As I walked down the hall this morning, intent upon a task in a daisy field of tasks, I looked over and into the office of a young woman who is sweet, kind, caring, young, gentle, and committed.
Her face tugged me from my future oriented, goal and outcome, driven process. I didn’t know what was tugging me. I could not have diagnosed the problem or even seen that there was one. But something drew me away from my desire to meet my self-defined and quite arbitrary deadlines, and into her sphere.
As I entered her office, I sat down in the chair in front of her desk. I don’t remember saying anything of any import. I just sat with her and waited.
She began to cry, tears rolling from her eyes and down her face, so fast, and with such compulsion the soft curve of her neck was soon glistening with moisture.
She spoke about how neglected she felt, how trampled upon, how unseen, unheard and uncared for. She had until recently shared a desk with another co-worker, whose possessions filled the space with such heft that there was no room for her to be found, no space to call her own. Then she was moved into an office with a personality so intent upon “becoming someone”, so sure of his greatness that here too… she was lorded over and made small and insignificant, not a single thing was allowed into this space that was hers or about her. And then the company decided that she should move to what amounts to a hallway, where people will walk through her space without consideration for her or her needs.
The shear volume of neglect that she felt she was laboring under, spilled forth simply because someone had stopped long enough to look closely at her.
And because she was being seen, she cried for the better part of a quarter of an hour. I felt a kinship with her as she wondered if there was ever going to be a place for her.
The work I am doing now is something I am good at, that I do well, and that is fun for me…but like her, when the music stops I too, may be without a chair to call my own.
I felt the need to champion her. I may well have angered her supervisor who seems to not have much compassion for those who are tender, as I strove to use my skills in design to create a space she could finally call her own. I pushed on her behalf, and it is possible I should have restrained myself…after all, I am most likely quite temporary.
It is hard to know that all suffering sources from the story we believe about ourselves, our situation, and our circumstances…and as such is inherently unreal, and still to remain unmoved in the face of such seemingly innocent pain.
I chose a side… her side.
Even though I know there is no such thing.
To discover the Emptiness, or at least to touch it, that lies behind the self I thought I once was, has been and will be, my greatest liberation. To discover that vast Silence is to come into the fullness of understanding that there are no sides, that essence and movement are the only real events. As an example, it was the Silence that moved me into her office, the Silence that sat me in her chair, and the Silence that saw and heard her sorrow.
It was my humanness that chose a side, my humanness that felt the compulsion to rescue her. And here is where I moved out of the truth, and back into the fantasies and illusion that have driven so much of my life.
I do not mean to say that I was wrong to offer her my design skills, or that it was wrong to offer to set some form of physical boundaries for her, by blocking off one of the doors that allows her office to become a pass through for whoever wishes to invade her space. Where I went wrong was in the emotional tone that fed my actions.
I could feel, and strongly so, my desire to protect her from her too-busy-to-notice-her, supervisor and from the egoicly driven man who so claims his space, that she remains invisible even as she sits at the desk that he has laid such a claim to, on an only part time basis.
My Teacher would often use a metaphor of a car wreck as an illustration of the need for remaining neutral even in the face of great pain. He would speak about two cars colliding, and how, if we “know” who is in the “right” and who is in the “wrong” that we severely limit our usefulness to the imminent moment that is arising.
To transcend our need for choosing sides is to make of us an empty and deeply useful vessel. On the other hand, to choose a side is to limit our value to the transitory feel good, that has no place in the world of the deep truth.
I cannot say what I might have been capable of providing her, had I been mature enough to not “take her side”. Her sorrow and grief at being essentially invisible, her fear that if she spoke up she might well be fired for it, these are events and expressions that live only in her mind. Instead of being strong enough to simply share my presence with her and nothing more, I moved into agreement with her illusions so as to make her feel better.
She did indeed feel better, in the moment.
It always feels good to have a cathartic moment of emotional release, in the company of an apparently caring someone…it does not… however, foster deep growth or real healing.
Real healing is the solitary journey of discovering within the confines of the apparent self’s limited consciousness, the lie that we are telling ourselves. The how and why of the story that causes us to feel left out, unnoticed, unwelcome, unloved. There is no one else who can journey that path for us, no one else who can do battle with the illusion we ourselves have crafted, no one else who can bring permanent relief…rather than just transitory feel good.
I have, if it is possible, even greater respect for the fine line my Teacher was so capable of walking.
He could listen to my grief, sorrow, self-inflicted and self-created pain with total equanimity. His presence was a balm upon my soul, crafting a safe space of open awareness in which I could venture the soul jarring risk of seeing myself, naked and real. And yet, there was not a single time he sought to rescue me, to take my side, to champion me, or to “heal” me.
It is the small mind of the self-deluded hero who believes that he can manage the growth of another, guide the outcomes of another, or heal another. There is such a hugely unconscious and unflattering payoff to casting yourself in the role of hero. The man who shared her office and now whom I must share an office with, views himself in just such heroic terms.
My failing is that he stirs within me the memory of my desire for fame, heroics, “greatness”, bigness and living large… and I am in equal measure shamed, and chagrined, for having once sought such a poor substitute for reality and authenticity.
My new Teacher, whom I have not yet met in person, is equally capable of, and equally free of, the need to get his emotional highs from being viewed as the “one who knows”, as the leader, the savior, the hero.
I suppose such equanimity is a function of coming cleanly into the awareness that the self does not truly exist. That our collection of desires and avoidances, that we innocently name the self, are a poor substitute for discovering the vast depths within.
I wish I could have a do-over. I wish I could follow Presence into her room, watch it sit me in her chair, see it hold my attention upon her sorrow and remain grounded in Beingness, unmoved and unmoving.
I wish I could make a clean offer of help, free of the need for someone to be wrong so that she could be innocent, of the story she was building in her own mind.
I wish I could have been an empty vessel, useful, productive, valuable and transcendent.
Perhaps it is enough that I have seen and seen cleanly, my still sticky desire to be the hero in her story. I want free of that, in more ways than I can describe. The chase to be “Somebody” is a futile road to nowhere and one I wish I did not have to witness in myself, or to be reminded of how much of my life has been driven by such a sadly neurotic need.
My new Teacher, unlike my Beloved one, makes promises. He has promised me that once the Silence has been tasted, if even for a moment, that it will “clean you out” of the desire to be a false and dangerous “Someone”. That Silence will help me to remove the “me”ness off the controls of my life, and return me to the unfolding flow of the “movement of peace” that is my original face, (and yours).
I hope so. I want it to be so.
To move through the remainder of a life, neither grasping nor pushing away, is a form of heaven that few are capable of realizing. I do not know if I am capable of such a depth of release, but I do know it is the only thing worth accomplishing. I do know that it is the direction I am intent on traveling. I do, also know, that my young co-worker would have been much better served by that level of Presence than the one that was incapable of not choosing sides.
To stand inside yourself and not choose a side is a strength of immense proportions, a true power, and a real value.
Here is how Eckart Tolle describes the unattached activity of awakened awareness… “As Presence moves through you, it’s not based on desire anymore, it’s based on enjoyment. It’s not based on wanting or needing anything, because you’re coming from fullness. The actions, you take are not designed to fulfill you. It’s not designed to add something to you. The action is coming out of the fullness in which you already dwell – so there’s no neediness in it.” (Emphasis mine).
This is the place my Teacher dwells, he has no investment in my outcome. He moves only in response to the will of Peace and the needs of the moment… to discover this place inside oneself is to know true humility, to express authentically, and to end the need to be the hero in someone else’s story.
A true hero is the one who can turn within, who has the strength to end illusions and to come into the simple light of the noonday sun…here is where we discover Webster’s truly, “remarkably brave person”.
Adayre R. Miller
Photo courtesy of flick photo sharing and Sash’s Kitchen – Studio photography, to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link: http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0095009/photos/insashi/2047056983/
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