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A Lesson in Spiritual Vanity The Spiritual Traveler
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Spiritual
vanity is a paradoxical phenomenon. Spirituality implies
that we place a higher value on the intangibles of life--on the
invisible and the unknowable, on that which can only be apprehended
through love, through feeling, through intuition. Those who
succumb to spiritual vanity find themselves in the position of making
claims for which there is no visible demonstration. They ask
others to blindly accept their knowledge, experience, or
authority. If they are convinced of their own spiritual
stature, yet fail to persuade others of this, they can become not only
estranged from other human beings, but from reality itself.
I received a remarkable demonstration of this not long
ago. I was getting together with my friend Dee, who had
agreed to help me with editing some articles I had
written. Since she didn't have a car of her own, I agreed to
pick her up at her house. It was a Saturday afternoon in
late October, just three days before Halloween. I arrived at
the appointed time of 3:00 in the afternoon. It had been at
least six months since I had visited her place, and when I got there I
was surprised that I couldn't remember exactly which house was
hers. I knew it was either the last house on the left or the
second-to-the last one. The two houses were virtually
identical, except that the second from the end had dark shutters and a
dark door. The one on the end didn't have shutters at all,
and there was a white screen on the front door that looked completely
unfamiliar.
I turned into the driveway of the second house from the end, which was
empty, honked my horn, got out, and knocked on the front
door. There was no answer. I peered
inside. It looked like the interior of Dee's house, all
right. I looked over at the house next
door. There were two vehicles in the driveway, but neither
of them looked familiar. I thought of knocking on the door
of the other house, but for some reason I didn't. Instead, I
left a note on the house with the empty driveway and drove
home.
When I got back to my apartment, I called Dee up. Sure
enough, she answered.
"Where have you been?" she asked. "I've been waiting for you."
"Is your house the one on the end?"
"Yes."
I told her how I had stood in front of the wrong house, and had thought
of knocking on the one next door, as well. It was
inexplicable. I could easily have checked out the other
house, but for some reason I didn't.
"Well, do you still want to come over?" she asked.
"Sure," I replied. I got back in my car, drove to her
neighborhood again, and finally picked her up about 75 minutes later
than we had planned.
Dee was a heavy-set woman with long, dark wavy hair. She
usually wore glasses, but for some reason on this day she didn't have
them on. As she eased herself into the passenger seat of my
tiny Tercel, I noticed a cat sitting in front of her
house. It was a black cat with yellow eyes. It
sat perfectly content on the grass, blinked at us, and otherwise didn't
make a move.
"Is that your cat?" I asked.
"No," Dee replied.
"Is it the neighbor's cat?"
"No."
"Whose cat is it?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Dee said emphatically.
Now my curiosity was aroused. "What do you mean, you don't
want to talk about it?"
"If you want to know, it's not a cat," Dee answered.
"What do you mean, it's not a cat?"
"It's an entity."
"An entity?"
"An evil entity," she insisted.
Now, this wasn't a completely out-of-character pronouncement for Dee to
make. She was a very psychic, intuitive type of person, and
was always coming up with things of this sort. Whenever she
did so, I tended to sidestep the issue by changing the subject or
making some kind of bland remark that could be interpreted as buying
what she said, without directly committing myself one way or
another. In this fashion, we always seemed to get
along. She was an entertaining individual, and we generally
found lots of things to talk about. But I was aware that Dee
expected her utterances to be taken at face value, their truth
unquestioned.
On
this occasion, I was stumped as to what to say. As an animal
lover, my instinct was always to make friends with whatever creature I
encountered. I looked again at the cat sunning itself on the
grass as we pulled out of the driveway. It looked perfectly
harmless. I didn't necessarily accept Dee's pronouncement,
but I didn't necessarily refuse to believe her,
either. After all, Dee had all sorts of perceptions I didn't
have. I believed in the possibility that evil entities of
the type she claimed was in the body of the cat might exist, and if
they existed that some people might have the ability to perceive
them. I had an eerie feeling, looking at the cat, and
considering the possibility that Dee was right. It was like
a spooky Hollywood film come to life. At the same time, I
had the perverse urge to play the Devil's advocate with
Dee. A ready quip came to mind. "Even if it's an
evil entity, couldn't you make friends with it?" I thought of asking
her. But I held my tongue. I had the strong
feeling that a remark like that would only aggravate her.
"How long has it been hanging out in front of your house?" I finally
managed to ask.
Dee looked at me as if she resented even this miniscule question.
"Three months," she replied.
"Three months? Isn't that sort of a long time?" I observed.
"Yes. You don't know what I've been going through!"
"Do you want to talk about it?" I suggested.
"No," she said, with finality.
We drove into town, found a place to discuss the articles I had brought
with me, and after an hour or so I drove her back.
"Do you think the cat will still be there?" I couldn't help asking,
even though I sensed the question was provocative.
Dee was noncommittal.
I proceeded to tell her the story of how a cat had hung around my house
in New Jersey years before, and how I had ended up adopting
it. I was trying to soothe Dee's ruffled feathers, talking
in a neutral way about what was, on the surface at least, a similar
incident. But it wasn't doing the trick. I had
the sense that Dee viewed my very inclination to talk about the cat as
a sign that I was attracted to it. And, since she obviously
believed it was evil, I assumed this would appear to cast suspicion on
me, as well, in her eyes.
When we pulled into the driveway, there was the cat, waiting for
Dee. I let her out of the car and watched as she made her
way to the front door. The cat hopped up on the window
ledge, and arched its back in anticipation as she opened the
door. When it was open just a crack, the creature made a
move to get inside, but Dee elbowed it out of the way and disappeared
into the house.
I
thought no more about the incident. But the next day, I
received an unexpected e-mail from Dee:
"The
incident with the cat and the fact that you went to the wrong house,
unable to differentiate which house was mine, show that YOU DO NOT GET
ME! I told you that the cat was an evil
entity. Your interest in getting closer to the cat and
perhaps even getting to know her shows me one of two
things. Either you want to form a relationship with the very
evil the cat represents, or you feel it is simply MY perception that
the cat was an evil entity, and that this was not truly what she was.
"My perception is that you are hung up on the fact that you have been
pursuing a spiritual path for a longer period than I
have. You feel that you have greater spiritual knowledge of
things than I do. Why else would you pursue the
cat? You will discover that the number of years spent on a
spiritual path in no way defines a person's level of spiritual
attainment. It would shock you to know what my true level of
spiritual attainment is.
"There is nothing for us to talk about here. I cannot
explain myself to you because you do not get me. I don't
wish to talk to you on the phone or by e-mail. There is no
reason for us to continue to talk or see each other. It's
too painful to me that you don't even see me!"
It was quite a stunning communication. I tried to think
about it in a way that gave Dee all the benefit of the
doubt. I could easily assume, for instance, that her level
of "spiritual attainment" was far higher than mine was. What
did I know about my level of spiritual attainment, after
all? I did not recall ever saying anything to her that could
be interpreted as putting myself above her. Nor did I feel
that I personally had any idea of my place in the vast spiritual
hierarchy called humanity. Yet Dee clearly had an idea of
her place in this hierarchy--too clear an idea, in fact, to register as
entirely genuine.
I
thought about what I would consider the true marks of
spirituality. Certainly true spirituality would not need to
call attention to itself, assert itself, or defend
itself. Even more importantly, true spirituality would be
able to get along with people regardless of their inability to
recognize it for what it was.
Dee's parting shot ("It's too painful to me that you don't even see
me!") was indeed a poignant communication. The image it
conveyed was of someone who desperately wished to be seen by others as
she saw herself. I was struck by the thought that this is a
very normal human desire, but one that most people do not expect can be
fulfilled. Our human vanity wishes to be
recognized. But if it is not, we make the best of
it. We continue to live in the company of others despite the
lack of recognition that we receive. What was particularly
sad to me was the thought that if Dee really believed she had such a
high place in the spiritual hierarchy, she must have worked to build
this conviction for a very long time. I tried to imagine
what a lonely occupation that might be, and ultimately what a poor use
of one's time on earth.
Spirituality, to me, also
involves the use of common sense. What I found remarkable
about Dee's relationship to the cat was that she had allowed it to
plague her for over three months. "If I had an unwanted
animal hanging around my house," I thought to myself, "I would simply
have chased it away, or caught it and taken it to the Humane
Society. Even if it were an evil entity in the body of a
cat, I would still be rid of it." Why, if Dee felt the cat
was evil, would she simply allow it to hang around her
house? It didn't make sense. Then it occurred to
me that, if one took seriously the notion that the cat was really an
evil entity, it was possible that Dee, herself, had invited this
visitation, was tolerating it, or had brought it on
herself.
In this case, the fact that I
had failed to recognize Dee's house took on another possible
significance. I did not discount the idea that the events
that we experience can be interpreted. They can have a
symbolic meaning. Clearly, Dee was no longer recognizable to
me. From her viewpoint, I did not "get" her. But
whose state of consciousness had changed over the last six
months? Mine? Hers? Who could
say? One thing was for sure, however. She was the
one with the black cat sitting at her doorstep. It occurred
to me that our outer circumstances mirror our interior
situations. From a psychological standpoint, the presence of
the cat was indicative of a problem with which Dee was faced, and which
she might be tolerating or even encouraging. In this case,
the advice I contemplated giving her might have been sound--to make
friends with the cat. We all have a negative side to our
nature, and we have to make our peace with it.
It was strange that I found myself writing this article three days
after this incident occurred--on Halloween eve! I thought of
the spiritual significance of Halloween, and I saw that black cat with
the eerie yellow eyes gazing at me in my memory. Evil entity
or not, I still wanted to make friends with it…
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Date Submitted:
1/2/04 |
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