Hidden Treasure

At night, in my cold steel bed at the Preventorium, I prayed. Of course I had only a child’s notion of prayer, but I used it with ferocity. I didn’t have the maturity to question why or how I had gotten into this situation, I just knew I wanted out desperately. I prayed to Jesus, to my idealization of the Jesus who must love me and who could save me. One blessed night, maybe halfway between sleeping and waking, I became aware of a soft and radiant presence offering deep comfort. Jesus had sent my guardian angel to be by my side! I was in wonder but also in acceptance, since the presence felt both natural and familiar. I allowed myself to be held in the folds of love, and I began to rest.

Each night I communicated with my guardian angel. She was very real to me, yet only over time did I have a mental image to go with my feeling of her presence. The form she took in my mind was the one I had seen in a picture of a beautiful, all-loving guardian angel watching over two little children who are being threatened by an approaching storm. I felt completely at ease in her presence, and knew without a doubt that she would be by my side whenever I needed her. Perhaps she took Mammy’s place, since—unlike Mammy—she was with me anywhere, anytime.

Much later in my life I had more sophisticated explanations for what had occurred, but the unvarying truth—whatever the explanation—was that through this experience I was lifted from desolation into solace and consolation. I could look out of my eyes and begin again to experience the fun and adventure of my life rather than being fixated on my inner trials.

Everything got better. I could eat more, and I played effortlessly with the other children, and then one day my family came to get me. I don’t even remember that day, since I had already been rescued when my angel protector made herself known to me. Life was easier in every way when I got back to Clarksdale. Since I was not so focused on what I wasn’t getting, I was able to naturally love my baby sister.

I had missed some months of first grade, so my parents put me in the local Catholic school, as the classes were smaller, and I was likely to get more attention there. There was much that was terrible about the school. The nuns, with their long black woolen habits, their strange smells, and their protruding starched wimples, looked and often behaved like bad witches.

Since I was an Episcopalian, the nuns considered me lost to God; nevertheless I still had to attend the morning catechism class. What a surprise that I loved it. I was introduced to a passionate Jesus, surrounded by passionate followers willing to die horrible deaths just to be reunited with him in heaven. Here was a Jesus with a heart bleeding from all the love he had for all of us (me!). And here was his beautiful, eternally pure mother, serene with her open arms offering protective care. The statues and stories of the saints completed the holy family I now spent time with every day. I felt that I was meeting my real family. I felt I was home. I was very happy.

When I began fashioning little shrines to Mary and Jesus around our house, Mama and Daddy soon realized that all was not as they had expected it to be. When I asked to be able to go to mass with my Catholic cousins, they allowed it a few times. With dismay, however, they soon saw that they might be promoting an eccentric by keeping me in the Catholic school, so by second grade I was in Clarksdale’s public school.

I conformed to their wishes and reined in my religious fervor. Only later did I realize how I paid for that conformity, but still I had my guardian angel, and still I loved Jesus with all my heart. My prayer had been answered. Grace had appeared in an emotionally starved life and had nourished a shriveling heart. Though I had many more moments of pure love as well as long periods of suffering awaiting me in the future, though I had decades filled with failed challenges before I could be steadfastly true to the mystery of love that had penetrated my suffering, I happily no longer felt myself to be totally adrift and alone.

In our teaching story, it is the youngest child who still displays enough innocence, which is open-mindedness, to finally ask the right question. Such a simple, obvious question, and yet it penetrates the complex mental fog of cynicism. “Will you show us where the treasure is?”

The simplest questions reveal the simple and undeniable truth underneath all our complex mental gyrations. When we first become aware that we are, there is wonder and that wonder is met with intelligence. We are, but what are we? Looking up at the stars, discovering our own and other bodies, becoming conscious in sickness and in health all contribute to our wonderment and our intelligent capacity both to question and to formulate answers. The great questions lead to great discoveries. The feedback loop of great question and great discovery leads to more and expanded capacity to question and to greater discoveries.

Over millennia, in countless ways, our questioning has revealed both the light at the end of the tunnel and the dead end, since as human animals we mostly discover through trial and error. Those who have gone before us are sometimes able to pass on what they have discovered, and sometimes no matter how many times something has been discovered, we have to discover it freshly for ourselves. We can be warned away from or invited into, but for us to truly know a thing we have to taste it ourselves. Because this procedure takes time, we rightfully rely on others for information about this life experience we share. We have scientists of every discipline, artists of all kinds, philosophers in all fields, and explorers and mapmakers of our physical world to share their discoveries with us. We learn from and marvel at it all. It informs us, entertains us, and protects us. We find stimulation and comfort in the knowledge available to us.

And, yet, until we ask of ourselves the most basic, the most simple of questions, we do not know ourselves directly. The journey between the unquestioning wonder of initial self-discovery and the deepest self-realization is an endless journey until closed in an instant by the right question.

Our teaching story shows how misery and degradation can pollute the natural clarity of mind to such an extent that the simplest and most essential question is beyond reach. At the point of the appearance of the stranger, the entire family has succumbed to their particular versions of negative intelligence. They have succumbed, not surrendered. They are defeated, not open. The barrenness of their lives is their reality and a way out is not considered. In their defeat they even defend their misery against the stranger’s offer. They are attached to the stagnation and continual looping of mind activity as reality. We may easily wonder at their abject ignorance, but if we read the family as our human family, and each of the members of the family as each of us, then we are closer to seeing that we too often defend what contributes to our misery. Strangely, we develop the habit of perversely fighting to keep our victim identity. Seeing this common form of ignorance is the first step to opening the mind to unknown possibility. Seeing deeper into the structure of our suffering is an invitation to grace.

And in a moment of grace, the right question appears. The right question naturally brings forth the right answer or at the least clears the space for discovery. The stranger could never satisfy the family’s wrong questioning. They ask him, “Why are you taunting us?” and he answers, “I am not taunting you. I can help you.” In their blindness, which is our blindness, they had stubbornly wanted only the answer to their question about his reasons for taunting them. The stranger can easily answer the right question: “Will you show us?” Space opens. The waters part. The way is clear. The matter settled.

When we are children, our cognitive functions are usually not sophisticated enough to formulate an essential question. And if we ask, “Who am I?” we are answered with our particular name, or with our relationships (“You are Daddy’s little girl . . .”). When we are adults, our cognitive functions have become so sophisticated that we overlook the simple questions for the more complex. “Why is this happening to me?” “What do I need to do to make something happen or not happen?” “Who did this to me?” are just samples of the many questions we ask that can only have multilayered, complex answers. Assuredly, complex answers reflect the complexity of many situations and accordingly have merit. Nonetheless, they can only take attention into the maze of versions upon versions of stories. They can never lead to the limitless, storyless, answer that is the naked truth of oneself.

With even a childish prayer for help, the mind can open to the assurance of ultimate protection. This life-enhancing presence may be named guardian angel, or Self, or God, but all names are more complicated than the experienced reality of the presence.

When we repeatedly ask questions that only cause us to suffer more, we spend our time going in circles. When we persistently ask “Why? Why? Why?” we continue the useless habit of chasing our own tails. Fixating on who is to blame, what we should or should not have done, or could or could not have done, keeps our attention on the problem rather than the solution.

The right question is an example of innate intelligence asserting itself, even if apparently for the wrong reasons. In our story, the young child wants the stranger to stop bothering the family with talk of treasure. The talk of treasure is painful to them all, as they are aware only of their lack. They all just want the stranger to go away. Nevertheless the right question appears. “If he’s so sure it’s here, why not get him to find the treasure?” Although framed as only a strategy to get rid of the stranger, the question actually serves to break the logjam of the family’s denial of possibility. The opening is confirmed with the stranger’s surprise answer of “I will.”

Throughout our lives the conscious turning points have followed deep questioning. “What do I want?” “What is the meaning of it all?” “What is my life about?” “What am I doing?” “What should I do?” “Why am I suffering?” “How do I change my life?” “How do I find happiness?” “Where is God?” “Who am I?”

The list may be endless, but when certain pivotal questions are asked, the question itself turns the mind’s attention to the answer. The right question is never satisfied by our hackneyed habitual answers. The Indian sage Ramana Maharshi faced a time of trial in his teenage years by asking, “Who dies?” The depth of his inquiry led to his profound awakening to that which cannot die. He advised his disciples to ask, “Who am I?” When sincerely and fully asked, this question finally reveals boundless conscious awareness as one’s true identity. The question reveals the consciousness that is present in but not limited to the body of any particular questioner.

POINTS OF INQUIRY:

1. What do you want?

2. If you had that, what would it give you? (Repeat #2 until your answer reveals what you truly want, in the deepest part of yourself.)

3. Where have you looked for it?

4. What is present in the core of your being, needing no story or emotion or sensation for its reference point?