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Originally written: May 10, 1995
Last Revised: Sept. 17, 2009
I've been enquiring into the question, "Why is it so hard to do the right thing?" Here is an incident that occurred in the midst of that enquiry. This is a sharing of noticeings and awarenesses.
Remember that its object is to record the very difficult process of raising an awareness to realization rather than the easier process of mentally knowing or conceptually understanding.
I accept as an axiom that Father Mother God made Heaven and Earth. S/he made the absolute and the relative, the macrocosm and the microcosm. But S/he gave us a limited amount of free play on Earth, just as a tethered cow has a limited amount of room to move around in.
Things on the Earth, the things of the senses, the phenomena of the relative plane, if made by God without man's "value added" efforts, more or less reflect His Will and Intention.
When we practise our limited ability to create, or perhaps we should say to "modify" them, more often than not we ordinary mortals distort God’s pure and original design.
I don't say this as a criticism. We're gods in training. Our mistakes and what we learn from them are as they should be. Nonetheless, the more we let God work through us, the more we reflect and the less we distort.
My life being a workshop and a laboratory, and my behavior being the experiment I run and observe, I noticed an instance of this reflection/distortion phenomenon the other day. It had to do with dharma or "righteousness." I was having a disagreement with a colleague at work and was trying to act up to what I conceived to be righteousness.
But I wasn't. My colleague was upset. I felt strange. I felt ways I couldn't typify, but I knew they didn't reflect dharma. When I looked, those ways were: pride, self justification, gloating. I also felt lethargic and knew that was thamas calling. What was going wrong? If I wasn't being righteous, what was I being?
Inquiring with the help of the interior God, it became clear to me that my behavior distorted dharma. It was not divine righteousness. It was self righteousness. The difference between the two was showing up in my behavior.
I was being legalistic; I hadn't broken a law of the firm or a law of the land, I assured myself. But I was breaking a law of the universe. I was not speaking pleasantly, telling my harsh truths, tearing her face off.
Then I observed myself rushing to my own rescue: but of course! I was justified. She had done this and now I was doing that. Doing that was a natural link in the whole chain. No one could fault me.
And yet I felt dismayed with myself. Why? Self righteousness was leading me to win at her expense. She was backed into a corner fending off defeat. I was going to be the winner and she was going to be the loser. Our conversation was antagonistic, though veiled. None of this reflected anything I had learned from sacred study; it distorted it.
Therefore, self righteousness was not a reflection of righteousness; it was a distortion. Just as being wise in one's own conceit is not a reflection of wisdom, but a distortion. I saw how self encapsulated it left me.
No love here. Nothing but pride and vindictiveness. The same could be said for self love instead of love, self servingness instead of selfless service, and all the responses to life aimed at seeing one's self comes out on top.
None of them exposed to me our fundamental relatedness, or helped me drop the ego, or led me towards the expanded outlook in which I could realize the oneness of humanity, universe, and God. None was a step along the path to God.
Again, we all know this. But how hard it was to see it in the moment. I had to shake myself from the concrete dullness, the drowsy lethargy of thamas, so palpable, so thick, so dulling. And even when I did, thamas lifted for that moment, like a crow in the trees, before settling back on the branches again.
Righteousness leads to sathwa; self righteousness to thamas. One points to heaven; the other to a living hell. One reflects our holy and pure intentions and the other hides and distorts them.
Why was it so hard to do the right thing? Years of gloating over interpersonal victories. Vasanas of vindictiveness. Self encapsulation and the blindness that accompanies it. A desire to have my own way, no matter what.
There I was behind thick walls of my own creation, alone, cut off from love, and totally ignorant of how I got there or where I was. Only Baba's teachings provided a comparison against by which I could dimly see the walls of my prison and haltingly feel my way along its walls towards the door.
Namaste,
Steve
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The Essays of Brother Anonymous
Spiritual Essays
Originally written: Mar. 7, 1995.
Revised: Sept. 17, 2009
As a comedian once put it, I hit my all-time low last night, for the very first time again. It was enlightening for me because the topic has been one that has been raised several times offline in the past two weeks.
Going through the experience myself, I got to see some of the dynamics, and, with your permission, I’d like to share a little about that.
The ostensible reason for my nadir was a frustrating situation at work that needn't concern us. The real reason for my nadir was that the office situation flushed up my organizing principle -- unadulterated selfishness. I was obliged to stand there confronting how very selfish I am.
I saw the self-enclosing walls of what Da Free John called "Narcissus," my self-absorbed, self-interested personality, built of vasana on vasana, and kept in place by its remaining just below the surface, almost always unseen.
Unseen except at moments like this.
Narcissus was painful to see. I saw that I have an energy system that loops back on itself, that keeps people at a distance, that doesn't permit my attention to wander from me and my plight.
I hold the attention on me forever, paying out just enough attention to others to keep them around. It was not a pretty picture.
As I observed my condition, I could see that selfishness tinged every emotion, accompanied every intiative, colored every approach. Energy was turned back on itself; attention, a closed loop; love, bottled up. Ow! I hurt.
Life is constantly bumpng up against my limits and having them torn down -- ouch! I get to see how abysmally undeveloped I am -- oooh! I smart. I ache. I feel glum. Then I feel depressed.
So nadirs are an occupational hazard of life. I used the time last night to sit quietly with these feelings in uncertainty, not knowing what was going on or where it would lead. It turned out I had no idea what was going on, and never could have without being with the process.
I allowed the lamp of neutral awareness to shine on my feelings, etc., without having my down space be a witness for the prosecution or a blot on my record.
A wise workshop leader once suggested: if you're in danger of condemning yourself for being at your nadir, try this experiment. Fill the bathtub with an inch of water. Climb in. If you walk on the surface and still feel at your nadir, you’re right: something is definitely wrong.
However, if your feet sink to the bottom, you have more remodelling work to do and it'll hurt at times. Allowing life to remake me, I expect to feel at a low spot at regular intervals and I build it into my round of life.
After seeing all this, I saw that I needed to re-generate myself no matter what -- to recompile the code, to get on with life. It was time to stand up and get back to work. I still hurt, but I'm letting life do a thorough remodelling job behind the scenes. Take down those timbers. Rip out those stones and all that brick. I know I’ll be happy with the results.
Namaste,
Steve
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The Essays of Brother Anonymous
Spiritual Essays