Sometimes I really wonder about myself. I mean, sometimes I make no sense even to me. How can I be committed to spirituality, yet sometimes be such a bitch?
Several times this has happened now. I’ll be in the midst of a writing fever. It feels very spiritual to me, it’s a spiritual experience. I write about spiritual things.
The funny thing is, and this has happened more than once, I can’t even go for a cup of coffee and stay spiritual. One day, I got up early and wrote some, and then decided it was time to go to Dunkin Donuts for coffee. Another person butted in line ahead of me at the drive-through. Actually, I would have let the person in, but it didn’t matter, they didn’t wait for the polite signal to go through. They didn’t wait for my permission, and G—D--- it, don’t they know that they need my permission? I got really mad at that.
Yesterday, I again went to Dunkin Donuts in the morning for coffee. There was a long line there, but that’s to be expected. When it was my turn to pull up to the intercom to order, the lady in front of me in line would not pull all the way forward. She was blocking the intercom even though she was done ordering, hence my order would be delayed. Nay, it’s not even that my order would be delayed, just my ability to order would be delayed. I’m sure it would take the exact same amount of time to actually get my coffee.
So I did the natural thing, I honked my horn at lady in front of me to pull up thinking she was just distracted. At first, I just tapped it. The lady ignored me. At the same time, the Dunkin Donuts lady-taking-orders-through-the-intercom-box was now asking for my order. The lady then says she can’t hear me because I am too far away. So this time I honked my horn again at car-lady, really laying on it and cursing. The Dunkin Donuts lady-in-the-box said, “There’s no need to be rude, just wait.” How embarrassing! And how could she say that when I was obviously right, and the other lady was obviously wrong?
Finally, after ordering, I pulled up to the window. Predictably, by then I was embarrassed, and I had to wear my shame-face when I got my coffee. Worse yet, the same girl works at that Dunkin Donuts window every single day, so now I have to wear my shame-face every day. The Dunkin Donuts lady used to be nice to me. Now I can tell, and I’m absolutely sure about this because I can read minds, she really doesn’t like me anymore. No more pleasantries for me!
Later on, looking back at this, I was able to understand the disconnect between the spirituality I was feeling, and the very-unspiritual way I was acting. I remembered things I’ve read over the years about spirituality, and I recognized that my experience was actually surprisingly completely normal.
The way some psychologists have put it is that we have three parts to our personality, the ego, the id, and the super-ego. The id represents our basic instinctual desires. The super-ego is our purest self, and the self closest to God. The ego navigates the outside world, balancing the pursuit of basic needs, the id, and our spiritual selves, the super-ego. The ego makes decisions how to act in the real world when it makes sense out of the balance between the id and the super-ego.
When I was writing the book, I was functioning in the world of the super-ego. The super-ego is too fragile to interact with the outside world easily. No wonder my sense of inner peace was so easily disturbed. Even everyday tasks become challenging when someone is in the super-ego state of mind.
I once read a book on this topic called, “A Path with Heart”. It’s a very good book, I highly recommend it. The book was written by an American who spent five years overseas as a monk in a Buddhist monastery. At some point, he decided to come home to America and share all the spiritual things he had learned there. The monk had the exact same experience as I did, the clash with the spiritual and the functions of daily life. Turns out it’s easier to be zen in a monastery where nothing is there to disturb you than it is to be when faced with the ups and downs of life in reality.
I don’t know if tomorrow I will get pissed off again at someone doing something I perceive as annoying. What I do know is that every single one of us has feet of clay. It’s still a spiritual journey.
コメント