| A Million Little Pieces |
© John DeVault 2005
When you realize you have all you need, the World belongs to you.
Tao Te Ching,
quoted in A Million Little Pieces
I escaped to the beach this Christmas, to Mexico. I layed on the beach, ate
tropical fruits, and read a book called A Million Little Pieces. It’s a story about
addiction, or rather a guy’s attempt at rehab after a decade of abusing his body
and barely escaping death. The cover art is a hand covered in sprinkles, those
round sprinkles of many colors, just bigger than sand, that come on cookies and
ice cream. The sprinkles represent the million little pieces that James’ life has
broken into at his own hand, so many pieces that, it seems to him, it cannot be put
back together.
It’s a great book about addiction. It articulates and defends my own objections to
the 12 Steps, and I attended meetings for years. I and my friends there found we
had to modify the 12 Steps in order to make them work for us. Often we did that in
our heads, without telling others. When I found Access, I left 12 Steps for ever;
among other things, I couldn’t keep creating that reality: “My name is John, and I’m
a recovering addict.” Saying it was creating it as my reality.
As I read the book it struck me that the core of addiction is really lies. The addict
gets certain thoughts stuck: I’m a piece of shit. I don’t deserve to be loved. Look
what a screw-up I am. These become a mantra, and the mantra creates reality.
Therapists help addicts by challenging the lies. Recovery begins when the addict
releases the first lie. The rest, like walls that will no longer bear weight, soon start
crumbling.
But the picture of those sprinkles on the cover. . . I like that image, on many
levels! Somehow seeing our world as a million little pieces seems helpful to me,
rings true. Maybe I can show you what I mean.
We know there’s nothing but energy in the universe, and science now confirms that
understanding. The waves on my beach are water, and water is just energy. The
papaya I had for breakfast? Energy. The solidity of my car is energy, tiny particles
in relationship with each other. Sprinkles. My house is made of sprinkles, and
trees are. Light, color, thoughts, breath, blood, speech, hair, food. All sprinkles.
Like an addict, though, we may want to make the sprinkles into discrete, definite
objects. We want Thoughts to Live By. The Answers. The Meaning of Life. We
want a system. It simplifies life if we’re not always having to deal with the infinite
possibility of things. At least, we bought that idea from someone. We bought that
solidifying things is easier and better, that it’s a worthwhile thing to do. We bought
the cliches: ‘Love means. . ., it’s important to stand for something, you are who
you associate with, love is the most important thing in the world, it’s better to give
than to receive, good people don’t . . .’ We create easy patterns of sprinkles
(energy), and re-create them every day. But these things are no different than the
lies that the addict tells himself. ‘I’m worthless’ is no different a thought than ‘Good
people help others.’ No thought is any better than any other. They’re all about
limitation.
I have long been fascinated by smell. Did you know that anything you smell you
are actually ingesting? Smell is extremely small particles of the thing that are
being registered in your nose. Smell dog shit? There’s dog shit in your nose. The
particles are spun off from the whirling pile of energy that is that dog shit.
MacDonald’s fries? The ocean? Your favorite flower? Smelly feet? Everything
is whirling and throwing off bits of its energy. As solid as we’d like to make things,
there is really nothing that is solid. (Remember What the Bleep?) Everything is
energy, and sprinkles of smell and energy are flying off of things, even when they
are at rest.
But we don’t want to accept that. We WANT things to be solid!! We want to
cobble thoughts together into a personality, and then live our lives as if that
personality is a real thing, independent of our creation. But it’s not. We WANT
identity, consistency, love, reason, the goodness of people, the rightness of our
nation, truth, justice, the American way to all be important ideas, moral
imperatives, ideas worth fighting for. But these are just ideas. They’re not
objectively true. They’re not universal. They are our creations.
The world is nothing but sprinkles. There is no Ultimate Truth beyond our own
daily creations. Recently we had Christmas, but the ocean knew nothing of such a
concept. The beach was no different from the day before. Arranging universal
sprinkles into something called Christmas had no reality for the ocean. The sun
shone and set beautifully, but with no sense of its identity or beauty. Our
attachment to these ideas, and to a sense of identity, is limitation that we choose
for ourselves.
What would it be like to wake up to a world in a million pieces, and create from
them absolutely anything? To surrender all lies, and make nothing significant? To
receive all that we know and perceive? To trust that we can handle absolutely
anything that happens? And beyond that, to know that we can create, with the
universe, extreme and subtle beauty and joy? Fear has set up so many vicious
lies. There is nothing at all to fear. . .
What would it take for me to give up all my limitations, and interact with the
universal dance of sprinkles? Not according to rules or preconceptions, but by
being truly present?
The universe is offering us EVERYTHING. Since Access I perceive more and
more of the subtle offerings and communications. She holds nothing back. But
we won’t receive it! It’s right in front of us, waiting to be enjoyed. Everything you
desire is being held out to you. It’s not till we drop the lies we’ve bought, like
addicts, that the truth can come in. We cannot hold onto the lies AND receive the
truth. And are those lies, that form and structure we’ve created, really working for
us? In the book, James finds truth in the Tao Te Ching (pronounced DOW DAY
JING), and the quote at the top makes the same radical claim: the World belongs
to you. Think about that. The WORLD belongs to you, if you just allow yourself to
perceive and receive all that is there.
What would it take for you to give up your limitations, and interact with the dance?
To accept that the World belongs to you? You are separate from nothing. What
would it be like to receive everything? It’s new year’s, if resolutions work for you. If
not, you can make the choice every 10 seconds.
How many invitations do you need? How many Access classes do you have to
take before you will act? What exactly is holding you back? Whatever it is, would
you like to destroy and uncreate it NOW?