seeking, revisited

I had an interesting experience a few months ago. My credit card information was used fraudulently. The credit card company caught it right away and notified me that they'd stopped all activity on the card and that I'd be getting a new one in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile I should cancel all automatic payments coming out of that card and switch them either to the new one, for which I didn't have the number, or another one. Minor hassle... part of living in this time-space.

I was able to switch all automatic payments online pretty easily except for one. The cable company that provides internet to my home has perhaps the most third-circle-of-hell website I've ever encountered. Dead ends, links that don't work, long convoluted processes that end in there being no "submit" button, and so on. I finally managed to switch my automatic payments to a new card (or so I thought) and that was that.

Two months later I get a notice that my service will be "interrupted" unless I pay my bill, which is now two months in arrears. Of course, I thought I had paid my bill, but these things happen, so back I go to the website, feeling kind of pissed off, and I go through the whole routine all over again, enter a new card, and get to the final step of payment. On the screen it says "click continue to submit payment." But there is NO continue button. No button to click. Nothing. There's no way off the screen.

Then I notice a live chat window, so I enter the problem in there, and after a few more really aggravating exchanges with the agent in which she does things like tell me to watch the video they provide on how to pay online, she finally believes me and makes the payment for me, entering that card for my auto-payment. Fine. I'm angry about all this, but it's done and I try to put it behind me.

Then yesterday I get a notice in the mail that my service will be interrupted because... etc. The payment never went through. I get on the phone to the number they provide for "if you think this notice is in error" and of course there's no possibility of human contact, but I pay the exorbitant bill AGAIN, over the phone by pressing buttons in response to the robotic prompts.

Arrrggg. I haven't been angry in a long time, but these types of experiences, of which I've had several, lately, are pissing me off. And then suddenly it dawns on me. I am wanting things to be different from the way they are.

Ah, relief.

This is a very subtle point, so I'll try to make it as clearly as I can. What I'm talking about can be misinterpreted as resignation. Oy, this is the way the world is, what can you do? That's a victim stance. Not what I mean.

What I'm talking about is sitting with the texture and grit of whatever you are experiencing and not fighting it. Not demanding that it be other than what it is. Notice how the human mind always wants a certain kind of interaction. It always demands a certain type of pleasure, a certain type of diversion, a certain type of smooth, pleasing experience. It's very discriminating about what kinds of experiences it considers "okay." This is what all seeking behavior is, whether material or spiritual.

Who you really are has no such discriminatory nature. All experiences are interesting. There is no sense of demanding that things be other than how they are. I guess this could be called non-resistance, but I'd say that non-resistance is the doorway into the experience, and the experience itself is more joyful than that.

You might also call it forgiveness, which is another doorway into the arena of non-discriminatory experience but forgiveness has overtones that imply morality and this really has nothing to do with morality.

I think the quickest doorway into this experience would be Byron Katie's four questions and a turnaround. She talks about our crazy ideas that, in this example, the cable internet company and its website should be different from the way they actually are. This is how we suffer... by demanding that what IS, be something else.

The human mind is addicted to the idea of resistance. It believes that unless it resists the "bad" the "good" will not come. Yet the truth is that in the very moment that you stop resisting the discomfort of whatever situation you are in, the discomfort itself begins to fade and to open into another type of experience altogether.

Comments

[Aileen Cheatham]

I can so relate to your frustration, Marian. One of the "one-liners" I recently worked on using The Work is "Computers should always work" and also "Customer Service interactions should be helpful." Such relief comes from inquiry. It opens the mind to the acceptance of whatever comes. Thank you for way back when sharing The Work with me. :)