Packing up one's stuff is debilitating. You learn very quickly how much of your stuff owns you, as opposed to vice-versa. I've got eight boxes of books just on the Cathars and medieval stuff! Teaches one a bit about attachment.
On the other hand, you run across things that you are *done with*, no longer attached to. DVDs you watched once and that was enough. Books you *know* you'll never open again. LPs that are Department Of Redundancy Dept. because you gave away your turntable. Clothes that you wouldn't wear again even to cart trash to the dumpster. Canned foods you bought two of, and one was more than enough, thank you. Candles that are partly burned down, but still have a few hours of life in them. Those sorts of things. In Sauve, we have enlightened recycling. You don't have to cart your stuff to the Salvation Army (although it does exist in France) or to the local Good Will or whatever. You just take your stuff and put it on the 12th-century stone ledge outside Fouzia's épicerie and then, if you're feeling like it (and I was today), you sit in the Micoccoulier and have un petit sauvin (white wine with fresh ginger syrup) and watch *as* your former loved ones transit through the Bardo and into new incarnations. You watch as people look through the books and take the ones they want. You watch as some 15-year-old film fan discovers the stack of glossy French film magazines and runs off with them as if his whole day (and possibly the next few weeks reading them) has been *made*. You watch folks "try on" the clothes, holding them up against their shoulders as they would in a vide grenier (literally "empty your attics") or marché, and if they seem to fit, walking away with them. You watch the local vinyl freaks just *drool* over the rare Telefunken classical records. You sit and watch and sip your petit sauvin, and life is *good*, man. And it strikes me that this recycling process is a lot like my idea of what spiritual teaching should be like. We seekers spend our lives gathering stuff -- techniques, knowledge, words from other seekers and finders, inspiring stories and tales of power, maybe a bit of personal power ourselves, and a whole lot more. And then you "pop," as today's FFL word of the day puts it. Something happens -- or more exactly, nothing happens -- and you just don't *need* all this path stuff any more. Your life has become about Here And Now, with nowhere to go and nothing to seek. So what do you *do* with all these techniques and all these words and all this knowledge and all these inspiring tales of power? Well, some sell them. And I guess that's cool; I've sold off more than my share of old stuff I don't need any more. And the buyers were grateful for the bargains they got, so I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with that, especially for those who are used to paying for things, and don't trust anything that comes to them for free. But there are a few who, when they find themselves in full popped-popcorn mode, all white and fluffy and all, just put their stuff out and sees who is interested. If someone wanders by and says, "That looks like a cool technique," you teach it to them. If someone says, "That knowledge sure sounds fascinating to me," you share it with them. If they get off on tales of power, you tell a few tales of power. And then you go home. And you don't let them *follow* you home. You don't let them praise you for having given away all these bits of knowledge and techniques and tales of power. And you try your best not to feel cool because you once *had* all these bits of knowledge and techniques and were part of the tales of power -- they were then, this is now. And now is some- times best spent just giving away fragments of then that you don't need any more, but which might be of use to someone else. It's a real rush, and in my opinion a great deal *more* of a rush than sitting up on a throne in front of a room full of ga-ga seekers who are focusing all their attention and all their energy on you just because you collected a bunch of stuff. The stuff had a *purpose* -- it helped you to get to Here And Now. But its *only* real purpose now is in helping others to get to their own Here And Now. I'm sorry -- I know that a lot of people here disagree with me, and they may be right in doing so, but selling the stuff to them them still strikes me as a little tacky. It's just so much more FUN to give it away...and then *walk* away. No muss, no fuss, no spiritual seekers clinging to you and hanging on your every word and trying to make a big deal out of you. As Robert Anton Wilson once said so well, "A disciple is an asshole, looking for a human being to attach itself to." Who needs it? Got one already. Heck, I *am* an asshole already...who needs a bunch of extra ones hanging around? I guess this rap boils down to an extended answer to Marek's wonderful question recently. What (and, unspoken but implied, *how*) would you teach. I think I'd just give it all away, and walk away after the giving. If people find a use for some of the things I've given away, cool. If they don't, and end up giving them away to someone else, even cooler.
