I have just completed a type of marathon. It was grueling, as I am sure they all
are, it was also debilitating in a way I can’t quite define…and I am not sure I
have recovered, or if I will recover…
I think it began a year ago, when I was laid off from a job
by email, a form of rejection so hurtful I could not even respond to it.
Thankfully, and with much gratitude, I found a new job
fairly quickly, this one involved going to a church with a teammate or two,
setting up a “studio”, photographing families, and then attempting to sell them
portraits on a straight commission basis.
As the new kid on the block, I was treated to an astonishing
array of hazing type behaviors. I
would say good morning to my coworker and get only stony silence in response,
or I would do one less photography session than my co-worker and get ridden all
day about the need to be faster, or one woman in particular would monitor my
behavior and comment/counsel me on it, to a degree and depth, that made me want
to pull my hair out in handfuls.
While this has been going on in the external of my life, in
the internal, I have come to a deep form of utter and total understanding that
no amount of striving will change the nature of the experience, I have repeated
since they day I began forming memories.
I cannot imagine a life that is not surrounded, invaded,
captured, bounded, and in bondage, to a deep and overwhelming sense of
rejection. From the day my mother
gave birth to me, and handed me to my 12-year-old sister to be cared for, I
have unconsciously believed myself to
be experiencing some form of rejection.
All of my most deeply painful memories involve some form of being an
outsider, and all of my coping behaviors grew up, in, and around me, as a
response to that deep experience of rejection.
It is only in the last year that I can stand still with my
internal experience of being rejected.
As these coworkers add weight to my perceptions of being shunned and
vilified, as they bond together in their decision that I am the villain and
need to be expunged, I find in myself a place where I do not feel the impulse
to run.
I would say this is/has been, my forty days in the desert.
Alone and without the shared warmth of someone agreeing with
me that I am being treated poorly, and that it should not be thus…I have met my Waterloo.
I can see, but only dimly so, the value of this
experience. The emotional storm
that came with me into this lifetime, the karma that is mine to bear, has been
at full volume and in full gale force for months now …and I endure… alone, still, silent, and steadfast.
As the false glow of my life’s “dream” has finally faded
from my mind and heart, (this is surely the greatest gift of this past year), I
have come into the strength necessary to live life on its terms, and not with the pacifying hope of a better
tomorrow, somewhere over the rainbow.
As my perception of daily rejection from these people who
find me so objectionable, swells and crescendos all around me…I do not seek
another place to be, I do not run to the emotional cover of someone to agree
with me that I am being treated badly, nor I do not seek out some other place
to be, some other place to stand.
I stand here.
Right here.
…and I watch, and work, and carry on.
What is the work? It is the work of understanding what
really matters in a lifetime, what really counts, what is mine to do and mine
alone.
I have boiled it down to two simple notions. I desire only peace of mind, and I
wish to contribute authentic kindness to the degree that I am currently
capable.
Now, you must know, that if you come to that clean an
awareness that you better baton down the hatches, stoke up the fires, fill up
the pantry, and button up your winter coat… for you are in for a wild ride
indeed.
To have true peace of mind, you must be willing to come nose
to nose with every single thing that disturbs you. And more, much more than that, you must be willing to let it
have you, take you, devour you. Like
Prometheus, you must be willing, ready, and capable of pushing that boulder up
to almost the summit, only to have it
roll all the way back down, and over you in the process…crushing the breath
from your body and the wind from your will to carry on.
Peace of mind is not the pot of gold sitting at the end of
the “enlightenment” rainbow. It is
not borne into your life on the wings of butterflies, nor dusted upon your brow
by the sparkle of fairies. It is a
hard won, hard fought, crucifixion.
It comes only after, you have swept your gaze
skyward and wept the phrase…”my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
This is why so many billions, will settle instead, for the
utterly illusory value of “goals” set, achieved, and ultimately realized to be
useless, rather than fight the good fight of self realization, self
understanding, self release, and the ultimate winning of the prize of peace
born of true acceptance.
Lest you think that contributing authentic kindness, equally
simple, yet just as difficult to achieve, is any easier to define… Let me stand to say, that too, is
almost beyond my capacity to truly illuminate.
There is no kindness in sparing someone from himself or
herself.
If you make their road easier, their burden lighter, their
way simpler, you quite clearly are robbing them of the only thing that really
matters. Self-realization.
So how can you, and I, put a hand out to those in need?
By not having a horse in that race…
True kindness requires that we have no agenda, that we are
not trying to save another so that we may feel good about ourselves. Being that free, that available, we
become an instrument of great usefulness, so that we may fill the moment with its
needs, not with our thinly veiled desire to be special or important to those
around us.
I am not very good at this, I discover.
I want to be finished with my old friend…rejection. I want to put it behind me, but now, I
am finally mature enough to know that it will never be behind me. It is my companion, my best good
friend, my bellwether, my benchmark, my compass, and my hair shirt. It comes with its painful claws and
marks the place in my psyche where I have not yet surrendered, it makes me
bleed where I am, yet still, broken…so that I may turn in that direction and
invite those unloved parts of myself home as the prodigal son was welcomed with
fierce and just love.
When all else is swept away…I discover there is only ever
one thing occurring, and that is the relationship of the self to the Self.
Can I see deeply enough to recognize that rejection is a
long held pattern that lives in the bones of me? That feeling unloved, unwanted, undesirable is the dirty
little secret at the bottom of every single one of us…not just in my life’s
pattern, but also in the patterns of us all.
Could life be only about healing that sense of
separation? Can another do that
for you? Do you have the courage
to stand in the face of your own sadness, longing, weeping, and
dissatisfaction…long enough to hear the call for home, and to turn toward it?
I marvel at the ways and means by which we run from this
deep truth about ourselves, the busyness, the achievements, the outcomes, the
searching, all a vain attempt to outrun the deep truth that somehow in some
indefinable way, we believe ourselves to have been abandoned and are left bereft
because of it…(despite the fact that is not the truth of our Being).
In the face of this deep truth I commit to desiring only
peace and giving kindness where and when I am instructed, by the moment that I
find myself in. I don’t know that
a life could be made simpler than this…but if it can, I will bend to that as
well. I am done with the
complications of the mind-made self; I want only wholeness and simplicity now.
I invite you into its embrace as well.
Adayre R. Miller
7/4/13
photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Step_A to see
more of this artist's work please follow the link below:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29766674@N07/3859032226/in/photolist-6T1xQo-57yRYG-rqD4W-5WzVQZ-636TBd-ew3kXW-8JzERb-dp53ye-7REeqX-bCcpjA-aB7rYS-beVLBB-4ZMhvN-akdfuf-6XG3hd-7RX4bb-7yo67R-77iHdB-dfo4sS-8ZRKir-8ZRKtF-8ZRKpv-arrjUk-biWbqF-9fgCMr-7SZKro-y3hNn-aHNYAe-8giHR7-5WCX7S-Eykb9-bwebuo-4yfeMt-4yfftz-9wuo4Y-9wunbj-9wuauU-9weTXy-9wGBWS-9wGFvJ-9weYGN-8CaqpN-8CaqkE-8Caqn9-B18ey-8a6SeR-DJJST-aFbK2b-7EmWTv-4vNid9-6H9z9M#
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