"I understood with unequalled clarity what he was
explaining. I didn't have to ask him for clarifications. My keenness of
thought should have surprised me, but it didn't at all. I knew at that
moment that I had always been crystal clear, merely playing dumb for
someone else's benefit." DON JUAN MATUS.
PLAYING DUMB.
[First published in The Quarterly]
Sometimes when someone speaks, though it doesn't always have to
be a powerful speaker, a speaker of substance, but a whispered truth,
an unconscious truth uttered in the heat of the moment, even the
speaker does not always know that he speaks a truism. Yet it explodes
upon the mind and spirit and thunders its way to the core of your being
as if you have always known this Truth, always known what it was and
is. Something opens in you and you are at once set free. And then
gradually you forget again. The shutters go up, the fetters, once
again, are in place.
It can be a piece of music, a poem, a love-song, or a bird
singing whose beauty brings you within striking distance again, even
the sound of an axe chopping wood, the touch of a lover. And then you
forget, always this forgetting and remembering and forgetting again.
Why is it that we forget so easily? In the words of one Max
Bygraves, 'let me tell you a story': "There was once a man with a wife
and family. He, like his father before him, and HIS father before that,
led a seemingly blameless life. He was a churchgoer and everything
revolved around the church. He beat his children if they stepped out of
line and beat his wife if, she too, stepped out of line, and could see
nothing wrong in that. He was a strict father and husband. When he
wanted sex he took it, whether his wife wanted it or not, that was his
right. When he wanted a drink down the pub and came home drunk and beat
the wife and kids, that was his right also. And when he thought that
he had gone too far he would go to confession, just like his father
before him, and be absolved of his sins...until the next time. He
worked hard, very hard, and brought his son up to follow in his
footsteps and the daughter to follow in his wife's footsteps." And so
the pattern developed life after life. The scenery would change the
backdrop would change, but not the substance of his life. The woman,
too, remained subservient in her attitude. That also went on life after
life.
When you are born you don't bring with you a personal spiritual
shopping list! You don't bring with you a questionnaire with all the
answers about what you should do and how to behave, do you? You leave
that up to your peers and religion. And rightly so! For are not your
peers the one's to go to for advice, is not the church a teacher of
moral code? But that depends on who your peers are, that depends on how
your particular religion interprets their particular teachings!
But then something happens that you know is outside of what your
peers are telling you! Outside of what your religion is teaching you.
You just KNOW that it isn't true. Something bursts within you and you
become an outsider, questioning all the time about chapter and verse.
You question whether the God of your religion is a gentle and loving
God, or a warmonger, whether your God is a moral God or an immoral God
and whether your God is in everything or not? After all, God is
supposed to have made everything, created everything. It's not that you
doubt the existence of God. No, it's not that. But is the creator
without or within, or both?! Is your God a loving God or a vengeful one?
Or do you, personally, have to find out?
A person could have spent his whole life in a little village far
from anywhere of importance, he does not go to church, does not follow
any particular philosophy and yet has more wisdom in his little finger
then you could gain in a lifetime, no THREE lifetimes! And his secret?
It's no secret. He is KIND and LOVING, as was his father before him
and his father before that. They brought their children up on LOVE AND
KINDNESS. Wisdom grew in them without effort. That's not to say that
sometimes one would go astray, a runt in the litter. But on the whole
they would survive. They would automatically appreciate all that nature
would provide and in their loving and kindness would grow wisdom.
Again, the crops may fail and they would have a bad harvest. But they
would shrug their shoulders and say: that's the way of things.
But that's not the way of it, is it? Those people are hard to
find. Or are they? Listen to the wind sometimes, or just listen to your
heart, they will resonate all that I have said and more. When in the
quiet of your room and the quiet of your heart, listen. And if you are
lucky Love will come roaring over the plain like a wind, or sing to you
amidst the presence of your heart, and your heart will swell with
compassion for all things and leave you with a peace that is beyond
reason.
So next time your next door neighbor, or whoever, says
something that breaks you open with truth and joy, that hits you like a
hammer...tell them, for God's sake, TELL THEM, don't 'play dumb'. And
when a song or poem, or the sound of a bird echoes amidst the peace of
the forest and brings you to overflowing and tears course down your
cheeks...shout for joy and LIVE in that moment. But above all,
REMEMBER.
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