Nowadays we can get tracking information for our packages so we can monitor the progress of their transit. At first this seemed to be a gain.
But now I feel that I’m back at square one.
Jordan ordered coursebooks from his campus bookstore. He commutes and having them delivered here isn’t actually very expensive and in his case makes sense.
Some came. Some didn’t. But all were issued tracking labels. Some never progressed in the system beyond that. The bookstore says, “They must have fallen off the truck” (sic). Jordan took an hour yesterday to get replacement copies from the store, in person.
This morning I was checking the status of a different package, and again, we’ve got a shipping label acknowledgement by the carrier. I called the vendor, and they assured me this was normal, that the package was actually in transit with the carrier, and will indeed arrive next week. I asked them how they could be sure, and cited by way of example the recent experience of Jordan’s books. The customer service agent said that the lack of information that the package has made it into the carrier’s system is normal.
So tracking information has now become somewhat random. Maybe it gives one real information, maybe it is misleading. It is not dependable, does not give us a basis for a realistic expectation of whether the package will arrive. It does not seem to me that it leaves us better off than we were before we had access to it, at least when the tracking information gets stuck at this stage of “label created, not yet with carrier.”
But there’s always, for me, the possibility of an analogy. There’s always a lesson I can find in my circumstances. The situation is not a useless exercise in frustration or in unmet expectations from what technology purports to do (and maybe even did for a time).
Here it could be how psychism interferes with faith.
For example, there’s a spiritual story about a person who “tracks” other people with some sort of supernatural powers we might call psychic. They eavesdrop and insert messages on a frequency most people don’t notice because they don’t have enough awareness to pick out within their thoughts and emotions these intruded thoughts and emotions as not being their own.
During a subsequent incarnation, these psychic people have that same ability, but without the quality of discernment as to which individual they are communicating with.
They eventually figure this out and are quite indignant. They think they’ve got defective machinery.
But they don’t. They have machinery helpful for a different task and helpful for teaching them not to rely on psychism to navigate their lives. The “different task” is empathic healing, in which it is quite helpful not to know the identity of the person being healed. And not being able to triangulate and strategize about what move to make based on inside information forces the person back onto faith and reliance on internal guidance from their core. They can’t track the package, or even know it will get there, they can only do their part and then wait and see, until they receive feedback actually addressed to them; and in the meantime, they can (only) do what their guidance suggests.
But they cry out and complain and sit down and refuse to participate. Or they demand extra help to compensate for their inability to untangle the strands of what they hear and attribute them accurately to individuals. Because in addition to being able to undertake empathetic healing, the person in the story is also capable of being one of those “mixing bowls” (like Plato mentions somewhere), and can mix various strands of energy or information in a way that forms a new whole, but they don’t realize that’s what that talent is for, either — they see it, again, as a defective device for manipulating people. They don’t understand their function, probably because it isn’t part of the belief system of their culture.
Along comes the IT support, the spiritual geek squad, and they check out the equipment (by trying it out themselves). And they report that it works just fine, it’s just not meant for tracking other people or manipulating them or building social relationships, it’s meant for healing shattered souls, including by creating pieces that may be missing and lost.
I have no idea whether I will receive my package. I have no idea where it is. I can only wait. While I wait, I can stop scouring my external environment for clues and listen to what I hear within.
The package in question is a representation of Kwan Yin. She would not be who she is through means of trying manipulate on the basis of pieces of external information or trying to manipulate other people. She hears the cries of others as cries welling up within her, she navigates and heals by means of looking deep within herself and connecting with those forces.
Misunderstandings
April 28, 2014I was writing about the Anglo-American property law concept of adverse possession in a comment I wrote to Paul Krugman’s column on Cliven Bundy, because I wanted to focus on how people get emotionally invested in their initially mistaken notions of what is theirs.
People do that in all kinds of contexts, including spiritual ones, I think. In most social circles in our culture we don’t allow much discussion of trespasses against others that are not visible physical ones, but that doesn’t mean people don’t trespass against others in other ways. In fact, the fact that we can’t talk about it helps such trespassers continue the trespass: “What, are you crazy? I can’t be doing that, that possibility doesn’t exist!” And it doesn’t mean nobody talks about such trespasses, either — it is acceptable discourse in some circles.
I will focus on a context in which it is more generally acceptable to talk about the issue: the muse relationship.
Writers, artists, and musicians who focus on someone whom they think is a muse may actually just be focusing on some particular real life person living their life on this planet. Their focus may come across as a “wrong number” phone call to that person, and if the caller perseveres in the call, it may come across as a trespass; it may even damage the person. And like Bundy grazing his cattle for years without paying, the caller may get used to the idea of a free grazing right.
People who have a lot of spiritual development and are very open get plenty of people who want their emotional and spiritual support. Some of the people looking for the support try to establish muse relationships (some try other type relationships), and some of those relationships work, some of those relationships come across as trespassing or worse. It can feel to the “muse” as if they are getting an unsolicited cold call promising them a scam. They may follow up on the call to make sure it really is the scam it seems to be, and if it is, they may terminate the connection. But first they may give the caller an opportunity to recast the relationship into a viable form. If there is no willingness to negotiate in a reasonable way, then the connection will probably fray and fade.
Just calling the relationship a “muse” relationship doesn’t make it one. It may be experienced as something quite different on the receiving end — the “muse” may feel as if she has a Cliven Bundy grazing his cattle on her resources, claiming, in essence, adverse possession.
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