The train is a peak train from New York. The work day is over, and there are plenty of people here, packing in, overcoming any social boundaries that normally would prevent them from sitting next to one another. It's a long ride and you don't want to be standing all this time.
A few years ago I was on an island whose surface area probably was a little smaller than the total surface area of the cars of this train. Imagine if I can fit all these people on the island? What a bad time they would have, even though it was a tropical island in the Caribbean. They would all wonder what to do. All complain that they don't have any space around them, to do what? Imagine they could just sit down and not talk, just sit and not talk, not walk around, not trying to figure out what to do, not avoiding the possibility of fitting in the simple idea of doing nothing on an island. What if all they did, each of them, was just sit, and feel the breeze. They would probably try and then get annoyed that there's someone, well, quite a few people, also doing the same thing. Instead of listening to the wind they hear all sorts of noise produced by their neighbors, who even without touching them have this aura they create in their mind that they can't resist.
That's how my thoughts were, and always are when I am just sitting down, whether in my own room, on a mountain top, or on that little coral island where the only other people are the three that work there. What was I thinking? Or tried to think? I don't think at that moment I knew that I could just focus on giving myself the bottomless love from my heart. I think I was probably thinking about the surroundings because it was a way to distract myself from, or perhaps introduce, my loneliness. Because eventually, the reality of my lonesomeness would raise the voice of my loneliness. You can see the edges of the island from which ever spot you might be sitting. It's that small. You relied on the people on the island to do everything for you, including an escape. They were kind but they were also there for business. There was no real connection; not when you're there for just a few days. If you lived there for a few months, perhaps. But for a few days, you're a customer.
I was delighted to be distracted by the geckos that were chewing on a biscuit I left out by accident. They were fighting over it and you can tell quickly the ordering of the hierarchy among them. There are no hierarchies in my thoughts. Like the people in this train, they are just randomly bumping into each other when not sitting. Half the people here are disconnected from one another using their little PDAs and smart phones. Someone is reading his email, the one in front of him is chatting via SMS with her friends. When I close my eyes, the rumbling trains of my thoughts start rolling out, scratching one another, but not really connected to one another. They all want attention from me, but which part of me? My heart, probably. The only place where the treasure of love lives. But they all want it for themselves, each of them, and not share. They are all thirsty for some love, and once they can latch onto my heart they don't want anyone else have it.
I don't think I have shared, in reality, much with my heart. It's all in my head. These are thoughts; they originate from my head and they travel and wander and don't find any path out of their own journey. It's like being on that island. I wandered and felt the false grass they used to replace the original, less appealing grass. I look out to the ocean and wondered what interesting things I could photography, remember, write down. My thoughts were ignored; even though they want so much to be paid attention to. No wonder when I close my eyes they want so much to hold an exclusive right to my heart.
But I don't want to pay attention to my thoughts. They wander and they bring back feelings. They creep up on me in the form of fears, anxiety, cautions, reminders. They embody so much bitterness, so much desperation, and they shield me from seeing the love and hopes found in my heart. But I can't blame them. I just want to be doing something. When I was on that island, under that perfect sky and the radiant sun and bathing that pristine sea wind, I just wanted to be doing something. Eating. Speaking Spanish to my non-English speaking attendants, photographing, even the geckos. There was a night when I they had a problem with electricity. It was completely dark at night. I was annoyed. My passengers, hundreds of them, were annoyed. They all grumbled, they all wanted light.
But maybe they weren't grumbling at all. Maybe, finally, they were cheering because finally I had nothing to do, except to entreat them. I didn't want to. They make me nervous, they remind me that they are part of me, unpleasant passengers in my soul. And I probably just went to sleep and ignored them.
But what a great opportunity it was to just sit with them, all these passengers, and pay attention to each and every one of them. It was an opportunity to greet them, however angry, sad, pitiful, shameful they might be. However painful it would have been to confront these thoughts, some being demons, and left them in my heart, and not fear that I would drown in them, for my heart is infinite in its capacity to take in everything that is me.
But I didn't know that night. I remember that I was a little miffed that I paid so much money for this, black out on an island that felt everyday more and more like a prison. These unattended thoughts managed to remind me, as if from spite, that I was wasting my money, that my journey was a romantic silliness. Spending five days on an island that was disconnected from mainland by the virtue of your own dependency on three strangers. My heart wasn't opened by me, though it was always ready. I am always doing something. Always want to distract myself from my heart, from the simple necessity of opening it up to myself. I am constantly trying to open it to someone else but more and more I have been doing so for the sole purpose of someone else taking care of these unattended thoughts.
Someone else rescue me. Or more precisely, someone else take care of these thoughts and unpleasantness in my life because, I don't know why, I don't want to. I want to extract out all these thoughts and put them in a cradle like some mothers abandon their newborns in front of a rich family's door. And I will keep making new unpleasant thoughts, new difficult feelings, and I just want to lure someone, entice someone, with love in my heart so they can take care of these unpleasantness. My heart loves all, but I often have used it, much more so recently, as a lure. The unhappy passengers of my soul have been so stuffed away that I don't often realize how powerful they are in trying to get me to pay attention to them, by making me do selfish things, scheming to use others, and ironically, doing so just generate more unpleasantness that I have to ignore, too.
So I am not on an island. I was flying over the island of Manhattan not too long ago, and I saw all the words down their, all the words being exchanged, all the words that drown out the millions of hearts that are capable of loving but aren't used for that reason, not for loving the very person who houses the heart. So I am not on an island, and I am full of words, even when I am not speaking any, my mind is always full of words. I am always thinking about things, what might happen next, what might be happening with such and such person. There are so many sounds, all coming from the deeply imprisoned passengers of my soul.
So I will make my own island. I will let these poor passengers out of their stuffy hell and look at them, one by one, and let them into my heart. And they won't just disappear like that. They have been around too long to just be satisfied so easily. They have been disappointed so many times when the person I was using to meet their needs just couldn't do it and instead left me with more passengers.
But my heart is infinite and also patient. These passengers are always welcome back whenever they want. But I am gatekeeper.
I am the gatekeeper that has kept these unpleasantness away from my heart. I am the gatekeeper that colludes with the schemer that tries to have someone else figure out my problems. Next time I am in a forest alone, or better, on an island alone for a long while, I hope I don't have to feel a need to ignore my thoughts, keep them at bay, away from my heart. In reality, they don't need a lot of attention, they don't need a lot of time, but they never get much at any regular frequency.
But it's not "They". There is no really "they". They are me. When I was on that coral island, treating myself to the paradise that my soul deserved, I was ignoring myself. When I seek out a woman to take care of these thoughts and unpleasantness, I am just seeking a woman to take care of a part of me. When I leave the cold hard gate shut, I am shutting myself out of my own heart. I can just stop. At any moment, I can just stop, and stop talking, and let each thought speak out, not all of them together in some frenzy of flamingos bickering in a pink mess, but one at a time so each gets the attention needed.
