It's a spiritual exercise to consider being wrong.
Buddha, before enlightenment, found it part of his path.
At least two times and surely more, he admitted
he was wrong. After years of training with teachers he
confessed he was wrong when he told these teachers, "this is not it!
We hear he did this twice. In order to shift from what he
thought was "right," he had to be able to "be wrong." It's an act of
no conceit aka humbling. Self-importance just can't stand up to
an admission of being wrong.
Is this spiritual exercise familiar to you?
Well, I hope so. It may be, however, that you never look or reflect
on self-importance. The walls of the ego may be so impenetrable that
being wrong, especially in regards to something important is unimaginable.
Being wrong is unacknowledged.
Being wrong, at least unacknowledged being wrong,
may just get buried somewhere in the dark.
Hidden from view but not hidden from influence.
When it is buried it is much like a long
forgotten leftover in the fridge. It tends to stink up the whole
refrigerator. You know what I mean. It's that bowl, covered in
saran wrap or aluminum foil. It hides what now is an unrecognizable
lump.
That's what happens when we hide from view and forget
about our being wrong. It rots in the cold and dark and stinks
to high heavens.
Thankfully, it gives off a putrid odor that is intolerable
every time you open the fridge door. And sometimes
it gets so bad that it breaks through those airtight, rubber seams
along the door and shows up in the kitchen.
Be thankful for the stink. It gets your attention and gives you
the opportunity to practice this spiritual exercise of being wrong.
Every time you study the self there is an opportunity
to find the hidden, smelly leftovers of self-importance which
stink to high heaven. It might be the stuff of being wrong. At first,
the taste was a superior,cream puff which turns into an inedible leftover.
It never had much nourishment.
The saran wrap and sometimes a doubled wrapping of aluminum foil
around the self are the explanations, defenses and analysis of why you
did whatever you did versus a simple exclamation to your self of
being wrong.
The admission is blame free, it is a clear "yes, I was wrong." That's how to
remove the strong and often foul odor. The self does not stand up
against clear comprehension. "I am wrong." I was wrong." That's a
mouthful.
It's a spiritual exercise.
