Freedom On a Miniature Pink Plastic Spoon…

My week has included such enormous growth spurts I almost don’t know how to begin to describe it. It has put me into a place I have never been before, a place I have only heard my Teachers talk about, a place I would not have imagined possible for someone as slow and plodding as I have always been.

I so wish that I could some how reach inside my heart and give you a taste of what this place is like. Like Baskin Robbins, a small dollop of total personal freedom on a miniature pink plastic spoon…nuts with that? Sprinkles?

I have only ever read about this place, or heard about it from people whose worth cannot be contested in my mind and heart…and yet, it is so utterly simple, how did I ever miss it…!!??

My tale begins with an episode of a near epic attempt to completely and totally dominate me, to a point that is fairly shocking.

The company I work for informed me, that I would need to share an office space with a man that I have never formally interacted with…but whom almost everyone I work with, has a very strong opinion of.

His reputation is so extreme, that several people expressed real concern for me that I would have to share anything at all with him, and advised that I do all that I could to keep a low profile so as to not disturb him.

Of course I did not heed their warning…a character flaw of mine, no doubt.

As I watched him moving into the space we were supposed to “share”, him for 20 hours a week, me for 40…it was very clear that my needs or desires regarding that space would not be a consideration for him, in any form.

While I was working in the halls early this week, he came up to me and asked a question about something I was doing. We exchanged a few words, and in a moment of sheer internal pressure to express my desire to have some small measure of control over the environment in which I was slated to spend 40 hours a week of my life for the foreseeable future, I said to him, these words. “Richard, as you can see by the commitment of effort, time, energy and excellence that I bring to the process of my design work that my environment is very important to me…so…I just want to say that if we are to share an office, I hope that you will be willing to come to some compromises as to the development of that space.” (That may not be word for word, but it is entirely accurate to the content.)

He was immediately and completely angered. His response was very surprising in its speed, projection, commitment, and content. He strove with all his considerable might to cower me into some form of submission that would support his need for winning through domination. I was rocked back on my heels, but was not cowed, as I have faced, met, and fully accepted the primary fears of my life…and thus cannot be scared in the manner that he was used to being able to intimidate others. I suspect my very lack of “normal” response fed the fire that was instantly burning for him. I did not back down, turn away, fold like a cheap suit, or otherwise allow him to win. I also did not actively fight with him…I merely disagreed. As I did so, he moved into my sphere, glared and bore down on me with his eyes, maligned my character, accused me of having damaging “energy”, attacked me for bringing this up in the hallway rather than coming to him in his office and communicating in the “right” way, and finally threatened me with going to the boss, a grown up derivation of “I’m going to go tell Mommy on you”, which he did in fact do… (I also overheard him telling several other employees, describing for them, my total lack of worthiness.)

The boss did in fact come find me, after his explosion, and I was warned about the need to keep him on task and to leave him alone.

As the vibrations of that level of an attempt to intimidate and control me, along with the concomitant reverb washed over me, the adrenaline I was feeling in my body was extremely powerful. It came in waves of heat that felt very much like being on a beach witnessing the rise and fall of powerful pounding on the sand. My mind went immediately and potently into the desire to defend myself, to produce a “story” of how much I had been maligned both by him, and the owner of the companies’ assertion, that I do not recognize my own failings.

The pull and stickiness of the desire to cast myself in the role of helpless victim, was so intensely powerful it nearly swept me off my feet. And for the first time ever, in all the years of my life, I did not allow it to carry me away. As Gangaji, one of the teachers I have great respect for calls it; I allowed the experience to “burn” me.

I watched with intense and focused commitment my yearning to be the innocent one, the wronged one, the maligned one…it did indeed burn me. Staying with the energy, not allowing myself to disperse it by gathering others into my sphere and telling them of his assault on me and casting him in the role of devil, I merely went back to working on the walls and watching my internal history go up in flames. It burned for the better part of the day…and I cannot adequately describe how potent it was. Although I have not, thankfully, had this experience, it was a bit like having your fingernails pulled off one by one. And like every wound laid bare, the mere movement of air caused the burn to reignite.

And not one time, not for one instant, not even to myself…did I allow a “story” to coalesce inside my mind. And not one time to a single soul, did I, or have I, or will I, ever tell the “story” of him as wrong or dangerous. (Hopefully you can tell that my recounting of it now, is not about his behavior, but rather, about my growth.)

I won. Fully and completely. I was the sole victor, and the sole opponent, in a fight to the death with and in myself, for the full freedom of my soul.

I won.

Never again will I be able to go back into the trance necessary to place myself into the drugged state of sleep consciousness, that is required to cast myself as victim and someone else as the devil. Never again.

Do I need to describe the freedom in that? Surely not.

But wait…there is more.

The work that I am doing is something that I have never once failed at, literally, never one time. I know that sounds quite exaggerated, but it is true. I have had people dislike me over the years, or have trouble dealing with my process, but no one has ever been unhappy with the work itself.

And in this case I was more than confident that I had gotten it totally right. Before work ever began, I had showed the client, and several employees, the entire palette. I had pictures of the rock fountain that was to be the central focus, I had a sample of the papered wall treatment, I had samples of the accent rocks I was going to use, and the fabric choices. It was all displayed and agreed to by everyone concerned.

I then went out and purchased a great number of items that “answered” or referred back to those original agreements. I pushed my body terribly to finish the front entry hall as a way of making the entire process visible to all concerned, and the shear volume of excited and enthusiastic compliments was truly surprising. I have never done work in such a public setting as this, and the volume of praise for the work that was now fully developed was quite staggering. (My crew, as they were in the halls more than myself, was especially flooded with compliments and glad handing…to the degree that they are taking the work to heart and very personally.)

In that emotional environment, as you might easily imagine, I was perhaps over confident in my belief that I had quite literally nailed it.

However the other shoe was not far from dropping…

The owner came to me and reported that the color palette, which had been entirely driven by the loveliest piece of natural rock fountain that I perhaps have ever seen, and a complimentary set of natural stones…(all of which never made it into the environment)…was “dead” and flat. One painting was especially offensive, and described as a “swamp”, (as an aside this painting was the only personal choice that I had made out of all that I had chosen). It fit the working palette so well that I was thrilled to have found it, and it depicted a deep forest with a path running straight through it and into a golden orb of palpable sunshine. (This description is, of course, my experience of it… as it was a swamp where things die and decay for the owner.) In addition to the deadness of the colors, a pair of lamps that are whimsical in nature and depicted a cat, with a magnifier reading a book under lamplight, was so offensive as to be generating a student “petition” to have them removed, as they “depict animal cruelty”, the cat, its book, and lamp, are inside a wire cage which is the lamps structure.

As you might imagine…for someone who has never failed at this sort of work, in the past twenty-five years…this was a severe surprise, especially considering the number and volume of folks complimenting the work, asking to be taught how to do the “amazing” paper treatment, and stopping to take pictures of the work in progress.

Again… I allowed it to burn me.

I did not build a story; attempt to defend my value, my work, or myself. Instead, I just let it burn.

Each time the desire arose inside my heart and mind to craft myself as the victim, each time I felt the nearness of the tidal wave seeking to steal from me my freedom, each time the pull and sickly stickiness of dualistic perspective sought me…I let it burn inside me. It was damnably difficult…

Standing still inside that, is a bit like standing still as a tsunami thunders toward you. It takes real and demanding courage, and total internal mastery.

And then, just like the sun breaking through after decades of gray stormy clouds. I was set free. My beloved teacher calls it the maturing of emotional “apathy”, my new teacher calls it “high indifference”…I call it… a bloody freaking miracle.

I felt, when I awoke this morning, (this is still quite fresh), a gladness that cannot be describe. A freedom from the opinion of everyone concerned, a deep willingness…even a joy, at destroying what I had created. The pleasure of painting out what I had so painstakingly crafted was visceral, real, and deeply satisfying. I don’t possess very much understanding of why that is so, but it is deeply so.

I imagine, in the weeks and months to come, that will be required to unpack all of this flash change, that understanding the joy of destroying my creation will be experienced, and already is of course to some degree, as being something akin to the reason why sand mandalas are crafted with such exquisite attention to detail, and then utterly destroyed, immediately upon completion…an homage to the total transitory nature of all apparent reality.

What appeared on the walls, what gathered such intense, and vocal, and voluminous praise, is quite literally ashes, compared to what has opened in my heart. (My crew is way more upset about its loss than I would have been in the past and thus, I have not attempted to describe my joy at its destruction, as I cannot imagine anyone else even coming close to understanding it.)

It takes great will to do the work I do, hours and hours of sifting through merchandise. Miles and miles, of standing on ladders and paying attention to the smallest of details, total obedience to the demands of the work that are placed upon my body, my mind, my talents, and my nervous system. It is a quadruple length marathon, and over the many years of doing it I often hated the stresses it placed upon me, and yearned to be free of it. But like a master cellist, I required of myself the commitment to strum the strings of my instrument, until my fingers quite literally bled.

And I gave this job, all of that and much, much more.

I liked it better than any other job I have ever done. The subtle palette, the quiet stillness, the quirky humor of cats reading books, (you have to see them to understand that, and the company is, after all, a school), the vibration of calm that flooded me every time I looked at it – (of course I mourned the loss of the natural stone fountain that had lived inside a mountain in Idaho for millennia waiting for its time in the sun, and the small stones from China that are the color of the sea at tides edge in a Caribbean sun drenched beach), none of which were ever introduced.

But still, and even so, its destruction produced an eagerness in myself that was, and is still, quite surprising. (I have never once before been present, or taken an active part, in the destruction of anything I have created professionally.)

So far…all I can manage to understand about it, and believe me when I tell you understanding is the least important aspect, is that it heralds the true dissolution and destruction of my “personal” self.

My new teacher, whose language is much more contemporary than my beloved teacher, calls it the “discovery of just not giving a damn”.

I don’t care that I put my heart and soul into creating it, I don’t care that I drove my body until I became quite sick because of it, I don’t care about the investment in time, thought, intention, commitment, care, concern, and will.

I just “don’t give a damn”…

My investment is like a dandelion floating away upon the wind. The creation of the work was not personal, (it hasn’t been for years and years now), and its destruction is now equally impersonal.

A young woman, who was working the front desk when much of this was decided, and was privy to my conversation with the owner of the building, said to me later that she could not believe my reaction. I can’t either, but for very different reasons... She was astonished that I was not devastated, and said that she would have been entirely crushed by it, I am astonished because I do not care even the tiniest bit about it. I care so little that I feel as though I am sort of floating a bit. Like I am a bit tipsy, or a bit high.

Being suddenly, physically, and potently, untethered from the personal self is a very dramatic experience. I know without doubt, that the attack of the man whose need to control others is as strong as I have ever seen, and the destruction of my creative efforts, are working in tandem with the burn I was willing and able to endure. That those “outer” events, coupled with my inner willingness to stand still in the face of it, to meet it, to fully embrace it, to allow it to burn me, will be the front runner to the full measure of peace I have sought all the long days of my life. These last few days will set my destiny for perhaps lifetimes to come…

I repeat here the quote from Albert Camus, “A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.”

My “taste for truth” has required the sacrifice of many weeks of intense labor, complete failure in my once total confidence in my design sensibilities, and a rather demanding attack by an emotionally weak man, all of which I would do again, and again, and again, for the release that is now my victory.

I fully commit to the necessity of giving my freedom back to the ones who have unconsciously provided me it. I have no opinion of the man that sought to control me, and no opinion of the destruction that has been required of my work. I fully allow for all to be as it is, with no argument from me in the slightest

I will be reporting on this for a long time I suspect…I can’t wait to see what unfolds next…

Adayre R. Miller

4/13/12

photo courtesy of aso2008, to see more of this artists work please follow this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29643712@N03/4989015516/