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Double Standards
October 2006
Double standards:
when someone refuses to let you do something they themselves indulge in. When people allow themselves a treasure they won’t allow anyone else. When they get angry at someone else for doing the same things they just did. “Do as I say, not as I do.” The unfairness of double standards, the irrationality and illogic, the social injustice.
Looking back over the past few months, the thing that has upset me the most is when I feel a victim of an irrational double standard (and they are all irrational, in the end). It makes me frustrated at my inability to communicate my perspective, and frustrated at the other person’s apparent unwillingness to hear my truth. (Not the truth, some objective ultimate truth, but my truth.) All they want to hear is their own truth: they want to right, in the right, correct, at all costs. They want to be right, and they assert it with all their force, even when they are wrong.
The image comes to me (and I want to draw it with my left hand) of a one-way glass mirror: standing on one side of the mirror, one can see through the glass; standing on the other side, one sees only a mirror: one sees only oneself, reflected back. The divided self standing on both sides of the mirror—the self that is unaware of all of itself, unconscious of its dark half, its shadow—the self standing on one side of the mirror can see all of itself, both through the glass and reflected in the glass, while the self standing on the other side can see only what is reflected, and cannot see its own hidden components. How we project onto the world what we do not like in ourselves, and the world mirrors it back. How to see through the mirror of the world, to see what the world actually is, with clarity, even only partial clarity, is to see past the mirror of projection to what is really there. Illumination, enlightenment, awakening: all of these refer to seeing past the mirror, the filters, the projections—to see what is actually there. Removing the blinders from the eye. Removing the pole that is in your own eye, before you remove the splinter from your neighbor’s eye.
Some of what upsets me is when someone has not the self-awareness to see clearly when they apply a double standard to me or others. But what also upsets me is their apparent lack of self-awareness, the way they unconsciously apply the double standard, the way they cannot see what they are doing, objectively, from the outside—from the other side of the mirror. In my public visibility, in my role as wizard, shaman, healer, and artist, I often find myself on the see-through side of the mirror: knowing that I am being projected on, knowing that I can see through the mirror (in that moment, if not always) while all they are seeing is their own reflection. How do I get through to them? How can they be shown that all they are seeing is a mirror, onto which they are projecting? I admit to frustration: when one side of the mirror has insight, and the other side of the mirror seems to willfully choose to avoid insight. You can’t force wisdom and insight onto the other: they have to learn it for themselves. The injustice is being projected onto, being painted as something I am not; even if by doing so, I am serving the other as a healer, even if the healing is to shake their assumptions loose, so that their shadow can emerge into the light. I get tired of being painted as bad and wrong, when all I do is stand there. Its exhausting to be the punching bag so often, and having to hold my own ethic on non-violence in place. The paradox of the spiritual warrior: take all the blows, but don’t give them back, except surgically: to heal. The temptation is always to retaliate in kind: and that is always wrong action. Oh, but some days, when I’m tired and upset and have had enough, it’s tempting.
Why do I get so upset at double standards? (Of course it has as much to do with me as it does with the world.) Is it only because of the injustice of it?
There is a social justice component. One wishes to show the truth to those who are willfully blinkered and self-blinded. Sometimes wants to violently show them the truth, in ways that will shake them up, terrify them, because that seems like the only way to get through to them. My own double-standard about people is that I often unconsciously expect people to be as strong as self-analysis, self-awareness, at confession, as I am myself. I have to admit: not everyone can take, and not everyone wants to be so nakedly revealed to themselves. The world will not judge us: only we ourselves judge ourselves, or each other. The world is indifferent at worst, and otherwise compassionate. The world is reflective in ways we often choose not to be. I admit it: I assume that everyone is capable of doing what I can do, and I am often caught up short, shocked, and surprised, when it turns out that they cannot, or will not.
Elitism. I resist it, even as part of me acknowledges that not all are created equal, after all. I may be smarter than some, but that doesn’t mean I deserve special rights. They are also human beings, with the same rights—and responsibilities—as I. My own double-standard about elitism is to reverse it, to prefer that all play on a level playing-field, with as clear and honest a set of motivations as I strive to find in myself. I want everyone to be like me. I want everyone to be how I think I am, myself. I get tripped up when I see someone lash out in ways that make no sense to me, and I have to stop and go inside them, using all my skills of intuition and empathy, to understand why they would do such a thing. I get tripped up on my own assumptions. In my defense, I stipulate that I often assume the best about people, rather than the worst. When I assume the worst, it’s because that’s all I can see in my own mirror at the moment: my own darknesses. My choice, when I am clear enough to know that everything is a choice—everything, no exceptions—than I usually choose the positive option. (Though there are occasions when I feel the need to spelunk my own darker emotions, and I will choose to go into my own shadow, and see what’s there, what’s rising up at the moment. But that is another topic entirely.)
Reverse elitism. I want everyone to be equal, when I know deep down that they are not. I want to believe in democratic ideals, even when the evidence suggests that meritocracy is a more accurate picture of the world. I don’t want to stick out. I don’t want to be a target anymore. I want to blend in; I don’t want to be seen as different, special, unique, gifted, or brilliant. Even when I acknowledge to myself, inwardly, that I am all those things, I want to hide those things from the rest of the world, and I want others to know and believe the same things about themselves. Even I realize that not everyone has the will, desire, or fortitude to know themselves as thoroughly as I work to know myself, I project my own (assumed) good motivations on them.
I don’t want to be part of an elite, I don’t want to be an elitist. I want everyone to like me, and I have learned through bitter experience, since I was child, that to stand out as an Individual, apart from the Tribe, apart from the Tribe’s projected assumptions about what is good, what matters, what the world is like—to stand out is to be attacked. I feel under attack a lot lately; I feel anxiety about how I am doing, about revealing myself too openly, for fear of being attacked. No, for fear of being attacked again.
I don’t want to be an egotist. “If a nail sticks up, hit it back down.” That kind of conformity, enforced by the Tribe through judgment, mob rule, and ostracism, is truly painful to adhere to. I don’t want to be special, although I have to admit I am. I want everyone else to be special, too: we are all gods, or none of us are.
I want everyone to understand themselves as well as I understand them. (This is intuitive, not intellectual.) The insights that I get, as healer, shaman, wizard, intuitive: it’s like I can see right into people, sometimes; can see right into their fears and motivations, and how their shadow is controlling them, because they have not mastered it. These are insights that I cannot tell people, except under special circumstances, within safe space, in the setting of the healing circle. I get the insights all the time, continuously, every day, but I cannot do anything with them. That can get frustrating. I usually have to wait for people to ask me what I See in them. Most people will never ask, though, because they are afraid of what they learn about themselves. It is easier to go through life unconsciously, than to Awaken. It is easier to be asleep, not responsible for one’s actions, caught the in puppet-strings of one’s own unconscious desires and cravings and hatreds, than it is to own one’s own shadow, and take full responsibility for all of one’s own actions. To take responsibility for one’s own actions requires one to become an adult: mentally, emotionally, and most important of all, spiritually. Instead, we are often a species of children, kept infantile by our own consent, refusing to wake up, because it’s too hard, too much work, too painful.
I own that I suffer from the vice of impatience, which comes in part from Seeing: when I give in to this vice, it seems so obvious what a person needs to do to heal themselves—which is freeing themselves from what has bound them to the past—perfect health exists in the present moment, and is unfettered to past or future—that I just want them to quite wasting time and get on with it. I want everyone to be enlightened Right Now. No waiting! No dawdling! Get on with it! I have to sometimes restrain myself from leaping in and giving them the information that my intuition tells me that they need, and I must remind myself to be patient: not everyone progresses at the same speed, and not everyone is in the same place in their story. I remind myself to slow down, and be still, and Listen. I remind myself that being on the fast track to personal growth is not for everyone, and not everyone would choose it if they could. I remind myself that I cannot intervene, even if I am impatient: so, let it go, let it be, be present. Sometimes the most you can do is hold space for someone else’s process to unfold at its own best pace. When I am confronted with my own impatience, when it feels like everyone else is going too slowly, it is the world reflecting back to me, as in a mirror, a reminder to be patient with everyone, and with myself. I direct my impatience at myself, and I beat myself up, too, for not being already enlightened Right Now. The mirror reminds me to slow down, and go at the pace best suited for me, too.
There is an element to projection that does pertain to creating equality and social justice: If you expect people to act beyond themselves, better than they normally do, with altruism and compassion, then they often do. If you assume the world is a finer place, just doing that can make it so: locally, for awhile, even if not forever. The double standards fall away. Belief creates reality, and what we will changes the world. (Is this magical? Of course, but then, everything is magical, and wondrous, and magic is nothing else but changing the world, and our perception of the world.)
I’ve seen this principle in action on the streets of San Francisco, walking to the train station to ride home, walking through the homeless people after Chorus practice. One small act of lovingkindness is so magnified, there, because the people are so reduced to the basics of survival, that it seems like a world-changing, epic event. One act of charity. I see them take care of each other. They know each other well, what their strengths and weaknesses are. When you are reduced to the basics, just eating and sleeping, no leisure for philosophy or self-centeredness, actions take on much more resonance and power. Everything becomes significant.
When I’ve been homeless myself (relatively speaking), living out of the truck, traveling, nomadic, with nothing to my name, and no demands on me from other people projecting their needs onto me, that’s when I’ve been happiest. No cares, no concerns, no projections: just contemplating the world, as if it were myself, as it truly is, as I am also the world. My own cares and needs are reduced to traveling, arriving, and Seeing everything that I pass by as I travel. See the world as you travel through it. Stop and smell the flowers—and take photographs of them. When I have no more desire or necessity than this, I am truly at peace. Tranquility comes for me, sometimes unexpected, when I let everything else fall away, and sink and cool into just seeing, without having to do anything. At those times, the mirrors seem to fall completely away, and the world takes on its ascended luminosity: everything glows from within with divine light, both immanent and transcendent. The rocks and the life that grows in between them: all alive with godhead. I stop for gas in a small Nevada town, miles from anywhere else, and every conversation, every moment of interaction with the people there, is heightened, magnified, significant, radiant. They are healed by my mere presence, and I am likewise healed by theirs. This is true equality: we illuminate each other, we heal each other, by our everyday interactions. What is ordinary takes on the liminal glow of exaltation. Divine grace is expressed when the gas station attendant touches your palm when she hands you your change: and she becomes Kannon, Kuan Shih Yin, Avalokiteshvara, Mercy: the Goddess of Compassion, the Virgin of Grace. The Holy Virgin shines within everywoman, no matter how wrinkled and beaten down by life; the God shine within everyman, even that homeless man pushing his shopping cart along the steaming sidewalk, looking for a place to sleep that’s warm and dry, and out of the rain.
This is where we are going: exaltation, satori and salvation. This is how we get there: together, holding hands, picking each other up when we fall.
A Spiral Dance Essay, © 2006 AP Durkee. All Rights Reserved.
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