Scenario #1:

I’m standing in line at the gate, waiting to board the plane. The announced boarding time has passed, and the crowd is growing impatient. Cell phones start pinging, as passengers receive notifications that the flight is delayed 90 minutes, although there has been no formal announcement. Finally, the gate agent broadcasts the official news – a crew member is missing and the plane will not be departing until he arrives.

There are grumbles and a few quiet obscenities. The line starts to break up as people immerse themselves in their devices, trying to get additional information, or change plans. Fortunately, this is only a minor disturbance for me, as I have allowed myself enough time to arrive at my destination. It will be inconvenient for the person picking me up, but other than that, no big deal.

Everyone is stopped in their movements by an angry voice. A woman, just a few feet away from me, is enraged. She is yelling, “This is bullshit!!” She is very well groomed and dressed – clearly a business professional – but is throwing an absolute tantrum. She is addressing the crowd, reminding them how much they paid for their tickets and how terrible it is for an airline to treat its customers this way. She is proclaiming that this was merely a ruse for canceling the flight altogether, and that we will not, in fact, ever leave Newark airport.

I am completely hypnotized by her, unable to do anything but stand with my mouth agape, watching this scene. My body fills with revulsion and my mind with the following thoughts:

What is wrong with this person?

Has she no sense of appropriate behavior or propriety?

Does she not realize she is frightening some of the other passengers who are now worried they will never make it to their destination?

Wow, I would be sooooo embarrassed to behave that way!

She notices I am one of the few people who has not scurried away from her and stops yelling just long enough for me to say, very softly, “I think it’s going to be OK. No use getting so upset. This happens all the time.”

She glares at me and continues on with her rampage.

Scenario #2

I am participating in a weekend workshop in lovely Vancouver, Canada for leaders of workshops, seminars and retreats. Although it is promoted to those who have heart-based businesses, I find the crowd surprisingly diverse. We comprise a wide variety of ages, business experience and geographical locations.

One woman catches my eye right away. And not in a good way. She is slightly older, with hair the color of a yellow crayon, dressed as if she has been plucked straight out of the eighties in a double breasted navy pantsuit, complete with shoulder pads and baggy pleated pants. I dislike her almost immediately.

With absolute wisdom,  the Universe puts us together, in the same small working group. My annoyances grow. She spends the day texting on her phone, and interrupting the speaker with questions she would not have had if she had been listening. In a diverse group of people, she still does not fit in. Too brash, too unconscious, too self-centeredly doing her own thing. I cannot participate in her requests for help, I am so disgusted by her.

Analysis:

What do those two scenes have in common? For me, they are outer representations of my frequent inner experiences. Both of these people, who were, admittedly, doing the best they could, came under the wide net of my distaste of the inability to control oneself, to behave sensibly and to be obedient.

I realized only much later how these two women represented all those parts of me that my decades of spiritual work had left as messy as ever. I saw my judgmental-ness, my insecurities, my irrational desire that everyone should be how I want them to be, and a host of other ugly unmentionables. They triggered my fear of the dark.

We are all confronted, typically by the actions of the others sharing the planet with us (if we are lucky), with those parts of our personalities that we would do anything to excise. Strong reactions, especially negative ones, are always a sign that a personal button has been pushed, that something we need to see is being shown to us. It is an opportunity to know ourselves by temporarily stepping out of the bright light of our goodness and sit in the scary dark room where all our monsters live.

As I teach my meditation students, every time you realize you have drifted off is a success. The coming back is the practice. So I look at my thoughts and behavior during those two situations, and taste the bitterness of my own disdain. I can’t hate those parts of me away. I can only admit that they are there. Coming back to that place, of seeing what I wish did not exist, is my practice.

There is much to learn in the dark, especially when we realize that the light is only a flip of a switch away.

I’d love to hear about your time in the dark. What was being offered to you? Share here.