When Snark Sneaks In
Here’s your cleaned-up transcript — with paragraph breaks, punctuation, and clarity edits (no content added or omitted), using standard capitalization and correcting obvious dictation or spelling errors like “spear mind” → Spirit Mind, “reoing” → redoing, and “Husi” → Hisami.
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Well, I had another beautiful experience of the material mind really shining — doing its thing, thinking well — and at the same time, having the beautiful, full-spectrum Spirit Mind experience.
You know, the material mind is great at details and patterns — material-world things. And Spirit Mind sees the full picture: What are others feeling? What are the other possibilities? How is my energy influencing the discussion? All this greater picture — not just the words and the physical world, but also the energy at hand, the people, and the possibilities. Really, really cool.
So again, this one was around the construction we’re doing on our remodel. The bill came in, and there was kind of a list of items there. Two of them kind of surprised me. I was like, “Oh, I’m surprised they’re going to charge me for that.”
There was a situation where we had a clearance issue putting through a duct. They had showed me before that there was this issue — how it was going to affect the cabinet below it, and then that was going to affect the door, and then the refrigerator, and then the cabinet above that. There was going to be this cascading effect because they couldn’t get the clearance they thought they had.
When I’d seen it with them — I happened to be on-site when they showed me this, maybe a month ago — I thought, “Wow,” and really tried hard to think of any other place to put it. But there just wasn’t any other solution. So I said, “Yeah, okay. Shoganai,” which means like, “C’est la vie,” or, “I guess that’s just how it is.”
But the next morning, I woke up and my material mind had a solution. It said, “Ah! Maybe instead of using a round duct there, we could use an oval one.” That would make it just about five centimeters shorter — not much, but enough to give us breathing room so that everything would work.
So I sent an email the next day and suggested that. They were kind of hesitant, saying, “It’s not going to make much difference.” And I said, “Well, just a little bit could help, right?” And they said, “Yeah.”
So I said, “Okay, let’s do it.” They had done it. It had worked. They were able to make everything fit in a really elegant way — where before it was going to look a little bit crowded. We were going to make some compromises, rebuild some things, incur extra cost.
So I was surprised when the bill came in that they were charging that to me. Redoing the duct and fixing the cabinet under it — they had charged that as an additional charge for me. But I didn’t feel bad. I just was surprised. I wrote a little email. It said, “Oh, I’m surprised by that.”
And at the end of the email, I did put a little snark in there. I also wrote, “Oh, maybe you’re going to charge me for those other mistakes that I found the other day too. I hope not.” Something like that.
And I knew energetically that something was off — like I shouldn’t put that in there. But my finger just kind of fired off the email before I could fix it. In that moment, my material mind wasn’t in the loving space of Spirit Mind. I was kind of in that space of frustration. I wanted to be right. I wanted to sort of poke them in the eye a little bit. This email was going to three or four people — kind of that group thing we do sometimes, where we’re a little mean to sort of embarrass the person in a way where we think, “Ha! I made you look dumb.” So then you’re going to concede to my point.
This is all happening unconsciously, right? We all do this at times. I’m just admitting it — because I’m not judging myself there. I knew energetically this didn’t need to be there, but I’d already fired off the email. So it was kind of rolling around in my head like, “I just set in motion some energy here.”
Interestingly, the energy did come back. They’re super professional. Japan is amazing in their language and their politeness, everything. They just said, “Oh, of course we wouldn’t charge for something that’s our mistake. But this other one wasn’t really our mistake. We told you sometimes things don’t work out, and this didn’t work out. You really wanted this oval solution, and we said it’s not going to matter, but we said we’d do it anyway if you really, really wanted us to.”
And again, I had this sense of being able to receive what they said and understand the energy. I wrote a few replies — one reply I didn’t send. One reply was going into details — why I thought I shouldn’t have to pay for this, why I thought it was more of a mistake than not — kind of defensive.
But this time, before it was sent, I happened to be chatting with Hisami. I said, “Oh, there’s this little problem we’re having.”
Just the way she asked me about it, the way she responded — she had no judgment. She doesn’t have this material mind outside of Spirit Mind. She doesn’t really use her material mind in a super strong way like that. Hers is always coming from love, just trying to find the best solution for everybody. That’s kind of natural for her.
Just being in that energy, I got this idea. I was like, “Oh! Got it. Thank you, Hisami. Even though you didn’t say it out loud, the things you said reminded me there’s a different way to approach this.”
I can just ask a few clarifying questions. I can try to shine light so everybody feels good and we all get on the same page. I realized — I’m actually okay if I don’t get what I want. If I end up paying for those things, I still feel okay. If I’m able to communicate that I was surprised and didn’t want to — just being able to say that was my actual need.
I just wanted to share — my material mind really wanted to say, “I’m surprised. I think maybe you should pay for at least the cabinet part, because that still would’ve needed to be fixed even if we didn’t change the size of the duct.” That was already a mistake — an oversight. But even that, if I had to pay for it myself, I still didn’t feel bad.
And it was just really nice. It was like — oh, in the midst of this negotiation that’s happening over email in slow motion, I’m seeing that energy matters. The energy I put out there — if I put out snarkiness, it’s probably going to come back. They’re going to feel defensive. That’s just natural.
If I put out curiosity and kindness, then that’s going to come back naturally.
So I even started the email by saying, “Hey, either way, this is going to be really good. You guys came up with such a beautiful design after we made the change, and I’m really grateful for that. The project’s going really well.”
So there was just a lot of gratitude and love and appreciation in there — in addition to, “Let’s clarify this point. Let’s just kind of get to the solution. Nobody’s right or wrong or good or bad. Let’s just sort it out. And either way is going to be fine.”
It was really nice for me to notice that in that short period of time, I went from snarkiness to that space of just finding a good answer.
And it’s not about my ego. It’s not about my ego fluffing up, wanting to be right, wanting to be correct, wanting to make someone else look bad. It’s just about all of us enjoying it — being grateful — and returning to a space of balance and shared understanding and gratitude.
I really love that change.
