"Pogo's Syndrome"

When you turn to the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of John and go down to the relevant verse you’ll encounter, “These things I have spoken unto you, that my JOY might remain in you, and that your JOY might be full.”

There you have it! A one-sentence peek into the cosmic rationale that inspired the long ago prophet we’ve come to know as Jesus to walk the dusty byways of ancient Judea delighting minds and enchanting hearts with a teaching that was so pure and so inspired it’s still haunting us this Carolina springtime, nagging at us to wake up; take a deep breath, feast our eyes on the redbud and the daffodils and EN-JOY the grace.

Can’t you just hear Him, bopping down the road of His life on a sweet, swinging beat, singing, “how pretty the tree, how pretty the bee, how pretty you and how pretty me?” Leaving no doubt that the name of His game is EN-JOY and that we are here to refine our capacities to toast the whimsical, applaud the absurd, love the ludicrous, adore the arrogant, embrace the enigmatic, welcome the witless, and perfect playfulness as primary response to the ever-changing flow of form and circumstance we call our lives.

Sound like a plan? And what better time on earth could there possibly be to work on our capacity to express light-hearted levity as our basic nature than NOW! Are we blessed, or what!

So, what’s preventing us from feasting on a steady diet of chuckles as basic emotional nutrition? As I consider the question, one thing becomes eminently apparent. Unless I get clear on the identity of the “who” that’s really responsible for making a light-hearted relationship with the “Now” hard to come by, I’ll surely stay lost in the fantasy that there’s an “it” out there that’s responsible for turning my joy into a rock and a hard place.

Not!!!

Regarding the identity of the “who” that’s truly the culprit, Walt Kelly said it best when he had Pogo observe, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

And there we have it. Try as we may to shift blame and disown responsibility for our emotional downtime, the truth lies clear and undisguised... each one of us is individually responsible for the thoughts we think and agree with, thus the feelings those perceptions inevitably give birth to.

If we are thinking and agreeing with thoughts that are spiritually uninformed, (the “what’s happening” or “perception” part of this equation) it’s straight to an emotional lock-down of one kind or another, be it frustration, resentment, anxiety, guilt, etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseaum. And, as Jesus advised in Matthew 5:26, we’ll stay in lock-down ”till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing,” which is Aramaic for, “until you’ve milked your drama dry.” There just isn’t any slack in the system. “As a man thinketh, in his heart so is he..." and, of course, her as well.

On the other hand, if your perception of ongoing reality is based on thoughts that pass the muster of being true witness, of “good report”, it’s “zippity-doo-dah” and welcome to the “Joy” of the Lord!

So, the dance we are doing is the cosmic exercise of learning to talk to ourselves about our life and times using mental constructs that are chaste and free of any hint of “bearing false witness.” And how, exactly, do we “bear false witness?” Oh my, let me count the ways.

Any time we find ourselves describing an experience using thinking patterns that are earth treasure oriented (a.k.a. spiritually uninformed), it is absolutely inevitable that we’ll come away with a perception of our life that will severely challenge our capacity to maintain our basic nature of lighthearted contentment.

As we begin to carefully observe our mind at play, we’ll inevitably wake up to how different aspects of our life influence cognitive function. We’ll become familiar with its different patterns of thought processing. We’ll notice the kinds of thinking that lead to more suffering, more pain, to greater tightness and contraction. And, we’ll gradually refine our capacities to withhold agreement from any kind of thinking that perpetuates suffering.

Conversely, our commitment to watching mind-at-play like we would “watch a rattlesnake” will reveal the patterns of thinking that lead to more spaciousness and openness, to a free, easy, and joyful relationship with ourselves and anything else that is populating our moment.

And in that discovery we’ll find that the key to making our joy “full” is to stand at the gate of agreement and tenaciously refuse to grant passage or credence to any collection of thoughts and images that don’t first satisfy the scrutiny of a witness nature grounded in an abiding clarity that intuitively separates the “wheat” of Truth from the “chaff” of false witness. My daughter calls that divine capacity her “bull-shit detector.” May each of you be so blessed.

In the meantime, know that you are well loved and deeply appreciated in this here heart.

Be well, be at peace and...

Enjoy the Grace!
~ Chad

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