Give Up the Smiley-Face Life! You Can Do SO MUCH BETTER!

What is all the faddish ecstasy, and pseudo-enlightened talk? Who is everybody kidding? Instead of endless shallow smiley faces, I’d rather see tears — sincere tears. Better a real tear than a fake smile, don’t you agree? You’d think you died and went to real heaven (you know, the place where the angels sing — and weep). So let’s give up the smiley-face life. We can do so much better with true heart.

I know sorrow isn’t all there is, but to be real about it, human life sure isn’t all smileys. As you know, almost everyone is, in reality, lacking sufficient love in their lives, sufficient love relationships. Especially now that “intimacy” has come down to the web blog (or maybe, in rare cases, a semi-close real-life friend). If anybody wants to lie about that, be my guest. But obviously …

It ain’t working, folks! It ain’t half enough! Wake up!

Here’s what’s really happened with most of the people around here:

The love boat left the harbor. Maybe we sent it away. Maybe we forgot to give our all when all was offered to us. Maybe we tried to give our all to one who would not have it.

So now, almost everyone is standing on the shore, yearning after that speck on the horizon. Or, worse, people are making up new-age love stories like these:

    “Love is all around! I love pets, everything, and everyone: old people, animals, the                    universe, etc.” Sure, but what about getting a life? A LOVE life!”

In large part, all that trendy super-duper-extra-happy news amounts to little more than false self-talk — cosmic self-hype created to compensate for actual misery (and at the same time, create a cool social persona).

Storybook lives

Please, folks, I’m not saying that no one is ever happy — or that all of the people have zero love in their lives. I’m just saying this: the reality of many of these lives is terribly lonely and sad, and we practically never see that. No one wants to cop to it. Or even admit it to themselves. Now, that is sad. And counterproductive.

Must we live a story we make up in our heads — a story that says chronic loneliness and unfulfillment isn’t the case for us, when in fact it is the case for us? That’s nowhere. We’re just driving down dead end roads into a parched desert, chock full of empty nothings.

And then what? The hopeful “solutions”:

     “What we have to do is: build bridges, go green, dialogue till we're blue, think a bunch,             give more hugs, and share warm fuzzies.”

Social awareness is appropriate, and action is needed — but social action is only working on symptoms, folks! Every ill we see is only a symptom of the disease we have: too little REAL love. And if we go out empty-hearted on our mission of planetary salvation, we’re just carrying the disease.

And the smileys:

    “My life is abundance and love.” Affirmation?  — Compensation!

The truth is, under all the stories, the theories, the spiritual fads, there’s DEEP DEEP PAIN — and a DEEP DEEP NEED. For what?

    Real commitment.

    Genuine loyalty.

    True love.

    Wholehearted belonging.


In other words, we need the real stuff. The real human stuff.

If we can get human deeply enough, then real spirituality is. Otherwise NOT! – NOT, NOT, NOT!

Living ass backwards?

Sharing, helping, coaching, guruing, whatever — all good. But, helping without having one’s love house in decent order is just plain backwards. And wasteful! How can anyone meaningfully teach love without first having rock-solid love commitments — in which the ways of love have been found and established in and as real life?

Those who can’t do, teach? No! Those who teach what they can’t do may be well-intentioned, but they’re also deluded. And, they’re misleading the poor people who are counting on them for help. If we’re smart, we would be way better off trying to get to the point where we have what we are trying to share. To get there, we’ll absolutely need love — lots of it.

Real enlightenment is a team sport, never a solo invention

Enlightenment weekends and over-hyped trainings can hardly begin to fix what ails us, or fill that hollow leg. We need reality, not paid-for services. We need heart and soul service, not lip service. We need commitment. The popular “heal thyself” concept, too, is vain. LOVE, we need. True love.

Confess the truth!

Why not check in with yourself right now:

Doesn’t it bug you, how alone you feel, and are?

Don’t you feel how alone you feel — and are — as long as love-belonging has not manifested in and as your everyday, flesh and blood life?

Don’t you see how insufficient all this virtual networking and seminar busy-ness is — for you?

And while you’re at it, confess this bit of truth: You need deep love, deep feeling, deep belonging.

So, here’s some good advice, for a change:

    1. Give up the whole pattern of endless shopping for cool and hopeful bullshit from the crazy new-age marketplace. Throw away all the silly methods, pipe dreams, diplomas, posturing, vainglorious pretenses, soapbox rhetoric, false titles, debates — the whole tower of Babel. We’ve got twenty-year olds who are masters, avatars, life coaches. Wow! Does that impress you? Leave the marketplace Tower of Power Babel. Walk away! Run away! Get away while you’ve still got a brain – and a heart!


THEN:

    2. Pray to God to point you to the real.


THEN:

    3. Find something realest, and feel its reality in your soul. “Realest” means, not theoretically real, like a “real” good philosophy or a “real” good-sounding path. And not even just pragmatically real — like, save the trees and help the downtrodden. Realest means real heart. Real intimacy. Real relationship.


    4. Throw your entire life in with that Real Thing — everything you’ve got, and  everything you are. But only do that someplace where you are seen, and where your true commitment can and will be truly reciprocated.


THEN:

    5. In the arms of true and loyal relationship: grow; love; work all things through; find God and Goddess.


AND FINALLY:

    6. Once you’ve FOUND, and truly HAVE — SHARE.


That’s the right order, folks. The rest is futile. It only postpones the actual healing on which effective helping is (necessarily) based.

So …

    Throw away that happy face of false, consoling self-talk about how it’s all going great, when it’s going nowhere good fast (or maybe slow).

    Quit randomly networking. The very last thing you need is more distraction, more data, false consolation. It’s confusing, and deluding. It makes you as thick as a person who fucks way too many people, or who thinks way too much. It’s the “spiritual” iteration of the boob tube.  


Then, instead of all that:

    Cry, cry about your life. Rage against the alienation and emotional starvation you find       yourself in. Scream for the real.

    Don’t settle for superficial relating.

    Get willing to respond only to what is real.

    Pay the real price for what you really need. The Pearl of Great Price is Love. Real love ain’t cheap, and there’s no negotiating its price. Get willing to trade everything useless you have for what you need.


This is it, folks. Everything we need is to realize love, at the human level. There is where Divinity and spirituality can be found — only there.

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
— Anais Nin

WANT TO SEE SOME REAL LOVE? HERE IT IS:




You want in?

The way in is tears — Your tears. Your tears are the way, friends.

Tears for the fears that have thrown You out, and kept You out.

Tears for the lost years.

Tears for the hollow leg that has been covered up with stories, theories, pipedreams, and smiley faces.

Tears of sorrow; tears of regret; tears of unfulfilled longing.

And yes, dear friends — have courage now — tears of shame.

Cry with me; I will cry with You

I’m holding Your heart. And I’m holding a candle for You. Come and cry with me. I will cry with You. I will hear You — and so will God. God responds to realness, You know.

So let Your tears flow, and let go of the ungiven life that caused the emptiness that caused the tears.

Which will it be?

When it comes to real love, it’s all or nothing folks. Which will it be, then? All, or nothing? Who wants a plateful, a heartful, a podful of nothing? If you want that, here:




I hope not. I hope You want what Your heart needs. But if not, here’s twenty more friends:




You know, it took me only a minute to draw those smiley faces. Piece of cake. But it took me twenty years, in this lifetime alone, to have this Heart to give You (— and God’s heart too). Now I say, LOVE! Love for real. Love until everything You thought you had, and everything You thought you were, is gone. Only then will You be Home.

And I will welcome You Home: candle in one hand, Your hand in the other.

Love,

David