I've discovered myself engaged in and absorbed by a worthwhile new
project. This really is the best way to say it ("I've discovered
myself engaged in and absorbed by a worthwhile new project")
because it's an ongoing project even though it's not one I consciously
started. Unlike other projects I've started, I discovered myself
spontaneously engaged in this one. It's the
perfectsegue ie it's the appropriate
next
thing to do, given everything that came before it. To describe it
analogously,
it's like pruning the leaves of
my house
plant. I could also say it's like trimming my fingernails: simple
routine, basic maintenance. To describe it actually, this project is
cutting out my ability to manipulate.
I'm a good manipulator,
speaking
candidly. Really I am. I'd say we're all good manipulators
- except you haven't designated me the job of
speaking
for you and / or for
speaking
for all of us in this regard (it's only you who can say for yourself
whether you're a good manipulator or not). Part of being a good
manipulator is not 'fessing up that you're a good
manipulator ie it's not telling the
truth
that you're a good manipulator. One of the
tools
in a good manipulator's
toolbox
is being covert about it ie being dishonest about it. Good
manipulators don't admit to manipulating: they just ...
manipulate.
Definition
manipulate
verb (INFLUENCE)
MAINLY DISAPPROVING
to control something or someone to your advantage, often unfairly or
dishonestly
<unquote>
The thing I've realized in this project while confronting my own mostly
unexamined ability to manipulate (that is, mostly unexamined until
now) is my manipulating (or at least my attempting to
manipulate) is not so much manipulating something and / or
someone (as the
dictionary definition
states) but rather manipulating or attempting to manipulate
experience itself. And it's my manipulating (or at least my
attempting to manipulate) experience itself, which is the precursor to
ie which leads to manipulating or attempting to manipulate something
and / or someone. Here's what I mean by that:
One way I can have an experience of something or of someone (which is
to say one way I can have any experience) is to simply
have the experience. In other
words,
I can have the experience without judgement, without downplaying,
without
resistance,
without avoidance, exactly
the way it is
and exactly the way it isn't. Another way I can have the experience is
to not have the experience (or at least to
attempt to not have it), to judge it, to downplay it, to
resist
it, to avoid it, to have it be different than
the way it is
ie to have it be anything other thanthe way it is.
The latter is what I call manipulating experience itself - or at least
it's attempting to manipulate experience itself, since experience is
what it is anyway, regardless of my attempts to change it and / or
avoid it etc. Yet it's a tenet of
transformation,
a bastion if you will, that before you can
transform
anything, you have to be able to be with it exactly
the way it is
and exactly the way it isn't.
In this regard, it's almost impossible for me to have
transformation
ongoingly in my life, without cutting out my ability to manipulate
experience itself. As long as I haven't cut out my ability to
manipulate experience itself ie as long as I'm not being with the
experience I'm having exactly
the way it is
and exactly the way it isn't, it's almost impossible to experience
being whole and
complete.
And it's when I'm not experiencing being whole and
complete
that I'm most likely to manipulate (or attempt to manipulate) something
and / or someone, to compensate for not experiencing being whole and
complete.
It's the stuff about which dramas and
soap operas
are
written:
building something, or building a
relationship
with someone, when we're manipulating the experience of being whole and
complete
at the outset ie when we're compensating for not experiencing being
whole and
complete
at the outset, is fraught with so many fundamental built-in flaws as to
be almost certain to fracture and fail at some point in the
future.
Part of this malaise starts with the very
human
error of confusing the experience of being whole and
complete,
with the experience of being
nothing
(that's
nothing,
like inadequate or like insufficient, or
nothing,
like in the flung angry put-down "You're
nothing!").
But the seminal experience the sages describe as "being
nothing"
is actually the experience of "being everything ...
andnothing"
- which is the experience of the possibility of
Self-realization,
the experience of the possibility of
enlightenment,
the experience of the possibility of
transformation.
And we naïvely confuse the
nothing
component of the experience of being whole and
complete,
with being inadequate ie with being insufficient. That's what's likely
to get us
misconstruing
it and recoiling from it, and then attempting to manipulate it.
This spontaneously started project of cutting out my ability to
manipulate, and especially
unflinchingly
cutting out my ability to manipulate any experience, leaving me at
choice to be with it exactly
the way it is
and exactly the way it isn't, is both pivotal as well as pragmatic in
living
transformation.
