April 11, 2005

• My memory is going…

  
  

  I am not sure whether it’s a sign that I’m becoming an old fart, but I write everything down. If some idea comes to me, I start looking for a pen and a piece of paper so I can put the gist of it in writing before it leaves my head, as fast as it arrived. When I’m at the computer, working, some “insight” often pops into my mind (often in the middle of writing something else), so I end up starting a session of Notepad, just so I can quickly put down the bare bones of what just popped into my mind and save it in some soon forgotten file with a cryptic name like 0504-blog-73-brainfarts.txt. At the time it makes sense; when I come across the file six months later it seems like I must have been high at the time I saved it.

  
  

  I was re-reading Mother Theresa’s words from yesterday’s entry, and it struck me that we have some remarkable biases in our society. “Whatever obstacle you encounter, persevere anyway.” That’s pretty much the message from her words. Yet, our environment, and the Talking Heads who call themselves experts on psychology, would insist that adopting such values is really an indication that you’re a chronically codependent wuss who’s in serious need of developing some backbone and assertiveness. Their maxim: If someone is rude to you, don’t “love them anyway”, kick ‘em in the shins!

  
  

  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. The mainstream of the world is oriented towards teaching “survival skills” not towards “living right.” David Hawkins– a mainstream M.D. turned enlightenment guru– asserts that 74% of the world’s population lives at a “destructive” level of awareness. And that’s the rub, isn’t it? If you are living at a low (“destructive”) level of awareness, the things you teach people around you are also going to be destructive.

  
  

  Hmmmm…..

  
  

  The issue that causes me more lost sleep than any other is “choice.” Let me back up a bit. If you’re into the whole self-improvement, finding-inner-peace, transcendence journey you’re probably also familiar with the notion that the end to personal “suffering” (or some similar term meaning “how do I end my inner pain and confusion“) comes through transcending the ego, or killing the ego, or some other such ideal. It seems to me that what must really be “transcended” are the fixations associated with the ego– but that’s a whole other ball of wax. But let’s just say, for grins, that I am trying to live my life from a place that’s not governed by ego. What happens to “choice?”

  
  

  Where does “choice” end, and “ego” begin? When I “choose” something, rather than just “letting the situation be,” is that my ego speaking, or am I making a legitimate choice? I find it confusing. When I “choose” Suzy because I find her sweet and compassionate, rather than Jane because I find her temperamental and selfish, is that an “ego decision?” Am I, in fact, caving in to my “ego fixation?” Some– who feel a lot like “false prophets”– would hold “yes.” It should matter not one bit whether it were Suzy or Jane in the bed next to me, because the “evolved self” loves all equally, and so it would make no difference. Doesn’t quite work though, does it?

  
  

  It’s also ironic that these ego-less “everything is exactly as it should be” types have little or no problem lauding spritual “communities” in which those of a similar spiritual persuasion get together. And if everything is “exactly as it should be,” why did they find it necessary to give themselves a special name like Starlight Dancing-Bear rather than just stick with the Ebenezer Finkelstein they were given at birth? The fact that it is even an issue suggests to me that their ego is alive and well, and that “choice” does matter. 

  
  

  Of course, it still doesn’t answer the question of choice. Mother Theresa surely chose to live by that set of guidelines– they weren’t randomly plucked out of the air. Perhaps the real answer is to choose wisely, and to choose with intent. Make choices from a place of love, but don’t be a “spiritual idiot” who cultivates the “nothing matters” school of thought. Spiritual idiocy takes many forms, some of them quite “ordinary” in nature. I was a spiritual idiot for the last 7 years of my marriage, convincing myself that it “didn’t matter” that I lived in a sexless relationship with an emotionally abusive and unstable person, because I “should love people as they are.” Whether my ultimate choice to leave, with the understanding that you can “love” someone without having to “live with them” was “ego” or “free choice” speaking, I don’t know.

  
  

  What I do know is that I will face these choice points in life again, and I will tend to get bogged down not on what I am doing, but in my reasons for doing.

  
  

  
  

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  Edit, added at 4:10pm:

  
  

  And then again, sometimes things happen to good people that make the scale of my life seem so utterly insignificant.

  
  

  She could use your support and prayers.

  
  

  Edit, added at 7:30am, Tuesday morning:

  
  

  Evidently, she has taken her site down. Whether her post was a hoax, or a way to get people’s sympathy we may never know.

  
  

  My sense of True North tells me that the woman needs love and compassion (albeit for very different reasons) regardless of whether her family was truly killed by a drunk driver, or she wrote the story as an attention getting stunt. People do stupid and selfish things. Love them anyway…..

  
  

   

  • 4:38 pm
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