Anonymity

I woke up this morning thinking about the nature of Anonymity. One of the twelve traditions talks about anonymity in this way: “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.” Those of you with inquiring minds might ask right away, how anonymity can be the spiritual foundation of a thing? Isn’t anonymity in AA just to prevent alcoholics from being “outed?” I don’t think that is what this saying is talking about. Rather than disavowing any one persons presence, anonymity allows an individual to subordinate their will to the spiritual strength of the group. It’s funny, I think of anonymity as, being anonymous with ourselves. Getting our personality out of the way so we can heal the quirks that make us unhealthy.

Anonymity in AA is something of a contradiction, because spiritual well being calls for a bit of soul searching and self reflection, while asking us to be mindful of how we relate to others. In some ways this tradition refers back to the first, “Our common Welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends on unity. Unity aids the healing process, allowing us to step outside of ourselves and view our lives though the group consciousness with selflessness and mindfulness. It reminds me of the idea of selfless action. I love the idea of selfless action in the Bhagavad Gita. I believe that selfless action is the core of anonymity, work done without expectations, motives, or thinking about outcomes that purify one's mind. These concepts are vividly described in the following verses from the Gita: "A person has the right towards action alone and not towards the fruit of action. Let not the fruit of action be the motive for acting. Also, Let there not be any attachment to inaction.”

Anyway, random searches of the Internet yielded a list of The 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century. I was a little disheartened that I hadn’t read a lot of these, and of the ones I had read, I didn’t like half of them. I was interested in reading Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, but when I went to get my copy of what I thought were Weil’s essays off of my bookshelf, it turned out to be a copy of her biography instead. So now I have to run down a copy of that for my own edification. Apparently this essay is maintaining its anonymity for now.

My last struggle of the day has been to address what I feel to be a prejudice at my school. I was at an orientation meeting for new faculty the other day when I began discussing my continuing education towards my MFA with some of my peers. I told them of the difficulties I have been experiencing with my professors. A perfect example is the meeting I had last week to show my summer works to one of my professors. I told him that I had had some success in exhibiting this work over the summer. His response was to discourage me from showing my work calling it "a distraction," questioning my desire to exhibit my work. This is not the first time I have heard this language from the faculty, in fact many faculty members have frequently discouraged me from showing my work in outside venues. I was telling my story to my peers at my new job, their response was, “why are you taking this?”

It had never occurred to me to protest the seeming disparity I felt at the hands of my professors, encouraging some to show while berating others.. At a recent graduate meeting I heard the new chair of the department say that the primary focus of the graduate student should be to build a portfolio and an exhibition record. So I asked him, in light of these seeming contradictory messages, what is his position as the chair of the department on graduate exhibition outside of the auspices of the graduate program?

“Any time you can get exposure to the professional art community I would encourage you to go for it. I would discourage exhibiting for the sake of exhibiting.” Was his response.

My every cell screams at this kind of double talk. We want you to exhibit, but not to just exhibit. (Queue Scooby-Doo “Hurungh?”) Alas I have to let it go. Thank the dear chair for his kind response and suggest an opportunity to dialogue on this subject as some point in the future. Jenny sometimes says, “Let’s just mend the fence.” Meaning, we probably aren’t going to make a lot of headway on this subject tonight. Let’s just mend the fence and try to get some sleep. I think this is a good policy for inaction. Realizing that I can’t do everything I want to do in an instant. I can’t right a couple of years of wrongs over night, or even dispel a few dozen character defects in an instant. The best I can hope for is a bit of anonymity from myself, my fears, and the nagging thoughts of a persistent mind.