually. Now, one invites it, confusion, as with its friend chaos, is good compost for our heart garden. If I had to choose between two books, All the Questions or All the Answers, I would choose the former, that would be the honest way anyway.
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Confusion is an invitation to work creatively toward clarity, and so confusion enhances, in this way, communication and communion. Of course, life is confusing, how could it not be? Relationship is confusing, how could it not be? We are confusions to ourselves, how could we not be? The question, "What is life?" or "Who am I?" or "What is going to be after death?" is confusing. How could it not be?
I recall Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche having written: everything is workable. That was liberating, when I first read that over twenty years ago. See, life is like a mandala, with all this moving, ever-shifting energy, all this ungraspable fluidity, and when we approach life as invitation to create with, rather than complain about or kick against, life becomes an adventure, a sacred pilgrimage. In this, we are not simply living a life, we are living as Life, we are in-Love-with Life. Then, we are on pilgrimage. And this means joy, not necessarily a life of pleasure, and the world and Earth so much needs now our joy. So, we can move with confusion and chaos, toward harmony, seeing these mandala offerings as something we can work with, can respect, can cooperate with as helpful, beneficial, even a blessing.
Continued...
