Inmates
Ponder this thought: the inmates run the asylum.
I got some insight into the way I subtly manipulate a psychological container for my own benefit. First, I express some weakness, some helplessness. Then, others in the container have to accomodate me.
I've "polarized" the container, subtly excluding those who won't accomodate me, and turning those who remain into doctors and guards. Both professions, despite their apparent strengths of reputation and legally sanctioned violence are actually quite weak against a single determined human will.
In truth I'm very capable -- capable enough to manipulate the situation masterfully to get what I want. Here is a concrete example:
In the monestary
In the zen monestary in 2017, Gyounin told me the rules around eating dinner. They were complex. I failed to master them, but felt justified in my failure because they were simply too ornate. He had to correct me a few times. Finally, he showed some irritation, and then was (rightly enough) doubly irritated to discover my self-satisfaction at failing to get the rule.
I was being inconsiderate. I only saw that I, quite an exceptional fellow, was doing a Very Good Thing by being here and Couldn't Possibly Be Expected to get every single arcane rule right from the start.
Gyounin might allow me that, but it was clear that I planned to give myself a large amount of time to get the rule. In fact, there was pleasure in expanding that amount of time given for me, because in that space I held my specialness and contemplated it anew.
Indeed, I used his expressed irritation as further food for my sense of specialness. "Why must he be so unreasonable?" I projected into our container, which he could sense, of course. It was meant for him to sense.
My God...how terrible can we be? (Note this as well...I "spread the blame" away from myself into a generalized "we"...I pat myself on the back for my demonstrative humility.)
No. How terrible I am.
(Again, I've won: "oh, have brave you are to go that far...to point the finger firmly where it belongs, at yourself personally.)
You see...? There is no end to my ability to take secret pride in myself and to configure any relationship container in a fashion that suits "me," this me who takes the pride. The container of the moment is this blog article, into which I've already assigned you a role.
(You have no obligation to fit yourself into my conception of you!)
For a great take on the sin of pride, check out the animated C.S. Lewis chapter from Mere Christianity. It is really a burrowing sin, always disappearing behind a screen. It shapes the context so well that any plain speech about its presence will sound unnecessarily rude.
Anyway, these games go on all the time.
I think this is the reason for the desert in the life of the seeker. He or she sees that they are always weaving a web of intrigue in order to enlarge the prideful self. The desert is the landscape in which those cudgels of manipulation you wield with ancient dexterity are reduced in number by austerity, and seen more readily. Whether alone there or in a small, experienced group, there is tremendous time available to reflect on a small number of interactions.
Only in the desert will we finally know ourselves.
There is a beautiful short film on youtube called Desert Foreigners that I think captures this quite well. It's about Coptic Christian monks in the Egyptian desert. Fr. Lazarus Al-Antony says in the film:
When a monk comes to the solitude of the desert, he does not feel oppressed by the emptiness of the place, but he becomes aware that he is in a confrontation with the demons that inhabit that space.
I think we bring them with us. Though it's useful to externalize them. However, Frater Al-Antony identifies Satan in their number -- a primal, elemental "will to the un-good" that predates him. I simply have no experience of that, and, thank Goodness, my personal demons are beings threaded-through with those patterns of pride and laziness that I cannot help but identify entirely as my own. Therefore I haven't needed to think seriously about any independent malevolent will. My plate is full!
Satanic interlude
However...
It does make sense that as your meditation deepens and you trace complex pattern back to simple beginnings, the discovery of the will of another at a crucial moment may await. Reality is a continuous function. There is no "cliff" between any state or manifestation. So if you are surprised as causes unfold into effects, then you can usefully linger in that space and look around.
You may find that at an angle, just out of sight...you were observed...and your inattention was exploited for another's gain.
If the satanic enters our lives, I think this is how it comes. That being was cast out and down. By necessity, his work must begin on something like an "atomic" level, and our psyche is the disputed land. In such a working, a single impure thought added to a mix will adulterate subsequent thoughts. The best are thoughts which when read aloud, sound anodyne and correct, but come wrapped with assumptions. For example, if you regard another as being unsuitable for a role, the assumption is that you would be better. The satanic entity need do no more than return a while later and discover a host of additional useful thoughts which built on that one through the mechanics of rational thought.
And so...when we say "I am in error!" we are already deep in a wilderness of error whose origin may stretch back before our remembered birth. And our own personal stamp is visible throughout. Considering the vastness of this psychological space, I ask: is Satan really so ancient? Am I really so young?
Return to the story
To return to the desert, the demons reside within you, and they are housed nightly by you. You've made agreements with them. The desert is how you pick those contracts apart and become free from them.
In my situation with Gyounin, I finally did some adulting.
The reason for the complexity of the eating ritual is that it's designed to allow the monks to continue their meditation through the meal and on into whatever comes next. If everything goes by rote...if no flicker of consciousness is needed to make small decisions or engage in distracting eye-contact, then important internal work with God may continue undisturbed.
This, I finally realized, is an expression of true manners. Of deepest hospitality. Of the deepest wish that whoever came here may be able to achieve what they came to do, for who knows in what hour they may meet success?
Then I could see my shame.
I spent time practicing the ritual alone. Finally I mastered it, and this was a small but good thing. I had passed a test.
It's strange though, that I can only see the full story years later. In the intervening time, I had the outline of the truth, but still preferred to draw some particulars with my own brush. In particular I kept the feeling that Gyounin was slightly more irritated than necessary. And it is this that has changed. Now, I would tell him to be more angry.
Because I was really being rude. I was already decorating the space with my own ideas and trying to force accomodation. That is...uff! Well...I'm sorry now.
If I look at things with me now, I live in something like a desert. Parents dead, siblings on the other side of the world. No longer working (so much, anyway). I am anonymous to my neighbors (though they are kind). The patter of German in the street is untranslated by me. I love my life, and despite my "high and lonely talk" in the sentences above, I have a loving and supportive life partner. Still, ...I see that I want to contemplate in silence, and to disentangle the threads of error. It is better that I live as simply as possible.
In this expression there is also pride. But I offer it anyway because it is interesting to observe your environment and ask yourself how it serves you. You may find that some of the things that "irritate" you are actually serving you. Some of your pleasures are obfuscated.
The asylum will disband when the inmates wake up and do their duties without complaint. When they stop picking at scabs. When they are helpful rather than harmful to the common good. There may be some struggle, because guards don't know what to do with themselves when deprived of their role. In fact, that is how they were so easily enticed into taking it up.