Deep Spring Center
Thought for Today
“Your job, once you understand that the river was never broken, is not to go on campaign to clean up the polluted river, but to help to teach those who live along the river that they are responsible for cleaning it up. The need is to understand clearly what needs to be fixed. Then you don’t enter into it as ‘I am the teacher and I’m going to show you how to do it.’ Perhaps you talk to the people who live there about how sad it makes you to see this pollution. You help them to understand their responsibility for creating it and that they are empowered to clean it up if they wish to.”
A Wall Street Journal headline caught my eye: Bullies Are Everywhere – How to Stop Them. I was reminded of a line Richard Bandler would often use, “The best way to help a poor person is to not be one.”
Right speech and right action (wholesome attitude and behavior) is a central motive for our practice in mindfulness. The best way to stop a bully is to not be one.
My meditation teacher was involved in the civil rights movement when she was a teen. She tells of having been well trained in non-harm before being sent into spots where illegal acts of violence (like lynching) was still occurring. How they responded in those spaces of such hatred and tension brought about life-or-death results. I personally know a man who was holding the hand of a woman killed when a bulldozer plowed into humans lying on the ground in protest of the demolishing of a brand new school building to avoid integration.
Rather than relying on a thin,
idealized hope that
we will all
one day
just get along,
we can approach conflict resolution
as an art form that
we are privileged to
develop and hone.
~ Diane Musho Hamilton
Aggravated anger that erupts in deadly violence does not just jump on us out of thin air. We are constantly utilizing or missing opportunities of grace which is continually creating active moments.
A couple of days ago, our daughter, also a supporter of President Trump, sent a text message to her dad saying it was a mathematical miracle that 100 percent of the late mail-in votes were for Biden. Before he responded to her, I said, “I can conceive of some tiny sampling where that statement was true. These distortions are what is fueling the hatred and distrust of one another.” (The tilting of truth I wrote about in a previous post….)
He responded to her saying he hopes one of the things that comes out of this is an end to voter fraud. He also reminded her to keep this all in prayer, that she has a very strong faith in God. He utilized that active moment!
The article about bullies addressed the underlying drivers of the behavior of bullying. At the top of the list was narcissism. Craig Malkin, a clinical psychologist, lecturer at Harvard Medical School and author of “Rethinking Narcissism” is reported as saying, “People who are very narcissistic display a trio of behaviors called the Triple E: exploitation, entitlement and empathy impairment.”
A poignant point to you and me is to realize that excessive interest in oneself and a sense of entitlement actually occurs on a spectrum. All humans have some. As Abraham Hicks says, being self-interested is just hard wired into humans. Brad Bushman, a professor of communication at the Ohio State University in Columbus, who studies narcissism and aggression adds, “Have you ever rushed into an open spot in a busy parking lot before someone else can grab it? That’s narcissism.”
My dharma sister shared having a very tender awareness on a recent retreat, her voice choking as she said, “My father was a bully. My brothers are bullies. What I realized this week is that I am a bully too.”
I have been a bully as well. We all have. I have been a religious zealot. That term was first used in reference to a political movement in the Judea Province in the 1st Century. They were trying to incite a rebellion to expel the Roman Empire from the Holy Land, by force of arms. Reference the FIRST Jewish-Roman War. Oh, my…. we are slow to learn, but we are learning.
It is our river of life that has been polluted by our narcissistic behaviors — on both sides of every issue.
Over the next days and weeks and months following this election, speak honestly about how sad this pollution has made you. Speak words that lessens distress — in ourselves and in the one with whom or about whom we are speaking.
On occasion we might even feel superior to some people — like the gruff man in line ahead of us at the bank or the rude cashier at the grocery store. But in all cases, the moment we compare and thus create a separation between ourselves and others, we deny the blessing of God’s all-encompassing plan for each of us.
We are all one in God. When we realize our connection to one another, we learn our task is to care for each other rather than artificially set ourselves apart.
~ In God’s Care, Daily Meditations on Spirituality in Recovery
We are all one in God. With each active moment we are able to clean up our own river of relating. If we wish to….
