Swami Achives Fool-Realization-Again!
by Swami Beyondananda

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There is a classic story of the guru who told his number one disciple to warn everyone in the village not to bathe in the ocean the next day because a huge tsunami was going to hit. Dutifully, the disciple went from house to house and alerted everyone. Sure enough, the next day the wave came in, and all were safe. All except the disciple, who forgot to listen to his own advice and was swept away.

Well, I have a confession to make. Like that disciple, I failed to follow my own advice. While the Swami has been out campaigning for a new precedent and imploring his devotees to become “votees,” I missed the deadline for absentee ballots — and failed to cast a vote in the recent California Gubernatorial Recall fiasco — I mean, election. Granted, we had little choice. We had a larger-than-life action figure pitted against a smaller-than-life inaction figure. Or, as Jim Hightower has said, if God had meant for us to vote, S/He would have provided candidates.

Nonetheless, I have no excuse. Despite being a comedian by trade, I take this stuff pretty seriously. I was pretty sad watching the election results on Tuesday night knowing I had failed to participate. If one thing is true during these challenging times, the essence of “spiritual fitness” is to walk the talk, and be impeccable. Well, I was peckable. And frankly, I was humbled, if not humiliated. It was definitely a low point for me.

Then I remembered the sad, sad story of Donnie Moore. Donnie Moore was a relief pitcher for baseball’s California Angels (yep, the Angels, just another example of the Creator’s sense of humor) in 1986, when they faced the Boston Red Sox in the American League playoffs. Moore gave up the runs that lost the playoffs for California, and he never got over it. He felt such a profound humiliation that he killed himself two years later.

As shocking and distorted as this may seem, there is a traditional relationship between losing face and well … losing ass. Don’t those Japanese sushi chefs commit hari kari when they blow it on some blowfish, and a patron gets poisoned? Still, there has to be a better way to acknowledge a humiliating error … and be alive to live it differently the next time.

That’s when I realized that the best way to acknowledge my foolish mistake was to … commit Hokey Pokey. And so, for the next set of performances, the Swami will silently do the Hokey Pokey and invite the world to laugh at his foolishness. For years I have been talking about “fool realization” without fully realizing just what it means to hold oneself up as a laughingstock for all. Sure, I’ve said that when people laugh at our expense, it goes on our karmic expense account and we can skip a couple of karma payments. But now I know that fool realization is having a piece of our own human folly revealed to us — and being given the opportunity to laugh with God at ourselves. And — reflecting back on Donnie Moore — that sure beats the alternative.

I’m reminded of a passage in one of the early Teachings of Don Juan books. The shaman Don Juan and his apprentice Carlos are sitting on a park bench. At one point Don Juan points across the way to another bench and says to Carlos, “See that man? He is dying for your benefit.” And within minutes, the man keeled over, dead.

I’ve often thought about that passage, and many times since then I’ve experienced someone “dying for my benefit.” Maybe not literally dying, but certainly having an experience I could view in technicolor without having to experience myself — and still glean the lesson. And that’s when I had my second realization about fool-realization — in the wake of open-hearted, open-eyed loving laughter at oneself comes the awakening: the lesson learned.

And so let me declare that I have learned my lesson. I will never again be too busy to exercise my minimal duties as a citizen. I suspect that there are many, many others out there who are too busy, or too distracted by day-to-day doings to be the kind of citizen our times require. And so Swami has committed Hokey Pokey for their benefit. They can learn from my experience and take steps now to make sure they aren’t absent when the REAL election occurs in 2004.

In fact, Swami tells me he is hereby establishing an organization called Nonvoters Anonymous, and he has volunteered to be the only non-anonymous member. As he has said before, “My goal is to activate the nonvoter vote. If all the nonvoters vote for a new precedent — government of the people, by the people and for the people where the government does our bidding, not the bidding of the highest bidder — we will win in a landslide.”

Of course, the other element involved in voting is actually having someone and something compelling enough to vote for. If we truly want to reap a “world win” where the whole world wins, we have just about a year to cultivate the field of consciousness where people are more likely to choose the Turbanator then the Terminator. And so, on my new very-soon-to-be-launched website, www.righttolaugh.com, there will be an ongoing forum to explore the questions of citizenship and participation. Some of the questions which all of us (including me) will have a chance to answer include:

1. What regular and effective action am I as a citizen willing to commit to? What is the minimum I expect from myself, and what is my “go for?”

2. What are the most effective ways for us to change the field of understanding regarding our political system?

3. What are the most effective ways for me — and people who are busy in their lives — to handle all the prerequisites for voting, and then actually vote?

4. How can we all use humor — and all the other tools in our tool chest — to enlighten the political conversation and point the body politic in a healing and functional direction?

So … what are the lessons learned? What is the wisdom in the foolishness? Is this notion of acknowledging our folly just a wacky idea from a fringy comedian with enough of a comical imbalance in his brain that he doesn’t need drugs? Consider this sobering thought: What if Bill Clinton had immediately and open-heartedly acknowledged his dalliance with an intern, chalked it up to “delusions of glandeur,” went on Saturday Night Live to proclaim himself an international laughingstock (“Folks, when my term is up I’m going to join one of those Sex Addicts Anonymous groups — I hear it’s a great place to meet girls”), then sincerely apologized and asked for forgiveness?

I assert he would have diffused a divisive and destructive issue, and left the Religious Right holding their own you-know-whats. And perhaps we the people would now be enjoying more bush with Gore — instead of suffering through more gore with Bush. The good news is, laughter helps us illuminate our own and our collective shadow, and as the late Victor Borge used to say, it is the shortest distance between two people. May we indeed wake up laughing, and leave laughter in our wake.

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© Copyright 2003 by Steve Bhaerman. All rights reserved. Visit the Swami online at http://www.wakeuplaughing.com, or call him toll free at 1-800-SWAMI-BE.
ld Library, toll free 800/972-6657, ext. 52, www.newworldlibrary.com.

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