I wonder how much of what I'm going through is real and how much is imagination, an attempt to create some sort of meaning or usefulness out of a hellish time in my living. But when I'm in that place that is neither hell nor heaven, when I'm just me sitting in my suburban apartment, I always think that way.
It seems impossible to look back to see how far I've come, and it's very difficult to feel the progress, but I know it's there, simply from the lack of hell that was once there.
Cubicleland is still incredibly unpleasant. It's such a savage place, peopled by savage beings, only savage because they don't know a better way, most likely because they've never known one. It brings out the savage in me, the savagery that still lingers inside of me, originally set into motion from the savagery of my childhood, my young adulthood, and of course all those many lives that have come before.
I could blame cubicleland, and the lack of evolved souls that populate it, for how savage I often feel. I could talk about the rage and ugliness, the men who wave their fists in my face, the women who spit bile and spleen. Or I could tell you about how the bosses set things up for chaos, who have so little interest or training in the way of organization management or group dynamics that they believe in browbeating and threats, cracking the whip more fiercely, and then come back with outrage and blame for the chaos that reigns supreme.
But what's really happening inside of me is that all of the savagery and chaos and ugliness that is still left inside of me, still needs to be burned off, is rising to the surface, so that I can see it, so that I can stop denying that it's not there, so that finally, finally, I can let it go, poof, and walk on to a place free of those ugly, aggressive, mean-spirited chains.
The amazing thing though is how I continue to not be able to do it. How difficult it is to let something go when it keeps rising up in my face, and the defenses inside rise to meet it. And how Life refuses, absolutely refuses, to give me even one small warm hole to hide in from it.
If I find a gentle flow of Yes at work, Life will change the rules so that the flow is disrupted: the bosses will say that we have to answer phones even if we have a client that we're sitting with, even though this ticks the person off that we're sitting with, and ticks off the person on the phone because we have to tell them that we'll call them back. So then, instead of having a pointed focused ten minutes where I can work on breathing and releasing, and therefor find the best, most clear way to genuinely be of assistance, even if the person in my cubicle is raging at their life situation by raging at me, there is now rage from the person in the cubicle, rage from the person on the phone, and neither one of them really gets what they need, which is for just a few minutes, someone to walk them through the thicket of bureaucracy while simultaneously not reacting to their self-pity and chronically impotent rage.
But time after time, I fail. Instead of staying grounded and clear, in the face of rage coming from all angles, I defend myself . . . with rage of my own. I do it in the form of arrogance, or quiet, steely power-tripping to try and gain control of the situation, or the worst of all, blankness, shut down, impenetrable, closed-heartedness.
I'd say it was all impossible, that I was doomed to fail, if I hadn't had a dozen or so moments in the past six months where it all came together and I got, really got, where I'm heading to with all of this.
In these moments, it always goes the same way: a client or a coworker or a boss is standing in front of me, behaving very, very badly, speaking and acting from some reptilian place deep within their brain stem, the place that says kill or be killed, the energy radiating out from them that says it's either you or me and it ain't gonna be me, you f*cker.
And in the face of all of that rage, that pointed aggression, I feel . . . nothing. Without effort, without trying, without thinking, there is simply . . . no reaction.
I keep speaking normally, neither excited nor upset, answering their questions, even if it means telling them no when what they really, really want is to hear yes.
And in the face of my own lack of movement, they simply . . . relax. The tension in their bodies, their face, their voice, releases, and a sort of astonishment takes over, like a sweet little bomb of Yes, of light, went off in their brains, rained down into their heart, and all of the poison they'd been feeling just a second ago was now just . . . gone.
So maybe it is imagination, maybe I am just trying to make up meaningful stories so that I can make it through the hell that is rising in my living. But those moments of Yes, they can't be denied. Those moments of sweetness, even in the full on burn of hell, are just so dang sweet. And I get that I will spend the rest of my life letting go into that, working and working and working so that particular flavor of surrender becomes the default, and I can walk thru hell without so much as a tailfeather getting singed, because in the absence of anything to burn, there is no fire.
So thank you Life . . . thank you for such an excellent lesson in the nature of hell . . . thank you for such an intense crash course . . . because among so many other things, it is making me truly turn my face to the light, not the one outside of me, but the one inside of me, the one that is quiet and without movement and wants nothing.
Cubicleland is my boot camp for the next war on my agenda, the one where I finally, finally turn and fight the war that needs to be fought . . . the one against the only true enemy there is . . . the one against myself . . .