I have been really sick for the last three days or so, and sidelined from the many responsibilities that I am enjoying taking care of…I have laid in my bed unable to lift my head for hours on end. Hot and cold at the same time from a high fever, a condition I have always really disliked as there is nothing you can do to alter two opposing experiences, I finally feel a wee bit better and can sit upright and chat with you.
I had the most marvelous and quiet insight yesterday, and I so wanted to share it with you.
I was going to include the whole written exchange so that you could see what I saw, but when I finally felt well enough to retrieve it the other combatant had pulled his end of the conversation from public display.
It began with my spending just a few moments online. I do not value Face book as most folks do, as the whole “too busy” to relate any other way, seems a bit crazy to me. So I very rarely post, but I do follow one or two folk who I see very rarely, and watching them on face book is the only way I get to see them.
One of them is a woman I value a great deal. I will use J to name her, and she was my last partner, in the last ever class that my Teacher was able to attend. We did really good work together and we were fated to do so. They always choose some interesting way of pairing us up, and on that day we had an inner and outer circle. I was paired with someone when the facilitator realized a mistake had been made, and moved everyone on the inner circle one place forward, and J slid in beside me.
She is beautiful, charming, kind, a really good hostess – something I am really bad at, and compulsively on time. (We would have to leave at least 25 minutes early to get back to class, a journey of ten minutes at the outside, to keep her internal alarm clock from knocking down the door to her chest. (I enjoyed that about her, it so reminded me of my father…plus, I never once had to know what time it was.)
So yesterday, with just enough physical fuel to sit and read a few face book posts, I saw that J had posted a quote from a Hindu teacher that spoke about the need for a new form of profit making. The Hindi teacher stated without equivocation, the need to rid the planet of corporations that have no center save the bottom line, and piling up as much profit as possible. How they are the primary force for destruction of the planet and the source of the ongoing and unmet needs of millions, for the benefit of handfuls. (I am paraphrasing broadly, but that is the gist of it.)
J’s only comment was that she agreed, that she was an old hippie, which made me smile, and that she wanted to put forth this brave idea.
Next came a response so attacking it was vitriolic. It included words like “communism”, “stupidity”, “un-American” and so on. It was so loud, aggressive, and committed to attacking J that I was fairly surprised. Without a single thought, or a moment’s hesitation I waded in to defend my friend. I spoke about the need to assess the ways and means by which profit shorn free of communal responsibility is dangerous, and that greed is killing the planet. I tried to “educate” him, and enlighten him. I talked about how the Japanese figured this out ages ago, and it is part of their culture to weigh profits against what it will do to 7 generations into the future.
His response to me was equally vitriolic, I “should move to Japan or India” if I was so hell bent on being so “un-American” and so on. I felt that I had the right to call him on his attacking energy and did so, and our final engagement came with his response of…”you should look in the mirror”.
My first response was, of course, to feel validated in my opinion of his brutish behavior. But it wasn’t sticky like it has always been in the past. It was just a thought that floated across the expanse of my mind and I knew even as it came to see if it could engage me, that it wasn’t real. Then J popped up on the private communication panel and told me that “Bob” was her ex-husband, (thus explaining the personalness of the attack) and how much she valued my defending her.
By that time, I had come to the realization that I had gone to war with him, and more, that no matter how “right” we feel we are, war is never a pathway to peace.
Next came a very surprising realization that he was entirely right, that I should look in the mirror…that my accusing him of brutish behavior while also being a brute myself, was exactly what I had done. My language was better, my arguments more reasoned, my verbal skills more deft, but I had picked up a stone just as surely as had he.
Let me be very clear, none of my realizations mean that my friend should not have been defended.
In fact, one of the few lessons that my Teacher provided, that I could never quite get my brain around, was that you could become a fully enlightened warrior.
I remember asking him…”wait, you mean that you could become an awakened being and then go out and actually kill someone on behalf of your country/family/homeland?
And he assured me, it was possible.
I see now, what he meant.
I could have defended J with just as much care and concern, and much more humility if I had been able to see “Bob”, not as a perpetrator, but as an innocent being severely caught in the web of misunderstanding and ignorance. In other words, I could have been an enlightened warrior…
But instead, I was the brute in the mirror.
Here is why the coming to rest in Impersonal Being, which is the source of our lives, is so incredibly valuable. I have no value judgments about having seen my brutishness. In fact, not having judgment about it, is the how and why of being capable of seeing it.
I once thought that spirituality was a kind of “get out of jail” free card. When I was a young Baptist, I prayed fervently for what I wanted, and almost never got. When I became a metaphysician, I worked with fervor to “manifest” what I wanted, and almost never got. But I come to see now, as I stand on the precipice of true adulthood, that spirituality is not a goodie grab bag, not a “how to” manual for getting what you want, not a dream machine…but rather, the opening of eyes deep with sleep, that finally become capable of witnessing yourself and the world around you, free of illusion and fantasy. Free of ignorance, right and wrong, good and bad, and all the other dualities that exist only in the conditioned mind…and nowhere else.
I see now, that a tiny moment with “Bob”, has led to more freedom for me…and that is what spirituality really is.
Tiny moments of quiet liberation, when you can allow someone to tell you the truth about yourself and not back up and hide from it.
Tiny moments of truth that open your eyes and save your soul, your mind, and your heart.
Tiny moments that lead you steadfastly back toward fully realized innocence.
My hat is off to Bob, for helping me to “look in the mirror”…
Adayre R. Miller
3/25/12
photo courtesy of Nancello photo and flickr photo sharing, you may see more of this artist’s work by following this link…http://www.flickr.com/photos/nancello/5053382179/
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