Mistakes Do Not Exist

Prologue: 

The aforementioned blog title occurred to me last night, while experiencing an emotional crisis of internal origin.  In truth, I had been contemplating this topic since I had begun work upon the hardest thing I've done in my life thus far:  forgiving myself.  Forever and a day, have I quite often contemplated (as I know so many other souls do as well) the "what if" questions of choices we've been made, or that others have made.  From the smallest decisions that seem so insignificant that they don't appear to influence any other lives, to the largest buttons being pressed by those who regulate entire nations -- all of these variables combine through parallel and perpendicular coordinates of time and space and other dimensions far beyond my humble comprehension.  Like electrons or photons whose spin will be detected as dependent upon the other regardless of distance between two the two subatomic particles, I had a sudden and profound sense of change in the world that occurs from something as simple as the cockroach I killed last night or the bacteria dying inside my mouth when I choose to brush my teeth.  It isn't to say I think that in cleansing my teeth twice or thrice a day, I am brewing hurricanes along the gulf of Mexico or stewing up more earthquakes along the already-ravaged coast lines of Asia (my heart pours out not only for the victims of Japan, but for those in Africa and the Middle East, and South America, and those I have passed in the streets of Sacramento).

Yet when I kill a cockroach at 2AM on a Wednesday morning, just before I a try to crawl into bed for a few hours respite from my tangled neurons, I am altering the timeline of the world.  No matter how minuscule, (to steal lyrics from Sting):  every breath you take, every move you make, every smile you fake -- you are indeed altering the course of others around you.

If I send a text message to someone, if I send an email to someone.  If I think about sending a message to someone, and do not -- all of these choices change microcosms that alter macrocosms that create the indecipherable yet all too predictable fractal of the living universe.



Postulate: The Divine divides itself into the infinite that we perceive, and yet retains itself in the whole that are the billion upon billion stars and molecules and quarks and smiles and grass hoppers and gloomy weeping willows.



Contemplation:

Over here, right now I sit at a desk in Sacramento.  While I wait for my actual work that I conduct in sansara, I write abstractions of my interactions with you who are reading this, with the people I rode beside on the bus, with the birds flying overhead, and with the tangle of people I cherish as holy and sacred.  Every single person to whom I have said dearest friend and smiled with genuine concern, every single one of you has affected me as I know I have affected you.  Like magnets, like energy-wave-matter-particle-perception-inconceivable dream-wake-dreariness, this stream of consciousness that I dare assign my current name to:  all that is, all that was, all that will be -- there are no mistakes.

Even that which I have regretted or wished to have pass but did not, these intentions or misinterpretations or miscommunications and chances that have passed -- these are not things I can regret any longer.  For had not this very specific sequence of events occurred, I would not be able to offer this humble stream of consciousness to you, now.  From where I sit, watching the world watch me, it is with meaning and without meaning; I am an inconceivable question to myself that I am attempting to answer.  These are not mistakes, even when these actions or these words or these silences have caused me to weep or wring my hands and tear at my back.  Even when the blood upon my hands is not my own, these are not mistakes.  These are lessons, and lyrics that have come to pass.  In a composition I cannot sing, since I was never taught to read sheet music, I can still give thanks even for those moments that have nearly driven me to complete annihilation.

Does any of this make sense to anyone else but me?  I do not worry.  I write these blog entries for myself, in the hopes that the process of pressing keys will bring me a lighter heart.  Nay, my heart is already full, brimming with the sweet wine of graciousness that I may be here, right now, breathing, listening to the music of someone I will never meet.  How miraculous!

For a long time, so many people have called me arrogant or proud or egotistical.  For so long, I was made to feel guilty for the bite I took from the meal I had dared to cook for myself.  I tried to slit my own wrists (figuratively).  I tried to use white out to erase myself from past blog entries, from photographs, from people's cell phones; I tried to isolate myself from the rest of the world, so that the world could be pure of me.  Then a friend sends me a text thanking me for being there oh so many years ago, to listen.  A friend calls me on the phone, asking if I'd like to share a pitcher of beer and celebrate their success.  A friend calls me, weeping over a relationship about to hit the cliffs and sink beneath the stormy seas -- and I hesitate to answer the phone.  I think:  I am not important enough to need a phone.

I do not matter.

But that is another form of sansara, the world delusion.

It is just an inversion of the ego.



-1 x (ego)

And thus, there is still ego involved.

Staring at this equation like a cloud in the sky drifting across the sun, I thought further.  I suddenly realized and said to myself:  it is actually egotistical to call something an error or a mistake.

Thus, in my humble opinion, I must offer these words:  it is arrogant to assume that anything we have felt anguish over in life, anything that we did not agree with, was a mistake.  In calling something a regret or a mistake, we  are daring to say "our perspective is the only perspective that matters".

Now that is real arrogance.



Conclusion:

 My opinion only really matters to me, and to anyone who wishes to consider it something valid and viable.  I would never ask anyone to listen to what I have to say.  I listen to myself because I am myself.  This is what I am.  I stop removing myself from the equation and committing the sin of trying to destroy myself.  I stop trying to commit a form of suicide that would actually not only harm myself, but all those that I am so blessed to interact with!  How dare I insult those whose radiant affection and kindness has enriched my life beyond my wildest dreams.  So, to honor any and all friends and family, I am going to stand with my back straight, when I have the strength to do so.  I am going to stride forward.  Here I am, dearest loved ones.  I have made no mistakes.  I am merely learning, and the more I learn, the more ignorant and blissful I become.  As the infinite fills my eyes and folds up into my pockets, I am the sunlight in all directions.

There are no mistakes, merely experiences and lessons I hope I can truly take into account in my continued evolution.  Cause and effect.  That I live, I have the option to change.  That I change, I live.