I could not decide quickly enough whether to give someone a “thumbs up” or an “okay,” so I gave them an ‘L.’  I am a dork.  Instead of communicating, “sure, that would be awesome,” I expressed something like, “hold on a minute.”  Combined with my affirmative nod, it was more like “you will hold on a minute.”  Totally nonsensical.

There are moments like that, trivial and short-lived, which make me cringe.  The cringing contains an element of self-deprication and a desire to escape my own skin which is heightened by the fact that those who witness my mistake would also appreciate it if I crawled away.  With no way to play it off, I oblige.  I am terrible at humorous self-deprication (irony is a different story).

Then there are moments when the mistake far exceeds a simple faux pas.  Someone rejects me, and instead of playing it cool, I fly apart.  Then the real rejection begins.

In Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade, Indy enters a cave full of goblets.  One of them is the holy grail, the others, fakes.  Indy must select the right cup or face dire consquences.

A greedy Nazi commander rushes in and grabs the most flashy gilded cup.  He dips it into a shining pool of water, takes a gulp, and waits for the reward of eternal youth.  Suddenly, his flesh melts off, and his bones disintegrate.

The knight replies, “He chose… unwisely.”

While the Nazi commander chose a cup out of selfish greed, Indy chooses a cup in order to save his dying friend.  Indy selects a rather ordinary wooden cup, drinks, and survives.

“More than once I have felt tremendous solidarity with that miserable Nazi soldier,” writes Carolyn Berry.  A writer and activist in Oregon, Berry is struck by the drama of the scene for the same reasons I reflect on it now.  Mistakes in the realm of relationships happen that quickly and hurt that terribly.

Last year, I woke up in the arms of a beloved friend and lover who casually informed me that his afternoon plans involved another woman.  For several seconds, I saw two paths laid out before me.  Let go or resist.  Letting go would have been easy.  I could have done it.  I had the capacity.  Yet, the moment I looked at the situation from that particular perspective… that perspective in which one feels owed love, and any withdrawal of love is an afront to one’s worth, I was hopelessly snared.  Tibetan Buddhists call this shenpa.  Shenpa is that moment when, standing on the upper platform of a waterslide, you select a tube, sit in the rushing water, and let yourself plunge into the darkness.  You are constrained to travel the length of the tube before you will know freedom again.

For a decision that took only a second, the consequences were severe and long-lasting.  The waterslide I selected was a real downward spiral.  I lost my best friend at a time when I needed him most.  I had sipped from the gilded cup, and soon my flesh was melting off, my bones disintegrating.

I chose… unwisely.

The most painful element of my mistake was the perception that I had failed at kindness.  Am I not supposed to approach every situation with love and acceptance?

Perhaps, but consider this.  Many times, perhaps more often than not, I did choose wisely.  Last summer, for instance, I committed an act of profound love.  I gave myself, consciously and prayerfully, to the healing of my friend, completely and unconditionally.  The tube was dark and vast, yet it was surrounded by all the light of the cosmos.  I did not know what the consequences would be, but I positioned myself in the rushing water and let it take me in.

When this memory returned to me, just yesterday, the recollected love was strong and vast.  Love like that forgets its modest birthplace and fills eternity.  It seems to come from somewhere else, not something one is creating but rather, something one is tapping into and allowing to flow: the Divine light shining suddenly through the pinhole of the small self.  Enter it, and you will see reality like you have never seen it before, from behind a thousand thousand eyes.

What would such love be if there had been no threat of pain?  It is precisely because I am human that an act of love means so much.  Because I might get hurt, because I am imperfect, when I choose to love, that love is divine.  We are eternal beings who have become temporary in order to experience love that is chosen in contrast to love that simply is.

And when I fail to choose love?  Imagine that every character in the Indiana Jones movie was really the dream self of a single mind.  First, it dreams of choosing the wrong cup, that is, choosing out of greed.  What will happen, it wonders?  Oh, excruciating pain.  Then, it dreams of choosing the right cup, that is, choosing in order to help another.  The possibility of pain looms, but with the possibility of pain comes this supernova in the heart.  The small dreaming mind begins to wake up.  Precisely because of its frailty and its fear, choosing love requires that awareness be placed heavy upon the well being of another, and as awareness moves to other, the dreamer begins to see something truly astonishing: that every person arises from the same awareness, all choices are equivalent, and the only thing real in the dream is the love.

Step back and look at everything you know.  Be willing to step back so far that you lose your attachment to the concerns that stem from your individual perspective.  Someday, everything you think you are will fade, and your flesh really will melt off, and your bones really will disintegrate.  Death is a certainty.  The end of your individual self is a certainty.  Step back far enough to see this communal dream from outside that small perspective.  At first, letting it go will feel like letting go of a life raft, but do it anyway.  What will happen, you wonder?  Your core of awareness is eternal.  The small self continues doing what it always does, being human, and the big self awakens, being love.

Being human is the very thing that makes your love divine.  You really are perfect… and you really are everything.