"Those agreements could be you," Jason said. "If you want them, own them. But consider what the cost of those agreements will be. Consider what you will have to pay for the privilege of owning those agreements. How much of your aliveness will you have to give up? Do you really want to be an American, Jim? I don't think so.
"You say that you want to be that thing that you think an American is supposed to be. But you don't really know what that is, do you? What is an American, Jim? No, don't play the tape. I've heard it. I helped write it. See, you've bought into a reality that's impossible to succeed in. You hold this idealized image ahead of you like a donkey holding his own carrot in front of his nose. You keep it out of reach and won't ever let yourself have it. You'll only let yourself have just enough of what you want to be miserable. You and I both know it.
"What you really want, Jim, is larger than any nationality. You've got a whole bunch of words connected to it, like God and brotherhood and freedom and justice and peace and love-but you don't really know what's at the center or how to get there. You just keep flubbering along in all directions at once, hoping you'll stumble into it.
"The only part of it, Jim, that any of us can ever get right is that we can recognize that place when we do find it. But the only way to recognize it is to stop trying to fit it into our pictures of the way we think it has to be. You have to let go of what you know to find out what you don't know. So, let go, Jim, and find out what's available here."
Jason was right.
There was something going on here. I had never experienced a context of such total love before. I had never experienced a society of human beings that was as nonjudgmental as this one. Anywhere else in the world, you were reviled for being different. Here you were applauded for taking the chance, for expressing yourself. Think of it this way. Silliness is an art form. And there are no experts in it.
You have to invent it fresh every day. It was a startling discovery.
I loved it.
And I discovered. . . .
Look, you take a person out of one set of agreements and drop him in another and then another and another, and it's like washing a dish. The agreements become transitory; you get to see the person underneath much more clearly. And once you can recognize the transitory nature of cultural agreements, you're free to reinvent those agreements in your culture that support you in the results you really want to produce.
Myself, I began to see how I had been trapped inside the whole military mind-set.
Old news: The mind is a computer program. Part of the program is hard-wired into the cortex; the rest is self-programmed, starting just about the time daddy rolls off mommy and falls asleep.
There's no instruction book. Baby has to figure it out without help.
And you wonder why we're all so screwed up?
Most of us can't even communicate with each other clearly. You don't hear what I'm saying, you hear what you think you hear. I hear what I think I hear. And then we bludgeon each other to death for our misunderstandings. And because we've all worked so hard to program ourselves, we're convinced we're programmed right and everyone else is wrong.
No wonder most of life is one long argument.
Jason said, "What we're doing here is tuning. We all have to agree on the language we're using, we have to learn how to hear what we're really speaking. We have to agree on our larger purposes. We have to, each and every one of us, willingly be a part of the larger whole."
We were taking a stroll around the perimeter of the camp. Jason took a meditative walk every afternoon. It was a privilege to be invited to accompany him. Today, he had asked me. Usually, it was an honor. Today it wasn't. At least, I didn't think it was. I'd done something terrible.
Everybody knew.
And now I was going to find out what happened when you did something terrible.
Orrie followed thoughtfully behind, stopping occasionally to chew on a tree or examine a bush. Jason would turn around and study Orrie, or sometimes just admire him. He was filling out beautifully. Sometimes, you could hear him singing all over camp.
It made me feel ashamed.
I wasn't worthy of this attention. And at the same time, I was angry. He didn't have the right to punish me. I hadn't done anything wrong.
"Jim." Jason put a hand on my shoulder and turned me to him. "What are you afraid of?"
"Nothing. "
"That's your military mind again, Jim. Now talk to me honestly. Do you want to talk about what happened yesterday?" I'd had a tantrum yesterday and had refused to attend the circle. It didn't matter what the tantrum had been about. What mattered was the fact that I had been unkind to Ray and Marcie and Valerie. I shook my head. "No." I stared at the ground.
Jason put a finger under my chin and lifted my face.
"Jim, I'm not your daddy. I'm not going to punish you. That's not what we do here. Intelligent beings don't use fear and pain and punishment to motivate results. It's counterproductive. Punishment is evidence of the failure to communicate."
"Well somebody failed to communicate with me then. . . ." I stopped myself. I sounded like a bigger asshole than usual when I tried to justify myself. I shut up.
"This is not a question of right or wrong, Jim. It's a question of being appropriate to the situation. What you did was inappropriate; something happened and your mind triggered an inappropriate response. So what? Don't beat yourself up for it. We all do that. The appropriate thing to do is apologize and get on with the real job." If en took me by the elbow then and began leading me up the garden path.
"Jim," Jason began quietly. "Do you know what the condition of life for most people is? Unconsciousness. I'm not talking about coma or catatonia; I'm talking about simply not being aware. People walk around this planet in hypnotic trances. They go through the motions. They eat, they sleep, they watch TV, they make love, and they do it like they're on rails. They're unconscious to the passion in their own lives. So what happens when something disturbing happens? Your mind gives you an uncomfortable reaction, and the automatic response is fight or flight. You know what happens when you wake people up? They get angry. You get angry.
"Guess what? We're in the business of waking people up here. It's a dangerous business. You know why? Angry people use their anger as an excuse to kill. You can get blinded by your own rage and do terrible things. Or, you can learn to recognize that the rage is a signpost that you've been unconscious about something.
"Jim, when you let go of the rage, what's left is what you've been resisting. If you're willing to confront the uncomfortable things, something wonderful will happen. You'll start to experience all those things that you've been resisting so hard-anger, fear, boredom, grief-and that's when you get the joke. You find out that resisting them hurts more than experiencing them. And then they disappear. And you get larger and more alive.
"So all that uncomfortableness that you're experiencing here, Jim, shouldn't be seen as a formidable barrier, but as an exciting challenge-because on the other side of it is your own life."
I didn't answer that. What he was asking me was to stop being mad. And I thought I had a damn good reason to be mad.
I just couldn't remember what it was.
"I guess I'm having a hard time adjusting," I said. "The rest of you make it all look so easy."
Jason laughed. "You're doing fine, Jim. Really, you are. You're right on schedule. This is part of the process too. We all love you."
"I don't know how I can look anybody in the eye again. I'm so embarrassed."
"Just go up to them and hug them, that's all that's necessary. And then you can all laugh together. You'll see."
I knew he was right. These people never let any hurt last very long. But how did they get this way? Sometimes it felt like an impossible job to me.