Note: Some of this may come from my working through thoughts after a cool story I heard about some neuroscientists who invented one of those machines that they put on people’s heads to measure their thoughts and brain waves etc. The scientists took this head helmet contraption to a monastery to study the brain waves and thoughts of a group of Buddhist monks, but when the scientists asked the monks to put the machines on their heads, all the monks burst out laughing. When the brain-experts asked why they were laughing the monks told them they had designed the machine incorrectly and that if they wanted to measure people’s thoughts, the machines had to be designed to fit here — and they all pointed at their hearts.
My Small Lizard-Self — A Mish-mashed Essay on Meaning
By Jane Tawel
I am but a small, small person, living in an age of gigantic egos, no matter the reality of who they are, and no matter the justification. And the biggest ego of all — the biggest problem of all — the biggest complaints and worries and angerings of all that make my life miserable and fraught and painful is my own out-of-bounds, out-of-control, out-of-all-proportion Ego. People, who know me, may think they are being kind and truthful when they poo-poo this statement about me. And all the world’s psychologies and philosophies and spiritualities will try to help me or dissuade me from this albatross of my understanding of what the world’s problems are. Oh, I see the world’s problems and wrestle daily with the knowledge that if only every single person — my family members, my friends, the government, the religious leaders, and the silly squirrels and rather stupid lizards and one-minded ants would JUST LISTEN TO ME — well then truth, justice, and correct behavior would be universal if everyone would just listen to this darn smartness I have about how to fix everyone and everything. And you know I am right, because that is exactly what you think about yourself, right? (This is where if this were a text I would put a laughing hysterically emoji. So, I will just say –ha! ha!).
See what I mean, though, about my ego? And after the last years of studying the Greats — those who realized that their ego was a burden to let go of and that only by “laying down their lives” could they truly have Abundant Life and be their True Self — I have imbibed a lot of good hints about Who I Am meant to be and How to get there and What the real purpose of all our lives is and Where I should be using my desire to give and be of good use, and above all Why — Why I should gladly “die to my small self, the ego” and Live to the Spacious Self, the Deep I, the unattached Buddha, and the Love of Enemy Christ. (And yes, those capitalized words are the penultimate, Ultimate and well-documented for effective truth-gathering “Investigative Questions”.) And I love learning all that important stuff about The Soul of myself and The Soul of the World, and God, and my True Nature — and then I go out and just snuggle back down into the bed of my narcissistic, ego-driven, comfy little lumpy small self.
My ego’s biggest fears right now can be reduced perhaps to two: First, I see that we humans are literally intent on destroying the world, people and planet and all; and this makes me fearful and very sad and very angry because humans can be incredible and none of us (don’t lie to yourself) none of knows what really happens to humans when they or all this world are gone forever (Great humans = Mozart, Dickinson, Usain Bolt, Ghandi, Teresa of Avila…). And also the planet is the most beautiful, awesome thing I have personally every experienced (Trees! Aforementioned squirrels, lizards, and ants. The Ocean. Little streams that make their way around rocks and fallen branches. Rain and also, sunlight falling on an open page. My children’s hands and our knees — aren’t knees amazing!? And flowers — I mean, Why God? Why useless, lovely things like flowers? Oh, this glorious world!) And none of us really knows (don’t kid yourself) if there is some other place somewhere that is anything as glorious and delightful and awe-inspiring as this dear, dear place we call Earth with these unique creatures from bees to rhinoceroses to people. I mean Jesus said it — The Kingdom of Heaven isn’t out there, it is here on Earth, among you, within you — earth and humans = Perfect World. But of course, it isn’t. Cuz — well, our egos. We don’t want the perfection that is or at least could be, because then we would all have to give up our egos and just share it all with each other and love each other and be joyful and peaceful and how boring would that be? (See Book of Genesis for allegorical proof of this should you need proof.)
Secondly, my biggest fear can be reduced to one word: Time. Running out of it (from being late to not getting a project finished on time to dying — the ultimate running out of Time). There is also the constant monkey-mind fear of not being present in this moment of time and constantly trying to anticipate or actually anticipating what it might or might not bring me tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow as it “creeps in this petty pace from day to day” (Yep. Shakespeare — Another great human to mourn the possible eradication of from the memory of the Universe if we kill the planet and ourselves.) (Does the Universe even have memory? Does it need memory? I don’t know. Stop asking me these hard questions. I’m tired.)
And the ego has long accepted platitudes and mockeries of faith to shore up its sandy shores upon which I have built the house I call my home — my ego, my small self. And it is only in small ways that I have started to piece together a new shelter, a shelter cobbled together from bits and pieces and wrecked ships on past shores of desire and dreams and beliefs, and my soul or True Self has begun to seek that which creates in me a small sanctuary, created from moments of mystery, the calm of curiosity, the unfailing truth of Unknowing, and in lighting the small wick of Love in my small self for all people, all things, and all that is “not me” and perhaps is God. And for a few little seconds at a time I can dwell in the difficult but loving reality I happen to achieve in nano-seconds of letting go, of opening up, and of quieting and lovingly rejecting all that races as a false reality in my ego-driven mind, and I stop momentarily the babble of my brain and with my heart I listen for the Still Small Voice of “peace that passes understanding”.
***
Last week I was in and out of my back door hanging up laundry. My husband and I like to hang up laundry when we can because not using our dryer is pretty easy in California all year long, (it rarely rains, alas) and it is a small thing we can do for the environment. It has also become a rather “Zen” activity for me and gives me a sense of connection to eons of women doing small tasks with our hands in the open-air, praising the sun and breeze as gifts for our good and our pleasure. Our back French doors are a bit wiggledy-woggledy, and if you aren’t focused and careful, there is a slight crack left open when you sort of swing it shut which you have to kinda’ do, to be honest, with a basket full of laundry in your hands. I hung the clothes and came back in to find a small mama-lizard (I know it was a mama by the size — in SoCal you get to know the lizards in your yard — the baby ones are soooooo cute!). Mama-lizard had rapidly, sneakily, foolishly, crawled inside to warm herself on the warm sunny grey kitchen floor. Now, that would be fine, but eventually, the lizard would realize that once inside she didn’t really have escaping capabilities (or brains –I am not being judgmental here, cuz well, lizards, well… evolution, people. Lizards — not meant to be all that high up on the smarts chart.)
I hate for anything to be in danger of harm or especially danger of death. On walks, if I see a silly squirrel start to dash across the street with a nut in his mouth, unconscious of oncoming cars, I call out: “Don’t do that, Silly. Be careful.” I often caution the deer who come down from the foothills to be safe out there and try to head back up as soon as they can. And my dear bees who throng busily around my lavender are such marvels, but they do buzzily worry so when I come in the evening to water the plants. I always let them know to stay up high (“When I go low, you go high!” To paraphrase Michelle Obama, another great human). “I won’t spray you, dear girls. I love you. (Bees busily buzzing in their beautiful business around our plants are girls — I used to call them “guys” but if you think about it, of course those lovely busy honey-giving, plant-pollinating nurturers are Female! I mean, it makes me feel sorry for Queens to think about the queen bees having to stay inside doing nothing but making more baby bees with AI drone bees. Makes me happy to be born one of the female worker bees out here.)
So, the mama-lizard gets into the house, and I realize I have to get her out. If you have ever tried to catch a lizard — well, you will have a clear picture of just how fast I failed. So, if lizards are stupid, what does that make me? I was actually very smart. I quickly got a colander (air holes) and a thick piece of cardboard (sturdy). I cornered the scampering (well, sort of quickly slithering, to be honest) lizard but then — I choked. I knew the lizard could grow a tail again if I accidently bashed the colander down on it but I am really rather mechanically challenged and I feared I would clang the pot down on its head and I didn’t think lizards could regrow their heads, even though they do have very small, barely functioning brains. And when I choked, mama-lizard dashed under the washing machine. End of lizard. End of story.
Except it wasn’t. Because speaking of small-brained dingbats, the next day I left a crack in the French doors and Another Lizard Came In! Wash. Hang clothes. Repeat human stupidity. I came closer this time with the colander/cardboard trick, but this lizard got back behind a cabinet. End of story. End of my saving lives. End of my Mother-Teresa-ing it, and doing great things with love by a small person.
I spent the rest of that lizard-losing-and probably-dying day mourning mama and papa lizard and all lizards and all lives and feeling like a failure and thinking all kinds of Nietzsche-esque thoughts about the meaningless of life and in particular the meaningless of my small self- life. I mean who can’t manage to wield a colander and piece of cardboard to save someone’s life? Ugh! Useless me.
But the next day, a miracle occurred. Because miracles are really just those moments when you have given up your small self and ego enough to just not know anything and so all the walls and doors and boundaries and ideas that close you off to something happening can happen– despite yourself, despite your beliefs, despite your accomplishments and also, well, — just “despite” — and when you give-up, then a small little crack in the unreality you have created about yourself and the world and Nature and God — opens to the Reality and through that little crack, the miracle of one, small act of Grace can sneak in.
Here is proof of miracles. The next morning, one of the lizards came out from hiding and sat patiently waiting for me in the small shaft of sunlight coming through the crack in the door and I said to the lizard, “Please don’t run away. May I just open the door for you?” And my small little nobody of a self, quietly, calmly, without overthinking, opened the door, skooched behind mama-lizard and with one small, old, very-human foot gently guided forward and through the door-crack one small lizard — back into her lovely, lizardy world and home to her waiting, anxious family.
***
I don’t know the meaning — neither the small little meaning of why I was allowed to be born and live this long, wonderful life I have lived, nor the meaning of why I was graced with saving one life of one lizard, or why I was given the gift of my family, and friends, and my particular Space and Time on this planet; and I don’t know what or if I will have any meaning after this body and brain die; and I definitely do not know the Meaning of “It” “All”. And the biggest tragedy of my life is nothing any one has done to me but rather what I have done to myself in thinking I have to know too much of anything at all and not just live as much Love as I can, embracing all the wonder, all the beauty, all the gifts, and all the joy — in just the miracle of being alive, in just this moment.
Maybe the sole reason I have lived was to witness the salvation of one small lizard and to know that in the end, there is nothing I can do but accept the miracle of grace by opening to the small cracks that let in the Sun. In my smallness is the greatness of grace. And therein, I may find the truly miraculous meaning of it all and a stillness and peace with a mind like a small lizard that needs to know very little, except how to open my heart to everyone and everything and with Love, follow the Light.
Back where I am from there is a saying “She’s a ‘Beaut, Isn’t She?” (Pronounced “Byoot”) Translated out of Midwestern or Southern dialect, one might say, “That is very Beautiful” or “She is a Beauty”. Calling something a “beaut”. is often used when referring to a new purchase like a car, or a baby crib, or a cow. There is another saying that may have come to some minds when they read my title, another “B” word that we often link to Karma. It is a word which, as a woman, I dislike intensely and try never to utter. But then also, I have come to connect Karma not with the idea that many Westerners do, which is a type of justice or just deserts (pronounced as in “desserts” with two s’s although spelled with one “s”). Karma is the idea that every action — good, bad, and neutral — have logical and unerringly correct consequences. It goes along with the other spiritual teachings and all true historical worldviews, and along the lines of “Do good and good will come to you”; “You reap what you sow”; poetic justice and just deserts; and so forth. “True Truth, Karma is”, (said in the voice of that wise one called Yoda). Then there is the karmic connection that one can not help but come to mind when I have seen the latest news and social media hype about a person who died last week, and that karmic saying really often does feel like it deserves the other “B” word: “you live by the sword, and you will die by the sword”. Or in America, translated as, “You preached that everyone should be allowed to own and use a gun whenever and however and now you have been killed by a gun that someone had the freedom to use because of people like you.” Karma is often, indeed, if not the “B-word”, oh, so situationally ironic.
I know there are people who are sad about the death of this man who was killed by a gun. In this country, as perhaps in many Western countries, there are several problems surrounding this. The first is that we deny the fact of death and the very real reality that everyone is going to die. So we are just super-duper shocked when someone actually dies. And what with the uber hype of social media and the talking heads that claim they are giving us “news” (Definition of “news” according to the dictionary: newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events.) Hence, I try these days to skim headlines, just to make sure I don’t have to pack my car for the next SoCal fire or to inform myself on what I might expect to find (or not find) at my local grocery, and I move on to more important things — like reruns of “Columbo” on Netflix. Otherwise I can lose whole decades and globs of hair I tear out obsessing about the latest machinations and tweets of crazy people.
The second thing that social media does to skew our view is to make us feel we “know” people that we don’t actually know. I am very glad I never knew anything about — not even the name — of this man that was killed by a gun this past week. He is possibly rolling in his grave to hear that, but there it is. I try my darnedest to spend my valuable and rapidly running out days left on this earth reading about people past and present who matter and who share or increase my understanding of what I, as a little human being, have been called to do (or not do) while I exist as matter on this earth so that in some way, I might matter — not because I am great or famous but because I love. And I believe one thing when I can’t seem to believe anything else, and that is that Love never dies. Love is in some way, some how — Eternal. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that every one, whether they know it or not, lives according to a WORLD- VIEW. I believe my greatest task left to me is to walk that so-called, “narrow path”, The Trustful, Truthful Way, the Tao — and to try my best to stop doing harm, to spread light and love, and to find the peace that passes my current understanding, with trust that God is Good, and that no matter how many times the Earth is destroyed or we destroy it, that Life, and True Life will keep regenerating from our ashes.
Thirdly, there are so many people in this country, and maybe the world, who have no idea what sorrow is and how to grieve. In fact, we deny being sad (we are depressed); we deny grieving (“mama is in heaven now so be happy”); and we deny the fact that we have allowed violence and injustice to thrive in this nation in the name of some idiotic idea that it means we have freedom. In fact, in America, we have taken the word and idea of “freedom”, and made it into a prison of selfish individualism in a nation that cares nothing for its citizens but only for the illusory chimera of wealth for the few and the “bread and circus” promises of winning the lottery for the majority.
Now I am, after having read more headlines about this man who was killed this past week, actually very, very glad I had no idea who he was until recently and that I have no history with ever hearing any thing that came out of his mouth. And please, can we be clear? This man was not “assassinated” like people who were actually killed for speaking up about justice or racial inequity, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This man was not a martyr for his ideals, like Ghandi. This man was murdered by someone who was simply exercising his Second Amendment rights — according to the man who was killed. Do I rejoice in his death? Absolutely not. But not because of him, but because, as that beautiful Christian poet, John Donne, who suffered and sorrowed much, especially over the death of his young son, I believe that “every death diminishes me”. However, do I think this man’s death warrants the hoopla surrounding it. Nope. So, stop reading here if this offends somehow your sensibilities or if you feel that not faking sorrow for a man who did not live in goodness or love for others is a bad thing.
I will tell you about a few of the people that I do not know that I actually do mourn. I mourn the twenty INNOCENT children and six teachers who were murdered at Sandy Hook. (Those children didn’t know that a crazy man was just exercising his Second Amendment rights.) I mourn the deaths of the fourteen students and three staff members killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. (I once lost a job at a Christian school, in part because I allowed my class to participate in the six minutes and twenty seconds of silence for the first “March for Our Lives” national movement day. Long after the scars have healed over, the irony still catches my breath.) I mourn the wives and mothers killed by gun violence in their own homes because their spouse or partner is allowed to keep a weapon despite the fact he is a known domestic abuser. I mourn Trayvon Martin and George Floyd; I mourn Matthew Shephard and Harvey Milk; and already and still — despite the fact it is not the current hot news du jour, I mourn the twenty-nine deaths and sixty serious injuries from school (SCHOOL!!!!) shootings in America in 2025 so far. (When did we stop being shocked by school shootings? That must be the day the soul of America truly died.) And if you get me started on some parts of the rest of the world where children are left to starve and innocent civilians are killed, I will probably implode with disbelief and sorrow to the point I will never stop mourning. “Every death diminishes me”, but the death of innocent children and the death of the innocent reduces me to a pool of sorrow.
Eckhart Tolle has helped me see the current state of many countries in the world, and especially my own nation of the, now seemingly ironically named, “United” States of America. Remember the Corona Virus (for those of you who still believe in science)? Well, we currently have, as Tolle brilliantly sees, a serious mental virus. I would, along with Jesus, be so bold as to call it a spiritual virus as well. That is the only way to explain the absolute insanity of what our government (and others); and some non-government leaders (like those in churches or synagogues or schools); and some random, known and unknown, citizens are believing and “preaching” and doing. It is — no other word for it — INSANE INSANITY. And just as Germany woke up after years of murdering innocent people and labeling people as less than human during the fascist regime of the past (not the current ones). And just as the nation I have loved and long lived in, woke up after we burned women for being witches at the stake because they were strong and outspoken and healers; and woke up after we stole human beings from their land to use as slaves, deeming them less “human” than we were because of their color; and just as we woke up after realizing that women were smart enough to vote and have their own money and property — we might still wake up in time. We might wake up from this horrible nightmare of our own creation in time to save our nation. We might even wake up in time to save other parts of our world, as America has often rallied and risen-up to do. We may even have the guts and righteous reasoning to save our planet.
But we may not.
And with each passing, fearful day, I begin to think perhaps this Insanity Virus, that so many in my country seem to have been infected with, will not be recognized in time and that we will not have the strength or the truthfulness to diagnosis the real problem we have and to turn to the Healers and the Helpers.
And it is, I regret to point out, in great part because we keep breathing in the toxic fumes of people like the man who was murdered this past week. And of course, we keep sucking in the nuclear waste of the supposed leaders who react and mourn this guy who died but not the actual recent assassination of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hotrman.
And we keep denying we have become sick to the point of spiritual death by caring more for what we have (or think we once had) than what we are called to BE. And we think somehow there is not enough to go around, when there is plenty if we are willing to share. And we believe in some future “good” when what we need to do is believe the Truthful Ones, like Jesus, who said, “The Reality of Heaven is NOW, not Then and not Someday. Live Light now, for you are the Light of Awareness and Truth and Love”. And if we lived that way, then we really wouldn’t have to fear death. We could mourn the loss of those who die without losing the sense that as individuals we are impermanent but when we live together in Oneness as part of The One, then death is simply transformation.
When I was in high school, I memorized some scriptures whose meaning has morphed as I have aged and has definitely morphed since I began to see my nation, my world, and myself in different ways. The shock of 2015 for me was that any one who claimed to know or want to know Jesus, the Christ, could ever catch the insanity virus. I thought the “Jesus-Worldview” would make any one immune to worshiping hatred and greed and lies. But as I saw people worship not the Golden Calf of the ancient Hebrews but the Golden Pig(s) of this Uber-Capitalistic Oligarchy, masquerading as supporters of “democracy” and as I witnessed people who would never say a swear word, blaspheming the name of God with their misrepresentation of what we have been told about The Way, and corrupting the ideas of the Judeo-Christian belief system — I realized — people really can go crazy without realizing it. People really have gone insane and I can not imagine they realize they have caught a deadly mental disease. “What does it profit a person if they gain the world (or the Congress or the White House) and lose their soul?”
So here are some things that continue to help me and why I don’t mourn some individual man who spread the Gospel of Hate and whose name will be forgotten in a few years, if not a few weeks. Here are my musings and my meditations on Galatians 2: 20,21)
“I am crucified with Christ”, (that is I die to ego and selfishness and greed and prejudice — and all those things that make me a prisoner of hate and fear) and I am crucified in the way Jesus accepted the reality of suffering and even death and I accept all suffering as crucibles and ultimately the way to Rebirth and Resurrection. “Nevertheless, I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me”, (I seek to know my true “Beingness”, my Soul, my Deep Self that Jesus knew and that God gives all who embrace the “holy spirit”; I seek to live in the Spirit which overcomes not only evil, but also overcomes death. So, when I die to ego and hate and greed and fear, I truly find Eternal Life.) “And the Life which I now live in the flesh, (while I still have a body and still have “stuff”), “I live through the faith of the Son of God” (I trust that I am, as Jesus was and is in a new form, a beloved Child of God), (and so are you, and you, and you, and you and yes, so is even that man who died by a gun and those men and women who are frantically and selfishly intent on destroying our world — we are all beloved children of God) (And so, there has only been and will always be only one Real Reality — and that is Love). (Jane’s current paraphrase of Galatians 2: 20–21)
I will share with you this paraphrased prayer, because I just don’t know what else to say to give you hope, except: May the peace which passes understanding, give you strength to keep fighting and to keep sorrowing and to keep loving to the End of Time and then Beyond Time.
So yes…. Karma is indeed a ‘beaut. Because just as the followers of Jesus wrote, quoted above (albeit in Jane “strange-speak” language), the amazing, wonderous, awesome thing about being a human BEING is that we can, if we choose to, elect to change our overall karmic arc. There are just so many examples of those who have changed their karma — the trajectory of their lives — through one intentionally good action at a time — So many little and great human beings have changed the moral/ karmic arc of their own lives and of history, that the pages in The Good Book can not hold all their names. “We can not all do great things, but we can all do small things with great love”, as that Good Karma Saint, Teresa taught us. And maybe, just maybe, if each one of us allows the Light of Love and Truth and Trust and Hope, to shine through our dense selves, then we will Light a path for those who choose darkness over light, those “blind guides” who choose to lead with hate and fear rather than love and faith. As the children’s song says, “This little light of mine. I’m gonna’ let it shine. Won’t let Satan blow it out — No! I’m gonna’ let it shine”. God willin’ and the creek don’t rise, I will.
I went to a funny little concert a few weeks ago, outside in a big park here in SoCal (SoCal — epicenter of the war waged from afar on justice and kindness). And at the last song of the concert, everyone got out their cell phones and turned on their flashlights and waved them around. Back in the day, we all had lighters to do that, even if we didn’t smoke, and the symbol of a little blaze of fire waving around in one’s teenaged hand was a more complete metaphor back then because of, well, fire. But still, at my recent concert, as you looked around and back and in front and on the overhead screens, you saw a vast ocean of waving lights. All it took, was for this one person to bring the light, and then that one person to bring the light, and then that one, and that one, and that one…. Fear not, my friend and stay strong. And Bring the Light.
You are the “Light of the World”. Let your Light so shine before all human beings, and someday, when you are “going towards the Light”, in those final moments, well, we don’t know what happens next, not really, but if we “do not walk in darkness, we will (for certain) have in hope and in fact, the Light of Eternal Life”. The Great Teachers have pinky promised us that; and I am going to trust them on that promise. One precious moment at a time.
Jane Tawel 