The Red Folder

There is something that actors define as the “psychological gesture”, it is the one move, the one physical expression, that when a character makes it, we, as the audience, know the entire sum of their point of view…their life’s direction, dedication, and the decisions they are likely to make in the third act.

The very best among the craft of acting are masters of the psychological gesture it is why we are putty in the hands of the likes of Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Robert De Niro. We cry where they want us to, we are afraid if they require it, we laugh out loud if they are in a comedic role.

Some of them are obvious… like the slow, silent, erect and committed soldiers salute, to a fallen hero as his body is being loaded onto a large belly transport plane for the last ride home.

Or the hand over your heart, as the national anthem plays and we are asked once more to acknowledge home, family, nation, and national pride.

I have found that one of the many and great benefits of a quiet mind, is the capacity to catch the “psychological gesture” when it shows up in everyday life. To see it in another is golden, to see it in the self is a treasure trove of awareness and alertness. Let us first agree on why the “psychological gesture” is so very powerful…it bypasses our thinking mind. It shows up as us, unveiled and without the mask that we normally wear in our daily discourses with one another. It is almost always entirely unconscious, and entirely revealing.

I thought I would share with you the most recent one I was privileged to view, as they often break my heart open, when I am able to catch one as it passes by.

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To begin…we must know that I have been given a job.

I say that it is a gift because I have no background specific to the job. I am, in all probability, being slightly overpaid for the job… as it is not nearly as difficult as procuring enough trust, in a two hour time frame, that someone will purchase a thirty thousand dollar kitchen from you, (one of my last jobs), and the job itself is straight forward and fairly clear in its requirements.

The difficulty lies not in the job itself, but in the minefield of emotional entanglements that surround the job.

I am working for a woman who has held the job for some time now. She is dedicated in a way that allows you to know that the job is her life, not just her source of income. She defines herself as “territorial” and she states this, as though she has a common allergy to household dust.

Apparently this is the word someone else has applied to her need to control every nuance of the job, as I don’t really experience her as understanding what the concept of territoriality means, as it applies to herself and her dominion over the job.

To be “territorial” is to mean that you have set up perimeters, a sort of psychological barrier, around some small island of self-defined landscape that you patrol as though your very life depended upon it. Territoriality is often confused with having a passion for something, or “loving what you do”, or a sort of all-hands-on-deck dedication, that assumes your level of commitment to something or other outside of yourself as heroic, or valuable, or to be admired.

Our employer defined her as “one of our most valuable and valued” employees. Her direct supervisor uses her to do most of the work that she herself, should more likely be doing.

This is a very common set of circumstances for the “dedicated” among us.

But do not be mislead, there is a deep thicket of thorns beneath that blush of red roses. There is no harm done to the employer who gets way more than she is paying for, no difficulty for the supervisor who gets to coast a little, or a lot, when she probably should be pedaling a little harder.

No, the harm that comes from turning your life over to something outside yourself is the loss that you personally sustain.

We see around us in every walk of life the truly dedicated, the truly committed, and the truly “passionate”…but what we don’t see can’t see, and what would be truly liberating if we could see it, is where that dedication, passion, and commitment is sourcing from.

There are two very different locations from which that type of total life immersion can spring…and sadly, you can only really know which source is which, when the life in question is slowing down and coming to a close.

The most common source of that type of life dedication comes from the deep need to be viewed in a certain way, accepted for something you have to give, acknowledged for your greatness, seen as an exemplary in your field of endeavor. This category is by far the broadest, deepest, and most common. Here are the sports figures who when the arm goes, or the running slows, or the knee no longer supports, they have nothing in their lives and often end up in rehab…or worse. Or the actor, or singer who when age takes the voice or the looks, end up with a needle in their arm and gone to soon.

This type of passion is lauded in our society, and it seems to me no-one questions the validity of this type of balls out dependency, for that is surely what it is. Somewhere, at some point along the way, a sad and lonely child finds that if they sing, or throw the ball, or smile that just a little-bit-goofy smile, they get all the attention their young heart is yearning for…and suddenly a “self” is born.

I found this sort of attention from being a story teller. My entire family, stopped, paid attention, and focused on a lonely and lost little girl when I told a particularly enticing story. It became my identity. And large portions of my life were lost to that ability and the rewards received from it. Finding my way up and out of that identity, has been the hardest and most rewarding climb I have ever undertaken and I cannot truly say that I have succeeded… I only know that at least I understand how big a trap it is, how far reaching it can become, and how necessary for the soul to step out of that particular patch of light filled applause…and into the darker aspects of being, so that balance may be restored. Balance, humility, stillness, and simplicity…the other location… from which passion and dedication can source.

When we do something with our whole heart and mind, because we get great goodies from those around us, we are more lost than can be imagined. Conversely when we do something with our whole heart, mind, and soul simply because it is the thing before us to be done, the thing that has put itself in our path, the thing that is arising just now… in the field of the present moment… we are found in ways that are very difficult to describe, catalog, or express. From the outside the appearance of those two sources, often look exactly the same. But that sameness is only millimeters deep.

The first is born out of neediness and deep dependencies; the second is the blooming of the Impersonal Self and its delight in awareness for awareness sake. That state of Being has been known throughout recorded history as an “Awakened Being”. Here we have a person who has so thoroughly lost ALL territoriality that everything that presents itself to them, garners their full attention with the same commitment, dedication, depth, and resolve, as those that do what they are good at, because they get applause for it.

The difference is vast indeed…

So, I promised to tell you about a “psychological gesture” and the sorrow it brought to my heart, for the supervisor who is supposedly teaching me her job…but who, in truth, cannot bear to let go of even the tiniest aspect of the job and her hold upon it.

When she describes herself as “territorial”, what she means by the descriptor is that her need for the approval that she acquires through her dedication to the job is nearly absolute. She fusses with me over the size of font that I used to write the copy that was once her duty. She doesn’t like the words I choose, or the way I describe something that she once was tasked with describing. She is aghast when I ask another co-worker a question…when I should have asked her. She variously describes me as being her property, as in “she is mine” or as my being her “mini-me”, both ways of patrolling her perimeter and clearly announcing that she does not view me as capable of doing the job correctly. She has given me nothing to do of any consequence at all, as she cannot emotionally afford to.

As the Christmas break approached and she was alerted to the fact that I would temporarily be absent from my duties on the upcoming Monday, as I was being diverted to another project, she reached out and took the red folder from my desk that contains the necessary information for a task that must be completed every Monday by 5 pm.

And here was her “psychological gesture”.

As she plucked the folder from its paper tray, she did so with a kind of energetic reclaiming of what is rightfully hers. Up and away it went as she brought it to her breast, above her heart, with a flourish and a look on her face that assumed ownership and that it had been correctly restored to where it truly belonged. Her look was gleeful, eyebrows arched with a slightly self-satisfied smile, meant to convey the absolute dominion she feels for her small fiefdom.

A while ago, when I was still imprisoned inside the personal self, I would have experienced her gesture as a gauntlet thrown down…a personal challenge of her right to exercise that much control over me and a need to defend myself would have drawn me, up and out, of myself and into some measure of warfare with her.

And instead, on this day, as she scooped up her red folder and with it her entitlement to a job that is her life, rather than her source of income…I felt only, very real and compassionate, sorrow for her.

Sorrow that she appears to know so little about the depths within herself. Sorrow that her life has become so entangled with something so temporary, and so fragile. Sorrow that she will inevitably fail at being able to successfully defend her small territory, and sorrow that she has apparently missed finding a doorway into the larger version of herself…the larger version that awaits us all.

When we have the courage and the will to step behind the self that we created out of childhood needs, when we can begin to feel the lifeblood of Beingness flow in our veins…when we have allowed the mask we have worn all of our lives to slough off, like so much dead and no longer useful skin, our “territory” becomes a vastness so large, so encompassing, so power filled, and so lovely that all are welcome there.

Here in this place, laying claim to that red folder or not, has no consequence at all. In our larger selves there is no territory at all, as we are finally able to see that the circle we drew around our lives, our loves, our needs, our wants and our passions…was an entirely arbitrary and made up one.

Passion sourcing from this place gifts us with the capacity to turn everything we touch into our red folder. Everything we see, everything that sees us, everything we do and everywhere we go…establishes in us the awareness that we are the One, the Only, the View, and the Viewer.

And in this place…it is just as good to let go, as it is to hang on. Just as good to lose as it is to win, just as good to fall down as it is to get up, just as good to sink as it is to rise, just as good to be quiet as it is to shout, and just as good to go unnoticed as it is to be applauded.

I tell you this simple story of my supervisor’s psychological gesture, not to expose her, but rather to potentially awaken in you the desire to catch yourself hanging onto your own red folder, and the many ways in which that grasping limits your life, and your destiny.

Let go… give up the need to know, the desire to compare, the craziness of competing, and begin to notice the depth in yourself and the hugeness of the vast consciousness of which you are a valued and valuable part. Live there, in that, and you will find peace, harmony, and quiet joy…

Adayre R. Miller

Photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Luis Ribes I Portillo, to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link…http://www.flickr.com/photos/lluisr/1457453463/