I ask my sister: “What’s your favorite food?” She tells me hamburgers.
Chocolate owns me.
Mom veers to beef stroganoff.
Our preferences are within us. We may shape our diets and lifestyles to scootch in a direction, but ultimately, there’s been a time when we’ve uttered “ew” and the person next to us is exclaiming, “yum.”
“True collective action can take place only when you, the individual, who are also the mass, are awake and take the full responsibility for your action without compulsion.” -Krishnamurti.
In the same way, we lean in to people, circumstances, and locations, events, which resonate. We’d never get anything done if our body didn’t tell us at six-years-old, “I want to play soccer” and at 25, “I want to make out with the blonde.”
Ramesh Baleksar, a recently passed enlightened teacher from Mumbai gave the example of a party. Even if you have 20 “conscious” people show up, they’re not naturally going to sit in a circle and kumbaya; this is not the way we are wired. We'll split up into four or five groups of people, as we’re drawn by an inexplicable vibration to that which is comfy... or hot.
Community, like-minded people, all of this is a vital, joyful part of living, but for growth, we need to confront that which doesn’t share in the matching t-shirts. The icky bits are the stretchy bits.
“Before you can act fully and truly, you must know the prison in which you are living, how it has been created; and in examining it without any self- defense you will find out for yourself its true significance, which no other can convey to you.”
Any judgments come up just as automatically as our preferences for blondes or stroganoff; we think we might have control over 'em, but we don’t. This is the stuff to notice, this is the “getting to know you” courtship with your mind.
The last time I was in India, the Big Daddy brought 200 people together from dozens of different countries so that you could watch yourself being internationally irked. Cultural differences are pretty obvious when you have Chinese women shoving you out of the way to get to the bathroom at a “spiritual retreat.” In the wings and downstage center, my opinions, judgments, preferences automatically came up for everyone around me.
One Japanese woman thought she was a animé messiah, consistently lead to call out to everyone in the room that they should be “laughing with the divine:” “It’s ok!! Laugh!!! Let go—laugh!!” This went on for ten minutes in one meditation. People called out to her to shut up (and let me remind you this was at an: Advanced. Spiritual. Retreat.)
Even if we don't act on these judgments, to say that we do not have them is bullshit. I’m sorry, pardon my French, but it is, it’s total bullshit. And that’s why someone reeks of inauthenticity when they walk around all spurious and holy.
The judgments are automatic. Judgment does not have to have a negative emotion or feeling attached to it; it just is. In relating how we could frame both a sense of “oneness” while housing a preference or judgment, my friend Adriana gave me a metaphor in India—“It’s like this crooked finger.” She shows me her finger, which is ever so slightly bent, one of the only imperfections on her Brazillian hottie bod. “I can see that it’s crooked, I don’t like that it’s crooked, but it’s part of me. So I still love it and accept it.”
Love and compassion, and their natural by-products collective action and “oneness with all,” can’t be forced. These sorts of warm, fuzzy things rise with practices and in time temper our judgments to be passing unattached clouds, just the silliness of the ego; judgment ceases to define who we are or who anyone else is. It happens and it goes.
On a deeper level, many teachings point to the truth that that which we dislike about someone else, or that brings up a reaction for us, is what we don’t like most about ourselves: we’re not accepting the icky bits. You know—the stuff that’s never going to go on the front page of your match.com profile—that stuff.
There’s a transcript being passed around in the woo circles from an interview with a recently awakened woman, and she said that P.A. (pre-awakening) whenever a judgment came up for someone else, she’d notice it, and add: (I would suggest doing this in your head so as not to frighten others) “Just like me.” I really like this, because it’s simple.
“Wow, she's got some balls-- check out that outfit, trash-shay.”… Just like me.
“Asshole!” (after they cut you off in traffic, stand you up, don’t return a call)… Just like me.
(my personal favorite) “Wow, that person takes themselves way too seriously”… Just like me.
“Margaret is so long winded, cheeky and full of herself”... Just like me.
I bring this up because I am helping to plan a wide-scale event on the East Coast for all this stuff. I am overprotective of my peeps, of these teachings, of this experience, because it is so simple, and we, in our enthusiasm for things can get caught up in a fanaticism very easily and get all crazypants or over-devotional with it, scaring other people off. I tend toward the real, the practical, the laid back dedication of the long haul daily practice and there will be many others present at this event that will not look at the world in the same way I do. There will be people who have closets of Christmas sweaters and count “Jesus Christ as my personal savior,” always using that complete phrase to describe JC.
I don’t find New Yorkers to be cynical or hard, but grounded, discerning and sophisticated. What plays in Ohio doesn’t play in New York. Honestly, what plays in Jersey doesn’t play in New York; it can get as subdivided as uptown and downtown or East and West side. Our inherent New Yorker’s egoic pride is yes, just that, an egoic mindset to be seen and dissolved if one is to “discover the manner of true fulfillment” as Krishnamurti puts it, but to ignore that it exists will not get us past it.
As we were on a conference call for this event, the person leading mentioned that one of the purposes of putting together an event like this was so that we could see the conflict and charges that come up between us in the planning and execution. To bring up our inner bitch.
And in case we think we may think we’re so non-judgmental, lovin’ Japanese animé prophets, Christmas sweaters and all those we come into contact with, with equal blissful abandon, I’ll insert the gentle reminder that it doesn’t need to be only people that can irk us. What about when something doesn’t turn out the way we want it to? The creative project that should have been done by now, that husband or life partner that hasn’t arrived yet or that business deal that fell through? Do we judge what life puts in front of us, or do we embrace every experience, ugly and uncomfortable as that which is necessary in the moment? The degree to which we accept the ick, is the compass as to how awake we are in our lives. It’s the other side of the “Just like me” coin… it’s “this is me.” That’s basically it in a nutshell: accept the ick, accept the bitch.
We cannot even think about collective action until we own up to ourselves, because once we do, a collective compassion arises naturally, there’s no need to work on it. “All of life is a movement toward our wholeness.” a translation from the Tao Te Ching, is pretty much my bumper sticker. In the moments of infinite love and bliss I have had (and they are and have been, thank you thank you, oh so grateful, countless) when the gritty ick or the inner bitch comes up, it’s not a la-di-dah feeling of overall oneness that helps a shift, it is a practical faith in this process. It is the responsibility of owning that there is something in it for me, and from me (“Just like me” no matter what it looks like. Whether it’s an “ew” or a “yum.”) These experiences are for me, for us, and the cozier we get with our inner bitch, the closer we get to a collective compassion. So when someone selfishly snags the last pair of Spanx at your pharmacy, preventing you from looking sleek at your office holiday party tonight, or a recipient isn’t as grateful as they should be for the iPad you gifted them, be pissed, be disappointed, and then remember: Just like me.
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