The
higher you are, the further the fall…
And this is the problem with being put on a pedestal. It is inevitable that you are going to slip
up, that you are going to do or say or think something that runs counter to your
own code of moral “ethics.” Whenever I
think I know that I am most definitely “right,” I know I have fallen into that
ego trap.
I like to think of myself as a being of compassion – and there
is nothing wrong with that, really. It
only becomes an issue when I hop on my trusty duality train and ride it into
the bleak, unforgiving terrain of black and white, good/bad, good evil. Yes it is true, I am a being of compassion,
but more than that, I am, in a word….being.
And being manifests itself in all different kinds of ways, some we like,
some we don’t like…all of them subject to our judgment: good feeling or bad
feeling. And we are programmed to deny
(as parts of us), the manifestations that leave us feeling “bad.” Because we are conditioned to believe that
these parts are not OK. And we resist, and we resist, and we resist,
and guess what: what we resists, persists.
I fell from grace.
HARD. REAL. HARD. I still may have a ways to go. And, dammit! Just when I thought I had my shit all figured
out, just when I was really confident of my own inner beauty, this mirror
called life reflected back to me my own inner ugly, if only to remind me that I
cannot have one without the other. And I
turned away in disgust - no, that’s not me.
Couldn’t be me. And ultimately,
it’s not ME in the sense of I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN ACT LIKE AN ASSHAT. It’s just me in the sense that I have the
potential, as everyone does, to act like an asshat. I played the “mean girl,” that girl who says
that certain backhanded comment, or gives you that certain “look.” You know the look. It has a whole lot to say, and leaves you
feeling some typa way: inside-out, upside-down, backwards, wrong.
I feel this life moving faster and faster and faster as the
days go by. For a while, my strategy was
to deliberately move forward in my life slower, so that perhaps the world would
decide what a good idea that was and slow down right along with me. And I still use this strategy from time to
time, when I can and when I remember. It’s
not effective all of the time.
And because things just keep moving faster and faster and
faster, sometimes it feels like I have almost instant karma, which is great in
some ways, but in other ways, it sucks!
When there is, eventually, only YOU to be accountable to, the stakes is
high and there is nowhere to run.
The Buddha says:
“If your compassion does not
include yourself, it is incomplete.”
I am sitting with this, sitting with the pain and anguish
that comes with doing something that runs counter to who I am and what I want
to stand for, and I am struggling to stay in the narrow space of acknowledging my
mistakes without beating myself about the head with them. This is a challenge - my inner critic happens
to be a real motherf*cker. The last time I fell this hard, I could not
stay in that narrow space and ended up falling into a deep vortex of
hopelessness, despair and depression. I
would like not to go there again.
And so, if you see me, do me a favor and remind me, gently,
that I AM NOT my fuck-ups. Remind me,
gently, that acknowledging a fuck-up is the first step towards doing something
different next time. And, above all,
please remind me that no matter WHAT manifests WHEN or WHERE, you see ME.
Kind thoughts, peaceful words, and a strong heart.
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