Before I went on the road trip I had refereed a tournament in the men’s league at the end of the scheduled year. These tournaments are always more intense than the rest of the year and the players play with stronger physically exertion and with more emotion.
In one game I made a call that was disputed. I think I made an incorrect call but I hadn’t seen the interaction between players as I was looking where the puck was going. I asked the young man refereeing with me if he had seen what happened but he had not noticed anything untoward.
There was emotional reaction from a few players and one man swore at me a couple times and I gave him a two-minute ‘sportsmanlike conduct’ penalty.
At the end of the game which that team lost that man told me he wished I had, ‘some respect for the game.’
This comment bothered me on a number of levels. All year I joined these hockey players in their game. They all want to have a referee; the game would be quite different without one. I enjoy doing it for the most part, I do not like any criticism, though I see that I have learned a lot from the criticism, and it has helped me in my spiritual quest.
The criticism brings up my own criticism of my self. If I had no feelings of inadequacy then I wouldn’t feel bad when I am criticized by another person, I would just see it as a random comment. Possibly I wouldn’t even hear any criticism because my soul would not be attracting it. I get the criticism because that is what I need to process my own lack of self worth and for me to grow up spiritually.
The night after this game I lay in bed for a long while without going to sleep. Occasionally I would think of the interaction with the hockey player and when I did think of it I just tried to breathe into the feelings I was having. I did this a number of times and then I began to feel very, very happy. A large grin seeped into my face. I do not remember ever feeling this happy and I have never experienced a smile like that.
After a few minutes I found myself in another emotional place I had never felt before. I had the feeling that I was in a fully creative world that had no set boundaries. I felt fully free and alive. This was short lived and I knew at the time that it was going to be short lived and was not to be something that I could call up if I so wanted to. Since then though, what it did do was give me an element of faith that I hadn’t so far if my life attained. Since that night I could call up faith quite quickly when alone with my thoughts and a number of times stay with it until my face went into the grin, which seems to be conjured up out of the mist.
What did I have faith in? Faith - that the world is a much better place than I have ever imagined. Faith that I can get better and better as time goes on and that I will be better physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Faith that I can trust in the process that I have been slowly, incrementally practicing.
The practice being - what I have been doing when I feel my feelings of inadequacy or insecurity, instead of mentally trying to control the outward happenings that go along with the feeling. That is feel the feeling and not to intellectualize it. Certainly not to deny, justify or minimize any feeling I might have.
It is instructive to see how the criticism from another could lead to a spiritual experience that is so beneficial to my growth.
I do need to say however that during the recent road trip I was on I did start to consume caffeine and now I am back where I started from with a constant caffeine addiction. I know I can wean it off; it is just a pain to do so again. I am finding that with this addiction my mind and spirit is muddied. As I said I could call up faith quite quickly but is has become difficult since the addition of caffeine to my body. If I hadn’t had the time of a more spiritual openness I would not see now how this addiction affects me.
This reminds me that importance of looking into everything that I may be addicted to.
It would all much more resemble Sparta without referees. I watch a lot of UFC, and it's a really challenging job both mentally and physically. Peoples lives are at stake, as we recently found out with that terrible hockey death/killing last year. People are ever more off their rockers.