Being less special

January 25, New York

Most of the imagination revolves around thinking somehow I am special. That I have special abilities or qualities, that the world somehow turns on aspects of who I am, and so on. Very little of my manifestation is turned directly towards just being ordinary. This can be scrutinized at intimate levels if I’m more present, more related, to my inner nature.

 The word ordinary turns into a disparaging term. When I’m in a “higher” state, ooh, it’s greater and more important, more special, than my ordinary state. And so on. I want everything to be extraordinary. So much so that the word gets flogged to death: we prattle on about extraordinary experiences, the  extraordinary qualities of inner work, how we love this extraordinary finer energy we experience, etc., etc. 

 Perhaps it’s worthwhile to just turn the attention — the physical, intellectual, and feeling attention— towards being ordinary. 

Towards just inhabiting what I am as a simple and uncomplicated fact. 

There is nothing special about me. 

In fact, I’m one of billions of tiny organisms at this level struggling to fulfill my inner and outer responsibilities. How special could I — could any of us — be?

 It reminds me of something that was once said by a minister at St. Bartholomew’s in Manhattan. This was back in the 1980s. At church that morning he said (to one of the wealthiest congregations in New York City) that although it would be a bitter pill for many there to swallow, the janitor in the building who cleaned out the toilets was equal in the eyes of God to everyone else.

 We’re all just janitors in this building. 

My inner work is meant to help me see this. There is no doubt that I ought — yes, I ought, it is my duty — to have the greatest gratitude for the least things. That I ought to give thanks to God for every single instant that I have even one single cell to sense; that I ought to give thanks to God for every single breath I take and every single color I see, for each berry I eat with my yogurt and honey. These are truly special things: and they have absolutely no contact with, make no impression on, all the imaginary things I dream up about how special I am.

 I suppose it’s natural that one develops a more acute sense of one’s inner vision and nature as one grows older. Yet nothing can prepare us for this idea of how thoroughly and ordinarily human we are; and how absolutely and irrevocably we ought to absorb this lesson within every cell in our being, into the marrow of our bones, in order to get an understanding of how we are ordinary.

 I can’t participate in the actions of humanity if I keep setting myself apart from it, as though there were something better about me than others. 

If I want to be more human, I need to be willing to be less special.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.