Ten Thousand Idiots

Let's start with the poem of the same name, from the wonderfully irreverently reverent Persian poet Hafiz (also written as Hafez):

It is always a danger to aspirants on the path

when they begin to believe and act 

as if the ten thousand idiots who so long ruled and lived inside

have all packed their bags and skipped town.

 Or died.

We’ve all been there - thought we’d finally learned the lesson, thought we’d evolved, thought we wouldn’t have to go through that kind of *@#! ever again.  And then - boom! - we’re right back in it.  It sneaked up on us - in another context, in another disguise - and here goes the cycle again.

The tendency may be to collapse into self-judgment, self-recrimination. Or to get mad at fate, God, the lords of karma, or the stupidity of the world.

I find it most helpful to just forego the judgment and reactivity and get to work on whatever the lesson is…then I don’t have double the lessons to deal with - the lesson about judgment on top of the lesson the event itself brought forward. 

But alas, I’m still learning both of them. So here’s what I keep reminding myself, from Pema Chödrön:

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

Darn, she’s right!  That is just exactly the way life is set up, like it or not. So the opportunity is to accept that's how it works, and accept that I am still a student in the school of life, still an incomplete work in progress. Perhaps the even greater opportunity is not only to accept it, but to embrace it. Maybe not only to embrace it, but to embrace it with tenderness and gratitude. Maybe I need to put on a pot of tea for those ten thousand idiots who keep showing me what I need to learn.

Adyashanti brilliantly says it this way:

The more okay we are when we are not okay, the more okay we are.

Learning, it seems, is best served with a large helping of acceptance of the need to learn. It is only when I become okay with not being okay that I can gently and lovingly learn the lessons, course-correct my responses, and get on to the next lesson. As John-Roger wrote:

Be patient with yourself as you seek to improve your life.

Most important, be loving.

There is never a good enough reason to take away loving.

Not even from the ten thousand idiots inside.