The Liquid Refuses To Ignite- Dave Besseling

The year 2014 wasn't the best year for me for reading. I have come to believe, for reading, 2012 still rules as one of my best year.

Fortunately, whichever book decided to come to me this year happened to be a good read. Another thing that I have come to believe is that, you don't find books, books find you. Many things in universe come together to present books that you were meant to read. 

With that bit of extraneous information, I must present to you, Dave Besseling's The Liquid Refuses to Ignite. It's is not about anything in particular except that it encapsulates ten years of traveling around the world, including Varanasi. Funny, subversive and anecdotal wisdom and sometimes self-depreciating humor to probe deeper issues around our existence. 

Dave is no less than a hippie disguised as a hipster with his constant companion he has found in Dr. Heagney who accompanies him sometimes but not always physically though at many other levels of companionship. 

"If Dr.Heagney and I aware of this crutch of a good life, how do we seek to experience the shock of a shit one to find. Some kind of balance? Self destruction? Liquor and drugs? would our lives have been better served with a dead parent? Serving in a war, being homeless for a while, having kicked a terminal disease, killing someone? Fuck knows. Do we consciously chase down surrogates?"

Besseling's experience in Varanasi will leave you deeply moved while he tries to find some semblance in one of the oldest, filthiest cities in the world. 

"This is Shiva's city, and guess which God is also known as the lord of bhang? None other that our host Shiva himself. No wonder he's always half-lidded barefoot and wearing loincloths and beaded bracelets. He is goddamn hippie dope fiend."

Fair enough. 

Besseling is not the one to go only in one direction. He is seeking wisdom in frustrations and deep meanings of life with equal irreverent panache. Perhaps, all their is to life is seeking, more seeking, till you become it. Who the hell knows?

"What makes India a spiritual place is not the idols or the gurus, but everyday shit you just have to let go off, make peace with, or surrender to. And it's a daily regimen." 

Or take this for example,

"Unsettling stuff. Unsettling to contemplate the Nazi state as educators. Perhaps most unsettling is the fact that though we can laugh at such things now, this may be part of our condition. The one our pampered generation has set to conquer: that certain detachment from real suffering, so often interwoven with cynicism, either that, or to be able to laugh at such things is a privilege, an intellectual elevation to be appreciated."

Surrender and Detach or Just Let Go

I stumbled on these 10 commandments somewhere and I recall making an instant note of it. These may not always resolve many things or everything. But then we do not always have to resolve everything, perhaps there is beauty in unresolved spaces or divine timing. If there is any such thing but I question less. Spiritual or not, don't buy it, I am not selling these.

1. Surrender and Detach — Let go of control and allow the Universe to do it’s work. Create and visualize the end goal, then release it to the Universe and detach. Allow things to unfold.

2. Look for Little Miracles— By noticing and delighting in little miracles along the path of your ultimate goal or life improvement, it reminds you that the Universe is indeed working on your behalf. Look for little signs, small steps and synchronicities. It’s reinforcement for your trust.

3. Watch as Your Needs are Being Fulfilled — As your goals are achieved, you will gain confidence in the process of trusting the Universe. This will lead to greater trust. You may even want to keep a journal of all that manifests. When you look back, you’ll be surprised how many dreams will come true over the course of a year!

4. Remember it’s All in Divine Timing — If you get frustrated by the slowness at which your desires are fulfilled, you resonate distrust. So back up and remember that it is not your timing at work here; it’s divine timing. The Universe knows better when to grant your wish than you do.

5. Letting Go of Resistance – Don’t push, don’t react, don’t force. Let it be. If you keep resisting or pushing back, you are not allowing the Universe to give you its grace easily and effortlessly. You are constricting the flow. It’s another sign of mistrust. So just remind yourself to go with the flow.

6. Tune into Your Higher Self — It’s your ego that wants it now and is convinced your desire can’t materialize without your manipulation and control. Turn it over to your higher self, your “heart self,” and let it open the channel of trust with the Universe.

7. Trust God May Have a Better Answer Than You Do — Trust the Universe to come up with the right solution. If you try to push through or mandate to the Universe the solution you see, you may be limiting yourself. If you postulate in your head how things should happen, you are narrowing the Universe’s possibilities.

8. Give Up Your Problems/Turning It Over — If you have a specific challenge that is confronting you, ask the Universe to take it from your shoulders and resolve it. Trust that it is then being handled and wait for answers.

9. Believe in the Best — Believe in the best of people, circumstances and solutions. If you fret about all the ways things could go wrong, you again demonstrate your mistrust in the Universe. Assume that all will be well and when you turn it over, an elegant solution will turn up or that people will do their best.

10. Listen Deeply and Follow Guidance — The Universe’s answer to a challenge or the achievement of your goal may not be some external resolution. It may be guidance you are given, things you are directed to do or signs that you need to follow. Once you turn it over to the Universe with trust, listen deeply for the wisdom you are offered and follow the guidance.

Essential Rumi

I believe none of us are fully comfortable with words like soul, pure love and heart. And perhaps we never will be as we do not fully comprehend their workings. This could be, for all we know that there is something we do not know- something that we will never be able to fully know. Thus begins our spiritual journey, egotistical as it may sound, our quest to find serenity and beauty that comes from deeper exploration of our conflicts and confirmations. Essential Rumi can be an useful set of ideas that presents a philosophy which may ease one's strain and you actually experience inner walls of pre-held understanding crumbling, brick by brick. Leading you to recognize that our presence is perhaps a myth. And its left to us to unfold this myth,  our mystery away from rational. 

Look at this
just finishing candle stub
as someone who is finally safe
from virtue and vice
the pride and the shame
we claim from those.

Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now. 

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
There is a field, I'll meet you there. 

Finally I know the freedom
of madness. 

No one who really loves,
loves existence.

And in that vein, Rumi suggests to dissolve your boundaries, pull and push and reach towards tenderness, of attempting to live beyond that may be undefined & unclear at this point, of sailing inside the inexplicable, drifting within your privacy.