Hello Everyone.
This is a highly personal Conversation between me and a close friend
of mine named Alan. It's a courageous journey beyond the known
frontiers of intimacy, honesty, friend****p, and shared spiritual
discovery. I originally hesitated to disclose so much of myself. But
then I realized that what I was doing was insulting the deep
friend****ps that would welcome such disclosure and whom I'd be such a
fool not to trust. Please forgive my silly hesitation. Here's the
whole story, with nothing concealed, protected, hidden or dressed up.
This is me, Ben, writing this now, but the Conversation that follows
is a joint project that I and my friend Alan created together. Here
it is.
This is Alan and Ben. Possibly the most unlikely duo in the world. A
straight, redneck, retired Policeman, who loves physical movement,
dogs and s****ts, and whose writing is utterly breathtaking; and a gay,
BiPolar, retired Professor, who loves Subatomic Quantum Physics, and
who dreams of one day writing just as well. Maybe that was a bit
more than you really wanted to know about us. Well, you ain't seen
nothing yet. We'd like to share with you the email conversations we
have had with each other over the past several days. It's been an
adventure in honesty, exploration and friend****p, difficult at times,
but an enormous blessing for both of us. We're inviting you to join
us in this intimate contact because we both love your friend****p and
would also love to deepen it.
In order to make it easier to read, we took the contents of the emails
and put them together to look like a dialogue. All of it took place
between November 9th to November 16th. A lot of this is very personal
stuff, but we've both been discovering that the less we hide, the
happier and freer we feel. Pretense sucks. It's not all heavy
stuff. Some of it's just fun. Hope you enjoy it.
Much Love,
Alan and Ben
ALAN: What about you and I doing a joint teaching gig together? The
theoretical and experiential aspects of Right Use Of Will? Might make
us clarify our thinking and understanding of the material so far. You
have strength in the theoretical part and I have some skill with the
experiential. Just a thought.
BEN: Well, I just don't have any motivation to proclaim the benefits
of Right Use Of Will to anybody any further. At least not insofar as
any Pal Talk presentations. A little essay here and there is fine. I
don't know if my feelings are appropriate, but in any event, that's
the way I happen to feel about it at this time.
ALAN: OK. Beats the **** out of me why the idea came up in
me...maybe it speaks to wanting to do something with you. Actually
participate in creating something together.
BEN: Ooooo! "Actually participate in creating something together."
I'd love to do that. I just don't want to do Pal Talk
presentations. Maybe if I start an essay, you can dovetail into it.
ALAN: Okay, and I'll do the same, see what wants to be said. This
might be a lot of fun.
(a few ominous days later)
BEN: I've been getting a bad feeling, Alan, a feeling that something
is going wrong with our friend****p, that you've been having some bad
feelings about me that you are hiding from me that have resulted in
you behaving in a distant and aloof manner towards me. It doesn't
feel good at all. I feel like something's wrong and I don't know what
it is. I always want to be honest with you about whatever I'm
feeling, but other than the fact that I'm feeling bad about something,
I don't know what I'm feeling. I'm probably absolutely wrong about
all of this, but even so, I'm having these feelings and so I have to
be honest about them.
Because of the way you have been recently I feel like you have
negative feelings about working on this essay with me, and that you
have other negative feelings about me as well, and that you have
decided to conceal those feelings from me rather than expressing them
to me because you feel afraid of hurting my feelings, and as a result
there is now a wall between us, which is creating yet more negative
feelings that you are hiding rather than revealing, making the wall
thicker, making you feel like you don't really like me all that much
after all, making you rationalize in your mind all kinds of reasons
why you should feel justified in not liking me so much, that I've
taken some kind of wrong turn that has led to me becoming something
that you no longer feel interested in being friends with anymore, that
you no longer feel interested in being friends with me, or you're
doubting your interest, and without that interest you have even less
motivation to do the difficult and frightening thing of expressing
your negative feelings about me and about things that I've recently
said or written or done, and so you feel justified in turning your
back on me and you rationalize that it's my fault, that I'm a gonner,
that I'm more trouble than I'm worth.
Of course I could be absolutely wrong about all this, all I'm doing is
doing for you what I hope you'll always do for me, which is to tell
you what I'm feeling, I'm just telling you that it FEELS LIKE all this
is what's going on, and so if what I've described is not what's going
on, well still something's going on that's resulted in making me feel
this way, maybe it's all somehow my fault and not yours, but if I
didn't tell you how I feel then I would betray our friend****p, so
that's why I've told you how I'm feeling, and it feels just awful, I
feel betrayed and rejected and abandoned and most of all I feel hurt,
terribly hurt, that someone who I thought was my best friend and
actually loved me doesn't love me anymore, and that's more painful
than I can put into words. So that's how I'm feeling Alan, and
because I've promised to you that I would always honor our friend****p
by always telling you how I feel and never betray our friend****p by
ever deciding that you could not be trusted with knowing all my
feelings, that's why I've told you how I'm feeling even though those
feelings feel so terrible and even though I feel afraid that they
might cause the very thing they fear and make you feel hurt or
betrayed or insulted or misunderstood to such an extent that it would
cause you to reject me and actually create the very situation that I'm
fearing; but the only alternative would have been for me to hide and
conceal these feelings from you, and then I would have betrayed our
friend****p, then I would have decided that you could not be trusted
with knowing all my feelings, and so then I would have destroyed our
friend****p; and I would never do that no matter how much avoiding that
would mean that I would have to do things that feel painful or
frightening, and so that's why I've told you about all these feelings
even though it feels so painful and frightening to do so, so painful
that I'm right now overwhelmed with grief and am crying like a baby.
ALAN: Dear Ben, Thank you for telling me straight what you are
feeling. I have been avoiding talking to you, but truly, only to
contain the energy of what I feel and not dissipate it by talking it
away. It has been easier to maintain contact writing emails. Here's
what I discovered late yesterday:
The writing you have done about awareness terrifies me. When I read it
I feel alone, without a God, afraid and responsible, like I alone am
responsible for figuring out how to make life work or I am a **** up.
Since adjusting to Sandy being in the house a lot after her retirement
I've projected a lot of the parental judgment I secretly carry around
in me onto her, distancing myself from her, too. Beneath what my body
has been going through for the last two weeks there is an awful guilt
and anxiety that is very hard to articulate. I don't get it as a
feeling that is clear, but as symptoms that I think are the
undercurrent of what it is. These include emotional tension, grinding
my teeth all the time, being easily startled, goosey as I call it, and
uncertainty experienced as a lost feeling. I have not transitioned
from "what should I do" to "what do I want to do" at all. I feel stuck
in should.
I feel abandoned with Right Use Of Will, like I'm the only one reading
it and trying to apply it to living. While on one hand I completely
respect that you are no longer enamored of the books, and that our
small group seems to have moved on to other things, I feel abandoned.
One voice in my head said I'm angry with you for skipping around from
one theory to another, but another voice said I had no right to expect
you to do what you don't want to do. I've listened to the latter.
I was interested in writing with you, felt that I was getting a clear
urge to do so, but I got ****in' terrified by what you wrote, lost in
the sense of loneliness I felt reading it. I feel useless, helpless,
lost and unloved by whatever God is while I struggle to heal my body
and deal with pain that was not being a problem for a long time, long
enough for me to almost forget it had been there. I am regressed,
fallen back, barely able to be in touch with the simplicity of being
in my own skin. The whispers of this undercurrent of guilt and anxiety
is steady and constant and I can't come up with a tact that allows it
to move.
Sandy tells me it is normal for me to regress when I have a lot of
pain, and I suppose it is, normal, that is. And I judge myself for
that anyway, for feeling childlike and frightened. From my childlike
state of mind you seem adult and certain and solid and even that
scares me. I don't know what else to do. I've told you about some of
my guilt and what I heard inside of me when I read your answer was,
"It doesn't matter." Well, it matters to me, I want it to move. I'm
stuck, stuck, stuck.
So, yes, I had some anger about your lack of interest in Right Use Of
Will, but it didn't get spoken. I think I brought up the books in some
email once. Nothing happened after that, nothing changed, so I dropped
the subject, not wanting to be *****y or pushy about the subject. As
for the rest of what I've been dealing with, honestly, it isn't
anything that is "at you". It's **** I'm going through and going
through poorly and without any clear sense of what to do, much less
how to do it. What I want is what I wrote at the end of the last post
about the kid. I want to feel the moments of my life with some warmth
and appreciation and gratitude instead of this ****in' guilt and
anxiety. I have brief awareness of these feelings, but then the other
**** rises again and I'm back in the soup.
Having said all this, I know my love for you hasn't changed because I
think of you so often and in the warmest ways. I see something funny
and think, Ben would like this. I watch a football game and think, Ben
should see this guy play. You are a presence in my mind all through
the day. But here in my dark, frightened, childlike guilt and anxiety
I feel too embarrassed or shy or something like that to talk to you. I
don't want to go into some theory about what I'm feeling, I want to
express the feelings to the feelings move. I want to feel that I'm at
home and in my "right place" inside my own skin.
I'm suspicious as I write this that I've made Right Use Of Will into
another set of rules to follow, parameters that must be maintained.
That doesn't feel good. I don't know how to get to feeling in my
right place without the help of some power bigger than me, and there
seems to be none in your current position about awareness so I get
even more afraid. You're smarter than I am, I trust what you know as
what is true, and I hide from confronting my fear that you may be
right, a God who takes an interest is a fantasy, and I am actually
well and truly ****ed and will never find "home" inside myself. I
feel like a big baby in a world populated with grown ups. A kid lost
among tall people who are all saying they know what they are doing. I
don't, and I'm terrified a lot admitting that. Makes me cry. I cry a
lot now, more than I remember doing for a long time. I feel lonely,
embarrassed, directionless, and blind. And, I know I love you and
respect you and keep you always in my mind.
I have no clue how to proceed from here for myself, in our
relation****p, or with my ****in' life. None, zero, zip, nada. This is
as vulnerable as I know how to be. I've held nothing back that I am
aware of.
BEN: Dear Alan, Thank you for letting it all pour out. There's a lot
I want to say in response.
You mentioned that you've been wondering if I've abandoned Right Use
Of Will. Well, as I see it, neither of us is perfect at the Right Use
Of Will thing, but it seems to me that both of us are doing the best
we can to be as emotionally honest with each other as possible, which
of course is what Right Use Of Will is really all about.
But you're right about the trap of making Right Use Of Will just
another set of rules that will only ultimately fail. The fact is that
Right Use Of Will all by itself will not work. Put all your eggs into
that one basket alone, and you'll just end up disappointed.
I haven't been "skipping around" because I'm some kind of floozy. I
was determined to get to the heart of the matter and I knew Right Use
Of Will simply fails to do that. Well I think I have finally gotten
to the heart of the matter. I'm sure that sounds improbable, but I'm
serious. I've recently discovered something that's having a greater
impact on me than anything I've ever discovered before. My
experience of it is that it's quite a big deal.
But it's going to take me a little time to spell it all out. It's not
something I've discovered on my own, but it's source is in a form
that's spread out over several hours of discourse. I feel like it
would just be unkind and unfriendly to make you wade through all that,
so I'm going to tell you all about it myself, as directly and
succinctly as I can.
But I wanted to get this out to you first, so that you know it's going
to take me some time and that that's why I'm not going to be able to
get it out to you right away. I'm figuring maybe by 4 PM. But I'm
"down" so I might have to take a nap along the way. I'll do my
best.
ALAN: Dear Ben, While I was walking I was able to feel my hatred of
God, the depth of my contempt for hurting me, leaving me, and now
hurting me again. **** any God like that with a pole. I don't want
it. But I want something that can help me cause I'm tired, tired of
trying, hurting, feelings alone and abandoned. So, I'm waiting. What
the ****, I've waited sixty-two years, I can wait until you feel the
juice to say what is on your mind.
BEN: Dear Alan, What follows has nuclear power, in a manner of
speaking. It's a very big deal, as you'll soon see. You're likely to
find parts of it incredible, infuriating, terrifying, or all three.
So what. Don't worry about it. You'll get over it. Just continue
reading. The im****tant thing is that this works. So what if it at
first stirs up some wild emotions. All it means is that you're ego is
getting threatened. That's a good sign, no?
I came upon all this a couple of weeks ago, but I decided not to say
anything about it until I tested it out to see if it really works.
Ok, well, I found out that it does work. In fact it works far better
than anything else I've ever found before. And it solves a whole lot
of problems that we've both been having. So here it is. As I say,
I'll just lay it all out as directly as possible.
The cause of absolutely all human suffering is one thing and one thing
alone. And that is simply this: Believing you are something that you
are not, in place of directly experiencing what you really are, in
place of directly experiencing what is true about you. So the only
solution to any human suffering is to directly experience what you
truly are.
Now that sounds exactly like what all spiritual traditions have been
saying all along, doesn't it. But here's the difficulty: What is
true about you is something that can only be directly experienced, it
is not something that anyone could ever understand, because there
cannot be any concept or idea or thought or belief about it that can
embrace it. So every concept, idea, thought or belief that you or
anyone else has ever had about what you truly are actually turns out
to be worthless. But that's what everyone's doing - drenching
themselves with all these spiritual ideas and working intensely at
doing all kinds of things based on those ideas. They're such
beautiful and promising ideas, and everything everyone's doing is so
commendable, but it all just plain worthless. It's like trying to
enable someone to know what a watermelon tastes like by thoroughly
explaining it to him as precisely and correctly as possible. It will
never work.
So even though everything we've been trying to do should work in
theory, it just doesn't. The whole kit and caboodle doesn't work.
That's a pretty hard pill to swallow. Hardly anybody is going to be
willing to realize this, but this is the way it actually is. It
doesn't work first because it's all based on concepts, ideas, thoughts
or beliefs, and second because we all start off with a false self, and
that false self is always going to screw up any attempt to get rid of
it.
So great as it all sounds, none of it can actually work. That's why
all spiritual endeavor throughout history as been so pathetic. Nobody
wants to face that, so everyone stirs up all these glorious fantasies
about it, but underneath, it's just plain not working.
Believing in God won't work. Talking to God, trusting God,
surrendering to God, none of that will work. Trying to understand
what Truth is, or what Reality is, or what you really are, none of
that will work. Trying to let go of ego won't work. See how horrible
that all sounds. Who is going to be willing to face such things.
Now, there actually is a way for all these things to work as part of
an expression of the one thing that does work, but none of these
things can work in and of themselves; they just flat out won't.
Let me go ahead and beat the dead horse yet more, to really drive home
how sad the situation really is. Everything we've had such hope in,
everything we've been so certain would absolutely have to help, it all
seems to work for a little while, and it all ends up leaving us high
and dry.
Now I hate to use the words enlightened or awakened or illumined and
so on because 99 percent of those pretending to be these things are
outright frauds and so you're liable to think that I'm also suggesting
a fraudulent state of mind. But if we talk about the real McCoy, it's
so weird because all those who are truly awakened or illumined or
enlightened or however you put it, all of them DO all these things.
But the thing is that none of these things MADE them enlightened; they
only express their enlightenment. Yes, truly enlightened people do
these things, but there's no way in hell these things can make you
enlightened. It just won't work.
Loving Acceptance won't work. Identifying as Awareness won't work.
Uncovering and moving all your denied feelings, all your lost will,
won't work. Radical Honesty won't work. Being totally honest and
loving and intimate and good and kind and non-judgmental, none of it
will work. Listening to the Holy Spirit won't work. Harmonizing your
Spirit and your Will won't work. Being the best friend mankind has
ever known won't work. Being as thankful and appreciative and
grateful as possible won't work. Changing your thoughts or beliefs
won't work. Trying to be in the now, in the present, in the present
moment won't work. Having tremendous insights or realizations won't
work. Having moments of great illumination or cosmic consciousness or
bliss or ecstasy won't work. Letting go of the past won't work.
Thinking that nothing matters won't work. Trying to be as aware as
possible won't work. Thinking that you are that which you are seeking
won't work. Meditating won't work. Forgetting about trying anything
at all and just living life normally won't work.
None of it works. All of those things can express reality if you're
in contact with it, but none of them can evoke or reveal or uncover
reality if you're not. Nobody wants to accept that. So everyone's
lying to themselves about it. There's tremendous self-deception about
all this, but if you really look closely at what's really going on,
for the most part, nothing's really working.
You said: "I feel like a big baby in a world populated with grown ups.
A kid lost among tall people who are all saying they know what they
are doing." Well guess what - they don't know what they're doing.
For the most part they're all phonies. You just happen to be one of
the rare one's whose being honest about it. And as you can see, being
honest is really terrifying. And that's why it's practically
impossible to get anyone to admit that nothing's working. But the
fact is, it just isn't. And it's such a shame because there is
something that will work. And as it turns out it's actually a hell of
a lot simpler than all of this elaborate stuff that doesn't.
There is only one thing that will work. But it isn't anything that
anyone can understand. It can't be understood. And it isn't anything
that you can do. It can 't be "done." It can only be noticed. It
isn't hard to notice. The only thing that makes it hard is that it's
so obvious. It's so obvious that you can't believe that that could be
it and so you don't bother to keep noticing it. And it can't happen
all at once, in a brilliant realization. It can only happen gradually
over time. And it doesn't take discipline or vigilance or
determination or persistence or any of that.
It's very simple. In fact it's so simple that people just don't
believe it can be that simple, and so they refuse to try it, and so
they never discover the one and only thing that really works. The
immensity of this whole debacle is dwarfed by the immense simplicity
of what would solve it; and further dwarfed by the grotesque atrocity
of the fact that everyone is just too damn ****ing conceited and smart
and arrogant and pretentious to see it's pure simplicity. But never
mind all that. If you'll just try this for a while, it will prove
itself to you.
Here it is:
Anytime you think of it, just notice that you're here. Just notice
that you exist. Notice that you can't be sure about anything else
because everything else might be a hallucination, but you can't deny
that you exist. So just stop for an instant and notice that as often
as you can remember to do so. Just that. Noticing the only thing
that you can be absolutely certain is true -- that you exist. Your
being. Not an idea about "being." Just the obvious fact that you're
being. The direct experience of simply being, simply existing. If
you will simply do that as often as you can, over and over and over
and over and over again. It will gradually dissolve the belief that
you are your life, you will more and more directly experience what you
truly are, you life will become easier and easier, and you will
experience less and less suffering. I guarantee it. It cannot fail.
It's the only thing that won't fail. It's the only thing that will
work. Don't try to understand it, because you can't. Just do it.
Don't worry about how often you don't do it, just do it as often as
you can remember to do so.
As far as anything else, do whatever you feel led to do. Express your
feelings, talk to God, accept your suffering, love yourself,
whatever. What happens is that when you do this one thing, you more
and more spontaneously act from intuition, and you'll just naturally
end up doing whatever expresses the reality your directly
experiencing. And because you'll be coming more from your real self
instead of a false self, THEN all those things that never worked
before will finally work now. But it won't be because of THEM, it
will be because of YOU. Again, all those things can express reality,
but they can't evoke or reveal or put you in touch with it.
It's not going to happen overnight. You're still going to continue to
suffer for a little while, but if you will do what I've just
explained, as often as you can remember, your suffering will gradually
disappear, and your life will gradually become easier and happier.
This is not a theory. I have directly experienced what I'm talking
about.
That's it. You don't have to believe it because that won't help
anyway. All you have to do is do it. Really, no matter what opinion
you may have about it at this point, it doesn't matter. Just go ahead
and try it. For a couple of weeks. And you'll then have firsthand
direct proof that it's right and that it works. And if it's driving
you crazy that I said everything else doesn't work and is worthless,
forget about that. Presume I'm dead wrong and go ahead and continue
doing whatever it is that you're convinced is essential or worthwhile
or helpful. Just add this. Simple. If you want to talk, skype me,
I'm down so I'll be snoozing on and off, but if you skype me I'll hear
it.
ALAN: Dear Ben, If anyone, I mean anyone else, had sent me this I
would have felt insulted. Coming from you, I can receive this without
any (or much) resistance. I will not argue, I will not comment, I
will not say anything about this guidance. I don't feel the need to
talk to you on SKYPE. I will when you start coming upward. I will
just do this. I don't know what else to say. Thank you for calling me
out of my egoic vortex.
BEN: Dear Alan, I'm glad that you're going to just go ahead and do
it. It seems to me that very few people would have the humility to be
willing to try this. That's one of your extraordinary virtues, real,
pure, humility. Something I could use a lot more of, I'm afraid.
Sometimes I fall into being such an insufferably conceited fop. It's
a typically gay affliction. A rather pathetic excuse, isn't it. It's
one of those curses us humans sometimes have where the more we try to
avoid the obnoxious attitude, the more it seems to irresistibly assert
itself, but yet if we ignore it, the damn thing just blooms in flaming
regalia. **** it. Better I don't worry about it. When I attempt
humility I only appear even more ridiculous. What does it really
matter anyhow. You know I have a good heart. Anyway, thank God for
you. I love you my good friend.
ALAN: Dear Ben, I'm glad you love me. I don't feel quite so lost or
dishonest right now.
(a few days later)
BEN: Dear Alan, I didn't want to say too much about it at first,
because I didn't want you to get the impression that it was
complicated or hard to notice. But now I feel like I can say a little
more about it.
I guess the most im****tant thing of all to say about it is that all
that's required is that you have the intention to taste the reality of
what you are. If in each of those moments that you stop to look, if
you have that intention, you'll see it, because there can't be
anything more obvious or easier to see. That's why everybody misses
it. It's so obvious that they think that that can't possibly be it.
But that is it.
You have never been absent. No matter what's going on, there is
always that same unchanging background reality that you exist, that
you're here. You are here when ego is raging. You are here when ego
is dissolved. Everything else that you experience changes, but the
simple raw fact that you exist never changes. It's just a matter of
taking a moment to be aware of the experience of your being, your
undeniable existence. It's nothing more than the direct immediate
experience of being, that continuous experience of being that is the
most obvious thing in the world. It's that unchanging sense of
presence that is always here and about which nothing can be said.
Nothing is more obvious, nothing is more certain, nothing is more
ordinary, nothing is simpler, nothing is easier to notice.
ALAN: I am doing it, the noticing. I'm not making a ritual of it,
just doing it without timing or schedule. I've blown off the seventh
book at the mid-point and started with the eighth. I immediately
identified with the beginning of Indigo.
BEN: Cool. I'm doing it also. I have been for a while now. We have
Sina to thank for all of this by the way. *See Postscript
I'm also having perhaps one of the greatest times of my life watching
that Nova TV show I sent to you called The Elegant Universe. It's
been such a moving experience for me that it's turned me into a puddle
of tears several times. It's a vastly more magnificent elucidation of
modern physics than I would have ever thought possible. I love being
moved to tears from awe rather than from grief.
ALAN: I like that, how you sound, makes me feel warm. I want you to
know that what you have written to me in the last couple of days has
been a great help. And I also feel good about the post I made,
telling the truth about being a liar and hating a lot of things. It's
a relief kind of feeling.
BEN: I'm extremely glad to hear that. This has made an enormous
difference in my own life, but this was the first time I tried to
explain it to someone else.
By the way, I'll tell you something else about it that's quite
interesting. As I say, it doesn't involve understanding. The ultimate
result is the replacement of the false belief about what we are, with
direct experience of our True Self, or Real Self or whatever you want
to call it. But what happens in order to make that possible is that
the repeated act of noticing our beingness gradually dissolves the
false belief we have about what we are, automatically, without our
being aware that that is happening, without having to have any idea
about what that false belief is, or was, without having to understand
how or why that happens.
And then, the more you end up directly experiencing your "True Being,"
so to speak, the more your life falls into harmony and ease in a
thousand different ways that you don't deliberately orchestrate but
kind of happen on their own, with your part in the whole thing simply
being that you more and more act intuitively instead of from thought
or belief, spontaneously.
ALAN: Suh-wheet!
BEN: We're not the life that we're aware of, we're what is aware of
that life, that which has remained the same about us as it was back
when we were 5 years old. That sometimes helps me tune into it,
noticing what's the same about me now that was the same about me when
I was 5.
ALAN: I like that sentence very much, not the life, but the awareness
of life. Nice.
It's been an interesting day. I had one of those Ah-ha moments driving
home from the grocery store. A moment of seemingly transcendental
understanding. Felt good.
BEN: Cool. It's been somewhat difficult for me today because I went
further "down." But just a while ago I was lying in bed "feeling what
it feels like to just be" and all of a sudden, sort of like when you
suddenly throw up, came this huge eruption of grief, and I just sobbed
and sobbed for a while, and then it was all gone. It felt like all
the grief I didn't allow myself to feel all the times in my life when
someone I deeply loved rejected me and left me for good. Nice to have
all that finally unravel.
ALAN: I am impressed that you had the grief. Not atta boy, but that
I trust what I'm learning from you and that the movement of feelings
is a good thing, no matter their nature.
Sandy is pissed at me about me being absent from the present and lost
in my mind, but she'll move it. I hope she doesn't do me any real
harm first. But as far as what's between Sandy and me, nothing stays
there too long. Once one of us starts *****ing whatever is causing
the distance becomes clear and we can make a different choice. It was
kinda cool when she slugged me, though. She gave me just enough
warning so I could turn my shoulder to her blow. She wouldn't really
do me permanent harm, but if she needs to hammer on me for a while,
that's all right.
(Cole Skyped Ben and Alan, and during the call mercilessly reamed Ben
about not getting any exercise. Afterward Ben wrote this email to
Cole and Alan.)
BEN: Thanks for intimidating and humiliating me into taking a goddamn
****ing walk. All the electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, hadrons,
positrons, photons, gravitons, neutrinos, gluons and strings in my
body are much happier right now.
When it comes to exercise, I'm hopeless. It's just a fact. I simply
will not do it on my own.
Ahhhhhh! I've got a fantastic idea. How about this Alan? Every time
I walk for three days in a row, you agree to watch a 6 minute segment
of The Elegant Universe show!!!
ALAN: Ok, every three days you walk, I'll watch six minutes of how
grand the Universe is, or elegant, or whatever. If it will help you,
I'll do it. Jesus, I must love you.
BEN: Yes you do love me indeed! Life is sweet!
(the following are our last two emails to each other last night,
dealing of course with our working together on the above "dialogue")
BEN: Here it is, attached as Alan_and_Ben.doc You can edit it further
however much you want to, of course. I will probably work on it some
more after you're done with it. I have to re-format the whole thing
of course. Feel free to take out anything you like. Cut it down all
you want. Or, add stuff back in if you want.
ALAN: I cut some stuff, parts that didn't seem to contribute directly
to the point. If anything, I'd try for shorter, but I can't honestly
delete anything else without losing the flavor of a conversation
between us and turning the whole thing into a teachy thing. I am up
for posting it. Let her fly!!
ALAN AND BEN: Thank you, dear reader, for visiting with us in such an
intimate way. Your friend****p is deeply appreciated, more than we can
express in words.
Much Love,
Alan and Ben
*Postscript:
Regarding this new teaching, Sina directed me to it in a letter that
he posted on the Right Use Of Will Forum where he called my attention
to a teacher whose website is at http://www.riverganga.org/
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