The Shadow of Predictability

As an adjunct to what I said earlier in “The Shadow of Consistency”, I will also speak to another shadow, that of predictability. I have found myself saying to some of my friends that “I love you because you are so predictable.” I used to think that I was complimenting them but that has recently shown up as completely the opposite for me and, in that new knowing,while my first thought was to say that it was not meant to be a compliment, if they had decided to take it as one, why should I take away from that complimentary remark by saying that it was not meant to be so. Can I do that and still remain authentic? I say Yes.

So now let me get back to the shadow of Predictability. If I say that one is predictable, what am I really saying? What I am saying is that a person is predictable if they are behaving for me the same way as they did yesterday and all of those times before.

And where does the showing up for me originate? Why with me, of course. In otherwords, people don’t show up for me the way they are, but by the way I see them. This is where my shadow lies, in the belief that people are a certain way, not because I see them that way, but because they ARE that way, or so I say. And since they tend to keep behaving that particular way that I said they did, then that simply reinforces the idea that they are predictable, and its their responsibility, not mine.

It is in my not taking responsibility for the way people behave around me that makes predictability, along with consistency, my shadow.

And having finally seen that, not too long ago, I have begun to allow people, or should I really say, now that I’m at it, that I have begun to create people being different and wonderfully unpredictable, and by doing that, the game of relationships has been reinvented for me.

The Shadow Behind Cultural Insensitivity

If someone had called me a racist five years ago or maybe even less, I would have been the first to deny it. Today I have chosen to stand for my racism or cultural insensitivity because I have those insensitive thoughts all the time, judging people for the lamest of reasons, from having dimples or a melodious regional accent or preferring coffee over tea to the less sublime reasons such as skin color, ethnic background, education, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation. At the same time, with people I know I hope I have been able to look past some of those differences to see them more as they are rather than what I project on them, such as my distrust, fear, and even hatred.

Seeing this shadow in me and taking ownership for it has done more for me to begin to question all of the more subtle aspects of this shadow than any class on multicultural awareness and sensitivity even though I still can see the value of teaching about those kinds of issues as a way to bring about a more compassionate society. In owning this shadow I must continually engage in the practice of seeing where I still have a charge around someone and pinpoint where, in the great diversity of human beings as we are on this planet, I have taken a difference between us, large or small, and hard-wired it to something to distrust, fear or worse yet, as something to simply ignore. While engaging my shadow I must be careful not to perpetrate one more projection, shame, which I have countless times projected on others as I have also done to myself whenever I have found myself caught up in the effects of this shadow of insensitivity, for as I continue to blame myself for my insensitivity, I will also continue to project it others. For me, the responsibility starts and stops right here, with me, and all I can continue to do for the rest of humanity is to remain true to myself and not perpetrate the taking away from the aliveness of others, in the process.  I must forgive myself and embrace my shadow so that I can dance with my shadow in the light, for I am all there is between my shadow and the light.

The Shadow in Not Telling the Truth

I have wondered what it was that made telling a lie to be regarded as tantamount to murder in some people’s lives. In my discovery of the power of standing for my shadows when they turn up in front of me in other people and things, I have come to realize that lying is tantamont to murder because it robs people of their aliveness. I believe that I have often justified a “white lie” because I believed that I was protecting that person from possible harm as long as that person would never discover the truth by other means. What I now believe I was doing instead was robbing them of the opportunity to experience “what's so”, and that “what's so” is the essential aspect of aliveness. That leads to only one conclusion, that lying to someone is, for all intents and purposes, robbing someone of their aliveness, their experience of being alive. Further I believe that there is nothing as indefensible as to achieve my desires at the cost of another person's aliveness.  That is, in the most simplest of terms, my purpose in being here and writing these posts.

In many ways, this discovery has become, for me, a form of liberation rather than more burden, for it has shifted the question of lying from a moral question to a question of workability, integrity and responsibility which are the fundamental qualities of wholeness and aliveness. I can still question the issue of lying as a moral question if I choose, and it will not alter the fact that lying takes away from me having to be responsible, and that as long as I am able to remember to step out of any judgment, feeling or shadow around not telling the truth, I can simply let myself see that lying does not contribute to creating a world of workability, integrity and responsibility, that it creates a world of unworkability and chaos.