How to get out of Hell

My good friend Ray gave me a copy of the new Sinead O’Connor album ”Throw Down Your Arms”, and let me tell you folks, it is a masterpiece. She worked with two of the best reggae producers of all time, Sly and Robby, and she makes some beautiful music with them. Reggae music is not an easy sell for most people. Somebody looking like me (white, longish hair, bearded, slightly spacey look in my eyes most of the time) comes up to you, says “Hey man, you gotta check out this new reggae album!” you give them a wide berth. They’re either a wigger, a college student, a stoner, a frat guy, or any combination of those. I can cop to being any one of those at some point in my life, but I do not lie, this is an amazing album. I’ve been a fan of Sinead since Lion and the Cobra, ever since I saw this beautiful bald chick singing about Troy (I think I’ve had a thing for chicks with really short hair since the first Star Trek movie. Long long hair, or really short – either way works for me). Gospel Oak was a really important album to me for a certain period of my life, and I have a feeling this album came along at the right time for another changing time.

Now, reggae’s like the blues, but with more God, less Devil. Plus, any God that’s down with the Rastafarian sacraments is A-OK with me. Like the blues, reggae music is good for when you feel bad – and I’ve been feeling pretty bad, lately. Lots of pressure and stress at work, trying to keep ahead of too many projects in my real life. I don’t know where exactly I’m going with a lot of these projects (and by extension, my life), and the time for decision and consolidation is rapidly approaching. Something’s got to be done. The work thing, in particular, is giving me pain like you wouldn’t believe. So, when I’m feeling victimized (and, no question, a person is a victim only to the extent that they believe themselves to be one) I sometimes entertain revenge fantasies. You know the ones: telling the boss exactly where to stick it, and how deep, screwing the company at exactly the right moment when they depend on you most. Yeah, those fantasies. Not that we’d ever act on them, because we’re far too well trained for that. We’ve got student loans, and spouses in grad school, and health insurance that keeps us in antibiotics when we’re sick. But we still get that slight sickness in our throats, that taste of bile that has just a tinge of blood to it when the boss tells us we need to pick up the slack, and we think these thoughts.

So I’m listening to this new wonderful reggae album, and a song I’ve never heard comes on. The little black-on-grey LCD letters on the Ipod screen tell me it is called “Downpressor Man.” And the lyrics go like this:

Downpressor man
Where you gonna run to?
Downpressor Man
Where you gonna run to?
Downpressor Man
Where you gonna run to
On that day?

If you run to the sea
The sea will be boiling
(x 3)
On that day

If you run to the rocks
The rocks will be melting
(x 3)
On that day

If you make your bed in hell
I will be there.
(x 3)
On that day.

Downpressor man
Where you gonna run to?
(x 3)
On that day?

Simple. The revenge/justification fantasy of the downtrodden and poorly treated everywhere. “Well, you may be on top now, but one of these days, there’ll be a judgment, there’ll be a reckoning, and you will get what you require.” And like I’m so oppressed, right? Still, everybody thinks, at least once (some people, more like once a day) “Man, I can’t wait till you get yours.”

But then came that line: If you make your bed in hell, I will be there. I heard something quite extraordinary, and I don’t know if it was the writer’s intention or not, but there it was. One of the central tenets of Rastafarianism is “I and I”, that is very similar to “Tat Tvam Asi” or “thou art that." It is the ultimate identification of self and God that comes in the awakened spirit and mind. One understands, at one’s root, that one is not ultimately different from God, and that God lives in one, as one lives in God. Now, this idea has ramifications.

Think about it this way: When you condemn one person, you condemn the God that is in them, and, by extension, the God in you. And since God is in you and you are in God, ipso facto – you are in Hell.

Similarly, if one condemns oneself to Hell, through guilt or a gross misunderstanding of the truth behind all religions, one puts the entire world in Hell.

Thinking this, I suddenly saw the verse that ran, “If you make your bed in Hell, I will be there” not as a promise, i.e. wherever you try to hide, I’ll find you and make you pay, but as a plea. “If you go down to hell, I have to go with you. If you act against what you know to be right, you condemn yourself, and by doing so, you kill us all.” This made the song incredibly sad for me, but also wise.

We almost all of us labor under our guilt, straining at the weight of it. Heavy, brown, turdlike guilt, awkward in its bulk and threatening at any moment to crush us under its smelly burden. Some of it was placed there by others, some of it we picked up along the way, some of it we were born with. When I am particularly down with the guilt, I speak with the voice I like to call “The Critic” (not the cartoon). He is vicious, ruthless, and utterly truthful, and he hates everything, and himself (myself) most particularly. He adds to my guilt with his hatred and rage and then turns it on the people around him. He puts the world in hell and then wonders why the place smells like shit. I’ve discovered, however, that there is a way out of Hell. But it’s not easy.

The only possible release is to accept. Everything. Completely.

Ain’t that a bitch.

The only way out is love, complete and total, unconditional, doggy chewing a bone, baby playing with a soap bubble, Jesus on the cross, Gandhi taking (another) beating, Martin Luther King in a pool of blood love. And I don’t care what anybody says, that is damn near impossible, some days. And the worst of it is, it’s gotta be for everybody, including and especially your stinking, horrid, selfish, unreliable, forgetful, vain, lying, cowardly, weak-willed self. Or else it doesn’t count.

Shit.