I always wanted to help others and an impulse to throw light on the hypocrisy in everyone and myself. This attracted me to comedians and great spiritual teachers and teachings – they exposed hypocrisies, were sources of wisdom, and told the greatest jokes. The greatest of my Teachers, Adi Da Samraj, had a tremendous capacity for humor and seemed to have transcended point of view. He was the most paradoxical being I ever encountered, as well as the wisest, most critical, praiseworthy, and full of humor; his teaching always criticized and illuminated; it was a perfect paradox of instruction.

 

Hypocrisy is claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which your behavior does not conform. The Aussies (Australians) call the exposing of hypocrisy - the 'taking the mickey out of something.' It originally referred to taking the 'Mick' or Irish out of a situation. The phrase was based on the assumption that the Irish were a people who had hot tempers and loved to drink and brawl. Taking the 'Mick' out of someone (or something) meant removing that person's tendency to fight or brawl and turning all points of dissension into a source of humor. Now, it seems to me that the 'condition' attributed to the Irish

is, in one way or another, true of all of us, not just those few.

 

'The Mickey' represents our unconscious egoic identification with our own point of view. There is an inherent 'problem' with 'point of view' because it is limited and therefore necessarily set against all others.  Therefore, every point of view and everything has a 'Micky' that must be removed. To recognize the 'Mick' or to 'take the Mickey out' demands recognition of points of view other than our own; how else could it be? Other points of view are recognized only to our own and thus involve acknowledging that which is beyond the ends of our universe (our own world). This recognition of our own limitations and others makes our own serious point of view a relative and laughing matter, and to see that 'Mick' needs humor and humor is the result of such acknowledgment. The practice 'of taking out the Mickey' does not keep us from hypocrisy, but it keeps us from being 'unconscious' hypocrites; after all, we all got the Mickey . . .

 

So, it seems to me the question is not whether we are hypocrites or not; we all most certainly are; the difference is whether we are conscious of being a hypocrite or not . . . and this is the distinction between a raving fundamentalist and a laughing man. To realize ourselves and every one of us as an actor or a ‘hypocrite (the Greek word for 'actor' is 'hypocrite'),’ is to become paradoxically conscious of unknowable Reality and our own limitations. Our ignorance is the necessary ground for any knowledge or understanding . . .  which provides the ability to discriminate between shit and Shinola or what is true and what is false. 

 

In the words of Carl Jung, "Whatever we are unconscious of happens to us outwardly as fate." If we wish to 'grow up.' and become human and responsible, we must start by becoming aware of our own ignorance, faults, limitations, and hypocrisies and this is what 'taking the Mickey,'

out of someone and ourselves is meant to do.

 

The stories I tell here illuminate the darkness of our hypocrisy and that of others. Because there are so many points of view one can address, there is no end to the stories one can relate or the Mickeys we can speak of.

 

It has been said that ‘an actor is an artist who tells the truth by lying' . . . the ‘lying’ refers to the ‘acting’ that he or she does. A storyteller is also a liar and does similar work by telling stories or tales and putting words into other people's mouths. By relating stories, he or she inevitably, consciously or unconsciously, exposes limitations,  ‘lies’, and hypocrisies in the subjects and characters he considers, including himself, the storyteller; in other words, he 'takes the Mickey out of all of it and him or her self.'

 

So, welcome to my storytelling, my small attempt

to take the Mickey outside the bar of life. 

Let me assure you, everything I write here 

is filled with nothing but Mickeys and 'true lies.'

 

 

- Peter Malakoff