Things To Do In The Belly of The Whale
The first thing the poem Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale reminded me of was the Christian allegory of Jonah being swallowed by the whale, who remained there for three days and three nights, praying to God, obeying God, giving thanks and repenting for paying the price for transgressing God’s commands.
When you’ve reached the depths of hell or stuck in the gut of a whale, what do you do? What can you do? Except to be with yourself and listen to the internal prattle of your own mind. Perhaps you can do some sit-ups and push-ups, like what Andrew Tate did when he was jailed in Romania. Maybe you can’t do 3000 push-ups a day like Andrew Tate. But 100 or 200 push-ups a day? Possibly. Technically, you could still work out, all day long, without barriers or limits, before the whale spits you out. Perhaps you can train in silence and work on your own physical body, transcending your physical barriers, one step at a time, one breath at a time, one push-up at a time. Perhaps this is an invitation to reconstruct the scaffolding of your physical and mental health and with each moment of sweating out, you can drown out the pain, sorrow and suffering of being trapped. If you are not ripped and overweight, perhaps this is an invitation to do sit-ups and crunches and build a six-pack? As Warren Buffet puts it cogently, focus on what you can control, do not focus on what you cannot control. God may have a plan for you, He may have given you a good reason here right now to work your butt off and sculpt your abs, so that even if you may perish in the belly of the whale, know that you have died with glorious rack of six abs on your body, that you may die with a grin, given that you have polished and perfected the physical majesty of your body.
Do you have time to cry because of you plunging into this confining circumstance? Perhaps tears may roll down your cheeks, but you need not cry. Tears or not, the cold harsh reality of your freedom of movement being robbed from you stares you coldly in your face. Tears and emotional feelings do not change stone-cold facts. Perhaps you know you need a moment of emotional catharsis, knowing that you are be robbed of your freedom of space and movement. Perhaps not all freedom is lost: you can still “practice smoke signals, call old friends and listen for echoes of distant voices.” You can “organize your calendar, dream of the bench, look each way for the dim glow of light.” You can “work on your reports.”
Perhaps being trapped in the stomach of a fish is a call to arms, a call to awaken the spiritual warrior in you, a metaphor to arouse the mindful reflector within you. When one has his back against the wall stomach of a whale, one has to accept the inherent limitations of his own situation and the confines of his circumstances, no matter how unpleasant the sensation is. This is the first step to mindfulness.
You may have lost your freedom of movement, but you have not lost the freedom of your wild, fertile imagination; in fact, what you have gained in return is peace, quiet and time: time to reflect, time to investigate the mental realities, time for potent self-reflection, perhaps even a time for self-atonement: What mistakes did you make that cause you to be trapped within the four walls of the stomach of a whale? As the poet puts it, “Review each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments of self-loathing. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound of gears and moving water.” The mind is a machine, it needs to be greased and well-oiled, so what are thoughts are you feeding it? Can you listen to the sound of its gears: what are those gears telling you? What is alive within you? Fear? Frustration? Devastation? Or perhaps hope? Is there an expansiveness of heart, despite being confined to the self, being relegated to loneliness and being banished from the external human realm? Can you learn to be your own best friend, with you and your mind being side by side and there is no one else there but the gearbox of your mind churning silently, moving it wheels forward, ever so slightly? Perhaps you can let the gift of quietness still your mind and still your body, let the peace of doing nothing radiate ever so slightly.
Facing stone-cold solitude, perhaps this is a ripe opportunity to open up and bow to the human potential before you. Ask yourself this: What could you have done that you could not have done before? What possibilities can you awaken in yourself?
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Perhaps this is a call for meditation, to observe the incessant chattering of your monkey mind, to understand the mental projections and the thousands of movie script that are swirling in that beautiful head of yours. To turn inward, sit down in a comfortable position and focus on the beauty of the breath, exhaling and inhaling, one breath at a time, one moment at a time. Perhaps this is a call to observe the grandiose delusions that you have unwittingly instilled in yourself, and what role you may have played as a participant to this set of grand delusions. Perhaps it is a time to peel back the onion layers of delusion, one layer of delusion at a time, one wrong thought at a time, one negative feeling at a time, one inflated sense of ego at a time.
Perhaps it is a season for you to pick apart the constellation of contradictory narratives running wild inside your head, to see them for what they truly are, to see them for their true nature. Pick apart the inconsistent, paradoxical desires, dissect their underlying root causes and conditions and observe them coldly and calculatedly, with logic and analysis, with judgment and precision, but welcome their subsequent implications with a warm and a gentle heart. Can you master the path of the heart? Can you learn to accept your foibles and weaknesses with an expansive heart, with a heart of forgiveness, with a heart of love, a heart of gratitude, a heart of boundless love? Can you embrace your inner humanity and reconcile the actual and supposed vulnerabilities you feel with all the warmth of your human consciousness? Can you continue to fan the flame of human consciousness and light the torch of human warmth? Beneath the cold, icy exterior of logic, can you embrace the rollercoaster of emotions that are coursing through your veins?
Perhaps this is a season that calls for immense gratefulness and radical acceptance? Being a prisoner of the walls does not mean that you need to be the prisoner of your own mind. Can you embrace the fact that you can still do what you can, and do the best you can to live, perhaps even fruitfully, thoughtfully and mindfully? Perhaps, with the endless stream of time as a gift of abundance to you, can you learn to dissolve into the practice of meditation, and awaken the higher human potential that lies dormant within you? With time no longer as a factor, you are now free, unencumbered from the pressures of time, work and family. Perhaps, now you can learn to pause deeply, breathe deeply and be thankful for each breath, even the breath of the whale. Without the pressures of time, perhaps you can take a deep rest for the first time, a deep rest away from the cutthroat, capitalistic pressures of society. Can you learn to forgive your mistakes and yourself and the whale who has unwittingly made you a prisoner? Despite being swallowed by the whale, can you be swallow hope or be swallowed by hope? Can you swallow contentment or be swallowed by contentment?
As you reminisce about your past and fantasize about your future, will you be swallowed by nostalgia and cling and grasp on to the glory days of the past? Will you yearn for the entrapments of the past, as you have always been? Will you “be nostalgic”, as the poet says? More importantly, how can nostalgia help you to be mindful in this perfect present moment?
As you meditate deeply, you realize time is dissolving all around you. Not only is your perception of time dissolving, but your sense of self as well. You may ask: Has there always been a sense of self, and if so, when did it start? When did you have this sense of self? What is the root cause of this sense of striving, this sense of grasping and clinging to external fruits and rewards that are beyond our control? Why is there an “I” even there? Because of this sense of “I” and the false sense of ownership, there is so much pain and suffering. I own this piece of property. I possess money and wealth and status. Now what can money and wealth and status and property do to elevate me beyond these four walls? Do I own my thoughts and feelings? Are my thoughts truly mine? Are my feelings truly mine? Or do they merely bubble up? Why are they mine? If I attach myself to anger, why does it ruffle so much feathers and cause me so much pain? Why does attachment precipitate pain? This body, too, is it mine? Or do I merely rent it?
Can you see that you don’t own anything, including your own thoughts, feelings and body? Can you see that these are merely forces of nature, of causes and conditions that are beyond me, of kammic energies that are just activating beyond your control?
Before you know it, morning has swept away and noon is here. Before you know it, evening lies before you. Before you know it, nightfall beckons. Sinking deeper and deeper into jhanic states, are you willing to dissolve in the blissful states of meditation? The jhanic joys of meditation? As one door closes, another one opens. Can you focus your mind on the door that is opening, not on the door that has shut tightly? Can you open yourself to the inner joys of deep meditative states? Realize that despite “treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes pointing again and again down, down into the black depths”, as your mind cycle through light and dark, can you open yourself up to the path of the heart, the path of light, the path of human enlightenment?
