Ever since she could remember, Mai needed more pockets. Her first pair of overalls had a large pocket right in the front where she could keep the tattered remains her "huggyblanket."
As Mai grew larger, the blanket part grew smaller, and was kept in the right pocket of her favorite pants - the ones with pockets all down the legs. The blanket kept company with her first ever blue ribbon - the one she got for spelling words such as "cache" and "conceal."
The week her father died, she cut the end off of his paisley tie, and carried it in her back pocket. A scarf worn by her nicest teacher and a glove (stolen) from a bad boy down the street occupied the pocket on the left side down by her knee.
Later came the handkerchief she had cried into when her friend moved away, her lucky piece of fur she had to have when she wrote exams and a piece of birch bark on which a boy had written "I love you forever."
When it became apparent that her pockets were not large or plentiful enough she made herself a coat out of all the "meaningful" materials she wanted with her.
It was very long, and quite attractive, especially when she studded it with the nails she and her husband used to build their first house, and belted it with an old leather leash that her dog "Keeper" had used.
As time went on and she became quite anxious about the future, she sewed gold coins and corn seeds into the large hem, in case calamity struck.
Her coat hid her weaknesses, too. She vowed that no one would ever see the sore on her forearm, right under the sleeve where she had sewn a Valentine heart.
No one ever would, either, because she didn't really need to take the coat off. The less people knew about her, she thought, the less they would have to criticize and she didn't want to think about the sore anyway.
When other people became too critical - or too friendly, she could pull up her large hood. The hood was lined with velvet from her first prom dress, that terrible time when her date drove another girl home. She was so humiliated!! She would relive that feeling whenever she rubbed her cheek on the velvet.
She pasted a piece of broken mirror on the right sleeve so she could look behind her shile she was walking.
Her husband moved out when she refused to turn the heat up in the house. The coat was so warm, it was all she needed. Her husband never amounted to much anyway. She sewed a long piece of his old gray sweatpants down the right side of her coat.
Ooh, he made her so angry! She would pull the coat closer around herself and scratch at the gray stripe with her fingernails.
Her coat was becoming sort of a history of her life. She could relive all her triumphs and failures just by touching a certain part. And it hid a lot of what she didn't want to face.
She couldn't wash her coat. The cinnamon bark toggles she brought home from her cooking class would break, but she frequently dusted her coat with whatever scent made her feel good that week. "Constant aroma therapy," she thought. Though the aroma drove away all of her friends. Mai didn't mind much. She loved her coat, and it - it sort of protected her from - everything. Other people, new experiences, - change in general - who needed all that?
"My comfort coat," she thought. "Life is having a good coat." Indeed, her coat supported many kinds of life. In damp weather a green mould would grow under the arms and once in a shile a few corn kernels would sprout and she would have to take them out of the hem and throw them away, but she could live with that.
There was only one confusing thing about that coat. On the inside at the right, was a label. And she had not put it there. She couldn't imagine where it came from. It was a small black label with her name, "MAI," in white stitching.
As the years passed and Mai became more and more dependent on her coat to protect her, the coat started to become uncomfortable. It didn't fit right. It began to get tight around her chest, constricting, really. She felt like she was longing for something she had lost long ago, but she didn't really know what it was.
The coat became so heavy that she walked bent over, like an old woman, a sad old woman.
She desperately sought help. A wise old man befriended her and showed her how entangled she had become in her resentments, anger, fears and judgments.
Oh, the freedom she had felt when she discovered that to be happy all she had to do was to shed her coat, and think no more about it.
I'll look away from my tears, I'll ignore my problems. I'll smother my judgments. I think I'm going to become a new woman," she sang, as she shed the coat, and ran proudly naked, sore and all, into the woods.
"I've finally learned to ignore my humanity, my weaknesses, and other people's weaknesses too." She felt so light.
Her lightness didn't last. The wise teacher lost interest in her. How she resented that. The water in the stream became polluted by some stupid geese. Her sore got worse.
She worried about how she would get through the winter. I thought getting rid of the coat was the answer," she thought. "What went wrong?"
Before she had had feelings of apartness, insularity, fear, and judgment, and that didn't make her happy. She worked hard to get over, and throw out those feelings, and now they came back stronger than ever.
So if Life wasn't about wearing the coat, and it wasn't about shedding it, what was life all about?
She was pondering this question the day she found her coat again. It was not in very good condition. The nails had rusted and squirrels had taken the cinnamon toggles.
But the one part that was undamaged, was the label, the label that had appeared out of nowhere. It came off, good as new, black and white, in her hand.
MAI. She turned it over and felt as if she had been struck by - light. Her name, MAI, seen from the other side of the fabric spelled I AM. I AM!! That was it! Her identity was not limited to some person experiencing or not experiencing Life. Her identity was Life.
I AM itself.
Her coat is her individual view of Divinity, called humanity. She couldn't throw her coat away, because appearances (the seen) can't exist without the seer. She designed her coat just as she had designed her world. I should write a book, "I Am The World I Wear," she laughed.
Suddenly it was so clear. It is not about wearing or not wearing the coat. Satisfaction is not object based. Pondering all the past emotional entanglements and future fears was not the point. Ignoring them was not the point either. She had thought that she was MAI, someone who must keep her entangling memories and fears, and then that she was MAI, someone who must ignore all that stuff.
___________________
Living is not in the holding onto,
or in the ignoring,
but in the self-permitting look of I AM
___________________
The FACT IS that her identity is not just MAI. From the perspective of the other side of the label, (the same label) her identity is I AM. It is from this identity that all happenings can be looked at -- and seen as they are. Exactly right. Living is not in the holding onto, or in the ignoring, but in the self-permitting look of I AM.
Attention to the fabric is essential. All pieces of the fabric are the "look of the moment" of Perfect principle. It is all there to remind her of her true identity.
Acknowledgement and permissiveness of that which is being the fabric is essential, and simple.
MAI could wear the coat, or not. What matters is that she pay attention to all of the ways Life shows up, from the perspective of I AM. She could look at her humanity and see that it was the look, the fabric of divinity. All of it.
