I had heard of Quaker meetings before; I’d been in meetings modeled after their design. But I decided it was high time I experienced the real thing. Quaker meetings are held in silence, only broken occasionally when someone feels led to share.
I stepped into the meeting room to see a small group of about a dozen people seated in a circle. As I was a couple of minutes early for the service, and had heard voices as I approached the door, I warmly greeted a couple of people as I sat down. Then I noticed an odd guy seated in the corner, staring me down. Uneasy, I watched him gaze at me for a few moments. It took nearly ten minutes of internal silent confusion to interpret his gaze as a silent rebuke into silence – as if they had already begun the service when I had entered.
Quaker meetings are normally pretty subdued, but this meeting was absolutely stone silent from beginning to end. We sat in that circle, unspeaking, mostly unmoving – even clearing one’s throat or adjusting one’s seating in the uncomfortable folding chairs seemed tacitly wrong.
Let me tell you, it is amazing what one can learn about the operation of one’s brain during such an extended period of silence in the presence of others. Specifically, I learned how hard my brain fights being put in such a position. It was hilarious. Allow me to elaborate:
From the moment I decided to interpret the stare of the odd man in the corner as a rebuke, I felt my hackles rise. How dare he treat me so disrespectfully? Couldn’t he tell I was a newcomer to their small group? Couldn’t he give me a break for saying a simple “Good morning”? What was his problem, anyway? Who does he think he is? I couldn’t help but reflect that this odd man looked a little like my cat’s comb after I use it on her: Long and thin, with a big, fluffy tuft of hair at the top. This description of him, and my righteous indignation over his silent affront, obsessed me.
After a few silent, ramped-up minutes, I recognized the well-studied activity of my Ego – always ready to rise up in righteous anger at perceived insults. After a few moments of noticing the activity of my Ego, I smiled internally and began to let it go. A few moments of relative calm passed, and then it began again, a little churn in the back of my head and a repeat of the ramping up of righteous indignation. Laughing silently at myself again, I attempted to let go one more time. It worked for a few moments, and then started up again.
For the first half hour of the silent worship, I persisted in this stew of self-righteous indignation and resentment, internal laughter, and momentary calm, followed by another wave of self-righteous indignation.
Finally, after half an hour of this internal squabble, I began to relax into the situation. I began rehearsing my prayers of Surrender, and allowing the healing Humility I am so swift to “preach” about to have its way with me. Then, a few minutes later, up would come the indignation, and I’d be back in that stew.
I “enjoyed” an entire hour of this captivating internal dialog, while I looked around and observed that no one else (from what I could tell) was doing anything but simply and effectively worshiping in silence. So I also succeeded in adding a tasty dash of Shame to the stew.
One cannot sit consciously like this for an hour without being significantly affected. And I was very much affected. But the result surprised me: When the “co-clerk” ended the silence by reading announcements, and concluded the service, I found myself refreshed and released in a profound way. I chatted with the co-clerk after the meeting (he mentioned that this meeting was almost always perfectly silent), bid my farewells, and left.
The result persisted for hours: peaceful, calm, positive, refreshed, possessed by an easy Joy, I went into the rest of my day differently. I will likely return for this fascinating experience, although I may never again experience it the way I did this first time, as a “virgin.”
Several years ago, I took an extended look at the role of Pride and Ego in my life. After a year of observing and recording the observations, I came to some profound conclusions, at least for me:
1. Left to their own devices, Pride and Ego are killers.2. With practice, Pride and Ego can be released by choice along with their murderous grip on my heart and mind.
I even came up with a little slogan to help me along those lines: “Leggo my Ego” (think frozen waffles). It almost never fails to help me laugh at the actions of these serenity-killers, and bring myself back to a place of humble Acceptance.
There is almost nothing in my life as destructive as self-righteous anger. It may be a luxury that others more equipped to handle it may engage in freely – God bless ‘em – but it is not suited to my well-being. The sooner I let go of my need to be “right,” the sooner I find myself back at my spiritual “center.” As my spiritual guide so often chants at me when I whine, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”
3 comments:
Good post, and I agree with your conclusions about pride and ego. There is always a little kid inside of us, screaming "Me, me, me!" And too often, that little kid succeeds at enslaving us.
I like the "leggo my ego" phrase. I also recognized your last line, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” from a group marriage counseling class. The teacher posed it this way, "What would be better, to be right or to be happy?" It was an excellent call to stop the bickering!
Thanks, all, for your comments!
I have posed that question "Do you want to be right, or happy" to many people since my spiritual adviser first posed it to me. It almost always results in an initial reaction of anger, followed by a calmer "I guess you're right." None of us likes like having our Ego confronted like this, but it is just this kind of "shaking up" that often leads to the most powerful healing.
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