Judas and the Butterfly

The story of Judas as the betrayer had me riled up this last week. As Pema would say I was completely hooked. In the story of Jesus, from the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, I was pretty much enjoying the correlations I was finding between my learnings and understandings found in Buddhism and this Christian story. But as I read further, I became irritated and angry with Jesus. His insistence on faith, his abandonment of John the Harbinger and finally he actually told Judas to go kill himself. I know it is just a story, but too many people on this earth believe in this story. We have wars, discrimination and fear over this story; it is taken as absolute truth. I don't get it. How can people not question this story? Even I believe that God loves us all as his children and would not tell any of us that we are so wrong that we should go kill ourselves.

I too am feeling anger over my unanswered prayers as a child. A child's unanswered prayers, are an atrocity in my book. My prayers never made it past the ceiling. Reading this story made me remember my anger with God, with my parents, my teachers and doctors. No one was willing to step up to the plate and address the abuse. All turned a blind eye. This created a deep penetrating sense of abandonment and isolation...a sense that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. This despair turned inward for me. I was not an exploder, I was an imploder. At the age of 12 I held a gun to my head but it was my brothers voice that brought me back. At the age of 20, razor blades but I was too drunk and passed out. And at 45 pills but collapsed in a heap and was checked into a hospital. To me Judas was the brave one. He did it. I was the coward. I never had the nerve to make the final cut (Pink Floyd song).

So this silly story really got to me. It brought up a bunch of stuff. Yesterday, I met with Bill and we talked a little bit about the cognitive side but we didn't really get the the emotion. Before I left he gave me the story of the young girl who finds a cocoon and sees inside a butterfly struggling to get out. She wants to help and tears open the cocoon to let the butterfly out. But it keels over and dies. He said you see the butterfly survives because of its struggle to get out. The fight to get out strengthens its wings so it can fly. This is the only way it can live. A very good story don't you think. But I left his office raw. Which brings me back to why Buddhism has become my source of inner strength. It has given me something I have never had or perhaps I should say I could not find. It is pushing me to reclaim my innate buddhanature within. I am seeing the habitual thinking patterns and I am gently practicing renunciation. And I am touching that love for the first time. I really really down to my toes am touching this love that is who I am. And I cry and let go and at the same moment I want to share that love but wonder why it is so damn hard to find and feel hopeless and angry. Why does it have to be so hard.

But I digress. What I wanted to say is that after leaving Bill's office I felt raw. I was still wondering why Jesus and God guilted Judas into killing himself. And then it came to me ever so gently. Not like a smack upside the head but this gentle settling in of a smile. Judas did kill himself. I didn't. I was saved by my own love for myself. What I have always felt was cowardice for not going through with my plan was really my buddhanature coming forth. I had chosen love each time. Living with suicidal thoughts is perhaps the most harrowing thing I have ever done and it came to me that this is the bravery that Pema and Trungpa talk about. That each time Mara presented me with doubt, fear and anxiety, I have been able to say "Mara I see you." And when Mara says, "Who do you think you are to deserve this love?" I have reached to the earth as my witness. The earth is my witness that I am worthy, I am brave, I am on the path.