Show Me How

Show Me How

Work on your self can have marvelous results – if you remember you are in life in the Work and not in life without anything between you and it. ─ Maurice Nicoll

For anyone entering the Work, there is a lot of baggage and programming to uncover, neutralize, and transform. Becoming aware of and relinquishing the unnecessary parts of our personalities that serve no esoteric purpose is a prerogative and release valve to our higher parts. It is slow and challenging because we cling to the familiar and resist change.

Why does it really matter? Lots of learned behaviors in life are civilizing and natural for maintaining social norms. In that light, the programming we receive on what is right and wrong, cultural decorum, etc., is perfectly harmless and typically beneficial for families, religions, and civil society. These behaviors, however, operate often without attention and thus, for our purposes, tend to be sleep-inducing practices and attitudes.

I try to question everything, well, not everything. Only the mechanical manifestations need intensive scrutiny to liberate myself from automatic behaviors. It is fine to open the door for someone else or to listen to my mother and father’s advice, but I want to do so with divided attention and intentionality. I want to be present to everything I do.

The following Aesopic fable, called “Show Me How,” helps to make feminine dominance clearer through its ironic telling:

“Don’t walk sideways!” said a mother crab to her young one. “Don’t drag yourself sideways over the wet rocks.” The young crab replied, “Dear mother and teacher, first walk straight yourself, then I’ll do so by watching you.”

The next time you open the door for someone else, let your Higher Self go first by bringing your attention to the moment. Resist the “inner” push-button door opener and choose your Higher Self.

The lower self is the door to nowhere land and presence is the door to now-here land. ─ The Teacher

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Herakles and Iolaos slaying the Hydra with crab, Caeretan Hydria (detail) 520–510 B.C. Getty Museum