White magic results from speaking your truth…but first you will be crucified…
As a little girl growing up in the vibrant heart of south India, I once overheard my father warn a friend that a certain woman whom he referred to by name, a stranger to me, was so clever she could even “draw blood out of a stone.”
My father—then a charismatic and handsome fellow gifted with a silver tongue—caught my attention with his vivid language. How I burned to meet this sorceress who could coax a crimson stream of blood out of ungiving stone! What other supernatural gifts must she possess, I wondered dreamily?
Soon after, the whole family attended a wedding in the community. In the crush of adults milling about, I heard someone greet a formidable woman—dressed in a resplendent peacock-blue silk sari bordered with heavy gold—with the name my father had used for the clever woman with the magical ability. In a daze of excitement, I ran up to her on strong little legs and gazed up at this wondrous creature. “Are you the woman my daddy says can draw blood out of a stone?” I demanded breathlessly.
The witch glared down at me in utter shock, her painted mouth worked furiously, though no words emerged. My mother rushed over and dragged me away, apologizing profusely, her lovely face flushed with shame. I was scolded, perhaps given a sharp slap or two, I don’t recall. What I do remember were the rumbles of delighted male laughter, and the eruptions of female giggles, when the now highly embellished tale of how I had rendered the witch speechless was recounted on breezy summer evenings. Out of the mouth of babes…
Much later I discovered that the witch was actually a wealthy widow who had taken to lending her erstwhile husband’s money out at loan-sharking rates of interest—and, a la Shylock, had no qualms about extracting her pound of flesh. Something like that, anyway.
Most of the events I recall today with a smorgasbord of mixed emotions were never told to me straight. Children were to seen, but not heard, and certainly we were never included in serious talk. So I quickly learned to crouch in the shadows, eavesdropping and interpreting the whispers of adults, even as I fabricated marvelous tapestries to explain our unusual way of life to my own highly curious self.
Despite my mother’s entreaties, and my father’s harsh punishments, this pattern of compulsively shooting my mouth repeated itself all through my childhood and adolescence. One evening, strolling back from a friend’s home in twilight with my mother, she suddenly turned to me and announced grimly: “You are going to get into terrible trouble if you keep spilling whatever rubbish jumps into your head!”
I looked at her, startled. Barely a teenager at the time, even more precocious than I had been as a child, it came to me in a flash that it was my inherent nature to speak my mind, and that I would be compelled to continue to do so all through my life, no matter the consequences. I blurted out this strange insight and watched my mother’s face grow sad.
Given our traditional, patriarchal Indian society, with its double standards for men and women, my mother must have feared the pain and trouble her irrepressible daughter would inevitably invite with the passage of time. Perhaps this was the reason why she rarely spoke her mind, unless it was to do with the home she ran, assisted by servants, the welfare of her beloved children, her burgeoning garden brimming with banks of delicate ivory and sun-yellow lilies and shaded with mango, papaya, gooseberry, cherry and sapota trees, or her collection of cactii and exotically hued orchids, which she had taken to displaying around the walls of our spacious home.
As a grown woman in Manhattan, in the aftermath of a dehumanizing divorce, I sat humble and defeated before my gentle therapist Amy and admitted that my mother had been right—had I kept my big mouth shut a little more often, perhaps I might have avoided, or at least diminished, the string of crises I had suffered in the intervening decades. Oozing self-pity, I added that it continued to baffle and frustrate me that so few in the family agreed with my version of past events, or cared to support me emotionally, in my current depressing situation.
Amy, a gracious and civilized woman of immense kindness, smiled warmly. “Don’t you worry, Mira,” she said. “Every sibling has a different set of parents. What you experienced is just as valid as what the others say they did. The time has come for you to forget how the rest of the world thinks and focus solely on healing your self.”
It took me a while to digest her meaning. Amy was right—each member of our sprawling clan nursed their own special views. After all, our natures were crafted by unique personal karmas, and we had each entered the world at different stages in our parents’ lives. Most of all, our degrees of rebelliousness ranged all the way from placid acceptance of the status quo (arranged endogamous marriages, the usual gender double standard, etcetera) to extreme reactivity to what was expected of us as “good” members of our community. Yes, I mused, though all my siblings had shot into the world through the same parental channel, our views and perceptions of distant events as well as the trials of the day were bound to be different.
Dr. Brian Weiss—who boldly broke out of the conventional therapist closet by daring to publish an incredible tale of past lives that emerged during his treatment of a severely disturbed young woman—once told me during a weekend workshop at Omega in Rhinebeck, New York, that every little thing we sense and experience, whether others agree with it or not, and whether from “imagination” or from “real” waking life, is grist for the inner mill.
Today, though my wildness has been tamed by the deliberate attempt to cultivate the wisdom of the ancients, as well as by fatigue induced by tilting at an endless succession of windmills, I am still compelled to speak my truth. The difference is that now I clearly acknowledge that it is only “my” truth, a subjective and shifting truth, and that everyone who looks at the same situation or event or person is bound to see and experience it differently.
According to eastern philosophy, our innate relative nature is studded with an infinite range and variety of predilections (vasanas, in Sanskrit) that are the result of habits from past lives. Some predilections are mild and trivial in their effects, others strongly ingrained and potentially lethal. Vasanas cannot easily be erased; only repressed or suppressed, though the intense spiritual cleansing that is the reward of diving into the spiritual heart on the quest to know who we truly are–which, in terms of the highest Indian wisdom, is Sat-Chit-Ananda–or Existence-Consciousness-Bliss–can completely burn them away; whereupon we know ourselves to be an integral part of the One Self, immortal and blissful.
Speaking one’s current truth, even if happens to be wrong, is part of the process of burning our relative suffering. If we later discover that we have spoken in error, we must train ourselves to quickly apologize and make amends. But if, due to wrong ideas, or a misguided assessment of our personal worth, we choose the seemingly easy way out in personal relationships, and cover up what we feel by shutting up at those times when honest communication is most required, a host of problems—emotional and physical—must eventually result. Not to mention that this dishonesty–whether it manifests as sins of omission or commission—will inexorably ruin the fabric of our lives, and cause harm to whose welfare is enmeshed with ours. In Twelve Step lingo, we are only as sick as our secrets. Or, we are only as sick as we are secret.
Age has graced me with a certain maturity, fortunately, and I no longer feel entitled to use my tongue as a slashing sword—the sacred duty corresponding to the sacred right to speak one’s truth must accord with the sage’s warning: that under no circumstances must we inflict needless harm. And yet there are occasions when tough love seems to be called for, though to determine that requires proper viveka, or discrimination—an art I am still in the process of refining.
Welcome to my blog, where I plan to continue in my heedless tradition of never shutting my mouth about issues that matter to me—though I will take care to present all I say as only my truth, and my truth alone!
