As you know, by now, from reading my essays…that I am not a global thinker. I cannot deal in large themes or views that are so clear that they can see the arc of human development over centuries or, even millennia. It would be grand, I imagine, to be that kind of visionary. An Albert Einstein, a Ralph Waldo Emerson, or my Teacher who often said he was serving the “deck and not the individual cards.”
But I am not capable of that kind of stratospheric living. I am a simple storyteller, attempting to tell stories that have a purpose greater than entertainment.
Essays ~ a simple story, with a moral. Toward that end, I must share my life with you, in the hope of sharing the lessons I learn.
This last Thursday was a doozy.
I am not sure that I completely understand, but I trust that by the time we have finished this conversation…that I may, end up knowing more about what happened, what it means, and how I can use it to become more expanded.
As the Queen of Hearts told Alice, begin at the beginning and when you come to the end stop.
My story begins with a woman I had not yet met. Ms. Darci Nivas, came to my company’s owner with a request. She had come up with a genius of an idea, to support the educational process she is engaged in. She took eighteen canvases, drew a large tree upon them and then distributed them to the homeless she was working with and instructed them to “do as you will”. Paint whatever, in whatever way you choose. “Try any medium, paints, collage, beads, scraps of paper…whatever”…and when they were finished, and hung, and viewed, there appears a tree… a quite wonderfully eclectic, diverse, and very recognizable tree. She then imagined, that she could produce a forest in exactly the same manner. So she began distributing the trees to many different groups of folk, who share some form of communal experience to create her forest.
You can see the genius of this idea, can’t you?
Lots of people, and lots of different kinds of people, get to show up and play. No one person is too exposed. The groups bond, much as we used to bond around camp fires, sharing our lives with one another, before we got too busy and self important to sit down and breathe with each other, and look one another in the eye.
And there’s more…she is going to have a reception so that all the unknown tree makers will get to see her forest. I can’t wait to see the quilter’s tree, and the version the art students are going to make combining photography and painting.
When my employer put this idea in my hands, and asked me to execute it, I don’t really know that she was expecting the commitment I was willing to make to it. But I know the power of shared creative expression, and I am a “get on board” kind of gal, when it comes to anything creative.
Back in the day when I first began painting at seven years of age, my parents would line my works up on the couch to show them off to neighbors, and aunts, and uncles, and folk… just wandering down our street… anybody and everybody, was welcome to join the viewing. It was the yang to my mother’s rages, the full ripeness and flowering of her loving attention, while the yin of her rage eventually became our shared journey into unshakeable and enduring unconditional love, understanding, and forgiveness.
We in the west, imagine that yin and yang, are polar opposites and on one level they are, but from a much deeper and therefore from a truer place, they are not really opposites, but rather, complimentary energies.
For instance, dropping a stone in a calm pool of water, will simultaneously raise waves and lower troughs between them, and this alternation of high and low points in the water will radiate outward until the movement dissipates and the pool is calm once more. Thus, yin and yang are always complimentary opposites, but equal qualities. Further, whenever one quality reaches its peak, it will naturally begin to transform into the opposite quality: for example, grain that reaches its full height in summer (fully yang) will produce seeds and die back in winter (fully yin) in an endless, and quite natural cycle.
It is impossible to talk about yin or yang without some reference to the opposite, since yin and yang are bound together as parts of a mutual whole (e.g. you cannot have the back of a hand without the front).
That said, and so that you do not get lost in my round-about story, please allow me to recap so far. Darci went to KC and asked for a company tree. KC, who has more on her plate than the law should allow, handed it to me. I saw the jewel in it and caught fire with the idea….and here is where the yin and yang dance began.
It started with me writing emails to our community to get them to join in the tree idea. The first one was professional, and I thought fairly clear. It got a teeny tiny response of three – already creative individuals – eighteen needed, so I tried again.
The next email I sent was folksy, newsy, and witty. The responses started flooding in, not only did I have to ask Darci for another tree, but I got a fair amount of praise and appreciation for my written explanation, from the troops.
It was very much like my mother lining my paintings up on the couch for all to see. It fed the creative spirit in me, it caused joy to bloom in a very vivid way…so much so, that a dear friend who works right beside me said he experienced me as a little giddy, that day.
Fully yang.
And becoming fully yang, caused me to lose touch with the only goal in my life… that of releasing myself from identification with form, (egoic thinking mind), in favor of the rising above yin and yang to the place that my teacher embodied so elegantly…where yin and yang are resolved in a unified wholeness and total harmony.
Now you can guess the rest right? Yin made an appearance.
It came in two forms. First a coworker I hardly know rained on my parade when I asked him if he had read the emails, hoping to invite the group of folk that he shepherds through him, to the creative party, and he said “no he had not… they were way too long”, and no he wouldn’t give me access to his group, full stop. Ouch.
I am still a very sensitive writer, even though I have been doing it for almost 12 years. Whereas my hide is as tough as nails when it comes to painting, but of course, I’ve been engaged in that for fifty years. It took me three years to be able to re-read what I wrote before I destroyed it, another three years to offer it to someone to read – and then only to my coach, whom I would trust with my life – another couple of years to decided to publish them in some form, and finally a blog, and an email blast list…thank you, from the bottom of my heart… you, tender readers…
But the real yin showed up in my immediate supervisor, who just cannot tolerate my artistic ways.
When I want a red sharpie, rather than a black one, she thinks I am coloring outside the lines. When I did my first exit interview with the students I am charged with caring about…she didn’t like how descriptive and “adjective” filled my language was. When I wrote the second of my emails about the tree project, I chose to include a reference to the “no child left behind” campaign that Laura Bush spearheaded into existence on a national basis, but I couldn’t remember if it was Laura, or Barbara, or Hilary…so I asked aloud, the co-worker who sits on the other side of me, who he thought it was, and my supervisor turned the answer into a competition between herself and him. “No, that’s not right it wasn’t her”…and so on, and so on.
By the time my creative joy had reached bursting yang and I was… in-point-of-fact… a little giddy, her yin energy was reaching a full roil.
I won’t describe, any further, the way it manifested… mostly because that isn’t the point and that would only serve to make you lose sight of what is important, just as I did.
I have worked for her, now, for about six weeks. She is as yin as my mother was. Although I often feel quite dull around her, her yin energy has not caused me any real discomfort until this event. Mostly because my mother and I had traveled that ground and healed that wound, with such commitment, dedication, and obedience – which had subsequently resulted in such a wonder of healing and miraculous release.
We, the western world, believe with our whole hearts that we can shape a destiny in which yang is ever present, and yin doesn’t darken our doorstep…we believe that, because we are young, still powerful, and quite immature.
Older cultures than ours, having already watched Rome burn, are wise enough to know, (or at least experientially understand), that yin and yang are as yoked as night and day.
There is, however, a wisdom path that can take you above the wild swings of living in the turbulence of yin and yang. I know because my Teacher is a living, breathing example of it.
I have had moments of rising above the polarized energies of yin and yang; I have done, in my mind, remarkably well working for such a yin supervisor…until my yang energy, pushed us both over the edge.
I am as much to blame for her severely delivered criticism, as she is, not because I am wrong and not because she is wrong…but because yang will never exist without yin. I completely lost sight of that, and moved back into a victim space when I perceived her displeasure costing me my much valued yang energy.
With my joy tattered, I lost my equilibrium and became really angry.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I moved cleanly and easily back into the child that had once cowered in fear or burned in resentment when my mother beat me, I gave myself to the egoic mind structure that I have spent so very long attempting to mature beyond.
There is a Zen story that talks about forgiveness, as being the perfume that a flower sends forth into the world, even as the heel of a boot is crushing it.
We don’t like that idea.
We want other people to make us feel comfortable, welcomed, included, and to provide us with the experience of being loved and appreciated.
I am not looking for that kind of service. My Teacher never once provided that kind of teaching.
He lived, and taught, the non dual principles depicted in the ancient wisdom parable that if you are walking the world barefoot and your feet hurt because of the brambles, stickers, and stones…do not seek your comfort in covering the earth with leather, but rather, sit down and craft for yourself a pair of boots, no matter how long it takes and no matter what it costs you.
My immediate supervisor with her near total yin energy is my latest opportunity to continue crafting, for myself, a pair of boots. I spectacularly failed at it, on the day in question, but I will not fail in the long run… because my eye is fixed upon the horizon.
Having come to the experience of total, unmovable, and complete peace with my mother for the last seven years of her life… I will have nothing less than a sturdy, functioning, and effective pair of boots to wear. So that all those who are required, by virtue of unconsciousness, to carry the yin energy…for those of us, who so much prefer the yang… can be blessed for their service. (It is my belief that is why our prison system is larger than any other westernized country, they are carrying the yin energy, we, the larger population will not deal with.) Until the fine day arrives… the one day ~ some day… when I am grown well beyond the reach of my personalities preferences, and my boots are worn and entirely broken in.
If that day ever arrives ~ I will upon that day ~ like my Teacher, be capable of sending forth a fragrance even as I am crushed by the heel of the necessity for the existence of yin. Death will call us all, destruction will find us all, disease will rob us all, the only thing that matters is if it will find us wearing a self constructed, sturdy, and well worn pair of boots. It all boils down to one simple question…will we, at the end of days, be shod? Or, like a small child, will we still be looking for someone else to cover the earth with leather?
Adayre R. Miller
1/28/12
photo courtesy of Matt Osborne and flickr photo sharing, to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link… http://www.flickr.com/photos/32681588@N03/4752299027/
No comments:
Post a Comment