Hearing the greatest hits of your inadequacy? How to stop singing along
Even the Buddha had a band of singing demons
I couldn't sleep last Sunday morning.
I was emotionally overwhelmed by a band of personal demons in my brain performing a concert of the greatest hits of my inadequacy.
"You're not smart enough. You're not talented, at all. Why would anyone listen to you? You've never been able to succeed in life, why do you keep trying? You'll always be small potatoes. Just give up now!"
None of these tunes are easy to dance to, and would definitely not be top hits, even though their message appears to be pretty universal. I know I am not alone in grooving to my own personal playlist of the top 100 classics on incompetence. We all have those personal demon bands that seem to take center stage in our minds whenever the smooth sailing of life hits the turbulent waters of doubt and despair.
The top hit playing Sunday morning was: "You're no good, you're no good, you're no good, baby, you're no good …" I've been trying to build a thriving spiritual community in Columbia, S.C., for the past 12 years and it insists on staying small and barely surviving. I'd love to make it my fulltime ministry, but it persists in not being what I want it to be.
Which is, of course, the problem. My ego wants it to be something it's not – at least something it's not right now. Even though hundreds of people have attended our Sunday morning celebrations over that time, they're not there all at once on a Sunday. There are not the hundreds and hundreds of people my ego wants to see sitting in the room. There are only about thirty now – down from nearly 50 pre-Covid.
There's a new church that opened just down the street from us in a building once occupied by Best Buy. They had cops out directing traffic the Sunday I couldn't sleep. The place was packed. My demons began to play thrash metal in my head. Something along the lines of "you'll never be good enough to get that many people in one place," but it's hard to understand your demons' lyrics when they're screaming them at you.
One of the things I love about Jubilee! Circle is that the Jubilants – as we call ourselves – often minister to me as much as I minister to them. Perhaps more. I sang a few of my demons’ inadequacy tunes to some of them and they kindly pointed out that I was not keeping the main thing the main thing by focusing on the numbers. How many people were in the room wasn't the point, they said. How many people were being transformed was, and by that standard, they told me, I was doing a bang-up job.
Personal spiritual transformation has an audience, for sure. The popularity of Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer and even Oprah proves it. However, the best way to draw a large crowd at a church these days, I'm learning, is to give people a set list of rigid rules to follow, and promise them that God will do all the work if they just toe this particular line, or give this much money. If you do your part, like tithing, dressing a certain way or believing a certain way, God will shower you with whatever you want – money, fame, power. No personal responsibility needed.
Yeah, I don't teach that. Transformation, as all the "famous" teachers know, is an inside job. You have to learn to stop dancing to tunes of your personal demon band and kick them off that center stage in your head. However, even as you begin to pull the plug on those demons – many of them will just switch to an unplugged event, singing the same songs in an all-acoustic show. The demons may get quieter, but you'll never truly be rid of them, even if the preachers with cops directing traffic promise that you can. We all can have our enlightened moments – our flashes of peace and insight – or what A Course in Miracles calls "a Holy Instant," but, no one ever gets to enjoy what Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield calls "enlightened retirement."
Even the Buddha knew this, Kornfield says. On the night he was awakened, Buddha was attacked by the armies of Mara, the god of illusion and evil. With his heart of compassion, he was able to overcome the anger and aggression that Mara unleashed in him and Mara eventually left in defeat. But that defeat was only temporary, even for the Buddha. There are stories of Mara's return later in the Buddha's life, where that anger and aggression would reappear to tempt the Buddha or undermine his teachings and ministry.
The good news is, however, that with each new awakening, with each step of progress along this spiritual path, we are able to see Mara -- that fearful ego -- more clearly, and realize that it will always be a part of us. Our goal then, is to find out how to use our increasingly clearer vision to begin to fully transcend our ego – putting it in its proper place, in the back seat and never in the driver's seat – and living fully into our higher, Divine Self.
If the spiritual journey is one of constantly learning to turning down the volume of our personal demons, it's also a journey of forgetting and remembering. When we get overwhelmed and the personal demons strike up the band, it's because we've forgotten who we truly are and why we're here in the first place.
Pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber says there are three questions to ask ourselves when we feel overwhelmed and inadequate:
What's MINE to do, and what's NOT mine to do?
What's MINE to say and what's NOT mine to say?
And the third one is harder:
What's MINE to care about and what’s NOT mine to care about?
To be clear – that is not to say that it is not worthy to be cared about by SOMEONE, only that my effectiveness in the world cannot extend to every worthy to be cared about event and situation. It's not an issue of values, it's an issue of MATH. […] It's ok to do what is YOURS to do. Say what's yours to say. Care about what's yours to care about. That's enough.
As I breathe into these words, the demon band takes a break, and I remember, again, the work I have been given. Building a megachurch may not be mine to do, much to the displeasure of my ego who believes that's the only way to measure "success." I can only focus on the one thing I have been given to do – Jubilee! Circle. When I start looking around at the work of others, I am distracted from my own God-given task. These questions remind us to keep our eyes on our own paper.
What's your answer to those three questions? This is a time of overwhelm for all of us as the pandemic drags on, prices go up and the threat of a global war seems too frighteningly close. It's easy to be outraged. It's easy to be scared. It's easy to be envious of the lives of others. It's easy to be distracted from our own work, thinking that it is inadequate in the face of so much suffering and turmoil.
Here's the truth: You can't solve all the problems of the world on your own. Here's the good news: You don't have to. Each of us is called to do our part in this great awakening of consciousness. It may look small and unimportant to your ego – but nothing – even the most fantastic success and highest fame in this world – is enough to satisfy its bottomless pit of desires. Trying to please your ego is a fool's errand.
Just as Mara continued to hound the Buddha, so too, your personal band of demons will croon your own hopeless, earworm inducing hits of despair and inadequacy. Here's the solution: Don't sing along. Don't even tap your toe. Pull the plug and ask those three questions to yourself: What is mine to do? What is mine to say? What is mine to care about?
These questions will help you remember to do your work and stop envying the work of others. This is where your true power lies. You dilute that power and become overwhelmed by life whenever you seek to do a job that isn't yours to do.
Apparently, in this moment, it's not my job to build a megachurch where cops have to direct traffic into the parking lot. It's my job to build a tight, small community dedicated to doing the sometimes difficult and painful work of transforming themselves so they can transform the world.
That's a big enough job, and one I'm glad to have.
Marianne Williamson offers this prayer for all of us dealing with our demonic songs of inadequacy:
Whether I am paid or not, whether I am working somewhere out in the world or planting my own garden, I dedicate whatever I am doing today to the uplifting of all things. May the activity of my mind, and the work of my hands, be of service to the healing of the world. Today I remember that there is only one work: to be who I am capable of being, to do what I am capable of doing to make the world a better place. May my life be of use to something greater than myself, that I might feel the joy of being so used.
Oh yeah!
Which greatest hits of inadequacy are you hearing today? How are you learning to stop singing along? Share in the comments!
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Take 20 with Candace
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About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true, Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass and the founder and senior editor emeritus of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for LGBTQ People of Faith. She is also a musician and avid beer drinker.