Chapter 8

The Habit of Being You

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Being, that’s what we were going to talk about next.

But I had to wait a bit before we’d get into it. And what a wait! I know that I keep saying, “Amazing!” but I was being blown away left and right by everything about this guy. I was seeing things, and doing things, saying and listening to things I’d never experienced before in my life. Heck, I’d never dreamed about most of this. Yet, here it was – here I was.

It really was all pretty amazing!

As we climbed out of the truck back at his house, he turned to me and asked, “Want to freshen up?”

I said, “Sure.”

And he asked, “Have you ever had a Japanese bath?”

“No,” I told him truthfully. “At least I don’t think I have.”

“Oh, you’d remember,” he assured me. “Come on. You’re in for a treat.”

“It’s my opinion,” he said as we walked into the main house, “that the Japanese are eating our lunch in business, simply because they know about baths and we don’t. I’m on a one-man crusade to establish the bath in America, so the United States can regain our position as the world leader.”

He turned and looked at me. “I’m not kidding!” he said with an earnest smile.

The inside of the house was just as magnificent as the grounds and his office-study, although a bit more formal. It was a truly gracious interior – light and airy, filled with lush plants and fresh-cut flowers. Somehow, I felt, it would always be summer in these rooms.

Some of the pieces of furniture were really extraordinary. Antiques, big time! As we passed the wide entrance to the living room, I glanced in casually – and stopped dead in my tracks!

He had walked on ahead of me, but when he noticed I’d stopped, he turned back and asked, “What?”

“Tha . . . that,” I stammered. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Is what what you think it is?” he asked as he returned beside me.

There, above the mantle, in this man’s private home, in a magnificent, gilded, splendidly ornate period frame, about six feet wide and more than four feet tall, was a Monet! Obviously, not a copy – an original! My mind literally reeled – in fact, I think my legs did, too.

“That’s a M-monet!” I exclaimed. “Water-lilies . . . it’s from the water lil . . . oh, what were they called?”

“Nymphéas,” he replied. And then he let loose with one of those booming laughs of his – the biggest one I’d heard yet. He threw his arm around my shoulder and gave me a very strong hug, laughing all the while.

“I do like you!” he said between trying to catch his breath and recover from his all-consuming laughter. It took a good half-minute.

“Ahha,” he gasped, bringing himself together. “No, no. It’s not a Monet. It’s a Me. I painted it. But thank you so much! That was wonderful!”

I shook my head, again in disbelief – and again, amazed.

As we continued walking through the house – it was a big house – he told me that he had gone to art school, even had a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and although he’d never painted anything of real consequence before, it was something he’d always dreamed of doing. That painting had been one of his goals for a long, long time. 20 years, he told me.

Monet was the artist he loved most. After he became successful in Network Marketing – successful enough, he said, so that he had the time to do the things he’d always wanted to do, but hadn’t yet done – he’d purchased a whole bunch of books and prints of Monet’s paintings. He’d studied them, and then set out to paint his own work in a style close to Monet’s.

He’d succeeded more than admirably. His painting looked like a museum piece and I told him so.

“Thanks,” he said, appreciatively. “I think, when I die, I’ll look back on my kids and that painting as my greatest contributions.”

And then he added, like Teddy Roosevelt charging San Juan Hill – “To the bath!”

The bath room – which in this case had nothing to do with being a toilet – was remarkable, as I expected.

It was walled and ceilinged in wide-plank, highly polished, dark red cedar boards. What wasn’t wood, was glass – two huge glass skylights and a large glass window that extended the whole width of the room. The room was filled with a number of monster-sized and lush green hanging ferns and ivy.

The entrance to the room was a small foyer with benches and hooks for hanging our clothes. He told me that the bath was traditionally done in the nude, by men and women alike – but if I minded, I could have a bathing suit and he’d wear one as well.

I said that I was a purist at heart, and I’d do it as it was meant to be done.

The first half of the bath room floor was covered with closely placed cedar slats, with a sub-floor and drain beneath. There were two tubs: one was raised up (and steaming!) about three feet high, and the other was set into the flooring, square shaped – made of marble, I thought – and probably about three or more feet deep.

Part of the floor was a rock garden, similar to those in pictures I’d seen of those tranquil Zen temples in Japan. The sand was raked in straight lines and swirling patterns. It was not the kind of place on which you put your foot.

He motioned me to sit down on one of the small stools that was facing the wall off to the side of the taller tub.

On the wall were two sets of hot and cold water taps; one had a central spigot, and the upper one had a showerhead attached to the wall by a snaking, flexible hose. Beside the stools were wooden buckets that held probably about a gallon of water. Each had a kind of crude, hand-made ladle inside.

He filled his bucket up with warm water from the tap on the wall, dumped it over his head two or three times, and told me to do the same. Then he picked up one of those natural sponges, squeezed some clear liquid soap from a tall white bottle and tossed the bottle over to me. He began to soap himself all over with the sponge.

“It’s interesting that we Westerners climb into the tub first,” he said, “then we soap ourselves. The Japanese taught me to do it the other way ’round. They have a number of reasons for that. It saves water – you don’t have to keep filling up the bathtub with fresh water all the time. And knowing the Japanese, I’m sure it also has to do with being respectful of other people, and of the water as well. After all, only a Gaijin, oblivious and disrespectful to the water kami, would get into a tub all dirty.”

“Kami . . . Gaijin . . . ?” I wondered aloud.

“Kami are spirits in the Shinto religion. Just about everything on earth – in Japan – has a spirit: trees, flowers, rocks, water. And Gaijin means ‘foreigner’ in Japanese,” he told me, “but in my opinion, the essential translation is barbarian. The Japanese really think that they are the most refined culture on Earth – and that all foreigners are barbarians,” he laughed, “especially Americans.”

“And with good reason,” he added. “We don’t bathe nearly often enough.”

When he had finished soaping from head to toe, he filled up his bucket again and rinsed himself off at least a dozen times. I did the same.

Then he stood up, and said, “Now, a Japanese bath is very hot. Much hotter than you are probably used to.”

“I like hot baths,” I protested.

“Please, trust me,” he insisted, “this is very hot. I suggest that you use the shower and make it as hot as you can stand it by turning the temperature up gradually. Then you’ll be able to come and sit in the tub.”

I said that I’d really like to try the tub directly. He shook his head and smiled. Said “Be my guest,” and stood aside with a gallant gesture of his arm, as I walked up, climbed to the side of the tub and stuck my foot in.

No sooner had I done that, than I pulled my leg back out as fast as possible!

He just looked at me – no expression.

“I think . . . I’ll do . . . as you suggested,” I admitted, sheepishly waiting for his I told you so.

It never came. He just said, “Good,” and went over and sat slowly, almost reverently down in the tub. The water came all the way up to his neck.

After I’d come as close as I could tolerate to scalding myself with the shower, I joined him in the tub. Boy, it was hot! But the shower helped a lot. At least now I could stand to get in and sit down inside the tub.
“Don’t move,” he told me. “The trick is to sit stone still ’til you get used to it.”

Slowly, I adjusted to the temperature. I had closed my eyes and fought the heat at first. Now, I was being melted – literally – into a state of peace and pleasure.

When I finally opened my eyes, I saw my friend had leaned his head all the way back on the edge of the tub, and draped a hot washcloth over his face.

I looked around. The whole room was filled with a light, steaming mist coming from the hot tub. I imagined he probably didn’t want to talk at that moment, but I mustered the courage to ask quietly if he was willing to tell me about being.

He slowly removed the cloth from from his face and smiled a deeply satisfied smile. “Sure,” he said, took a deep breath and began – as usual, with a question.

“Who are you?”

Great, I thought, another easy one. I was silent for a long time. I knew just saying my name wouldn’t do. He’d just ask me another question. So, I waited and thought about the question some more.

After a small-scale eternity, I said, “I’m the sum total of all the experiences I’ve ever had . . . all I’ve thought about me and those experiences . . . and all anybody’s ever told me about me and them.”

His eyes blinked open wide with a start. And to my delight, this time, he was the one who said . . .

“Amazing.” I wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to me or to himself. “I honestly did not expect that answer. That’s wonderful!”

I must say, whether it was the anesthesia of the bath or just the joy of hearing those complimenting words coming from him, I did feel quite wonderful at that moment.

“Thanks,” I said, uncharacteristically forgetting to preface my gratitude with Gosh.

“Very good,” he said, with genuine enthusiasm, now clearly addressing me. “And do you know what all of that – your thoughts and the thoughts of others about you – adds up to?”

“My being?” I asked and answered at the same time.

“Close,” he said. “It’s what your sense of your being comes from . . . what creates how you be in any situation. It adds up to your habits of belief. What some people call your belief systems.

“I don’t say ‘belief systems,’ just because I don’t think people really understand that term. Most people think ‘systems’ are so complicated that they’re powerless to change them. Besides, I maintain that our beliefs are habits of thought we have. And because they are simply habits, we know how we got them – and how to change them, too.

“Habits,” he continued, “are things we think or do without conscious attention . . . without being aware of them. The moment we are aware of what we are thinking or doing, it’s no longer a habit. It’s a choice.

“So, can you see, we can change our habits by making conscious choices?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, and I did see that very clearly.

“So,” he continued, “we have these habits of belief about ourselves, and the reason they are so important is that they control what we have, do and be in our lives.”

We were back at “have, do and be,” and my face must have shown that I was still not on solid ground here.

“Let me give you an example,” he said.

“I grew up fat. When I graduated from high school, I weighed 250 pounds.”

“Really?” I exclaimed. “Well, you’re not fat now . . . and I bet you’ll be a whole lot thinner after this bath!”

“Quite true!” he nodded, laughing with me. “But seriously, although I’ve actually weighed around 175 for years, I spent much of that time still believing I was fat.

“You see, for almost 30 years, my experience had given me all the evidence I needed to see myself as ‘fat.’ What’s more, other people were quite willing to contribute to that evidence. And so was I! Every chance I got, whether I knew it or not, I would simply add to that belief by . . . believing it some more! My mind had gotten the ‘I am fat’ message literally thousands of times.

“In school, I was the brunt of fat jokes and lots of cruelty about being fat. When I first lost a good chunk of weight, I bought slimmer pants that were really much too tight for me. Now, I thought I was doing that because I was glorying in finally being thinner, finally being able to fit into a smaller size. Then one day I realized that in fact, by buying pants that were too small and having my belly bulge out over my belt – I was continuing to live out my belief that I was fat!

“Later on, after I’d lost over 75 pounds, I’d mention something about being fat, and people would be shocked. They’d tell me how great I looked, how thin. And it took years of that kind of input, but eventually I began to replace my habit of believing I was fat with one where I truly believed I was, at last, thin.

“That whole process took more than 15 years!”

He closed his eyes and visibly shuddered. “What a waste,” he said.

He was silent for some time. Then, he took a very deep, slow breath, and opened his eyes as he let the air slowly escape his lungs.

“The Buddhists teach that life is suffering,” and his voiced was filled with a powerful emotion. “And I agree – to a point. What they do not teach, however, is how damn unnecessary it is. Being suffering, being anything, can be changed, if we literally put our minds to it. We only need to change our minds. And we do that all the time. We just have to learn how to do it on purpose.

“Habits of belief are created the same way as any other habits – simply by doing the same thing over and over until you don’t think about it any more. That means, you can create a new habit the very same way, just as I did when I replaced my fat belief habit with a thin one.

“Now, when I first did this, I was unaware of what I was doing. I didn’t see how the ‘thin talk’ I’d begun to hear from others – and from myself – was changing my habit of belief that I was fat.

“Think of it as a balance scale in our minds. One side is weighted down with all the talk and experiences that make up our predominant habits of belief. But we can change that, simply by adding enough ‘weight’ to the other side as we create new habits. Do you see what I’m talking about?” he asked, holding his hands out in front of him, palms up, moving up and down like the two sides of the scale.

I did. And I said so.

“Okay,” he said. “So, if you accept what I’ve said so far as if it were true, what’s the first question you’ve got?”

“How do you change the habit?”

“Replace it with a new one.”

“How?”

“How’d you get the original?” he asked, then answered the question himself. “You got it by having a thought about what you believed. Then another. Then another, and another and another. Pretty soon, you didn’t have to add any more thoughts – your habit of belief was in place. You just kept it there, sustained it, reinforced it, every time you added some new input – some experience, something you said about that, something someone else said to you about it – that agreed with or could be added to that existing habit of belief.”

“So,” I said, “you begin replacing your existing habit of belief – what did you call it, dominant . . . predominate?”

“Predominant,” he offered.

“Right. So you begin replacing your predominant habit of belief by adding new thoughts to the other side of the scale. Right?”

“Right,” he agreed. “What kind of thoughts?”

“Thoughts which are about the new belief you want to have.”

“YES!” he shouted, and jumped up out of the tub.

He turned to me like someone exaggerating a symphony orchestra conductor with his arms moving back and forth to some grand unheard marching music, and he pointed his fingers at me as he spoke, keeping the imaginary beat with his words:

“And . . . so . . . ” (Point, point.)

“I . . . say . . . that . . . you . . . ” (Point, point, point, point.)

“Have . . . the . . . habit . . . ” (Point, point, point.)

“Of . . . being . . . HOT!” (Point, point, POINT!)

“Well come on,” he laughed. “We’ll change that one right now!” And before he’d finished saying “right now,” he’d jumped into the other tub, where he ducked completely under the water, and stayed there.

After a good 10 seconds or so, he shot up out of the water with a great whoosh, exclaiming, “Whup, whup, whooa! Yes! YES!

“Come on. Get in here!” he demanded as he jumped out.

I did as I was told.

It was freezing! The entire tub was pure ice – no, colder. It was below zero!

“Whhhaaa!” I screamed out and jumped out at the same time.

As I rubbed the water from my eyes he threw a towel at me.

“Great, huh?” I think he was asking me, but I wasn’t very clear about it. All I remember at that moment was me jumping around and squeaking, “Ooh . . . Ooh . . . Ooh . . . !”

“Wow!” I said. I hadn’t done that since boys’ camp. “Wow!” I said again. “Wheew!”

“How do you feel?” he asked, having just finished toweling himself off, wrapping the towel around his middle and tucking it in.

“Great!” I said. “It feels invigorating. Do you do this often?” I asked.

“Every day,” came the reply. “I can’t think of anything better for your body – or for your mind. I’m actually 97 years old. How do I look?” And he laughed another of his boomers – only this one seemed deeper by an octave or two.

“You look great, old man,” I quipped back.

“Hey,” he said, as if remembering something special, “would you like to meet my family?”

“You bet!” I said enthusiastically. “I’d wondered about where they were.”

“Me too,” he laughed. “I haven’t seen them since yesterday afternoon, before you arrived. Let’s go find them.”

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Click here to read: Chapter 9: Housekeeper Master