Sacred Cows

I have a tremendous love and respect for the shaman Don Diego. He and Mother Vine guided me through a treacherous passage of my life where I subconsciously but willingly- although never fully realizing to what extent it would entail- consented to be unraveled, discombobulated, dismantled, deconstructed and decimated. It was incredibly painful and many times thought I would die. Imagine your skin being peeled off centimeter by centimeter…then imagine it being done with a butter knife…then imagine doing it yourself!!!! (This image was presented by Jed McKenna in his “Enlightenment Trilogy.”) No, I’m not a masochist, but in retrospect it was worth every minute. I actually dedicated my first novel “The Twin Flames, the Master, and the Game” to Jed, Don Diego, Mother Vine, and Abigail. Thank you, thank you , thank you!!!

Don Diego, especially during Dietas in the Amazonian jungle, and especially during those moments where you felt that you were so empty and couldn’t take another breath, would either sing a song or tell a story that allowed you to push on a little further. Moreover, at least in my case, these stories would stick with me and years later would reveal a deeper meaning or message than what I had understood at the time. One such story was that of the sacred cow.

Don Diego recounted that a student was on pilgrimage in India with his master, who was an enlightened being. In their travels, the master would share ancient teachings that related to events that transpired, conversations that arose, what they saw and experienced, and encounters with people. They had already been on pilgrimage for two years and it was now the monsoon season. They were in the countryside and were caught in a torrential downpour. The rain was so heavy that they were barely able to see anything a few feet in front of them. They came across a tiny shack and they knocked on the door asking for shelter. They were welcomed inside and the tiny space was filled with a large family. They were huddled on mats closely spaced on the dirt floor, avoiding areas where the roof was leaking. There were no actual windows but just areas where the wood was cut out. In addition to the large family, they also had a cow inside the hut.

The family was very gracious. They were all very emaciated and although they barely had enough food for themselves, they selflessly shared the little bit of food they had with the two strangers. They explained that they were extremely poor and that the cow was their only means of survival. They sold her milk to their neighbors in exchange for food. This was why they took such good care of the cow and kept her inside the shack during the heavy storms. After an evening of sharing they made spaces for the two travelers to sleep. At one point during the night, the student awakened and the master was gone. The rain was still pouring down and the student feared that the roof would cave in from the sound of the pounding rain battering the roof. The student stood up and carefully navigated around the sleeping bodies on the ground and while making his way to the window, noticed that the cow was also gone. Through the rain the student was able to make out the form of a man who he surmised was his master pulling the cow up the hill facing the shack. He ran out to catch up to the master but by the time he did, the master had already arrived at the top of the hill. Just as he arrived the master pushed the cow off the hill to its death. The student was horrified by what he just witnessed. He asked: “How could you be so cruel to take away these poor people’s only means of subsistence after they were so kind to us?” The master said nothing and started to walk back. The student grabbed him by the arm and said: “You are an evil man and I can no longer be your student. I hate you.” The master said nothing and returned to the shack. Before sunrise, the master was gone and the student dared not tell them what had happened to their cow. He bid them farewell and decided to continue on the pilgrimage alone.

Five years later, the student was returning home and was passing through that same village and decided to pay the family a visit. When he arrived at the place where the shack was located, he at first thought he was lost because there was a beautiful brick house. As he approached one of the family members recognized him and called everyone to greet him. The student was shocked to see that they were all now quite plump, well dressed and there was a car in the driveway. They invited him in for dinner and he couldn’t help but to ask them how they managed to do so well for themselves. They explained that when they lost what they believed to be their only means of survival, their sacred cow, they were forced to find another means to survive. It turns out that their land was very fertile so they started to grow crops that were very valuable to the surrounding communities so they became very successful and wealthy. Don Diego explained that this was exactly the work we were doing in the jungle, exposing and killing our sacred cows!

This story hit me like a ton of bricks! I immediately recognized so many cows that were sacred to me: my career as an academic emergency physician; the titles I carried like badges of honor- residency program director, founder and director of the emergency medicine ultrasound fellowship and the simulation fellowship; being a good father to my children; studying jazz piano; learning languages; my self image; the image I projected to the outside world, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There were so many sacred cows and at that precise moment, it was clear to me that I had to kill them all. That was a tremendous revelation and my first key towards liberation. I knew then what my mission was and shortly after this Dieta, I resigned from my position of residency program director and dedicated myself, like a ruthless professional assassin, to killing my sacred cows, one by one. As many sages have pointed out, evolution is not a construction project but rather a demolition project.

Interestingly as soon as I would find and kill one of my sacred cows, it was as though a veil or rather, a really hip pair of sunglasses that I for some ridiculous reason was wearing at night was lifted, allowing me to see five more sacred cows. There were layers and layers of sacred cows- “turtles all the way down” as the Buddhists say. At first the cows were enormous and couldn’t be missed, but as time went on they became smaller and smaller and it became very challenging to find them. I then realized that there would never be an end to this process. I realized that I was like the dog or cat chasing a laser pointer, and as soon as they would catch it, it would appear somewhere else, forever occupying them in a meaningless activity.

As I stated above, the deeper meaning of Don Diego’s stories would become clearer to me years after hearing them (yes, I admit that I’m a bit dense, which I also discovered many years after the fact!). The first layer of meaning for many is that it’s a cute story, but they can’t see how does it applies to their own life. At that point there’s the sound of a very loud buzzer and a voice that says: “No dog biscuit…you lose…try again in the next lifetime!” The second layer, which I was fortunate enough to catch, is recognizing that our lives are dictated by so many sacred cows that really do in fact need to be slaughtered. However, even with this understanding, the final judgment rendered with a drumroll as the envelop is handed to the beautiful person at the microphone, is…”No dog biscuit…you lose…try again in the next lifetime!” But why? you ask. You point out that it was a powerful story and metaphor for our own lives and in fact, our protagonist went out with the fury and precision of James Bond with his license to kill and massacred all those sacred cows that we all agree deserved to be killed. You vehemently object that this is not fair. You were playing this single role playing video game (RPG) for the hundredth time and after killing all your enemies and just as you believed that you had finally completed the game, the black screen of death interrupts the game stating in bold letters: “No dog biscuit…you lose…try again in the next lifetime!” Throwing the remote control on the floor and smashing it into a million pieces, you holler, waking up the kids and royally pissing off the spouse: “WTF!!!! That’s not fair!!! WTF!!!”

Jed Mckenna (by now you’ve figured out that he’s one of my heroes & I will probably- SPOILER ALERT!!!- dedicate my second novel, the sequel, to him) provides us with a great explanation in his “Enlightenment Trilogy.” He explains that one option is to jump into the sewer with all your weapons and decimate all your demons, or in the case of our story, your sacred cows. After ten to twenty years, battered and bloodied, you emerge, arms waving in the air exclaiming for everyone to hear that you did it, you kicked their asses and you finally won. Jed pops your bubble and tells you that you actually didn’t win. The sacred cows’ and demons’ only mission were to keep you in the sewer for ten to twenty years. That was their only mission and they succeeded. They aren’t actually real. They never really existed, except of course in your mind, and consequently, death is meaningless to them. Therefore: “No dog biscuit…you lose…try again in the next lifetime!”

The following is of course speculation and until you’ve crossed that line into Wakethefuckup land, which I clearly have not, this is all a mental construct. However, I love mental acrobatics and after falling and breaking my neck countless times- see my ramblings in “Wile E. Coyote”- I’m starting to see things a bit differently. Don Diego’s story about the sacred cow has taken on a new light. I at first took it to mean that our sacred cows keep us stuck in the same place and impede us from achieving our goals. I am now beginning to see that we ourselves are the sacred cow- Ah-hah! If we are the sacred cow, then everything we do keeps us stuck in the same place and impedes us not from achieving our goals, but from seeing the truth of our nature and reality. “What? you ask! What kind of brownies have you been eating?”

So hypothetically (please entertain me): What if this reality is an illusion or perhaps a simulation? What if everything we do in the simulation- meditation, puja, mantras, prayer, self-help, killing demons and sacred cows, chasing windmills- reinforces it and gives it more depth and meaning? What if fighting our so-called demons and finding and killing our sacred cows make the illusion/simulation more colorful and facilitate that old “suspension of disbelief” that is all-important to making that $18 you spent (this doesn’t include the cost of popcorn, candy and a soda!) to see a movie worthwhile?

So perhaps the sacred cow that needs obliteration is the idea of you. I say idea because if this is a simulation, this iteration or avatar of you doesn’t really exist. By the way, I am not in any way proposing an original idea as every sage that has ever walked the face of this earth has related a similar message. It’s just news to me and I’m working it all out in my head to pass the time away. So stick with me on this joy ride because this is deep. If what I’m arriving at is remotely true, then EVERYTHING that we are “doing” in the name of waking up, finding our true selves, meaning, peace, tranquility, peace, nirvana, in fact feeds the sacred cow that is us.

Now perhaps this is what most people really want- prolong the ride, simulation, illusion. After all, if they win the RPG video game, then what? That ends the fun and they’d have to go out and shell out another $50 at the local Gamestop to buy the next game. The fact is that it is a lot of fun to go on the ride/play the game over and over again, just as long as it’s challenging and we get to make a little progress each time. The obligatory “WTF!!!! That’s not fair!!! WTF!!!” and throwing the remote control on the floor and smashing it into a million pieces when you are blown up into a million pieces like Wile E. Coyote when you get the message “No dog biscuit…you lose…try again in the next lifetime!” is really just part of the game. It’s all part of the game- EVERYTHING!! Even your thoughts that you so preciously hold on to are part of the game! Consequently, if you want out of the simulation/game/illusion/Matrix/Plato’s Cave- Now think carefully, do you want the red pill or the blue pill? & Please be honest!- then you are the sacred cow that needs to die!

The problem is that the simulation/game/illusion/Matrix/Plato’s Cave, very much like todays video games, are quite sophisticated and becoming more and more life-like. Can you imagine a future where the games are so life-like that they become total immersion simulations? Then we’d really be fucked because you wouldn’t know for sure if the sacred cow that you killing is really you or the simulated you. How then would you ever wake up? Are we already in this predicament? I think it was much easier for the Buddha and other enlightened beings since it’s become a lot more complicated!

So as I was describing, the simulation is quite sophisticated and intelligent. It is not “out there” but rather in your head. The entire illusion/reality is being projected out from your head. Therefore any attempt to escape or sabotage the game with ideas of enlightenment or truth-realization is already built into the game, and further attempts are thwarted because the game knows every aspect of you and your mind, because it is your mind. Consequently, it easily throws in a monkey wrench that it/you know(s) will catch your attention and distract you/ keep you in the sewer fighting your demons, or sometimes just for fun, just start playing with a laser pointer that it/you know(s) you can’t resist. What a mindfuck!!!

So how do you get out? How do you kill the sacred cow that is you? Hell if I know and these wise-ass sages and enlightened beings, who I’m now convinced are also part of the simulation/game/illusion/Matrix/Plato’s Cave program, never give us a straight answer or how-to manual. After all, they too- in actuality “us,” the us that is playing the game or simply observing it and getting a kick out of watching us (in the game) chase that laser pointer- are just looking to amuse themselves and pass the time away. Therefore, they are sworn to secrecy and won’t give us the key but like the video game, just enough to make a little progress before we are again annihilated like Wile E. Coyote on his mission to catch the Roadrunner.

So I don’t know, but piecing together the clues and bread crumbs littered by the sages, it boils down to not feeding the sacred cow. ALL ACTIVITIES- meditation, puja, mantras, prayer, self-help, killing demons and sacred cows, chasing windmills, etcetera- reinforces the illusion of you, the “doer” that is doing something, the ultimate sacred cow. The solution therefore is letting go, and as Jed McKenna advises, letting go of the letting go. Letting go as Byron Katie advises: “Loving what is.” Letting go as in radical acceptance of everything and simply observing the spectacle. This brings me back to my three guiding principles: 1) “Don’t sweat the small stuff and by the way it’s all small stuff”; 2) “Everyone is doing the best that they can with the resources that they have at that moment”; & from the person who I am really beginning to suspect is an enlightened being pretending to be one of us, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, 3) “It doesn’t matter!” From the point of view of this discussion, they also now take on a much deeper meaning.

By internalizing letting go, letting go of the letting go, loving what is, radical acceptance and the three guiding principles, the illusion fades and what’s left is Consciousness, which is what the illusion/simulation/game/illusion/Matrix/Plato’s Cave is made of. There’s only Consciousness!

The scene fades with the image of Dwayne the Rock Johnson up in my face yelling “It doesn’t matter!” and then looks back at the camera as he’s walking away like a total badass, smiles and winks. The protagonist looks puzzled, frustrated and angry and says: “WTF?!”

I am an emergency physician, writer and a lover of life. The purpose of this blog is to share my ideas, experiences and perspectives as they relate to Consciousness, and as they evolve. Consciousness encompasses everything in my life, your life, the world, the Universe — in other words — EVERYTHING! As the great Shaman Don Diego used to say: “It’s not the most important thing, and it’s not the least important thing…It’s the ONLY thing!”

Check out my novel: “The Twin Flames, the Master, and the Game”! It’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Balboa Press.