Personal Power e-zine, May 21, 2008

Real Gurus Don't Eat Meat

I was in a popular Asian restaurant the other night. It serves excellent food and the (female) proprietor’s beautiful young face appears on every menu.

As I was heading to the restroom, I happened to notice someone cleaning dirty dishes from a table. It was the proprietor…or was it? This woman looked older and tired, not at all like the youthful, glamorous pictures. I caught myself thinking, “That’s not right. She shouldn’t look like that and she shouldn’t be bussing tables.” Seeing her that way completely destroyed my fantasy of her!

Just for a moment I was ready to utterly discount this perfectly lovely, hard-working woman. Why? Because she didn’t match the picture I had in my head!

If I had seen the proprietor in person first, I would have accepted her, no problem. But because I had a pre-set image of how she should look and act, my mind was ready to reject her.

I caught what my mind was doing and had a good laugh at myself. But, my experience made me think about how often we all do this sort of thing. We’re so invested in our illusions that we can’t see the reality that shows up right in front of our faces.

Real (fill in the blank)s don’t (fill in the blank)

Back in the 1980s there was a popular humor book entitled, Real Mean Don’t Eat Quiche. It was quickly followed by others such as Real Women Don’t Pump Gas and Real Kids Don’t Say Please. These books had fun with our tendency to invent mental categories about one another.

The trouble comes when we try to shoehorn real people into the categories we’ve invented. We do this sort of thing all of the time. Here are just a few examples:

She’s a woman – why does she want to be a firefighter?
He’s a Democrat – he can’t have that opinion.
She’s too old to wear her hair that way.
Sweet little grandmothers don’t swear!
He can’t be that successful – look at the car he drives.
How can a priest read People magazine?
He’s surprisingly honest for a lawyer.
She’s too good-looking to be a writer.

Hey, you’re not spiritual!

It’s bad enough when we do this in relatively “harmless” everyday situations, but it seems especially insane when we do it in matters of importance.

I am struck by how often this kind of mental door-slamming occurs in spiritual and self-development circles (where you might like to hope we’d know a little better). We reject whole classes of people whose wisdom and guidance might be exactly what we need, simply because they don’t match some picture in our heads.

This was brought home to me recently during an interaction with a potential client. The first time we met she was “totally committed” to working with me. But, within a few days she sent me an email complaining about my pricing, the four-month commitment required by my training agreement, and the amount of reading I’d asked her to complete to prepare for our first call.

I replied to her with a very straightforward, unemotional email that said it was my policy to not work with people who were not ready to get on board 100% in every way. (Been there…done that…none of those clients ever made much progress.) The potential client quit on the spot and sent me a long letter in which she told me how the other mentors she knew were WAY past the ego needs I displayed and how I still had so much to learn.

Anyone who knows me well would tell you I’m VERY open to feedback. But, what was clearly happening here was this potential client had an expectation of how I SHOULD have replied if I was a “real” master. I did not fit her expectations (fantasies).

Just think about all the fantasies we invent about spiritual teachers

REAL (Spiritual Teachers, Mentors, Masters, Gurus, Life Guides, etc.) don’t:

Eat meat
Drive nice cars
Charge money for their services
Appear on talk shows
Wear attractive clothes
Swear
Have sex lives
Sell books
Drink wine
Have kids
Speak harshly
Go on diets
Live in nice houses
Get angry
Have a sense of humor
Behave irreverently
Vote Republican
Vote Democrat
Vote
Enjoy material things
Bowl, golf, gamble...

And on and on. It’s a wonder anyone ever meets our (fantasy) requirements!

When you think about it, it’s only a short leap from this kind of spiritual “bigotry” to the kind of thinking that says “anyone who is not a Christian is damned for eternity” or “anyone who dances is an Infidel who deserves to have an airplane flown into their building.”

When we label others, we negate them

Anytime we label someone, we negate and/or miss their true essence. In effect we say, “my idea about who you is more important than who you really are.” Whenever we think, “this person is a teacher, workman, Christian, Irishman, soldier, nun, prostitute, successful person,” and expect that person to somehow look and act according to our mental image, we are practicing the art of non-acceptance.

Non-acceptance is insanity. Pure and simple. It’s the great human screw-up!

The most important step you can take in your spiritual, emotional, physical and mental development is to simply accept what IS. All of the greatest spiritual masters the world has ever known have tried to give us this simple message in one way or another. Accept what IS. Don’t deny, distort, destroy, distill or disdain. What IS, is.

Sure, work to affect change, but first wholly accept what IS. This means stop wishing, hoping and dreaming that what IS is something other than what it is. Nothing could be simpler.

Yet, nothing is harder for us humans to "get" and apply in our daily living

The funny thing is, what really IS is always richer than our fantasies and labels! The person standing in front of you is much more beautiful and complex than any of your ideas about him or her. Why have you reduced him or her to a label or category?

The place or situation you’re in right now is so much more alive with possibility than the way you thought it would be. The truth is (now brace yourself, because this may come as a shock) our human minds are limited and at times quite blind. The Great Big Fat Huge Universal Mind is Infinite and Unlimited. It has endless delights up its sleeve. We just need to open our eyes to see it.

Why make the Big a slave to the Small?

That’s what we do whenever we stop seeing what’s real and insist on honoring our mental fantasies instead.

Be wise to outward mental imagery that can easily fool your mind. Many times life presents the “real deal” in a package you are not looking for just to test how awake you are. Suspend judgment and fantasy and make an effort to look below the surface (and within yourself). You are likely be surprised by what you find!

About the Author

Personal power expert Michelle Rigg is the author of You Must Be OUT of YOUR MIND: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating More Power In Your Life. Her clients usually see remarkable improvements in income, relationships, communication, focus, and clarity after completing just one workshop or telephone laser session. For a FREE 5-step course that will supercharge your personal power, visit http://www.createpersonalpower.com.

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