I don't want to make this Substack significant
Forgiving the desire for significance through action, activity, purpose, job or role
My learning around this was beautifully shown to me by Spirit in a reflection on a scene from The Chosen, Season 4.
In that episode, the apostles were busying themselves with thrashing, sifting, grinding wheat, and making bread. While all the apostles were engaged in various parts of this activity, Judas was frustrated. He comes forth to them with his frustration, which could be paraphrased as, “why are we wasting our time doing this when we could be doing better things?”, “why can’t we just buy wheat from the market”.
The apostles respond kindly, it was the day they sifted wheat, and perhaps another day they would buy it. But on that day, it was their activity. That’s what they were there to do.
Judas’s thoughts highlight a beautiful moment which reveals how the ego loves to establish its authority, feeling justified and entitled to its way as the better way. It uses logic and rationale to render beautiful moments, perfect and whole in themselves, completely meaningless, to be diminished, looked down upon, broken down and conquered by reason, prowess, and power.
Over the last many weeks, I have been sitting with a similar conflict and anxiety.
I have been ‘jobless’ so to speak, and no matter how much I beg and demand God, or punish myself mentally and physically, I simply can’t seem to figure out what to do, nor what is in store for me. The lack of identity linked to a sense of activity (the what I do), has been bothering me for quite a while.
Today, when there was some quiet, I realised that I was attaching enormous significance to activity itself.
There seems to be a subconscious way in which I engage in an activity, whereby, what may start off as an innocent activity, becomes endowed with enormous significance and consequence. I might draw a squiggly, and suddenly I will concern myself with being an artist. I might write a few words and then concern myself with being an author. I might make a cup of coffee and wonder if I should have a coffee shop.
The void and sense of deprivation I was experiencing was being thrust upon every simple innocent action; trying to make it what it is not. Trying to make myself significant when I was not. There was a graspy attachment with which I did any activity—almost like I was anticipating that any minute I would discover or make the ‘me’ who had finally found her purpose. A me who was finally meaningful.
Every activity was weighed in terms of its significance. Did it add to my significance or take away from it? Was it wasting my time, or making a me? I anticipated that activity and its meaning to give form and shape to my life, directing me towards choosing more actions like it, tracing an arc of ‘progression’ from those actions. I wanted to make some activity my job, and do it the same way, the same time everyday—to a level where I don’t have to think or be disrupted. Delicious zombified comfort.
Zeroing in on the activity itself, I realised that in the absence of this tendency, I don’t know what that activity is. I don’t know what it is for. I don’t know why I am doing it. All I can see is that in this moment it is being done.
No activity is really significant. I can make any activity as significant as I want, and attach my own identity and significance to it. Without this story, it is just a happening.
What does anyone actually do? No one knows.
Who is the actor? What do they act?
Viewed closely, there is a dance, and I am a participant. I dance with the world, as the world dances with me.
Spirit shared a few lines as a practice for whenever I felt the pull to imbue any activity with undue significance.
I declared
“I don’t want to make this activity significant.
I want this activity to be forgiven”
I also added the classic lines from my teacher, “I want to see that this is not real and does not mean anything”.
Side note: Spirit was encouraging me to write this up and share it this morning itself but I delayed because the sense of doubt and imperfection I felt around this idea revealed that I had made this activity significant. Hence the title :)