Everyman's Journal 2011

Everyman's Journal 2011, #1, New Year's Eve 2010

One of the spiritual opportunities that arrived on my doorstep today (now yesterday) was the 'temptation to be right' (inside myself) about something that 'somebody else' did.... even though I know there is 'nobody here but us'. It gave me the chance to look at where my ego still is 'reactivated' by the actions of other egos, especially when what my 'ego-I' feels is 'not gotten, or judged, or misunderstood'.... that kind of stuff.

The 'what happened' details don't matter... although that is a universal instinctive egoic ploy.... to find friends who will agree with us about our point of view, and trade us stroke for stroke for stroke. I would like to be able to report my ego was perfectly at peace, and did not even raise an eyebrow at having its vote 'cancelled', ...that would have been how I would have liked my ego to behave. But it didn't. It went to its older (meaning younger), less mature emotions, and created that what happened meant something.... in other words, it/I forgot Don Miguel Ruiz's 2nd Agreement: Don't take anything personally.

Besides forgetting, it (my ego-I) very much wanted to be right about it too. Are the internal conversations that go on inside you also so political? Somehow I suspect they are, at least for a lot of people. It is so multi-leveled too, this game. For of course my ego-I has a strongly spiritualized side, so it also wanted to be right in a spiritual way too. But that was clearly just for show, and for the biggest ego win of all--- to look good. The situation reminded me of an ACIM line about how 'the mildest irritation is really just a smokescreen over insane rage'.

Just yesterday I had had a seriously good basic relevant insight return to my consciousness... almost as if it was planted there by an intelligence which knew what was coming in the future...:-). It was about things never being right or wrong... and about the possibility of being able to simply allow everything to be, or arise unresisted, and to be stable through it all, living in a space of equanimity. I might have even wrote about it... I don't remember. But in any event, today was a 'test day' of my remembrance of that 'm.o', at least in a sense. And of course, also remembering that to earn a passing grade would mean a. letting go completely of my need to be right, b. create several other possible interpretations of the event in question which would actually make it totally right that what happened happened, and c. forgive myself for getting hooked on my ego-I's immature knee-jerk reaction. (Not sure, but I think I might have just lifted some of Byron Katie's stuff as I wrote that last line... just staying clean here about what's mine or somebody else's.)

Have I done it? I AM doing it as I write right now. This writing discipline is in this instant (and has often been in the past) my ticket to the greater freedom always awaiting on the other side of any ego-I contraction. That is one of the things I get personally from doing this writing/sharing practice. Of course there are a lot more too, but they're not needed to be mentioned right now.

I'm not saying I let it get to me all day or anything. I let it go... there was too much else to do (and isn't that so often our savior.... that we 'can't afford' to wallow in ego-I reactions forever.... and that we 'have to' turn our attentions elsewhere. You do know what we call people that don't, of course.....Obsessed. That would be, perhaps, a nice way of being called insane).

What is being sane? As I listen to my VfG (Voice for God) I am guided to see that in this situation sanity begins with the return of Love (towards the person involved) to my heart. That is how I know I have forgiven whatever the supposed trespass was. It is not a 'love' that is still being right, but somehow still 'forgives'. ACIM has clear passages that reveal that that is not true love, nor true forgiveness. It is a love that simply allows what happened to have happened, and ceases to make it mean anything that it did.

As Gangaji has also many times said: "I can guarantee you that whatever you think happened... that that is not how it happened. In fact, when you really see, you will see that what you think happened never even happened at all...." (this quote is from my memory, as I was there and that's how I remember it... but so were the camcorders. If their version is different, theirs is right. Just another little practice moment of not needing to be 'right'.) :-).

Namaste,

David

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"The Four Agreements

1. Be impeccable with your word.

2. Don’t take anything personally.

3. Don’t make assumptions.

4. Always do your best. "

Don Miguel Ruiz

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My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on it's way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.

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Rev. David Seacord

Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag

david@davidseacord.com

www.davidseacord.com

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