When you
get
off it (which is to say when you
stop
making people and things wrong), the
angels
applaud.
Now I'm
clear
by saying it that
way,
I'm seriously at risk of making what it is to
"get
off it" overly significant. But I'll accept that risk, rather than
downplay the sheer guts and
heroism
it can take. And what exactly does it take,
Laurence?
Speaking
for myself, I personally don't equate
getting
off it
wholly
with either
forgiving
or with letting go. However: examining those two linguistic
acts (if you will), are important interim steps in the
process of eliminating what
getting
off it isn't.
Our drive ie our instinct to be right and to make others
wrong, is
powerful
and all-consuming. Unchecked (which is to say unexamined)
it totally runs us. There's
nothing wrong
with that. It's meant to run us. It's
designed to run us. It ensures the survival of the
ego.
It's self-preserving, automatic, lizard brain behavior at
its very best. Try this on for size for yourself: when you're being
right (making someone or something wrong), look to see if the furthest
idea from your awareness, isn't that you're being right and making
someone or something wrong. Even though it's what you're doing,
that idea never enters the equation. Instead the operating
principle at
times
like these is: they are wrong. There's no distinction
present
for you that you're making them wrong. No, they just ...
are ... wrong, yes?
Getting
off it ie ceasing making someone or something wrong, may sound like
it's
forgiving
someone or letting go of something. To be sure, there are elements of
both
forgiving
as well as letting go, in
getting
off it. For that matter, ceasing making someone or something wrong, can
also have elements of switching feet (that's a
surfing
term ...) and making them right again instead. But if
there's going to be the
possibility
of
authentictransformation,
then it will come from none of the above. So from what will it come?
Transformation
becomes
possible
when I can own their being wrong, as something
Icreate.
Really. That's it.
People are rarely measurably and provably and indisputably wrong. When
you make someone or something wrong, it may appear as if their
wrongness (if you will) is a set-in-stone
quality of theirs. It's not. It's actually your
projection.
It's distinct from people's physical, measurable attributes - like
people are so many feet tall, like they weigh so many pounds, like
they're so many years old. It's
true
from
time
to
time,
people occur for me as wrong. But (and here's the thing)
it's I who have the
power
(of
language)
over how people occur for me (that's
"Transformation
101") which implies I'm the
source
of them occurring as wrong. So it's also within my
power
of
language,
to not have them occur as wrong. They're wrong if I
speak
them wrong. They're not if I don't. And that's what
getting
off it, is.
Listen:
this isn't for the
faint-hearted.
Making this leap ie taking responsibility for
creating
the wrongness of others then not doing it anymore (which is
to say
getting
off it) takes guts and
heroism.
<aside>
If you've stayed with me with this thus far, the
angels
just lifted their hands to the ready-to-clap position.
<un-aside>
Allowing people to be whatever
way
they are, owning any of their wrongness as something I (not they)
create,
is what it is to
get
off it. It's
transformational.
It takes guts. It takes
heroism.
To
get
off it requires confronting all my rational, reasonable
machinery
which says "But I am right!" and "They are
wrong!". It takes verve. It takes bigness. It's not something I
have to do. To the contrary, all my defense mechanisms and
justifications suggest exactly the opposite. Nonetheless if I do, even
when there's no one else in the room except me, even when there's no
one else to notice what I did except me, that clapping sound I hear is
the applause of
angels.