Transcribed talk by J Jaye Gold
Earlier today I was listening to a Judy Collins song. There’s a line in the song that says, “You must barter your life to make sure you are living.” I was thinking of that because historically that has brought thoughts of adventure in war-torn countries and physical dangers—like jumping off cliffs with cloth wings, parachuting, taking chances that endanger the physical body—bartering your life. Those barters definitely give anybody who’s done any of those things a feeling of being alive.
Of course, one cannot live that program. Soldiers live it during wars, and they find such dynamic intensity there that after those wars it’s often hard for them to go back to ordinary life. Sometimes they can’t find a way to contend with normal life because they don’t know how to barter except in the way that was thrust upon them, which was being in life and death situations.
I agree with the words of the song, that to feel your life in you, you must barter it. You must put it up on the block, you must gamble with it, you must take chances with it. I’m not talking about endangering your physical existence. Bartering your life can be such a subtle dance, a subtle science. It’s a fascinating study that some of you have no idea about, and you find yourself bored, having taken refuge in the opposite of bartering your life—safety.
Yesterday I was putting in a mailbox with a decorative post. I had seen one down the street at another house, and a couple of months ago I said to myself, “I’m going to make one of those.” So, a few days ago I got around to making one. There were a couple people who were going to dig a hole, put some concrete in it, and put the post in—facing the street hopefully. These two people had not worked with concrete or levels before, and they were working together to do the job.
I was looking out the window, and it looked like it was going okay. Later I walked out and asked, “How’s it going?” They had a four-foot level perched on top of the 4×4 that was going to be the post, which is not a very dependable way to get a level on a post because the top has such a small surface area. I held the level on one side and explained, “First do it here for this level, and then do it here for this level, and you’ll get it level.” One of the two people was listening to me and the other was kind of looking off in the distance. I asked the person who didn’t appear to have listened, “Have you ever used a level before?” She said, “No.” I said, “Wouldn’t you like to know how it works?” She said, “Yes.” So I asked, “How come you weren’t watching when I was showing you how to do it?” The person answered, “Because I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t know how to use it.”
Now those of you who are thinking, “Wow, what a poor slob,” you just need to think of a comparable example for yourself. This bartering of life that I’m talking about was available to that person in that moment that caused her disquiet. She would have had to admit that there was something she didn’t know and put herself in a position where she would have to pay attention to somebody else and listen to them explain how to do something she didn’t know how to do. This person wasn’t willing to take that chance in that moment.
A person may go to a foreign country or to a strange party anticipating some sort of unpredictability and risk. Once they arrive, however, moment after moment passes, and in each of those moments bartering can happen. In that moment with the level, that bartering wasn’t there.
When I first got to this gathering, I was looking at the faces to see who’s here and who’s not here. When I looked at some of the faces, they looked away. They didn’t want to meet my eyes—they didn’t want that barter. (Now you’re all riveted, I know. You’re not going to look away for nothin’ now!) That barter in that moment, that danger, is a moment where you have a chance to choose whether you’re going to live or die, really—live or die. And you choose death. You choose safety.
So much of the work that I do is calling people’s attention to the timid ways they live their lives, to those moment-to-moment discomforts, inconveniences, and mini-dangers that come in front of us. We consistently go the other way and wonder why we’re bored. You may wonder why you have to keep busy and need such pace to feel alive, but when it comes down to it, you won’t say what you think. You won’t be who you are in the moment, in small things. You won’t ask, “Why did you say that to her?” because the level of danger to say it when you don’t know what the response is going to be is too great. So you opt out of it, and you die a little in the process.
The role models for you amongst yourselves shouldn’t be the people who are good at using methods or the people who are committed attenders of meetings or the people who can talk the talk, but the people who are bartering their lives in that moment-to-moment way. Those are the people who feel in themselves a pull to live more, not a pull to escape life or to learn some spiritual elixir that will help them transcend life. Those are the people who have recognized the incredible God-given gift of having a human body and a human life and want to feel alive.
The people who inspire me are the ones who are dissatisfied with numbness, with safety, with this incredibly ubiquitous addiction that has descended over our culture: comfort. Are you comfortable? I want to make sure your body’s comfortable, your mind is comfortable, your feelings are comfortable, that there’s no challenge to you whatsoever. We’ve bought into the curse that comfort is an asset and that you can get your fix of discomfort by watching somebody else’s life in the movies while in your own life, you’re dying. As I look around, I know I’m looking at person after person who’s a victim of living a timid life as opposed to the simple boldness of, “So how do you use the level?” That’s all it takes.
Many of you haven’t really traversed that threshold of being able to say those simple things to each other. Your guidelines are still your comfort and your safety. You’re dying, and you don’t know it. I don’t care what methods you use or how much you meditate. In order to meditate and experience God within, a person has to have one capacity, one attribute. That person has to be alive, not a perambulating carcass. You can’t meditate in a state of numbness. Your concept that you can is an erroneous concept.
If you’re not bartering your life, then it doesn’t matter what else you do. If you’re a chicken-shit and your explanation is, “I didn’t mention that because I was afraid she might think it was a dumb idea,” or “I didn’t go to the party because I wasn’t sure who all was gonna be there,” then it doesn’t matter what else you do. What are you afraid of? You’re afraid of somebody’s opinion of you—afraid at a level one on a scale of one to ten. Then you go to meditate and think you’re going to be a crusader for traveling into the Sound and Light, but that won’t happen. Your timidity will play against you in every case. Eventually, you’ll live in your imagination where you’ll think you’re bold. I’ve seen moments in some of the people here that I respect, that I regard. It has nothing to do with spiritual aspiration, knowledge, understanding, or the use of the methods. It has to do with life-bartering.