"A Flick of the Switch" part 2

Chapter 13 of Mystic Microsoft

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This chapter (in two parts, slightly edited) is from my memoir, Mystic Microsoft: A Journey of Transformation in the Halls of High Technology (written as Kraig Brockschmidt). I’m sharing it on the tails of the self-sacrificer to self-transcender transition explored in recent posts because it provides an example of choosing to be a channel for God’s grace. Enjoy.

Chapter 13: A Flick of the Switch, part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

Then I caught myself. Mustering all the willpower within me, I stopped cold. “It won’t help one bit,” I told myself, “to throw any more fuel on this fire.” I just said NO. Dropping my stick, so to speak, I cancelled my message, purged my inbox of everything else, and took a nice, deep breath.

Aaah. I immediately felt as though the mud had been hosed off. I felt cleansed and relieved. Now I could just ignore the raging battle and get back to my work.

Whoops! Not so fast, my friend. When one is caught in the middle of mud-slinging you keep getting dirty no matter how many times you wash up. The email kept coming. Each message brought a fresh burst of negativity that scorched me before I could even delete it.

No matter how much I tried to pretend otherwise, darkness was penetrating my entire being. I had turned away from anger in hope that it would just go away and leave me alone. But it wouldn’t. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. With an almost tangibly conscious force, the darkness kept pulling me downward: physically, that knot in my stomach became even tighter; mentally, I couldn’t concentrate; spiritually, I felt crushed.

Nor was I alone—I realized that with only two or three dozen members of soleil taking an active part in the carnage, hundreds of others were enduring a silent agony. And they probably felt like I did, just hoping to stay out of it long enough for the anguish to subside.

Then I had a horrifying thought: the negativity was so powerful that its destructive vibrations would spread into everything I did for the rest of the day, perhaps even for another week. It would spread into my work, into my relationships, into my very thoughts. And if hundreds of others…a chill ran down my spine. We had each become an unwilling carrier of a dread disease. Our repressed anger and bitterness would ultimately infect our families, our friends, and everyone else we came in contact with. They would, in turn, infect others, who would themselves infect more. And—<shudder>—a further ghastly realization surfaced: it wasn’t just happening at Microsoft’s corporate campus. Soleil had members in many of Microsoft’s nationwide sales offices and foreign subsidiaries. The epidemic was global.

This just couldn’t go on. Something had to be done. But what? I asked the question to myself over and over: “What can I do? What can I do? What power do I possibly have that can overcome such darkness?”

As I made this desperate inward search, a certain thought took shape in my mind. Despite its many challenges in the marketplace and the courtrooms to that point, I couldn’t remember a time when Microsoft had responded with hostility or malice. No, Microsoft overcame negativity with an even greater amount of positive energy. No matter what the situation, we countered every attack with an even greater determination to succeed, holding fast to our highest ideals.

The downward path of negativity and criticism is always easy: all you have to do is fall. It takes great energy and courage, on the other hand, to stand up and live your ideals—or to simply be positive—especially when no one else seems even willing to try. It is not a path for weaklings. But simply by making the effort we attune ourselves with Goodness itself, allowing the Divine Light to shine through us and drive the darkness away. In this we each have the power to change the world, if we would but choose it.

Yes, that was the answer: you can’t beat out the darkness with a stick, but you can turn on the light. I had to turn on the light. I had to express some kind of positive energy that was more powerful than the downward pull of the ongoing war.

Deeply inspired by this thought, I recalled why our group had formed in the first place—Sharing Our Life Experiences Is Loving. Soleil was a vehicle for light of every shade and hue, which together made the loveliest rainbow.

Over two years with the group I’d saved various touching stories, instructive jokes, and profound quotations. While my inbox continued to swell with putridity, I read through all of these gems and picked out a few of the best. One was this passage by Marie Dominique-Ellis, soleil’s founder:

Be compassionate
Allow people to be who they are
Allow people to express what they think
Allow yourself to not take things personally

If someone does not play the game
According to the rules
Let's give them the rules
Instead of raising our fists

Another told the fun episode from Sesame Street in which Oscar the Grouch was trying to spread grumpiness at Christmastime by giving away what he thought were useless and insulting gifts. But in each case the recipient found the item most helpful and Oscar succeeded only in spreading joy. Another story told of two Arabs who were driving cars in the open desert and collided. Instead of getting into a fight, however, they embraced each other. “Allah be praised,” they cried, “for if we hadn’t crashed we would never have met each other!” I also found the original account of the woman who had accidentally broadcast that charming message to her fiancé.

As the intense battle of negativity continued in unabated fury, I mustered every ounce of love and courage in me and composed a message with these stories. Here is how it began:

From: kraigb

To: soleil

Sent: Thursday, February 01, 1996 12:23 PM

Subject: Bringing us back to center...

Time and time again, words that appear on SOLEIL have had the power to drastically affect those who read them. Recently an outpouring of love regarding an accidentally broadcast message made the back cover of Micronews. Negative words can also have tremendous effect, and on this alias can sour a day for hundreds of people. This mail is my own personal attempt to turn anger into love.

In light of the current exchange on this alias, I'd like to share a few pieces I've picked up and saved from the last three years, hopefully in order to bring us back to that stable center where we can love, respond, and learn from each other, in the spirit of SOLEIL: Sharing Our Life Experiences Is Loving.

With my heart racing nervously, I wondered how people would respond. Would anyone notice? Would they turn their anger on me? I just didn’t know—whatever the risks, I simply had to try.

I sent my message.

Instantly I once again felt cleansed, this time permanently. This strong, positive expression of love and joy had reversed the flow. No longer were black tentacles of hatred reaching out of my inbox to strangle me—the Light drove them back for good. I knew that the war could no longer touch me. My queasiness left me completely, my mind was suddenly clear, and my soul was all at once uplifted. Wordless prayers of gratitude rose from my heart. Never before had I experienced such an instantaneous healing.

I came that day to appreciate both the incredible power of negativity and also the even more incredible power of love. I also came to a clear understanding that although it’s not up to us to create these powers, we choose which one flows through us. Will we be instruments of darkness, or instruments of light? This is really the only choice we have. It is the only real power we have.

What we choose to express, we become. To be loving simply means to choose love rather than anger or hatred. To be joyful simply means to choose joy rather than sorrow.

May we thus each pray with Saint Francis: “Make me an instrument of Thy peace.”

Oh yes, the response to my message? It was truly miraculous: the whole energy of the situation completely inverted. Whereas my inbox had been filling up with messages of anger and hatred, it was now filling up with only messages of love, joy, and gratitude—broadcast, as always, to the entire alias. Dozens of people said how my one little message had cleansed them as I had been cleansed. One woman wrote: “Thank you. You saved me from sending a very angry flame to this person. Flames were issuing from my fingers as I typed!!” Others appreciated the reminder of soleil’s purpose. Some simply enjoyed the uplifting stories. And one man who had just joined the group the day before told us all how in the midst of the battle he was really wondering what he’d gotten himself into. But now, having witnessed this undeniable transformation, he understood both the group and the Power—with so many different names—that gave it life.

And the miracle continued. When I arrived at my desk the next morning I was overwhelmed to tears. For there, in my inbox, were replies not just from Microsoft employees in the United States, but from all over the world, every one of them bursting with sweetness and joy. What could very well have been a virulent scourge of worldwide anger had been transmuted into a global epidemic of Light.

In fact, from the moment my note appeared in everyone’s inbox there was only one more negative message. It was from the same man who had issued that first scathing reply.

“This alias sucks!” he screamed, “I’m leaving it for good!”

            You can’t beat out the darkness with a stick,
                        but turn on the light
                                    and the darkness will vanish
                                                as though it had never been.

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