I had a friend who was a spiritual warrior. I had a friend on the righteous path. I had a friend who was White and special to Indians. I had a friend who was chosen by aliens. I had a friend, just ask her about it, she’d tell you. She’d tell you if you didn’t ask.
One day this friend was confronted by a stark realization through a legit rockstar of the spirit scene. A hero to her, a man of great reverence. He didn’t know it before they spoke, but he found out soon after, that what he meant to her was only what she meant to herself. Oh, he found out right away.
What he said was in exact opposition to the utter importance of the memories she carried with her—her struggles and sorrows and power in the face of it all. Her memories as muse. Her memories as fetish. Her memories as identity and identity as aggrandizement. What he found out upon speaking was that if she were a house of cards, he had just yanked out the joker, which collapsed her.
Now, here we were. She, throwing a tantrum. Slamming objects. Balling her eyes out. Forcing her captive audience to look through her photo album of all her enlightened achievements. She was her spiritual resume, and if that was taken away, who was she?
He told her she didn’t need him to validate her. She couldn’t hear him. Didn’t want to hear him. He’d already said too much. What could have been a stark realization for her, the first moment of Truth she claimed to live in, turned into derangement. She never fully recovered.
She fully covered.
***
We’ve said that there is only one choiceless choice that matters in this world. It is nothing or all. We’ve also noted that since we live in a world based on the avoidance of this fact—on the avoidance of Love, really—it is better to set up codes of morality, ethics, and laws that guide us to be the best people we can be. But there is an interesting thing that happens to people who approach unapproachable Truth, choose the choiceless choice over social norms. Have you noticed that they tend to go a bit mad the more they identify with what they consider to be the vital greater good? And if the lie of their identity gets shattered, they tend to have a mental breakdown rather than letting Truth break them up.
Truth, the thing they say they walk with. Love, the thing they claim they are. Foreign notions, both.
What is the nature of this toxicity? It’s you, isn’t it? It’s you when you are the unmoved center. You may talk a good game about evolving and heart connection and oneness, but if that’s not who you are then there is friction between the fact of who you are and the fantasy that you’re a hero on a journey or Love incarnate. You may use the word “energy” in sentences with the frequency of a teenager saying, “like,” but the moment you stick your proverbial finger in the spiritual socket, you get zapped. The shock is a precious gift. It’s a moment to realize you are not self-identifying as that vital energy the way you assumed you were. Will you condemn the socket?
***
My friend said there are no judgments in life, but my friend already judged herself as unworthy, as less than, and sentenced herself to a life of running from herself. My friend judged everyone who didn’t speak her “spiritual” language to be just as petty and unconscious as the person she was running from. My friend came consciously clear with the long-buried fact that she was a lie, when conversation with one who walked her talk felt like confrontation.
She smothered Truth in her self once more.
***
My friend sounds all too familiar.
My friend is on repeat cycle in the human wash.
My friend is reading this right now.
My friend is seeing this in someone else.
My friend is unmoved and this is how she stays unmoved.
My friend lives in the stink of her answers, never in the question.
The scary question.
The only question that matters.