July 28, 2008

• The eternal worry about “Them”

  Come on in, pull up a chair!
  
  I don’t write much, when life is busy. Life has been… busy.
  
  I was pondering something this morning… about the way so many people are obsessed with “them.” What I mean by that, is the constant concern with “externals,” the tendency to make one’s life “other referencing,” all the time.
  
  When I lived down in Texas, I knew this ceramics artist from Thailand. He was a “master potter,” he trained and apprenticed in Japan and was truly a master of his craft. He was also a man of great inner peace, and with wonderful sense of humor. I’d sometimes visit him, in Seabook, TX where he and his extended family occupied three adjacent houses alongside a bayou. The family predominantly worked at nearby NASA, but here was this fellow, creating his life from porcelain clay.
  
  The thing that was most interesting about V. was not just the degree to which people admired his work, but the willingness with which he was willing to show and teach ANY potter what he did, and how he did it, just for the asking. He was always puzzled by the feedback he’d get: “Aren’t worried that they are your competition? Aren’t you worried that they will take your styles and glaze recipes and copy them? Aren’t you worried that they…..?“
  
  “They.”
  
  His answer always was “Whyever would I be worried about someone else’s pottery and ability? I feel happy anyone can find a way to make a living from their craft, and if my knowledge can help someone, that makes all of us better off.”
  
  As a long time “traveller,” I find it fascinating how the obsession with “they” runs rampant, even within the cummunity of spiritual teachings. Even as Teachers and Gurus convey a message of SELF-actualization and SELF-awareness, and NON-attachment… the focus so often becomes on ATTACHMENT to– and fixation on– what THEY are doing.
  
  Different branches of Christianity teach us about a loving God, and about accepting God into our lives… even while busily telling us that “they” (different perspectives on Christian beliefs) are “evil” and will lead us astray. The “guru in a diaper” teaches us non-attachment and how to silence the “monkey mind” while simultaneously pointing out how “they” (the other gurus in diapers) are “caught in their delusion” or “stuck in the trance.”
  
  No matter how “evolved” or self-aware, it seems we all all but unable to do anything besides focus on what is wrong with those outside ourselves, as opposed to what is right with ourselves. In many ways, we arrive at our own “rightness” purely through examining and defining others’ “wrongness.”
  
  We make it about “Them,” not about ourselves. We don’t allow ourselves to just be “right” (for ourselves), we also focus on how they are “wrong.”
  
  The Thai potter, and “they” came to my mind this morning, because I ended up on some web site where two ostensibly “evolved” spiritual teachers were taking potshots at each other, over their process… each accusing the other of being “delusional” and “stuck in their fixations.”
  
  Maybe I have a simplistic view of the world, but isn’t that just another way of giving away our personal power?
  
  Frankly, I’d rather hang out with the potter.
  
  

  • 2:16 pm
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