Thursday, October 27, 2011

The Hermit

"Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking." - Jessamyn West

The Hermit felt awkward around her more sociable cousin, the Firechief. She felt like everyone around her was judging her for being unemployed.

She didn’t really get around to being open with anyone about it. She felt that most people didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand her overall situation or predicament. And so, she kept it unsaid and simply tried to be the person that she felt she was, which was kind, creative, healing and humorous, most of the time, and bitter, hateful, angry, and sullen most of the other time.

The woman felt that she was without question a person who had come a long way and found a long line of things inside of her that most people would never get a chance to experience. Most people, the woman witnessed, would spend their lives hiding behind the Doing and the Chasing-the-dollar schemes and machines rather than learning to become the people of Being that they were. The woman had used her money to discover what this state of Beingness was for her, and she had recently discovered what it was, and was joyous to learn what she wanted to Be, all of the moments of her life: Creator.

The woman felt that this learning experience set her apart from the other animal humans. She felt that most of them thought and believed her to be lazy. She was not lazy, but she was very determined intellectually to sniff out her inadequacies and learn from them. So, she tried to do so. And because of this, she outcast herself.

This is how she came to be known as the Hermit.

Her avoidance of others led them to speculation of who she had become. Her silence allowed their assumption to grow, and in the darkness of that not knowing, their judgments of her, based on past experience, resulted in them never getting an opportunity to truly know her.

This led to her feeling rather awkward around anyone. Her awkwardness lent itself to a feeling that if she spoke of what she had been doing, she would be punished for not having done what was expected of her instead. What was expected of her was for her to utilize her magnificent intellect and become the woman everyone identified with intellect: successful, driven, oriented to goals, single-minded, passionate.

The Hermit was all of these things, but she was these things on a more subtle path than her peers. Their understanding of these successes was flamboyant, of the ego, not the shadow subconscious everyone chooses to hide from daily. No, the people did not consider a mastering of this to be anything special, and if they did, they hid it in jealousy, because their jealousy of not knowing their whole selves drove them to abuse those who did, in a pecking-order that was customary of the ego, but not the subconscious self.

Those who seek to master the shadow self become hermits because no one understands them. No one can comprehend the wonders these questing-masters have discovered inside of their own souls and hearts and minds. They covet this sense of never being alone, and because of that, their jealousy drives the mockery of these Hermit sages.

Walking back to her hovel, knowing it is messy around her, knowing that she has had little reward for her achievements, the Hermit’s ego was hurt each time she stepped out of the house and into the world. She wondered how she might now master the ego. Her ego was one of self-victimization and poor-meisms. She was tired of this behavior as it no longer served her purpose as Creator. And so she set out to find the new learning experience and tackle the ego. Her understanding of the ego was different now, and because she was no longer afraid of it, but acknowledged it as part of her, she was ready to see how she and the ego could coexist and cocreate as a community.

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