...Or... A Journey of Such Great Distance, I Bow My Head, So As Not To Glimpse How Far It Is, I Have Yet To Travel…
Yesterday at work I was obliged to give the “role play” of the company story that they require us to deliver, with the fervor of religious commitment.
I did not want to do it, despite the fact that my dream was once to be a public speaker, I wasn’t looking forward to sitting in front of this particular competitive crowd and awaiting the “constructive criticism” that follows these weekly events.
But, of course, wanting or not wanting to do a thing, is not criteria that figures largely in the day-to-day activities of adults…and thus, I prepared what I knew was required, and set my mind to accomplishing their goals.
A couple of really interesting things occurred, and allowed me to take the experience into the Spiritual realm where my only true interest lies.
No doubt, because I have so many years of experience with public speaking and because I have spent an even larger number of years training my mind to go inward rather that out, (even though I am not nearly as good at it as I would wish to be at this stage in my life, and at this age) still, it provides me with a certain level of equanimity not normally exhibited in that room and in those “role plays”, except by the people who have been doing it for years and are the successful crowd, who we met in an earlier essay, who sit on the North side of the room.
After I had concluded my rendition of the company story and completed my assigned task…the “constructive criticism” portion of the days events was underway.
On the East, West, and South sides of the room…almost to a person…surprise was the unifying expression. “I can’t believe how comfortable you are doing this, for the very first time”, or “Wow, you seem so relaxed and at ease”, or this from the curmudgeon who doesn’t want to talk to any of us newbie’s, because “we won’t be around long enough to bother with”…”I don’t know your name, (no surprise there), but you won’t be going anywhere”!!??!! High praise indeed, from a man who won’t speak to you, until you’ve been aboard for three months or more.
Ahhhh, but then the North side weighed in…the list of crimes they discovered were so long, detailed, and persistent that eventually my boss waded in and began defending me, as I sat silently as instructed to do, and awaited the finish of the “We’re-Only-Trying-To-Help-You-Grow-Rag-Time-Blues”.
As I sat through the four points of the compass and received my baptism in the company culture, my mind did as I committedly instruct it to do, and kept it’s attention on my reactions rather than on their contributions.
Over the years that I have grown and matured in my spiritual practice, I have developed a very strong habit of blending into the wallpaper, (unless I am having a lot of fun and then I get rowdy and ribald as in the old days, when I was young and not very bright), and so I was not overly surprised at their surprise. Having kept such a low profile, I was an unknown cipher to all of them and therefore it was not unexpected, that I provided a type of shock.
For some reason my boss chose to take comments starting in the East and West, then allowed the South to chime in and finally the North, as the surprised praise turned into disgruntled blame, I watched my mind want to reach for the former and pull away from the latter.
But I did neither…
I cannot begin to tell you how much that means to me.
In the early years of being my Teacher’s committed student, he would often formulate lessons around what he called the “Twin Evils of Praise and Blame”, he taught without pulling any punches - as he was so masterful at, about the ways and means by which Praise and Blame can enslave a mind and prevent the, oh-so-necessary, growth of the Soul and Spirit.
In our culture of the blind leading the blind, there is almost nowhere to which you can turn to discover the evils of praise and blame, and the necessity of maturing into the capacity to accept neither of these dark energies into your self.
We abide in the notion that praise is a thing that heals, rather than wounds, and we, in all probability, would deeply resent someone trying to tell us that it can so easily and deeply damage the very ones we are attempting to serve.
When you praise another, if they are not in their “right” mind…which is to say, if they are living a life bound to the external as their source for well being, then praise can and will, enslave them to the source of external praise which brings them some temporary and fleeting relief, from the burdens of the “self”. They can so easily become as attenuated to the giver of praise, as does a heroin addict to their dealer, and in the doing of so, will have introduced a dangerous pathogen into their mental and emotional systems.
Blame on the other hand is the projected emotional disturbance of another’s mind upon some external source or person, to which they attribute their suffering, and in that way, is just as erroneous as is praise.
The only thing that happens in the outer is Events. Events are entirely neutral and without the potential for good or ill…in the Inner is where Experience lies, and in that, we can train ourselves to have absolute control over our lives and the levels of joy or suffering to which we are subject.
Since I have returned to the workings of the world, the deep realization of these truths - which I have enjoyed for some months now - has been somewhat wobbly, I have often felt myself under pressure which I incorrectly assigned as coming from outside myself, until the Evils of Praise and Blame made their way around that room on Tuesday morning.
As I watched the surprised glad handing slowly metaphorisis into blaming criticism, and held my attention firmly upon my internal responses, my balance was restored.
I remembered to remember… that my only role in this great drama of Life, is the role of Witness, that my contribution to my fellow human beings will not be found in what I do in the world, but rather, the tally that will be taken upon my death, will be of how much, how pure, how often, and how sacred was my capacity to bear witness to the workings of mind, as it sought to rob me, and therefore the planet, of poise and steadfastness.
When you, and I, and those that will come after us….can stand in the quiet center of our still minds, knowing – truly knowing, that nothing in the outer can affect us in any way that we do not allow it to, then we will have won for ourselves and our humble home, the blessings of the Invisible Ones.
You can touch people with praise so deeply, that they lose themselves entirely…
I cannot recall even a single instance in which my Teacher praised me, and yet, his unconditional Agape Love, fell like soft rain upon my upturned face. His gentle willingness to sit through my many and varied attempts to force him, through attempts at manipulating him, into praising me were met with a benign, beneficial, beneficent, and blessed refusal to do so.
He never waivered, nor wearied, in his willingness to allow me to see my false self in the clear and transparent mirror of his soul, until finely - one day, I could see my own transparency coming into view as well.
And so, I sat… still and quiet inside myself, as I was Praised and Blamed in fairly equal measure, neither reaching for, nor pulling away, from the external circumstances on display before me. Do not imagine that I am far enough down the road to no longer feel the pull, as my Teacher so clearly is, I felt it…I just didn’t journey with it.
Later in the day, a coworker came to me and described Rick as being an “asshole” for his “unjust and unkind” comments…and allowed as how I should not take it personally, that I had “done the best one she had ever seen”, including the North side of the room, superstars. I accepted her commentary without providing the feedback, that I was not taking her praising comments any more “personally” than I was Rick’s….and herein lies the victory…
When we can rise above the pull of praise and the fear of blame, is the very first moment in our lives, in which we might have some use to the Invisible Ones. Until then we are merely puppets manipulated by others for their need or gain, strung along like hungry baby birds, needing and requiring the energies of others to sustain us… or worse, demanding like small children, that they “take it back” if they throw us a bone instead of a meal. But either way - we are indeed -merely manipulated or manipulating children, reliant upon the outer to conform to our wishes, for our shadow strengths. Caught in a web as surely as a fly in a spider’s embrace, doomed to continuing looking beyond ourselves into the world of the mirage for our salvation, succor, and survival…a view that dooms us to the endless repetitions of the lost and lonely.
To mature into full Beingness requires that we lose this willingness to manipulate and to be manipulated, it requires of us that we rise up high enough to see the doom to which we are subjecting one another when we rely upon Praise, or when we accept Blame. Does that mean that we are not fully responsible for any and every wrong doing of moral and ethical character? …Of course not…but those are matters of self responsibility, rather than the projections of a mind that can no longer bear its own presence, and is therefore casting about in the external, looking for someone upon whom to project its weaknesses and flaws in understanding.
It takes a good deal of maturity to see this view of Praise and Blame, it took me a good many years to even get a peek at it…but now, as my emotional structure becomes increasingly stable, and my will increasingly turned to the realms of the inner, I can see, for myself, the ways and means by which Praise robs people of self-reliance. And self-reliance stands practically alone, at the very top of the mountain of good that the Creator yearns for us to acquire for ourselves. To become a self-reliant individual serves every-other-living-thing upon this blue globe of ours. A self reliant individual is a source of strength, a meter of well being, a lighting rod for the attention of the Invisible Ones, an opening through which grace can travel to us, a harbinger of what we could be, and might be, and a song each of our Souls longs to sing…
I move toward it with my head bowed so as not to see the great distance that must be spanned, but even knowing how far I must travel, I recognize that the Great Ones need only know that I am traveling their direction to support and encourage me, and to leave a light burning in the window of their souls, by which, I can find my way through the darkness of the “self”, into the pure and radiant light of the Impersonal One.
Adayre R. Miller
4/20/11
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