Everyman's WEEKLY Journal (#5)
© 2012 Rev. David Seacord
December 30, 2012
Always Beginning Again...
Sometimes it sure seems that the most common way I learn anything is by first failing….essentially learning by making a rather whopping mistake, and then having the courage to be honest about it to myself. My ego hates this…my spirit loves this…but usually not at the same time. It seems this way of learning surrounds me the same way that Love's Love always surrounds me. In truth, I can see they are the same. Exactly the way my gurus/teachers have taught….the Godness is 'no respecter of persons' and will use loss or gain, blame or fame (in other words…anything is game) if the experience of it will help us/me learn.
Thus each day I'm alive it seems there are always spiritual lessons mixed into my activities, even the most mundane ones. I guess it keeps my angels busy, yes? I find it's good to keep a watch out for them while I do whatever I do…illusionary me --making choices either as I/ego or I/spirit …sometimes recognizing when and where that choice is a win or a loss… sometimes (if it's a loss) having the courage to apologize or offer the correction (if I can then see what the correct correction is)… and sometimes not recognizing whether it was a win or a loss until 'decompression time'…meaning when I'm having an honest middle of the night conversation with God about my life and the places in it where I need wholeness help. It's in those kinds of times that my not-at-my-best memory film clips tend to get reviewed, and I many times have a pretty clear choice: to swallow the spiritual pride that most likely contributed to creating the mistake, cop to my failures/mistakes, forgive myself, and begin again.
Oh, and often right after that, I'll gently receive the suggestion that I might perhaps write about them. Agggghhhhhh! Write about my mistakes, my failures?!!!! But you'll notice, I am writing, right? Why? Spirit says 'To break up the ego's illusions'. Meaning I guess, by being spiritually transparent, to call my ego's bluff. All it ever wants is to look good/be right/win… the world's mantra. But these goals are all related to 'the love of money' (instead of expressing the love of each other via the use of money). My spiritual challenges arise to the degree I think I want those ego goals too. That's when my darkest blindnesses occur….of course. As you'll see….
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One day this past week I was in a bank waiting line. The line was long and not moving--- there were only two tellers---and after a minute I realized one was in 'a stuck mode'. Most of the other people ahead of me in the line were exhibiting suppressed irritation symptoms via body language or grumbling (within allowable social norms). There was a clear impatience in the room.
It was all centered energetically on a diminutive older man standing at the stuck-mode teller's window. Although I was several yards away I could overhear enough to get that he was certainly not happy… that he was not getting what he wanted. The young female teller had called in her supervisor (another young woman) and both of them were doing their best to be 'professionally courteous', but my experience was they were being seriously pressed.
Of course, a confronting drama like this is very interesting to the ego. It so loves to put itself into the thick of right/wrong scenarios, take sides, and above all, get proof that it's view is the righteous one. And being that I was there, I was suddenly in a real-life melodrama too… whereas I was in line to interact with the same teller and supervisor combo, and whereas I had a vested financial interest in a smooth transaction myself (because whereas, I was there to cash a sizable check) I must report to you that I erred….ie, I went unconscious and did not notice when I also began judging the man 'causing' this 'interruption'. He was in fact playing a part that was quite easy to judge. His clothes were somewhat soiled and rumpled, his grooming was poorly done if at all, and his personality was loaded with the unskillful use of provocative make-wrong attack language. There was nothing about him that was attractive…in fact…to the ego/me of that moment, he was the personification of unattractiveness. His back was to me…I could not see his face.
Even though I was (metaphorically) asleep and not noticing my judging thoughts, I still had some 'spiritual programs' running, and my initial response to all the tension in the space was to start attempting to defuse it by using Thought…praying, and blessing the space and everyone in it etc. I imagined a lot of light surrounding the man, and asked for his peace, the peace of the tellers, and the peace of the people in line too. You noticed 'attempting to defuse?'. That's a clear admission that I was again erring…I was praying a "My will be done here", not a "Thy will be done here" prayer. As you'll see, it backfired (but we'll get to that soon enough). Anyway, while all this was going on inside me, slowly the line inched forward as the second teller did her best to handle the customer line alone-- until the drama at the other window was resolved. Then.. finally… that climax did arrive…the man received the banks whatever/denial paperwork I guess-- with ill-concealed distain, and after uttering a couple pointedly sharp attacks about the wrongness of the 1% favoring policies of this 'too big to fail 99%-robbing megabank' to the teller and supervisor (which I saw they were now receiving as personally insulting), he turned to leave the scene. In so doing, he found himself facing us…the long waiting line that had built during his extended empass.
I suppose I might have been the 'friendliest' (or at least 'most neutral') face in that line (after all, I had been praying for him, right?), but I sure wasn't expecting or prepared for what happened next. He recognized somebody….me. Loudly (oh so loudly, it seemed) out of his mouth came "Hey, didn't I see you at that 99% Occupy meeting? Wasn't that you?" "Shit!", I must have thought, "What the…."?!!!!!!!!!
Now, I'm the guy that wrote 'The Love Declaration'…the guy who's always writing about how we are all one, right? But in that I/ego moment, I discovered that I was at about the same level of oneness with this guy as Simon Peter was with Jesus Christ when he denied he even knew him (during the crucifixion trials…just before the cock crowed three times---it's a famous story so I am assuming you will have heard of it). Anyway, my ego didn't want to have anything to do with this guy, let alone acknowledge I knew him and (I must have feared) be condemned or judged by the others in the line for that association. I didn't know him, not really. Yes, I dimly remembered suddenly I had gone to a local Occupy meeting once, many many months ago, and in my memory, this guy had been 'an irritant' there too….
I know…you want me to report that I saw through myself and got off it, that I smiled, and shook the guy's hand? That I said, "Hey man, how are you doing, nice to see you!", correct? Wrong. I looked straight at the guy and did not say a word. Could not… My tongue was frozen….I didn't ignore him, but …I just couldnot bring myself to respond to him either. Inside, I was jammed up, instantly intensely conflicted by my resistance to his request that I acknowledge him. So my silence denied I knew him….and in that, also pronounced him guilty of everything I had judged about him. I left him completely abandoned of brotherhood…right after I'd been praying for him. Much later, I was able to see his speaking to me had clearly been 'a call for help' test. But, by not responding, I'd failed, and left him even more naked. Not a skill-set usage that I am particular proud of reporting…. but a very real and useful exposure, however.
Exposure? Yes, I get to see AGAIN that there are still certain people that I will exclude from my heart, even though my spirit knows doing so will only hurt myself (my soul growth). There are the ones (like this guy) who are just 'socially unloveable', angry unhealed people that I'd rather not have in my life, whom I'd rather have some distance from…and then there is this other category of people that represent direct deeply personal violations…mostly old stuff…from times long past, thank God…where my ego story is that I was personally attacked, painfully humiliated, or (and in my ego's view) otherwise wrongly treated (errr…maybe just like the guy in the bank, you think? Hummm…). My spirit knows that all of these incidents still remaining not fully healed within me remain as poisons to my heart, and that all of them are my sole responsibility to allow healing of (through being willing to forgive). And I get to use this lifetime to choose what it will be. (Actually, I know and God knows I have already chosen, BUT, in certain instances, with a little hesitancy :-)
Thus this 'little exposure incident' reminds me gently that I also have more healing work to do. And although that guy personified a rather intense victimization commitment… angry, bristling, ready to destroy---he was actually just being more honest than I am usually willing to be about expressing it. I instantly had disliked him (my first judgement, btw)…but of course I would…he reminded me of the old remnant still incompletely healed…the victim-self piece still hiding, fearing life, resisting forgiving (which might mean feeling the pain again)… inside me. The victim I would so like to deny, to pretend doesn't even exist anymore….
By the way (and to complete the story thread) if I can see my ego's unhealedness this clearly, of course it's not going to be a pleasant day in Pleasantville (for my ego I mean). So initially, my ego played unconscious, anddidn't see or understand what had happened at all. The guy (sarcastically? defensively?) muttered something about me needing to learn how to talk, then pulled up on his jacket lapels as if doing that would somehow give him some dignity, and limped stone-faced past our line and out of the bank. 'Limped' is accurate…I saw that he walked as though crippled. Halting half-steps, like he might fall. I felt a bit of compassion at that, but was still mostly relieved when he finally exited and was gone. Then, it was my banking turn suddenly, with a newly-back-from-lunch teller who had missed the whole episode. That was a relief to me too, as then there was no temptation to socially commiserate (like there might have been with the other teller) about what a jerk the guy had been or anything. Soooo… the moment passed, I and my ego forgot about it and did the rest of 'our' busyness-filled day.
It was later… that evening before sleeping…. that my voice for God brought it all back up again. I have been reading (re-reading) Marianne Williamson's book 'A Return to Love' a bit each night, and I re-opened it to where I had bookmarked it…the 'Relationship' chapter…
You may remember that last week my Journal was an exploration of a single sentence quote of Bob Marley's? Well, that's not the case this week. When I read Marianne, it's unusual if there are not at least a half-dozen stunner sentences (yep, just for me) on each page. This night was no different… everything was synchronistically a 'set-up'… I opened the book, and ka-bong!!!!, as I began to read I recognized my failure with the guy at the bank with an OUCH, OUCH, OUCH!!!! and the realization that here I am, …Busted….and back in my own 'way too familiar' spiritual frying pan again!
Of course I could have chosen denial, and closed the book, but I didn't. I know I don't grow if I don't own my mistakes. As I also know but still sometimes forget (and as Marianne wrote in her book especially to remind me now :-) our true freedom is found through our holy relationships… which the Godness intended to be with and between everyone (without exceptions). Obviously I am making 'an exception' anytime I act based upon thinking/believing I am separate from another brother/sister, no matter how odious the phenomenal appearance (i.e., the test of discernment). My favorite Zen teaching is 'To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind'. Obviously then, to join with and share the worlds 'judging of each other' is to enter that disease, no matter when or where. Marianne mentioned also that in the Bible it says 'that a great sleep fell upon Adam', but that nowhere does it say that he (or we) woke up. So THAT is what we are in the doing of right now…. by, as Werner AND Gangaji AND Pir Vilayat AND Jesus and many others have all said… "just telling the truth about it".
I am left wondering… imagining…pondering….what could have been? What might have been? What if I had been able to somehow be a brother, somehow able to share that man's pain without believing it (his pain) was 'the truth'. Why had I feared the judgement of a line of 'strangers' in a bank instead of remembering they were all my brothers too? (That one is easy btw: I simply forgot I am a miracle worker…I thought I was a somebody with important personal business to do…). What if I had just said "Hey, wait up for me outside…" and then when I was done with the banking, gone out and heart-spoken with him. Of course there is no way to know what might have happened, but whatever might have occurred, it would have been a victory. Because it would not have been (by me) a denial of our fundamental oneness.
This is why we/I do 'practices' you know. To become more and more skilled, trained…to be able to deliver the miracle of love to someone/anyone/everyone temporarily without it…whenever/wherever. I don't doubt that I will soon enough 'in God's timing' see that brother again. It's actually a rather small world (you've noticed?), and if not him, then someone like him will certainly appear. When that occurs, I pray I will be able to report to you 'my test results' were more conscious than this one was. I pray I will report (at the least) my apology to him …for thinking wrongly that he was not my brother. Beyond that 'little willingness', that beginning… lies the great uncharted territory---the domain of miracles… which… (since 'of ourselves we can do nothing' [Jesus, paraphrased]…and…"consciously selected miracles can be misguided" [ACIM])….I/we/you can gratefully leave in Love's perfectly-all-accepting all-good-creating hands.
Namaste,
David
PS….I'd thought 'that's it', but then the parable below got delivered to me via Facebook. I have to share it. So wonderful….
~ Become a Lake ~
An aging master grew tired of his apprentice’s complaints. One morning, he sent him to get some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master told him to mix a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink it.
“How does it taste?” the master asked.
“Bitter,” said the apprentice.
The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake.”
As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the master asked, “How does it taste?”
“Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.
“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.
“No,” said the young man. At this the master sat beside this serious young man, and explained softly,
“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”
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Rev. David Seacord
Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag
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