Frustrating and hurtful this nice man finds me, or, our interactions.
There are few people that are drawn to interacting with me and of that tiny population this man's hurt and frustration is pretty typical.
Some thoughts occur to me on this this morning that seemed worth capturing here. Some of it I've written before, but much of it is new Clarity and I'm grateful to this man for speaking clearly and honestly to me.
It is never my intention to hurt or frustrate, but rarely if ever is avoiding that my purpose either. Knowing the possibility if not likelihood, rarely if ever do I seek to draw people into engagement with me. Drawing people into engagement with me is left to creator, whatever creator is.
Notice. Anyone that reads this and considers the following seriously will know that they've done so because it will cross their mind that I am stark raving mad. It will at least cross their mind. Seriously.
In a way I suppose I'm called to be a tour guide, or, an Expedition leader. And a ragingly unsuccessful one at that. But in fiction so were characters like Yoda and obi-wan. And were Buddha, Confucius, Jesus alive today they would consider themselves the same, ragingly unsuccessful tour guides, Expedition leaders.
Oh, they have gigantic fan clubs, but virtually no followers, no joiners, no folk standing alongside them or even trying to go beyond. No one envies them which is all they would have wanted.
The shirt worn by me says, I serve alongside this outsider soul and it has a cross indicating that the soul is the person Jesus. Not long ago a person identified them self to me, very friendly, as a pastor, a Baptist pastor. I was reading your shirt, he said. I serve him too!.
But the shirt very definitely does not say anything about serving Jesus, but rather serving alongside, two profoundly different things. I didn't cite how Jesus told the so-called apostles that they had become friends, brothers, not servants.
Pathologically, we want to be fans, We want to be fans, we want to follow whatever that means, but we want not to stand alongside, let alone, go beyond, with all of our might!
Projection is one of the major mechanisms that we unconsciously use to protect ourselves from the frightening task of coming along side such people. We're terrified of the self measurement that that would bring on sadly never knowing that life and growth only would come about in that way.
This brilliant post came across my Facebook feed yesterday. The same idea regarding Buddha was in the very brief study I made of him several decades ago.
He was possessed by the same Madness, the same Insanity, LOL, that possessed Jesus, Confucius, and others of their ilk. And me. All experienced that they encountered what would save the world, but more importantly, what was Heaven itself on Earth. Optimal Human Experience. The most enviable way of being. The most gratifying way of being.
And no one can see it. We twist ourselves into knots using projection to convince ourselves that the immature selfishness that our culture invokes in us is what they tried to lead us to, or, that that immature selfishness and its associated pleasures is the best we can do until life after this one.
As the subject of fan clubs they have been wildly successful! As the tour guides, the expedition leaders, that they gave their lives to be, they have been total failures. Like me.
And as for me, Expect nothing other than this from me. Ask nothing other than this from me. As absurd as it must seem, I wrote yesterday of the depression I frequently feel, I experience my quality of life as more enviable than anything I see elsewhere on earth. My mission, my soul purpose, is to become a better and better tour guide exactly to that. And rarely, and less and less everyday, will I feed into the projection of others that I really think there are alternatives. I don't.
Ignore me. Detach from me. Disagree with me. But don't expect that I'm going to depart from my mission, and to, for whatever good reason, help people feel good about the alternative ways of being that they have selected. It's not going to happen. I'm not going to lie.