One of the participants at my ‘Effortless Being’ retreat asked me to write this down for him. Since it’s about all of us, about our human condition, here it is.
One evening at the retreat they were showing a video of ‘Le Cirque de Soleil’ on a full size screen. This particular video had many long shots of the audience, so you could really get a feeling for what was going on with them. The first ninety minutes were the acrobats-probably some of the best acrobats in the world--tumbling, whirling, jumping and swooping around, like fantastic birds in flight. Their costumes were stunning, the music was amazing, and their performances were impeccable. It was beyond impeccable, it seemed almost superhuman. The audience sat, with heads craned and mouths open, oohing and aahing in wonder.
And then out came the clowns-each clown, in his or her own way, trying to duplicate the feats we had already witnessed. Their costumes were ridiculous, and their antics were absurd. They tripped over each other, pushed each other out of the way and down trap doors in the floor, and pranced around together like a bunch of complete lunatics.
What really got to me was the audience. They were all laughing ecstatically-laughing until they cried. The clowns were very good, and they just went on and on, new ones appearing out of a hole in the floor every few minutes. In the audience, total strangers were passing kleenex around, slapping themselves on the legs, and children were throwing themselves in their parents’ laps with total abandon and glee.
It became apparent to me that our laughter, this overflowing joy and freedom, was a spontaneous recognition of the human condition, even if that recognition was not conscious. Who can identify with the acrobats? Impossible, they are the perfect ones, the ones who never fall, who never make mistakes. But the clowns are us, stumbling around, falling flat on our faces, wondering what happened, and why we can’t be those perfect acrobats.
What a great relief it would be if we knew, from the beginning, that to be human is to be a kind of clown. How seriously we take ourselves, how hard we try to get everything right. Who taught us that we are so important, that every thought we think is so important? Why have we never learned to laugh at ourselves? To release our grip on our terrible self-preoccupation?
I remember when I was first learning how to speak in public, many years ago. It was in India, and the audiences I was speaking to were sometimes quite large. One day I asked my teacher for help. “What should I do?” I asked him, “when I first walk out in front of that huge sea of faces? It can be pretty scary.”
“It’s simple,” he told me, “All you have to do is remind yourself that you are no more significant than a spider.” You might regard this as a strange kind of comfort, but it was one of best things anyone ever said to me. It released me from my self-importance, and allowed me to be myself up there, without any fixed ideas of how I was supposed to be. Sometimes I would walk out in front of the audience, and just repeat that to myself, “I am no more significant than a spider.” I would feel my whole being expand, and relax into the ‘unbearable lightness of being.’ The lightness of being that knows that the harder I try to impress you, the less authentic will be our connection.
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