Chapter twenty-one: the trickster's crazy wisdom.

There is nothing so whole as a broken heart. (81)

More often now I experienced that sudden burst of laughter, as I had recalling the night of the wee people. Things that happened seemed to just strike my funny bone in unpredictable ways.

An example is an experience that occurred following an extended period of meditation with a particular spiritual teacher, Shree Maa. I had spent many years in personal therapy dealing with my resentment toward my parents for "borrowing" money from me in my teenage years, and never repaying it. I felt used, and forced into a position of age-inappropriate responsibility. A behavior pattern that developed from that early experience was hyper self-reliance. The day after the meditation retreat with Shree Maa, I happened to go searching in a box in my office closet for some professional documents I needed regarding renewal of licensure. I had periodically accessed such important papers in that box over the previous twenty years. On this occasion, I discovered at the top of the pile of papers in the box, never having encountered it previously, a cancelled check written by my parents to me forty years earlier, repaying the money borrowed. My fourteen-year-old endorsement was carefully written on the back of the check. The moment brought my ego, invested for so long in its version of personal history, close to the edge of disintegration. Immediately I experienced a moment of ecstatic humor and liberating clarity. Finding that cancelled check was the funniest, most ironic, and most humbling experience of my life. I couldn't stop laughing, and the moment seemed to last a lifetime. That moment offered an opportunity for a great opening to occur, vast and spacious, novel and spontaneous.

For days following that epiphany, I had many surprising capricious moments. I spilled a pitcher of cream when I retrieved it from the refrigerator, and immediately recognized the jagged effects of too much coffee. I laughed at myself. Later that day, I was driving through town and saw ahead of me an attractive young woman walking along the sidewalk. As I drove past, I glanced over to see her face and realized "she" was a bearded man with flowing long hair. The absurdity of my assumptions seemed hilarious.

I was enjoying these little surprises as they popped up in my life, and a general sense of lightness was lifting my spirits in a new way. I was coming to expect the humorous each day, and with it came a sense of innocence and wonder. Then one morning while I was pondering these things, a thought came to me. These experiences were not random--they were being provided to me for my benefit, my growth. But these serendipitous moments were orchestrated by an invisible hand, unlike so many of the lessons I had been given, or so I believed. Of course, I immediately realized that finding the cancelled check was a lesson offered by my spiritual teacher Shree Maa. That I found it the day after the meditation retreat was no coincidence. But what about these other instances of seemingly cosmic humor? Where did the magic and the serendipity come from? Or were they only whimsy?

I recognized my own foolishness. And that, it turns out, serves an important spiritual purpose. It forced me to go beneath the surface of experience, to question all the things I took for granted in my everyday life, and to explore the outer reaches of conventional beliefs. Seize the present moment in all its freshness. (82) Call it crazy wisdom. The Native American tradition holds that Coyote, the Joker, the great Trickster, carries this way of whimsical reflection. But Coyote tends to be fooled by his own trickery, and no one is more astonished than Coyote at the outcome of his own tricks. (83) The invisible hand orchestrating these surprises was more wise than fool, yet willing to use a magical, fun, even crazy method of delivery. I laughed at the thought of this crazy Coyote; I felt inspired to call him the Fool Coyote.

Crazy wisdom goes beyond all reference points. Relax into insecurity and the absence of any stable ground. Learn to navigate in the abyss, the chasm without bottom. It is okay, even though there is no hope of understanding anything at all. Give up your ambition to put the jigsaw puzzle together. Give it up altogether, absolutely; throw it up in the air, put it in the fireplace. Unless we give up this hope, this precious hope, there is no way out at all. (84) The Fool Coyote spoke his foolishness, and showed me mine through a more accurate reflection of reality than any mirror could ever provide.

I realized that I would need to allow the true meaning of Fool Coyote's messages to sneak up on me. He was speaking to me about living spontaneously, experimentally, in close contact with my instinctual side, my animal nature. Live carefree, embody the gusto that enlivens, dance with the life-principle. Be honest enough to acknowledge the ways you have conned yourself, and celebrate the genius of your self-deception.

I had to laugh with recognition. How often was I the emperor with no clothes, the only one foolish enough to believe my own fabrications? How often do I take myself so seriously that I cannot see the obvious? How often do I still not believe it, even when the obvious is made painfully undeniable?

There was a sense of sadness here, too, exquisite sadness, sadness uncontaminated by guilt or regret. Fool Coyote was calling me to account, as well as calling me to live my life with passion. To do so is to live with my heart open and vulnerable, courageously defenseless. (85) And how could a person live in such a way without sadness for the world? When you stay in tune with your own heart and feel its quality without judging it or impulsively reacting to it, you will discover beneath all the emotional highlights a deeper, tender, more constant feeling. At the core of the heart is" a sense of profound, unwavering sadness and joy that comes from being truly open to the worm and responding deeply to it. (86) Sadness and joy are each the experience of the heart full to overflowing.

Raven appeared out of nowhere to bring me the gift of paradox. The most ancient name for the Heart, anahata, means "the sound that is created without any two things striking, " or "the sound that is produced by no cause, that originates from the Void." (87) Crow, keeper of all sacred law, lives in that Void, merging light and darkness, creating sanctuary. Only by fully accepting the miraculous conception of our deepest core can it be experienced as full to overflowing. Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

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