Being Human, Falling off the Perfect Path
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A Spiritual Journey
Being on a spiritual journey is often talked about in terms of being on the path. This goes back to Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, where a fictional representative ‘man’, called Christian, leaves everything behind to go on a journey towards his own spiritual salvation. It is a remarkably similar story to that of the Buddha, a true-life story about the character, Prince Siddartha.
If we accept this analogy, it suggests progress towards a given goal. I am not sure that is a helpful model, as it suggests that we are not good enough as we are just now. Where we are right now is at our best point, but nothing is permanent and we will change as experice confronts us, and that new place will become our new best point. It is important not to think of ourselves as how flawed and unskilful we are but rather how far we have come and how far, how much, we still have to learn.
We stand in the moment
We can only ever be in this moment, we can only ever respond to what is there, in this moment, and mostly we cannot predict it either. So we must respond with our best choices, and sometimes this moment will catch us unawares. This happened to me recently whilst on retreat. One of my ADHD — attention deficit coping strategies is to repeat back to the person whatever they have said, especially if it requires me to find a solution for them, and especially if it has come out of the blue at me, which this had done. I did not have a strategy but I needed appropriate time to find response that was helpful. I used my strategy, and was told in no uncertain terms that they knoew this already so did not need to be told again. I offered a solution and then a suggestion of how to avoid the same problem in future. This was the final straw. The individual concerned threw back at me an energy ball of anger and shame so large that it overwhelmed me, and told me she needed me to think about what I had said to her and why.
Other people
This affected me quite badly and triggered my own history of deep shame and self judgment, and it took me some days to shake this off and to consider her feelings. I can understand in this situation that her own lack of attention to instructions had led to her making a mistake and she wanted me to fix it for her. My repetition amounted to her feeling more ridiculous than before, even though that was so far from my intention.
High sensitivity to other peoples energies
I can feel other people’s distress very profoundly, I feel it as tingling in my skin and nervous system, I can feel it as knives slicing into me, I can feel it as a bolt of energy hitting me in the stomach, and I can feel it is a gentle connection between me and others. I knew I had got it wrong for this person and quite badly, but her reactions had also floored me badly too, and I needed rebalancing and recovery time, so I made a point of avoiding this person until I felt I could address her calmly and without injury to myself. I was almost there, I only had a few days before the end of the retreat anyway, and then she repeated the energy bolt when she stood in front of me on a path and demanded that I respond to her question. I was trying to get to the loo in time — older bladders aren’t that strong, and I didn’t know the answer this time either. She completely closed me down once more, and I couldn’t calm that energy in me down in time to respond to her appropriately before it was time to go home for us all.
Regrets
I regret that I wasn’t able to cope better with the situation and also to reassure her I hadn’t intended to make her feel belittled, but it was my own coping strategy. I regret deeply that I was unable to make her feel re-assured I had not rejected her or wanted to belittle her, only to manage my own issues. It is never about blame, of her or myself, and she showed me how easily it is to get into this frame of mind, defensively or self punishment. It is not about that. It was an energy exchange that went wrong, and what can I learn about myself and move on with from it. How can i turn this into a positive learning experience for myself?
Time will tell
I can think of some options of positive lessons coming from this encounter, but until I am tested in a similar way I wont know if I have mastered those lessons and done the interior work on myself that would enable me to be more skilful in future. I am not responsible for her feelings in this- that arose solely out of her previous experiences, so I have offered her the opportunity to also look deeply at herself and consider why she reacted as she did too. Why did she feel such shame as her own error, or lack of information? This is her story to unpick, I can only unpick my own. I wish her well.
Resolutions
If we are on this path of deep spiritual self reflections and exploration, it is pintless to berate ourselves for not knowing what we think we should know etc. for getting it wrong, for being mistaken.
A young child is born in an extreme state of not knowing. Do we berate a toddler for its inability to master walking more quickly? Could I have dealt with it any better than I did? Probably not.
I did my best and was struggling to come back in a positive way, but could not get there in time. Perhaps I can replay this scenario enough times to spot the place where something I did would have made it better for us both, perhaps not. The mind likes to do these replays where we try and change the script and make ourselves feel or appear better as a result. This does not help us.
We need to be a little brutal here and face the truths. We are just not that skilful at life yet either. We can only learn to walk forwards along that path and accept the destination is not the point, but where we stand right now and how we can be open and honest with ourselves about what that looks like. Only from this position of blameless openness can we truly learn and move forwards, otherwise we risk the circles game, or we avoid life itself to protect ourselves from those risky exposures. Being gentle with yourself but honest too is the goal after all.
