To Kick and Be Kicked

To kick means to hit with the foot, but a “kick” can also mean an objection or complaint. Both suit my story. My earliest memory of kicking is playing with stones on the road—seeing how far I could send them—hopping on my left foot before vigorously kicking with my right.

That changed when I learned there is consciousness in everything—beginning with a stone.* Now a stray rock became one I looked at with an urge not to kick—there were no more personal contests, and I stopped aiming my toes at stones.

What I also now understand (from the words of Meher Baba) is that when someone speaks to me unkindly (or gives me a verbal kick), rather than being upset, I can stay calm, just listen, and know this person is taking something away from me called an “impression from a past life”—even if I don’t know which one it is—and taking it on him or herself. At first, I felt startled by this because I had a history of pointing out to someone who criticized me that I was not this. Then I became encouraged. I could decrease the importance of the words directed at me and rather than defend myself, practice simply listening. I found another Baba quote saying to be like the “football” that when kicked goes a long ways. Now there was spiritual progress where before there had been none.

My realization is, “Rather than reacting to criticism (a kick) directed to us, we may listen, acknowledge without agreement, and later reflect on its truth or absence of truth.”

*Discourses, Meher Baba. “The progressive evolution of consciousness from the stone stage culminates in man. The history of evolution is the history of a gradual development of consciousness.”