Why Not Do Nothing?

I have to confess that I have, throughout my life, been one of the world's worst when it comes to this topic.

This past weekend and early this week, my daughter and I decided to put on a protest of sorts against the big rodeo event that travels through Ogden, UT each year as a part of the Pioneer Days celebrations. (For the negative one readers who look at this blog site, Pioneer Days is a Utah state celebration of the Mormons who settled in the state in the 19th century.) I thought that it was finally time for me to begin to express myself on the topics about which I am passionate, and animal rights is one of those topics. The animals in rodeos today are typically tame by nature (unlike the 19th century beginnings of the rodeo when the animals used were truly wild and there may have been a certain danger, if not stupidity, element involved for the cowboys participating in the events), which means that, in order to induce the bucking, shucking, and generally fucking ridiculous behavior of the bulls, horses, and cattle seen in rodeos, electric prods, spurs, and bucking straps (many times painfully rigged with sharp points and squeezing and pinching the genitals of the poor animals) must be used. All these tools of pain and torture come in handy when it comes to making the "cowboys" look brave and skilled, but, as you can see, it is all just a sham. Like wrestling except in wrestling there are no innocent victims.

It is obvious to see the innocent, choiceless victims in any rodeo are the animals who endure such tools of torture for our barbaric entertainment. Well...it is obvious to me, anyway. Really, I think it is obvious to all of us, but we would just rather ignore that little voice that we have all but silenced inside us that asks us is this what we are really all about as the most powerful species on earth? Hmmm. These provoking tools of torture are not the only negative experience for the animals in rodeos. No, it gets worse:

Horses have been enraged by the prods so much that they burst out the gates at dangerous speeds and have crashed into the fences and had their necks broken on the spot. Bulls are wrestled down with violent jerks of the neck and have been left to suffer with broken necks for almost half an hour before they were euthanized. Calf roping (in my opinion, the most disgusting of the events at a rodeo) involves child cattle being strangled by ropes flung round their newborn necks, which are then ripped backward along with the rest of their bodies all while laughing and indifferent spectators look on. We are a cold race, indeed.

All my life, I have had a voice. I have had ideas. I have had feelings and understandings surrounding how I choose to live my life and who I choose to be. Yet, for much of my time on this planet, I have been taught to fear giving expression to that voice, those ideas and feelings and understandings. People will use your truth to hurt you, many have said to me. People don't care what you have to say, some have implied to me. It won't matter if you do speak up; people don't listen and you can't change them, we have all apathetically uttered in our minds at one point or another (and usually after all the years of being taught the other two statements).

What is the point, then, huh? Why even bother at all to make the attempt to raise awareness through one's compassion and love and passion for anyone or anything at all. Why not just sit back, let the world continue to crash and burn while minding my own business? No one cares, anyway, right?

Let's take this a step further. Let's talk about some of the spiritual insights that have spread into this world, and look at how many are interpreting these insights. There is an idea that, even if it is not necessarily new, is still revolutionary because so few of us have actually adopted its practice into our lives. This is the idea that there is nothing we have to do in order to be anything we choose. To give a much too brief breakdown of this concept, what is attempting to be conveyed with this statement is that doing is never required to produce being.

For instance, I love to write. When I write, I feel creative, I feel inspiring, I feel exciting, I feel boundless, I feel passion, I feel love. Yet, do I have to do this thing called writing in order to feel these emotions and energies? That is an interesting question. Let's see, I have often (as this blog will attest) detested the work I do to support myself. Yet, over the past month or so, I have been performing a little experiment with me as the guinea pig: I have made the conscious decision that I was going to feel creative, inspiring, exciting, boundless, passionate, and loving while doing the tasks at work that I have all too readily judged to be mundane and useless. What have I found?

Only that I can be all of these energies while doing any menial job. I am learning each day that what I am doing makes no difference at all in what I decide to be. Sure, throughout much of my past life, I have chosen to be reactionary, which means that I was choosing to feel a certain way based on what was happening to me or what I was doing. However, I have read and am now experiencing that this is not the only choice I have. I am discovering that, in fact, it is this choice to be reactionary that nauseates the gut, makes the mind feel ill, and shrinks the heart from most new experiences.

Hmmm. How does this affect the answer to the question, "What is the point of doing anything when no one listens or cares, when people will only use my truth to hurt me, when I can just sit here and be happy and content even while doing nothing to raise awareness in others who are suffering through this life?" I have fallen into this trap, my friends. I have told myself that I do not have to do anything to get involved in making the world a more peaceful and loving experience for all. This statement is true. However, if I am truly being Love or Happy or Peaceful, I have seen for myself that I will choose to do activities that come from these states of being in order to promote more of that beingness in this world.

There is a world of difference between choosing to do something and having to do something.

But before we go there, let me move back just a bit. The trap with regard to being and doing that I referred to above has to do with the fact that most of us have spent our lives doing in order to be something. We do the thing called work hard in order to be abundant. We do the thing called buying a house in order to be secure. We do the thing called tucking in the children in order to be relaxed (that last one is for all us parents out there - lol). Then, we here a revolutionary concept like there is nothing we have to do in order to be anything we choose, and it becomes such a relief to the worn out senses (from all the incessant doing we inflict on ourselves) to hear this that you get sucked into a spiritual apathy as you take a deep breath and essentially decide to ignore all the pain and suffering surrounding you because you are being, man, and that's all you have to do. Right on, brother, give me some skin with yo' funky being self.

This is the trap, and oh is it a deep one. While I say I am being content and peaceful, I watch the world fall apart around me, and I feel something tugging at me about this - something perhaps asking me to act (or do) from my being state of contentment and peace, but now I have a rationalization for why I do not have to listen to this guidance. Now I feel more justified in not letting my voice be heard because not only does nobody listen, but I do not have to do anything.

This spiritual rationalization is a fool's gold, I tell you. It is another lie of the ego that has snuck in to your spiritual life and called itself your being. This movement from being forced to do something to realizing that you are at choice in anything you do is not an excuse to withdraw from the world; rather, it is an invitation to truly create a new world altogether. Understanding this choice means that now you will make the choice to be happy, peaceful, wise, etc., and that you will then do things that come from those states of being. No longer will you be tied to what you are doing in order to produce any state of being, which makes what you are doing that much more powerful, that much more loving.

There are well-documented cases of this. Jesus and Buddha both found the truth that being always precedes doing, but that did not mean that they quit doing. It just meant that what they were doing became invested with the compassion and grace of True Love. Why? Because they did not have to do anything to reveal to others what they had found, but they chose to do something anyway. There are, of course, many others throughout the history of humanity and even in our contemporary society who have reversed this perspective of doing in order to achieve some state of being. In fact, we all have the opportunity to do just that, right now.

Here, however, I want to tie this back into the beginning of this post. I was relating my thoughts on the rodeo and a protest of a local rodeo show that was just here in my town. I knew the rodeo was coming, and I was deathly afraid of what this gentle guiding feeling was asking me to do. My God, this "voice" could not be serious! What it was asking me to do felt like a suicide of sorts. It asked me, unequivically, to lend my voice (that I have spent much of my life repressing at the admonition of others - parents, bosses, teachers, and the like) to raise awareness of the voiceless suffering of these poor animals used for human amusement in rodeos.

I quivered nervously within and without for days as this idea of demonstrating at the rodeo continued to surface above the shallow waves of my egoic mind. People would ridicule me. They would curse me. They would look at me funny. They would hate me. They would ignore me. I would be irrelevant to them. And to go through all of that with little hope of actually getting anyone to change their views on the rodeo! It was a horror to behold this conflict in my mind.

Thus, I delayed taking action until I could ignore the question no longer: How can I claim to trust God if I will not follow where He/She leads me? I started researching how to put on a demonstration. I put up signs (although too late) at work asking others to join me. I got in contact with PETA to try to reach out to other members in the area to join me.

In the end, the only one who came with me into the hostile environment of rodeo-loving human beings was my lovely, kind, and compassionate daughter. I was petrified. I did not want anyone to get violent over our attempt to raise consciousness and do something to hurt her. I did not want to get hurt and not be able to look out for her. But by God, we stood out there anyway, just the two of us, without being tied to the result of how many people would actually listen to our loving plea for everyone to consider the suffering the animals in the rodeo experience.

We did this three nights. We held up picket signs at busy intersections where rodeo patrons had to turn to get to the rodeo. We set a table to hand out leaflets near one of the rodeo ticket gates at the stadium where the rodeo was taking place and while the rodeo was going on. We walked the picket signs around the rodeo grounds, with the rodeo workers spitting at our feet, with women (yes, only women did this, not the men - I find it interesting and worth another whole posting to observe how much women have assimilated themselves into taking on the brute characteristics of testosterone-driven men) yelling at me and cursing me, calling me a "fucking faggot" and other nonsense, and when no one would take any leaflets to learn more about the cruelty to animals perpetrated by rodeos, we walked around putting the leaflets under the windshield wipers of the cars and trucks of those attending the rodeo in hopes that maybe some of the people, when removing the leaflets from their windshields would actually take a second to look at the information about the tortures endured by these animals. We did all of this, and I tell you that, although I was frightened each night we were there, I was also evolving. I was remembering what life was like before I let my voice be taken away by harsh step-parents, foolish teachers, controlling religion, and enslaving bosses. I connected, once again, with that eternal essence of Love and Goodness within me that I have been so ashamed of up to now. That shame led me to keep silent in the face of atrocities. That shame led me to fear the wrath of those who would disagree with me. That shame led me to run from the rejection of people who would ridicule my puny position on the matter.

But two of us, a father and his little daughter, stood out there and shined forth more light and brought through themselves more powerful energy of Love than all the masses at that rodeo combined.

I decided to be trusting of my Soul, and it led me to do what would fulfill the experience of that trust. I am humbled and grateful for the truth this experience revealed to me about myself and about my daughter.

Pretentious

Is there anybody as lonely as me? Is there any life as pointless as mine? How many words have I deleted to hide from all the chasm opening wide shadowing over and engulfing my insides? They creep into the words: the fears I must hide. There are lies to cover the lies that lied about the liar who resides now in a desert of dried waste. Why even bother with anything at all?

The sun, that last ray of hope, falls from the sky, leaving me here so alone. I walk for no reason where no reason would wander. Head down and eyes closed, I cross the traffic in the road, hoping against hope that no one will see me until it's too late. The other side is better now that I left it. But now I am here, and no relentless longing will change this fact.

What? I've never left this house? All have walked out on me. No one believes in anything anymore. Everyone hates the one who stands up and proclaims, "Enough!" It is a most lonely existence. Diligence will be punished by insidious behaviors even from the ones professing their love. I find it hard not to hate.

I can just sit here and loathe you for a lifetime. Your treachery runs so deep; the disdain in you gives rise to the contempt in me. DON'T YOU FUCKING TALK TO ME WITH THAT TONE IN YOUR VOICE! I can yell louder, punch harder, claw deeper than you. What's burning you is what's positively consuming me. I would gladly tear your face from your skull to show you the error of your ways.

It is just the loneliest feeling to have to die all by oneself. No one else will join me. Everyone else gets to keep living just the way they are. I am afraid, but one look at the decaying of your face tells me that to live your life is worse than death. Perhaps you will hold close my memory once I am gone. Because I am dead does not mean you must remember me fondly. The legacy of the dead buries the dead even as I die.