Specificity and Accuracy

I think there is some confusion about what exactly it is I mean by specificity and accuracy.

Contrary to what you believe, I am NOT asking you to hit a bull’s eye.

I am asking you to eliminate everything that does not pertain to the material.

We THINK accuracy and specificity means that out of the ten zillion possible choices, we have to be geniuses and find THE ONLY PERFECT one – like we’re aiming for the head of a pin or the eye of a needle.

I think you think you’re looking for a needle in a haystack.

But that’s not the case at all!  In fact we shouldn’t be AIMING at, or searching for — ANYTHING! Indeed, we should be doing the very opposite.

Instead of aiming at what we perceive to be our goal or the answer (or the prize per Anthony De Mello), we need to simply allow the given circumstances, the relationship and the genre, to limit the playing area for us until the ONLY CHOICES WE CAN MAKE GIVEN THOSE LIMITATIONS will be perfect ones.

This teeny, tiny, limited playing area gives us the freedom to do anything we want in that space.  It’s great!  It’s freeing. We simply CANNOT cross the boundaries.

We don’t have to take aim and hope to hit the mark.  We just need to set ourselves up to be able to do nothing BUT hit the mark by noticing and embracing the limitations already imposed upon us by the text. It’s a simple process of elimination: if we give in to what what the paper tells us to do, we can’t go wrong.  It’s only when we ignore what the text is asking of us that we get in trouble.

Uch, it’s so zen, so Tao Te Ching, and so hard not only to explain, but also to execute.  But once we DO work that way, it’s effortless, always.