Wow…I just outed myself in this talk. I just saw so clearly why I left, either voluntarily or was fired, from series of jobs in state institutions for the retarded in Cleveland. I was in the grips of a Divine Compulsion. (listen to the talk because I don’t want to repeat myself)

But the Idea (the theory that explains everything) I’m working on is that when our are caught in a pair of contradictory commandments a feed back loop is created, a tension that must be resolved either violently or creatively. The feed back loop generates energy that reaches an intolerable level, that can’t be sustained, like a microphone against an amplifier. It will blow up if you don’t stop. In the movies this tension is always solved by some “mad idea” or solution no one ever thought of before. Just watch the Full Monty. That was a mad idea that solved the dilemma. This was a creative Idea. We love creative single Ideas that solve the dilemma. Art is a creative Idea that solves the tension of a feed back look between polarities. Technology is full of creative ideas that solve the tension of problems, the tension of mutually dependent but contradictory conditions.

As I look into the nature of compulsion in my own live, I’m finding a gold mine of insight. Compassion is. ritualize unconscious behavior that seek God (Unity) in form (or in the wrong places). Because it seeks permanent unity of completion in form, which is impermanent, the compulsion is kicked down the road in continua Ground Hog Days or events, that look new but are really just a repackaging of yesterday. Relationship, especially marriage, seems to be held together by compulsive behaviors, you know, the games we play.

Compulsives remain unconscious because we always blame then on others or the world. And the are repeated because a compulsion creates the guild of turning away, or ignorance of looking for God in the wrong places, a turning away from God is the original guilt, not by Adam but by ourselves in our everyday minds. But again this God is not the God of religion, for that too is a compulsion, a looking for the ONE in the wrong place.

The One that has no second is not to be found in form, yet it manifests itself in form. But since form is impermanent or change itself, the One is dynamic, not static, a verb and not a noun. The beam we balance on is not static but a wave.All compulsions are divine compulsions, the yearning for the One without a second, yet the miss the mark because they focus on form, they focus on creating the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in time, tomorrow when my compassion solves the tension of the polarities in my everyday mind, and of course, the ritual never solves the polarity because the ritual is not conscious. Only Awareness, the mind that does not rest on any form, solves the polarity of form and existence.

The compulsion then becomes the Gateless Gate of Zen when we penetrate it with awareness, when we go into the compulsion awake and aware and without judgment. The compulsion is ritualized and really does us because we don’t want it, we resist it, until it takes us over, then we are the victim of our compulsion but by blaming others for our victimhood, the compulsion remains unconscious.

A compulsive behavior can be an embedded strategy that worked in childhood to solve the dilemma of contradictory commandments that parents inflict on their children; but then it becomes ritualized and unconscious because the original conditions in which is was born have changed. Now the ritual continues in conditions that do not call for it, so the ritual instead of solving a conflict creates conflict. It is repeated over and over in hopes for a different outcome. We even marry as a way to solve a contradiction or dilemma in our lives, quite often to create the very conditions in which or childhood compulsions can be acted out, perhaps so that here at last I can make the compulsion conscious and be done with the guilt. I know that was my case.