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Talking Down
tom walsh

The Wisdom of Incomprehension
Ashok Gollerkeri

How Do We Deal with Setbacks? (excerpt)
Gary Egeberg

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Talking Down

There's one thing in life that I don't let people get away with, and that's talking down about themselves.  No, I don't punish them or chastise them, but I always correct them--I won't let a self-deprecating comment go by without countering it with some sort of positive reinforcement.  This annoys my step-children to no end--they always say "But I was just joking," or "I didn't really mean it."  And that's probably true--they didn't really mean it.  But I don't let the comment slide for several reasons.

First of all, I know the power of negative self-talk.  Saying bad things about ourselves can lead us to believe them, even if we start out "just joking."  What happens if we make a negative comment about ourselves and no one disagrees?  There's a part of our minds that will tell us "Hey--no one's arguing!  Maybe they agree with the comment!"  This seems to be the case especially with young people who are in their "developmental years" (though aren't we all always in those years?).  Especially in our culture, though, we're taught to learn things through indirect methods ("Ask Rob if he likes Sally"), and we come to expect to learn things about ourselves more through what other people say--or don't say--than through other more direct means.

Secondly, I see such comments as an opportunity for encouragement.  As an adult, I am a role model.  Period.  I can choose to accept that role, or I can choose to reject it.  As a role model, it's important to me to provide young people in my life with a healthy, encouraging, helpful way of being, and most of what people learn from me or of me has to do with what I say and what I do.  But there's also the more subtle side:  what do I let slide?  What do I let go by without comment or action?  Even among people my own age (wouldn't you lie to know?), I know that it's important to encourage whenever I can, and not to let an opportunity to encourage go by.  I don't know if that particular person needs encouragement at the moment--yes, they may be fishing for a compliment, but they also may be in a very needy time of their lives.  I'm not concerned with judging why a person is needy, but I do want to recognize it when a person is needy.

(By the way, this can only go so far--after the third or fourth repetition of the same negative comment, I'm much more likely to tell a person to knock it off than to encourage.  There's a certain point when the concept of hard love kicks in.)

Third, I want anyone else who might have heard the comment to know that at least one person finds such comments to be completely inappropriate.  I don't want to let someone talk themselves down and have someone else think that it's normal or acceptable to do so.  Someone has to say something, and this is another role that I'm willing to assume.  If our 13-year-old hears her 15-year-old sister make a comment insulting her own physique, for example, and no one says anything about it, she just may find the same or similar flaws in herself and start to worry about them.  If she hears someone tell her sister that she shouldn't make the comment because she's fine just the way she is, she still may find the same "flaws," but she also may be much more accepting of them just the way she is.

Life is about other people--loving and helping and encouraging them.  Doing that will give us meaning and fulfillment in life, and neglecting it will harm us.  We have to be aware, though, that the only people who can counter another's self-sabotage through deprecating self-talk are those who hear the talk.  We have to counter it--I know that I would have been spared years of negative self-image if anyone had bothered to counter my negative ideas about myself when I was younger.  Now that I'm old enough to do so for others, I counter it every chance I get.

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Can we be uncomprehending, looking at the world like a young child, curious, with a freshness, free of accumulated notions? Can we look at everything anew every moment, free from conditioning by notions, by received instruction and the past? Can we allow the impressions in our mind to evaporate so that we see every situation and person afresh, without the barrier of the past? Can we be completely free of the screen of conditioning? Can we be childlike again? Can we be enriched by the wisdom of incomprehension?

Actually, we know too much. What we know are our own accumulated notions, memories, fears and experiences. This makes us unable to see reality, as it is, from moment to moment: an ever-changing, dynamic flux, creation forever in the making. We have labels of good and bad, we have labels of right and wrong, we have labels of great and small. We have labels for everything. We see through the lens of our own experience, of our own likes and dislikes, our pride and prejudice, our egoism and vanity, our fears and hopes. Through this distorting medium, we see and observe. This distortion is called our world and ourselves.. It is fragmented, polarized and in conflict. Is the conflict in the world merely an unfortunate state of affairs or is it directly the reflection of the conflict within ourselves, within our own minds?

To me, it seems that the fear, the conflict, the hatred, the violence and the misery in the world is a direct reflection of that within our own minds, in our own consciousness. Our experience of life is one of separateness, alienation, loneliness and despair because it is based on fragmentation and fear. This in turn is a vision of ourselves and the world as seen through the distorting lens of our own past, our memories and notions, our ideas and ideologies, our faiths and dogmas. Seen through this lens, the world represents mind boggling multiplicity that is a potent cause for fear.

Obviously then, we will live unburdened and free only if we can see directly both ourselves and the society we live in, free from the burden of our own knowledge. We need, in these times, more than ever, the wisdom of incomprehension. We need now, more than ever, a return to a childlike simplicity and joy.

Can we remain uncomprehending of notions of rich and poor, of high and low, of beautiful and ugly, of great and small, of intelligent and unintelligent? Can we remain free of separative notions that divide man against man? Can we be free from ideas and knowledge that create division and conflict? Can we be free from the entire structure of thought based on dichotomy, teacher and taught, leader and follower, idea and reality? Can we see beyond the divisions and differences between human and human? Can we embrace the whole of humanity as one? Can we embrace our oneness with nature? Can we see with the simplicity and insight of unitive understanding?

An awareness of our uniqueness is different from a divisive and separative outlook. In the latter, there is judgment, there is superior and inferior, there is looking up and looking down. Superficially, we are different. Some of us are thin, some fat, some black, some white, some rich, some poor, some famous, some infamous--whatever be our particular circumstances, our image, our appearance, whatever be the name and form of our bodies, whatever be the quality and content of our minds and intellects, we are all, simply human. We are human beings who walk on this planet for a brief while and then die. In this brief journey, what is of the ultimate significance, for each of us, is to recognize our own essential oneness, our oneness with each other and with mother earth and nature.

Our bodies one day will become fertilizer for plants and maybe food for animals. Every one of us, the greatest and the smallest will face the inevitable fact of death. Should we not, then, celebrate our oneness? Should we not rejoice at the essential oneness of creation? Should we not celebrate the glory and grandeur, the wonder, the majesty and splendour of creation? Should we not marvel and acknowledge the vast forces that act on this planet, keeping us all alive? Should we not attempt to discover the infinite intelligence that animates the whole of creation?

To wonder at all these, to rediscover our imprisoned splendour as that infinite intelligence and unbounded awareness animating the whole creation, we will have to unlearn our mountain of misconceptions, our accumulated notions, our labels and tags, our categories of low and high, great and small, rich and poor. In discovering our own hidden potential, in reaching the wisdom of comprehension, we shall become childlike again, living in simplicity, spontaneity, joy, contentment, unconditional love and an infinite oneness with the whole of creation.

© Ashok Gollerkeri.   Hi, I'm Ashok Gollerkeri.  As I see it, every human being on this planet is a wave in a vast ocean of humanity, creatures and creation.  I write to celebrate our essential oneness and share my joy.

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The process of resolving an inner or interpersonal conflict or handling an emotion that we have struggled with for many years or decades, such as anger or fear, in a healthy manner is one that frequently entails making progress and suffering setbacks.  We usually feel excited and pleased with ourselves when we make some surprising progress and discouraged and disappointed when we regress or backslide.

When we do suffer a discouraging setback, it tends to feel like we are back at square one, but that is almost always not the case.  The progress we have made prior to the setback is real; it is not to be discounted or negated, though our feelings of disappointment, shame, or remorse and our subsequent loss of perspective may try to convince us otherwise.  One key indicator that we have made and are continuing to make progress is that the setback will not keep us down for very long, not nearly as long as it may have in the past.  Progress is evident after a setback or moment of regression or failure when:

For instance, if we have recently lost our composure (which happened to me just the other day when I was discussing religion with someone), we usually feel disappointed with or even ashamed of ourselves (Why did I let that happen?  I should have recognized that our conversation was going nowhere and either agreed to disagree with this person or changed the subject!).  Our inner critical voice may be champing at the bit, as mine always is, to put in his or her two cents worth.

But as is often the case, a setback or regression of some type precedes or paves the way for even greater progress.  For some unknown reason, a setback almost always seems to be necessary at times in order for our next growth spurt to occur.  Perhaps we have another significant lesson to learn.  Or maybe we need to be reminded that whenever we react in familiar counterproductive ways, such as yelling, the silent treatment, blaming, retaliation, and the like, we are setting ourselves up to suffer inevitable feelings of remorse or shame.  A setback, though often painful, is not without potential redeeming value, for it frequently paves the way for a comeback and gives us the momentum to grow more than we would have had we not suffered the setback.  Go figure!  Personally, I would prefer to make significant progress without having to suffer setbacks, but life doesn't usually seem to work that way.

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse.  Some years muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a person aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some people become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we were meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen:  may it happen for you.

Sheenagh Pugh

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