So...this morning I arrived back at school to find my inbox filled with 21 messages from students who neglected to turn their papers into our school's electronic essay receiver on time. The excuses vary wildly, almost all of them implausible. It took me an hour and a half to tranfer all their documents from my inbox to our receiver.
Then I sat down to daven Shacharit. I thought a lot about oneness. And about ratzo v'shov. I started using the contemplative meditation, "This too, is a flavor of God." My anger, miraculously, started to fizzle. I felt open and clear. I said the Shema with true belief.
But then I was confused...isn't it "provisionally" or subjectively mindedly "true" to be angry? And isn't this "anger" also part of God? Aren't I creating dichotomies with this ratzo v'shov idea?
Then again, I thought, why anger? Anger is, again, a form of idolatry to the subjective...so why not just reprimand the students without anger...just tell them how to better plan their time, penalize their essays for lateness so that there's a consequence, but eliminate the need for anger, because is this equation, it is actually doing nothing except making it difficult for me to expand my consciousness and be the One.
Then I sat down to daven Shacharit. I thought a lot about oneness. And about ratzo v'shov. I started using the contemplative meditation, "This too, is a flavor of God." My anger, miraculously, started to fizzle. I felt open and clear. I said the Shema with true belief.
But then I was confused...isn't it "provisionally" or subjectively mindedly "true" to be angry? And isn't this "anger" also part of God? Aren't I creating dichotomies with this ratzo v'shov idea?
Then again, I thought, why anger? Anger is, again, a form of idolatry to the subjective...so why not just reprimand the students without anger...just tell them how to better plan their time, penalize their essays for lateness so that there's a consequence, but eliminate the need for anger, because is this equation, it is actually doing nothing except making it difficult for me to expand my consciousness and be the One.
My friend Haroot explained it this way: the emotions that you feel in the subjective (constricted mind) can be used as a way to access the expanded mind. For example, my anger led to prayer, which lead to the realization that the anger was unnecessary, though the consequences were (the late grades). In fact, I probably would have no reached the same level of openness had I not been so wedded to the constricted mind at first! This is a good lesson about the Oneness. There is no hierarchy, it's just that one can be used to realize the other. When one mind-set becomes TOO dominant, THAT is the place for practice. Thus, practice becomes the melding of the two mindsets in perfect harmony--sort of like a yin-yang symbol's twoness=oneness. When one part becomes most extreme, it manifests a kernal of the other; that kernal should serve as a reminder of balance and ratzo v'shov.
No comments:
Post a Comment