Love lets you be who you really are...but who am I, really? Posted by John on December 08, 1999 at 13:41:48:
In Reply to: Re: Love at first sight with the "male sexual psychopath" (MSP). posted by Sally on December 04, 1999 at 14:52:29:
Sally, I do feel loved. Thanks for sticking up for me! And yet . . .
Buber says: "love is caring enough to support the loved person in being
who they really are." Is beating up on old ladies, and scaring
beautiful widows out of their wits who I really am, old pal?
We know a little bit about the Lady in N.Y. — hello to you, if you are
listening here! And welcome! — and we know a little bit about the old
lady in the store. For one thing, we got feedback from both of them.
Heh-heh. In one case, we got words in our space, words with impact via
e-mail. In the other case, we got "a thing in our space" (that is,
actually, empty spaces where some of the missing groceries I'd paid for
were supposed to be). In both cases, these "things in my space" had
powerful impacts on me, that is, impacts on my physical body that have
caused me to have reactions (and on some of you, as well, perhaps, as
witnessing bystanders, in any ways you may have reacted to these things
in our space). (Those "reactions" are: emotional feelings, thinking,
ego desires, and personality behavior.)
One thing we can know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that *I*—right or
wrong—managed to rub these two people the wrong way. And they—right or
wrong—managed to put some impactful things into my space in return.
That's what really happened.
We could call these things in the space a couple of "stingers." Now,
this is very valuable to understand. Whenever you get a stinger from
anybody else, one of two things has happened. Either somebody else put
a stinger on them, and they are just passing it along *gratuitously* to
you . . . or else, they have received a stinger from *you*, and they are
reacting to that with the stinger that you get from them. That's life.
Right or wrong, that's the way it happens. And the question today is:
Can this back-and-forth stinging be stopped at some point along the way?
If so, it will take some knowledge, and some awareness.
Now it's obvious with the missing groceries, that the young woman who
apparently pulled off this daring aggressive act (a tall, dark-haired
young woman, wearing a baggy khaki jacket, I remember), had been stung
by me, and she was just stinging me back. That happens in life, all the
time. If you've never seen this before, it's just that you haven't been
noticing this going on in your lives. But it is visible if you wake up
and start seeing. It's going on among friends, relatives, working
associates, with strangers, too, everywhere you go!
Apropos our current subject, by the way, this was quite a psychopathic
act to pull off, right under my nose there at the end of the checkout
counter! It was a *crime*! Maybe she was an experienced shop-lifter
(which could be a psychopathic behavior pattern) to have the steely
nerves to do that right then and there that way! (Funny to realize
that I was lecturing almost pompously here in class about "how to
recognize a psychopath," and the Great Universe with its infinite sense
of humor seems to have seen fit to bring one into my own life right
then, just to fool me, the psychopath that *I* didn't recognize in time
. . . . to humble me a bit perhaps. Heh-heh. I think I get the point.
As a matter of fact, I remember that earlier in the line that day, I'd
seen another shopper "commiserating" with this same young woman who
apparently took my stuff. The other shopper was saying something like:
"Gee, it must be a burden to have to help a cranky old lady like that
(or words to that effect)." And the young woman was offended at that,
and turned her back on her abruptly. That made a strong impression on
me at the time. I wondered about the loyalty that she showed there.
Anyway, she went farther than turning her back on me in the midst of
whatever that whole situation meant to her, from her perspective, at
that time. She gave me a stinger! I was outraged at first, when I
found this out at home, and it took me a few minutes to calm down, and
then cry about it, because I *knew it was coming*. (Maybe I was crying
not just for me but for the whole human race, and the way we all blindly
keep on doing these stingers back and forth to each other without
knowing what we are doing, in sleep. So much unnecessary human
suffering is caused this way! Maybe I was crying for the human
condition.)
As for you, dear Lady in New York. I imagine (the best I can do is
project here, unless you will tell me) that when you posted your
innocent request to be relieved of your anxiety that the fellow you've
fallen for isn't a "psycho" or after your money, you had no expectation
of what you got from me. You got a lot more than you bargained for.
Comparisons with the President, and with a serial killer??? That could
be frightening.
I guess you really didn't need a whole detailed movie on the horrors of
psychopathy that might keep you up nights fretting over every little
thing your sweetie did that day—indeed, perhaps you might be more
anxious now than before you wrote to me. I'm sorry if I did that to
you. I know at least that I rubbed you the wrong way. I do go off on
subjects around here at great length. When I answer questions, I figure
it is for "serious learning," and I'm prone to teach everything that I
know (or don't know) about any subject that comes up, at the drop of a
hat. (I think you were trying to attenuate my tendancy to write such
long and rambling classes the other day, Doug. And I see that Perk is
on your side on that one, too. Heh-heh. I'll get back to you guys on
that—back, that is, to you "well-organized Player/Judges." That's
obviously my own weakest area on the wheel.)
Anyway, dear Lady in New York, your boyfriend is probably NOT a real
psychopath. The odds on that are very long. And if he's upset you
about being a little possessive, and jealous of your time, and of your
Mom, I can understand that, but that's probably natural and normal.
Most of us men are probably a little like that when we really, really
want to "get the girl." and "want to have her with us all the time."
And you sound, from your poised and intelligent expression, to be "quite
a catch." So he's probably just "crazy" about you, and not a "psycho"
after all.
That was *the short answer* I might have given you, were it not for my
own ego agenda at the time that I received your first e-mail. *
Apparently* I wanted to write about "male sexual psychopathy." Since
that's what I did, it's obvious and apparent. That long class turns out
to have been my agenda, and not your own. Aha! My teacher Mits used to
say "The environment is all accomodating to our neuroses." What he
meant by that was that at any given time, if we are in a neurotic state,
we will find something available in the environment to latch onto, in
order to act-out our neurosis. For instance, if a person is going
around being really uptight, something around them in the environment—
dust on the lampshade, the changing weather, the look on someone's face—
can be enough to "set them off" ranting and raving.
So your letter, as if by coincidence, came along from New York, and I
latched onto that, and went off on my long, long sexual psychopathy
dissertation. What d'ya suppose? The ol' coach was in the middle of a
period of some days when I'd been playing that role. Aha! I was being
lonely, rejected, and felt I wasn't being loved enough. I was being
"crazy for love" for awhile. That's what really explains why I wrote
that piece. It wasn't your letter from New York. It was *in me to get
out* at that time, so to speak. And that e-mail just happened along for
me to peg it on, and act-out on around it. And I was being asleep alot
during that time, of course, and indulging unconsciously in my ego and,
in this case, indulging in this famous and common human syndrome, "being
crazy for love" that had temporarily replaced the ordinary "more lack-
luster" primary types of my personality make-up for awhile.
I often get that way around the holidays. Christmas is my birthday.
The holiday season seems to have a lot of effect on a lot of people, and
it seems to have a lot of effect on me.
Well, I'm over it already. I'm feeling much better this week. You've
heard me say before that if you aren't being as mindful during the days
as you'd like to be, the thing to do is jump in and do some vigorous
intentional practicing. And that's what I did. I spent the weekend in
the country chanting an old Hawaiian chant every hour, called "E-ia
ala." And every time I'd wake up in between, I'd say "E-ia ala" ("I am
here now, awake on the path.") out-loud.
Saying it out loud that way kind of "knocks me in the head" lightly with
the vibration of speaking, and I *know* I am being here now, awake and
present. Saying it out loud acknowledges and highlights the phenomenon
of waking up out of sleep. You can try this out on your own, if you'd
like, using any phrase you choose. For instance, when you have been
trucking along in sleep, and you wake up in a given moment, from time to
time over the course of the day, you can say out loud: "Present," or "I
am here now," or "Thankya', Jesus!" or "Allah is great," or any phrase
you'd like to make up. Doing this "adds a little charge to your
collected mana."
If you'd like to sing that Hawaiian chant for the fun of it, and you
know the ukulele chords, it goes like this:
(C) E-ia — (I am here now,)
(G) ala — (awake on the path,)
(F) nana — (seeing)
(C) pono — ("righteously")
(C) E-ia
(G) ala
(F) nana he-
(C) wá — ("hewa" = "sinfully")
Continue in F as you sing "he-" and then strike it one hard C at the end
as you sing "-wá. And it ends, abruptly, there, with the rest of the
measure "loudly" silent.
W, by the way, is pronounced in Hawaiian like our V. That is, "hewa"
is prounced "he-vá."
It's a beautiful chord progression, that will give you all the "melody"
you need to sing it. That's not G7, by the way; it's G. Dig the
"brightness" of that G chord there! Ain't it purty?! Makes me wanna
cry. Aloha, Hawaii. Eia oukou Keoni.
The kahunas who taught this chant to me, many years ago, made plain that
it refers to seeing ourselves both "being awake," and "being asleep," as
we use those terms here in our class.
So . . . . . I seem to be over my sexual psychopathy for awhile. Heh-
heh. Sorry about all the ruckus. I have a definite sense that I am
starting a new life in the year 2000, a new adulthood, I hope. That is,
I hope that, at 65, it won't be what people call "a second childhood."
:-)
Sally, thank you for loving me and sticking up for me, and (heh-heh) I
think you've "missed it" with the old lady. If I had to sting her like
that (and don't think what I said wasn't a powerful stinger!), then *she
was in control of my life*, not me.
Don't you see? If I am guiding my own life, I am not just a knee-jerk
reaction to obnoxious people that I encounter along the way. I am awake
and playing the awareness game, which means that I can *master* the
situation without having to attack the other person. And it is a
practical strategy not to put stingers out in the world, anyway, because
when you do, you are gonna get stingers back again from the world. "As
you sew, so you shall reap," really is true!
Look at the clever stinger I gave the old lady. (I read her out the
whole story of her 80-year-old neurotic life in two sentences, and made
her look at it! Ouch!) Then look at the clever stinger the Lady in New
York gave me, not an hour later! Ouch! That's life the way a warrior
perceives life, moment by moment in the here and now, seeing what stands
out in high relief. Have you ever heard the phrase "instant karma?"
Well, that's what I was lookin' at that day, Kiddees. That's why I
"knew I had it coming." It wasn't about who was right and who was
wrong!!! It was about the way life *actually works*. The Universe
works in wondrous ways, and we can, with patience and sticking with it,
learn to see this with mindfulness and careful contemplation. But if we
make excuses for ourselves, based on "right and wrong" then we will
never get to see a thing.
The piece I did on male psychopathy could have been "the piece that
wounded everybody in some way." It might have been a stinger to people
who regard themselves as being happily in love although they don't have
any of the kinds of experiences I wrote about. Men reading that piece
might have been indignant that I pretended to be able to speak for "all
men." Their own experiences might have been quite different. Some
people might have felt stung and hurt by that piece because the "good
stuff" in it, the companionship, pillow-talk, and love-making that is
described is remote from their lives at this time—maybe, like I was
being for awhile, being lonely as the end of the year approaches.
There are a lot of ways that piece might have stung different people,
especially people who have not become toughened by the rough-and-tumble
frankness that often gets expressed in our classroom here, people who
are not "prepared" for such stark and candid shots of "the raw life of
homo sapiens" like this. No, I think an apology from me is deserved by
any of you who *might have been* wounded by this piece. Yet it is done
now. And it has certainly been a learning experience for all of us,
especially me! That piece could have stung many people, Kiddees, and
the point here is that I was unaware of that when I wrote it; I was
insensitive to other people, and caught up in the rush of my own ego
trip. That's not who I'd really like to be.
Anyway, I'm feeling relaxed about the whole subject now, and any more
comments and feedback that any of you have on this will be welcomed by
me. Especially you in New York, if you have read through this, would
you be willing to share with the rest of us what it was like for you, in
your experience, when you read that long posting in response to your
innocent question? (This is called "checking it out," a way to find out
what is really so, instead of whatever projections I may have.). I'd be
grateful to you, if you would.
And, NO, I'm not mad at you for that "stinger" you sent me. {wide
grin}. I *know* I had it coming, somehow, although I may not have
guessed exactly why. And I don't blame you. I forgive you, indeed.
And I'm more who I *really am* today, that is, more who I really like to
be! So I have no "stinger" to give you back, only wishes for the
happiness of you and your lucky beau. And I'm much happier this way, if
we can put an end to the "personality war" that I, alas . . . . .
started with you.
Love y'all,
Coach
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