Yesterday Stan and I participated in the Great Password Challenge.
Not that we signed up for it. It sort of snuck up on us both. He was changing his POP email accounts to IMAP, in honor of getting a new iPhone 6, to synch his devices, if you know what I mean. (If you don’t, don’t worry about it… read on.)
By mid-afternoon, I heard his frustration in his neighboring office, and offered my assistance. He had been changing the passwords to try to meet the demands of the system. By then, his email accounts had all quit working, giving him error messages.
In periods of frustration and problem solving, Stan often goes into a sort of shut-down, while I usually remain calm, if inwardly irritated. Yesterday, using our highest spiritual practices, we made it through 3 hours of password hell, without intense anger, language, even irritation with each other. A downright miracle.
By half-past suppertime (I declared Chinese take-out) we had his 3 primary email accounts all functioning again, both incoming and outgoing.
We high-fived! We congratulated ourselves and each other! We thanked God/the Universe for the Angel Tech helpers we had asked for. We also noted the great sense of accomplishment that comes when we overcome a challenge.
But then… as I sat down for supper I felt really grumpy. I wanted something – actually someone – to blame. I became – after the fact – angry at Stan for his part in getting this all tangled up. He in turn became self-critical and defensive, then angry at me.
The seduction of the downward spiral was pulling us both, right there over Chinese hot-sour soup and crab rangoon. I really wanted to slip over the edge and make it His Fault. Man, so tempting!
It’s the lure of the Dark Side, the vortex of suffering and blame. A Course in Miracles talks about the “attraction of sin and guilt.” There’s something in me that, sometimes, even with all I know, wants to go there. To put my tongue where the tooth just came out. To play “ain’t it awful?!” or “it’s his fault.” Or the ever popular, “Poor me… look what I have to put up with!”
But it seemed kind of a waste. We had both made it through a really challenging time without sinking in vibration, dropping in mood. Why would we spoil it now, when we had the option of enjoying a sense of accomplishment and a peaceful evening ahead?
As I sipped my hot-sour soup, I spoke of how tempted I was to blame. Stan dipped his crab-rangoon in the sweet and sour sauce and told me of the pull he felt to beat up on himself. We looked at each other with awe.
“We don’t have to go there, do we?”
By the time we we got to the Hunan Shrimp, we let the Downward Spiral’s gravitational pull move on past us both.
As John Milton said, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
