Blog o’ Gnosis

I spent last evening with magazine pictures spread all over my dining room table, sifting through them, cutting and rearranging my favorites on a big piece of black paper. Also at hand were scissors, glue stick, clear contact paper, and a brand new spiral-bound journal. I was assembling a collage to cover my new journal, an act I perform every few months as the old one fills up.

It is a practice I adopted from Jeremy Taylor, whose journal covers are quite awe-inspiring. I am skilled at plenty of things, and visual art has never been one of them. For this reason alone, I torment myself by toiling over pictures and placement, letting the part of my brain that is unused to coming out to play take over and call the shots for a change. Sometimes the collage comes out really nice, sometimes I am completely frustrated from beginning to end. Either way, I live with the finished product for the life of that particular journal, and try again the next time.

All this is part of my effort to practice what I preach, namely that those of us who make our living teaching need to remember how to be students, too. Mastery in one area doesn’t mean we get to stop being beginners. On the contrary, particularly for people who profess to have some spiritual wisdom, it is essential that we regularly practice something that we’re not good at. Without the reminder that we’re just bumbling humans like everyone else, it is so easy to fall into the lap of hubris, and from that position begins our downfall into the hell realms, as the Buddhists would say. If it were just ourselves who suffered the ill-effects of our inflated self-importance it would scarcely be worth mentioning, but the sad fact is that the more influential or charismatic we are, the more people will be hurt as our downfall proceeds.

If you have been paying attention to political commentators lately you will hear lots of them saying that a giant collective bubble of self-delusion is in the process of popping in this country. They speak happily of a return to reality-based decision-making in government. And they worry about how many thousands or even millions will be hurt by a president who surrounds himself with a (shrinking) circle of supporters who help to keep him from facing the things he is no good at.

It is easy to see this drama being played out on the national stage. Harder to spot are the ways we keep ourselves from stepping out of our own bubbles of self-delusion. Here’s a quick tip on entering a reality-based lifestyle that we can all attend to in the new year: cultivate old friends. If you have some, get back in touch and stay in touch. If you don’t have any, make some new friends and do what you must to keep them for a long time. They are your best insurance against leaving reality behind.

Only someone who has known you for a long time will be able to spot the ways you’re repeating old patterns when you think you’re doing something new. An old friend is someone who has earned your trust and respect, someone you will listen to if they say you are deluding yourself. If you think you have found The Answer, you would be well-advised to consult with at least three people you trust and respect, and listen to what they tell you. Then notice: are these people I have met recently, who might be as starry-eyed about The Answer as I am? Or have these people known me for a longer time, and can offer a more objective perspective on my current pursuit?

This has been a hard year for almost everyone I know. Difficult times make us turn to our comfort zones and just try to endure. There’s nothing wrong with that; everyone needs a little respite. But they only help us if we can also stretch ourselves to meet the challenges life presents us, painful as they may be. I can guarantee that we’re not going to like all the things we have to do this next year, either. But if we’re lucky, some nights our biggest challenge will be to sit at a table and struggle to bring disparate bits of color and image together, into something that might even pass for beauty.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 12:02 am and is filed under Society, Spirit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.