Not feeling particularly inspired, so I am going to resort to a “here are some quizzes” blog format.

Here are some quizzes, to eat some time off your clock. Click on the graphics to take the quiz:

Personality: How Others See you

Your romantic attachment style: Secure and Happy

At this stage of your development in romantic relationships, you tend to be pretty evenly balanced in your attachment style. You are not significantly more anxious about them, nor significantly avoiding intimacy or emotional closeness in relationships.

This is a healthy balance, but it also may mean that it is more difficult for you to find someone else who has achieved this same healthy balance! Most people tend to either have greater anxiety or greater avoidance in relationships. You’d probably be most comfortable and at ease in a relationship where your partner is also fairly balanced in their romantic attachment approach.

“Things are not always as they seem.”

I know that’s an old phrase and something we tend to “toss out there” when we feel slightly mystified by the occasionally counterintuitive workings of the Universe.

Sometimes– even when you know that “things” are not as they appear, and know this with the utmost conviction– ”things” can appear in such a way that you have moments of doubt. Even when you know the doubt is a waste of time. Even when you know you have no reason to doubt.

It makes me realize that even though we often support the idea that our minds– our intellect– must prevail over “heart” in order to make sense of things, there are also times where the heart– with its utter conviction and determination– must prevail over the fact that nothing is making sense, from a logical intellectual perspective.

Maybe it’s a bit like finding balance between intuition and logic.

And perhaps there is no part of the human experience where this becomes more important than when we consider love. Love (and I am talking “higher” or “soul” love here, not your garden variety “ego-based” love) is– at least for my money– the highest level of human awareness. It is the purest and most beautiful gift we can give ourselves, and others.

And, at the soul level, things are definitely not always “as they seem.”

I was having a conversation, yesterday, with Someone… and we ended up laughing knowingly, as we understood the simple piece of “logic” that governs soul-level love, and yet confounds 99% of the world, and keeps them trapped (and not saying it’s always a BAD thing) in the world of ego-love:

As long as you are looking for love, you are actually making an open admission that you don’t have it. It’s very simple, really. I can’t both look for something, and have it, at the same time. It’s a paradox. The only hope of “having,” is to stop “looking.” And even that… is beside the point. Soul-level love isn’t something that can be “had,” in the first place, because it is something that simply Is. You can’t “own” it, and you can’t “posess” it, and you can’t “find” it somewhere. Because, it comes from inside yourself… and the only way to experience it, is to be it. When you realize that you are love, you attract love, in kind. Nobody can “give” it to you, you give it to yourself.

It’s just that simple.

And that’s why all those goo-roos and “experts” tell us to work on our relationships with ourselves, first.

No, it really is that simple.

And things are not always as they appear…

Because– sometimes– we have to say things, and do things (due to circumstances, and where we are on Our Path), that don’t necessarily reflect who we ARE. But the Universe knows, and “things” will– as inevitably as the incoming tide– sort themselves out, and Love will prevail.

Oh, and there are no rules. So stop trying to fit it into some neat little “box.” Just as it can’t be “found,” it also does not have a “shape” or a “format.” It’s free, an opening, an allowing… with no contingencies, or dependencies.

It simply IS.

Percolating Ideas

I was never much good at just coming up with things, out of thin air. It’s not that I don’t like spontaneity, it’s more the case that a lot of things simply don’t occur to me on the spur of the moment. I noodle stuff. Sometimes endlessly. I think back on something that happened from days out in the future, and suddenly it occurs to me that “such and such a change” would have made the experience much better. I rarely have such ideas while the experience is taking place.

There’s a paradox there, however, in that the pieces I have spent weeks or months noodling around, tend to fall into place suddenly and spontaneously. I don’t just start working on a puzzle, building it one piece at a time… I sit and plan it and ponder it for an eternity… and then the final picture spontaneously “appears” and I can build it in record time, from that point onwards… as if I “know” every step that must be taken to get to the complete picture, even through I have never walked the path there.

When I was a kid, my mom would occasionally tell people that “Peter seems to ‘practice’ life before her gets into it.” I guess there’s a truth there… although the only thing I distinctly remember “practicing” was the conversation I was going to have, before making a phone call. No, I’m not kidding. Where other teens were spending hours and hours yakking on the phone, I always tried to find ways to “just drop by” to talk to people, rather than calling them.

I really suck at “just jumping in and starting somewhere.” One of the things I have made peace with in recent years is “being OK” with my process. And I think that’s really important, as a way of helping us find the lives we really want. I watch a lot of people around me get “trapped” in a game of trying to fit a process that doesn’t work for them to their efforts to get to whatever place they want to go.

So how is it that we end up spinning our wheels, stuck in the “process,” rather than trying to figure out how to get to the actual “outcome” in a way that makes sense to us? You know, the metaphorical “am I painting the house properly,” rather than “Is the house looking the way I wanted it to?”

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a bad case of “People Pleasing,” but often we give an awful lot of weight to “what other people think” about the way we’re doing things. OK, maybe that makes sense on some level… there are many ways to put a square peg into a round hole… and then there are those who’ll insist such a thing is “not possible.” Shutting down all the “voices” and leaving only the power of our own convictions can be difficult… but it strikes me as essential that when we pursue our dreams, we have to act “self-ishly.” Trying to live someone else’s “version” of what we want is never quite going to feel right.

Now, I’m not advocating that we shouldn’t listen to suggestions… it is just that they are not necessarily “better” because someone else came up with them… someone, perhaps, who has experience in whatever area we’re pursuing. Remember, just because it worked for them, doesn’t mean it is right for us.

In other news, it is “one of those dates” today: 7/7/7.

I have long been fascinated by numbers, their meaning, and coincidences and synchronicities. 11:11 is one of my favorite times, and it often seems to show up, just when I happen to be wondering what time it is.

I feel “scattered.” People are disappearing on me… and when that happens, it often makes me ponder who I have “disappeared on.” Because, of course, that does happen. Maybe it’s just the nature of friendships and relationships that they sometimes run a bit “bi-polar.” Hot and cold. Or maybe that’s the result of my being an “explorer” and “seeker” for much of my adult life. It actually strikes many people I know as a slightly odd thing about me… I am very much an introvert, and quite a private person… but I have always feelt driven to “meet a lot of people.” Maybe it’s because I have spent so many years in search of my “tribe.” You can’t expect to find your tribe if you just sit on your lillywhite arse and “wish” for them to exist… you have to go out and actively seek and find.

As a result, I know a lot of people. Or “have known.” Because it seems like we often disappear on each other.

I have learned not to pay too much attention to society’s “Forever Myth.” Sure, it’s a nice ideal that when we make a connection, it is going to last “forever.” And maybe some connections DO. But I believe there are also many wonderful relationships to be had, that never had the nature and intent to last more than a few months, or years… certain lessons get learned, you run out of things to say… and they should just naturally end. And yet… we cling to them, long after they have actually “ended.”

Maybe it’s a matter of differing perspectives. One of the last persons to comment to me that I seemed to “know so many people” was also someone who had surprised me… in an earlier conversation… by “guessing” that she’d slept with “about 30 people.” I couldn’t even begin to imagine, and yet she couldn’t imagine how readily and easily I seemed open to finding and befriending new people.

As I frequently say, “Life is weird.”

The MORE I think about it, the MORE I keep leaning towards the notion that so many of our troubles and suffering in the world can be traced back to a toxic love affair with the word MORE; particularly to the relentless pursuit of MORE.

Our entire value system seems so wrapped up in 1000s of variations of MORE that we completely lose sight of even looking at “what is,” let alone contemplating the idea that maybe everything we need and want is already here. Even if that’s just “New Age Mumbo Jumbo,” I’d submit that most people are (at least) rather oblivious to whether or not the particular MORE they are pursuing has any ability to affect their deeper sense of happiness and well-being.

Maybe it’s just human nature. We spend our lives pouring MORE water on the fire, rather than pausing to figure out what’s burning. Maybe I have grown cycnical because I have spent so much time “mapping” the fires of my personal hell(s)… maybe I just have a twisted perspective on how the Universe Works.

Like many, I am what some people would call a “Seeker.” I suppose Seekers “seek” different things, from inner peace to huge piles of money. For the most part, I am a Seeker in the psychological/spiritual/psychic realm. My days of Seeking in the physical/material world are largely behind me.

One of the things I learned along the way is that most people driven by “seeking” (this would include myself) carry around something that feels like a “hole.” The thing about a hole is that it implies the “absence of” something. And so– due to our own fears, and pressures from society around us– we go about finding an assortment of “things,” so we can put MORE stuff into our hole, in the hopes it would go away.

The irony of that paradigm is that a hole with a bunch of stuff in it is STILL a hole. The hole hasn’t gone away, it has merely been disguised; decorated; camouflaged. The second irony is that we often “misplace” our efforts… that is, we try to use “objects” to fill a hole created by a loss of “feelings.”

Maybe MORE is not “bad,” in and of itself. “Bad” is a nebulous term, at the best of times. When the Lion eats the Gazelle, it’s good for the Lion, but bad for the Gazelle. Is the desire for MORE Love a bad thing? Probably not. How about the desire for MORE power? Or MORE money? Or MORE designer sneakers?

I guess that’s not the point. The point is knowing our hole. Because with knowing, we might– just might– be able to fill ourselves with MORE of something that will actually make the hole go away. A hole created from a lack of love cannot be filled with new shoes (sorry, ladies!), nor with risky behavior, gambling, or alcohol. It can only be filled with Love, because that is what was removed, in the first place. And that can be tricky business… especially if you’re not entirely sure what Love is….

I was at a workshop some years ago, and the Teacher was telling a story about a man who had come to a different workshop, and just went on and on with his accolades of “how wonderful it was to finally be in a group that saw the world as he did,” and how glad he was to have found a Teacher who subscribed to his point of view.

A sort of awkward silence followed.

The Teacher eventually responded “And what do you believe you will learn from someone who supports the illusions you have already taken as your own?”

The man was deeply offended.

We learn in many ways, and we travel many paths in search of “meaning.” In the process we have many Teachers, from our families to so-called “experts” and “gurus.”

But what does a “good” Teacher look like?

Whether it’s a frailty, or a psychosis, we are often drawn to those who support our perception of ourselves, and of the world. But does that make them “good” Teachers, or merely “enablers?” And where is the fine line between merely enjoying the company of like-kind minds, and being addicted to those minds reinforcing and validating a paradigm that may be toxic, or certainly less-than-healthy?

I do believe that good Teachers are compassionate, caring and understanding. That said, my best Teachers have been the ones who have been willing to tell me things I didn’t necessarily want to hear. Not in a “mean” or “judgmental” way, but in a way that allowed me to “tweak the picture” in a positive direction; letting go of attachments that weren’t necessarily good for me.

And good Teachers also seem to have in common the ability to see and understand “what is.” When we are searching, and seeking out “teachers,” there’s often an implication that something is “missing,” and we are battling some kind of “fixation” or “psychosis.” Sometimes the greatest lesson comes when someone tells us that “there is nothing wrong,” in a situation where we have worked ourselves into a frenzy over some perceived “issue.”

Some seem to believe that “shock tactics” are needed to stir people out of their comfort zones. Russian Mystic and philospher G.I. Gurdjieff (one of the original teachers of the Fourth Way philosophy) was quite famous for bullying his students into enlightenment. Perhaps that works for some, but it’s also a strategy that will sour many on even caring about self-exploration. In my opinion, there are more ways to “rattle cages” than blatantly beating on them with a metaphorical baseball bat. My best Teachers have been very quiet and unassuming people who had the ability to call their students on ingrained bullshit without being rude about it.

Maybe it’s all a matter of how we learn. Some learn from stress, some learn from anger, some learn from shame, some learn from despair… and so, the “right” Teacher isn’t one who “humours” our psychosis, but one whose style of conveying a lesson– ugly, or pretty– fits our temperament, and place in our journey.

I have been to California, and I have spent time with my “Tribe.” It has been a while since the last time I have been to a retreat– for a variety of reasons, most of which relate to selling a house, moving, and all that good stuff.

Each time I go to one of these events, I am reminded of a single word: “Community.” Even though the people I just spent four days with came from all over the globe (as far away as New Zealand!), we are a community. And even though I have never been much of a “joiner,” in the conventional sense, being with this particular group of people fills me with a deep sense of “belonging” I don’t typically experience elsewhere. Unlike your typical workshop setting– where people often say “let’s stay in touch” and then don’t– these people share a deep commitment to stay connected, even if it means via Skype, across the globe.

Perhaps it is a core element of the human experience, to have this desire… not just a desire to “connect,” but a desire to “belong” to something. And the funny thing is… this group shares this sense of “belonging,” even though many of the participants are first-time attendees.

OK, so I confess…

I have “joined” a variety of groups over the years. But when you put 25-odd empaths and inuitives in the same room, it’s a little different from putting 25 comic book collectors, or 25 people who play golf, into the same space. I can’t exactly explain how that “works.” Maybe it has something to do with the fact that these folks actually can see and/or sense the invisble threads that connect us all. Then again, maybe it’s because one of the common threads tends to be a lifetime of alienation, for having “senses” that make no sense to other people. When I was a little kid, I used to scare people because they felt that I was looking right through them, when I looked at them. Actually, I wasn’t looking “through” them, but I was “seeing” them in a way that’s a little different from most people.

Society– the world– tends to dismiss such things, or riducles them. And so, for most, they are buried rather deeply, in the interest of “getting along.”

For no other reason than I want to, I tend to get there early and work the registration desk. I have been part of the volunteer staff since 2004. It always amuses me how a few newcomers will insist that they are “too weird” even for this group, and how they have long since determined that they have no “tribe.” But in spite of their best efforts… they still end up feeling like they finally have found that “sense of belonging” that previously eluded them.

And watching that unfold is a beautiful thing. But what moves me most is to watch people who have spend a lifetime “self-editing” and being guarded about describing themselves… gradually “letting their shields down” as they discover that this is not like any other place they have been.

Leaving is always difficult; we never want it to end. Bur we remind ourselves– and each other– that we are starting new beginnings, not having “endings.” That helps.

Not a lot. But it helps.

In returning home, I also realized something about my own “sense of place.” It was the first time I had flown into Sea-Tac airport after moving to the Northwest. As we approach, we did the wide swing north, for a landing to the south… passing by Mt. Rainier, then over the Puget Sound with all the islands, turning back over the city of Seattle, and then in past Boeing Field for landing. As I looked out at the scenery below, I understood that… possibly for the first time in my adult life… that I was returning to a place that actually “felt” like home; a “home” I could feel, and not just pay lip service to.

And that, my friends, is a difficult thing to put a “value” on.

***

In other news, I was thinking about putting some music on this site… people often ask me what it is I am listening to, and remark that the amazon links usually are to obscure CDs without samples. Made me realize that I’d have to rip and upload my own mp3′s from CDs… and got wondering about copyright laws, and all that good stuff.

One of the most (over-?) used words in the self-growth “industry” surely has to be “Acceptance.”

There is a bajillion disciplines and philosophies out there. At a cursory glance, they may seem quite different, but when you dig below the surface there’s often a common thread revolving around the idea that we must “accept” and “embrace” certain things in order to move forward and grow. Acceptance is about letting go of resistance; letting go of patterns that keep us stuck.

Fair enough.

From my perspective, a great source of pain and confusion– for a lot of people– seems to be the misplaced notion that “accepting” and “embracing” something (we otherwise typically dislike and/or philosophically reject), by definition means that we also have to “like” or “love” it.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about some of the misunderstandings that surround the core concept of finding Peace and Enlightenment. As was the case there, “Mindless Spiritual Idiot Syndrome” can often be observed in those who explore and subsequently wrestle with accepting and embracing their own– and other people’s– “Shadows.” Acceptance is seldom a stumbling block when dealing with traits/people/habits we like; the “roadblocks” mostly appear when we face our dislikes, which often bring us face-to-face with the “dark side.”

In an interesting piece of “symmetry”– I don’t really like the word “Enlightenment,” but I accept that it’s commonly used and carries a particular meaning for a lot of people and have come to embrace it as the most descriptive term I can use, in certain situations. That’s not a great example, though.

More often I use the example of “The Barking Dog,” originally shared by one of my Teachers. Our neighbor may have a nasty, snarling, barking, biting dog chained in the yard. We really have no control over the dog, or how it reacts– all we can control is how we respond to the dog’s barking and nasty temper. We have a choice to stay in a place of anger and becoming upset with the dog every time it ”disturbs our peace,” and for barking and snarling every time we get within ten feet of a certain part of the fence. OR (as many spiritual Teachings suggest), we can accept and embrace the dog in all its doggy-ness, and know that it “simply IS” that the dog will bark when we walk to a certain part of the fence.

However, this is often where things get muddy…

Just because we have embraced the dog’s dog-ness doesn’t imply that we must suddenly become opinionless morons and like/love barking, snarling dogs. All we are really doing here is saying “Dog, I accept and embrace that this is what you are, and that it is not my job, and it is not within my power to change you. Please BE the dog, exactly as you are.” Nowhere is it said or written that we must suddenly “love” being barked and snarled at, and having our ankles bitten if we get too close. If love (here meaning “compassion“) is involved, we love that “dogs are dogs,” but not the toxic behavior attached to the dog, itself.

Accepting and embracing something doesn’t grant us a license to– or require us to– become opinionless and choiceless.

Many people have “barking dogs” in their lives.

Upon reflection, I’d hazard a guess that much of the suffering and confusion people experience over the Accepting-Liking and Embracing-Loving dilemma is based on the impression that “Accepting and Embracing” is an “end point,” rather than “a step.”

It took me many years to understand that it’s just a tool. A piece of Learning. An understanding that allows me to make wiser– and more “honest”– choices. We don’t have to “change” our parents, our bosses, our lovers, our spouses, our friends in order to make peace with our difficult relationships with them. It’s not our job. Most of the time, we can’t change “things,” only the way we feel and think about things, and subsequently how we respond to them. And we can’t change “people” and “relationships,” only how we choose to interact with them.

A lot of people– including those with considerable wisdom and insight– argue with me about this point. In the end, we come down to different opinions and perceptions of “unconditional love.” Specifically, the sticking point shows up when we stalemate over whether or not it is truly “love” when we allow ourselves to experience more suffering in service giving unconditional love. If loving others is not loving towards ourselves… then what? And what when we become invested in our own selflessness… running an inner martyr dialogue of “Look at me, selflessly sacrificing my own needs and wants, and taking on suffering, all in service of unconditionally loving this abusive person.” Or something like that.

When we dig around in the deeper reasons for their protests, most often they arise because agreeing with my point of view would ask them to let go of their own co-dependencies. I’m not going to get into a long explanation of “co-dependence;” I’ll just point out that it doesn’t always have the obviously negative connotations pop psychology assigns to it. Co-dependence, however, is nearly always self-serving. In its “high road” form it is often subtle– like a teacher disagreeing with a student, because agreement would lead to the student no longer being dependent on the teacher, and thus leading to the dissolution of the relationship.

When I was a kid, we travelled all the time. Being “on the road” became a natural part of existence, and I was perfectly capable of packing my own suitcase by age 10.

Although we most flew wherever we were going, I generally liked road trips better. Quite often, we’d be driving from Denmark to The Netherlands, or Switzerland, or France. Although the car was usually packed to the gills (after all, we were often gone for months at a time, not just “on holiday”), I still enjoyed watching the landscape glide by, from my perch in the back seat.

For a while– in my early 20′s– I felt really burned out on travelling, and on road trips. When I arrived in the US– in January 1981– it became the 12th country (on three continents) that I would call “home.” I was 20.

Even after a period of being “in,” it still seems that travelling, and being “on the road” is in my blood; in my nature. I once contemplated the idea of getting myself a Volvo station wagon, loading my stuff and a mattress in the back, and taking off… making a road trip around the US to visit all the people I had gotten to know… from regular life, and from cyberspace, and taking about a year to do so. I was in my 40′s, when I had that thought.

“The road” represents a strange sort of freedom, for me. When I’m on the road, it feels like this nebulous thing I think of as “my obligations” become powerless to reach out and make demands of me. People have suggested to me that I use the road as “escapism,” as a means to “run away” from whatever is in my life. Maybe that was once true, but I have changed a lot– philosophically– over the years, to where my going anywhere represents a “going towards,” rather than a “running away from” mentality.

In a few days, I’m headed to California, for a few days… going to a retreat at a place called Walker Creek Ranch, in Marin County. Going to spend a few quiet days “retreating” with some members of “my Tribe,” getting back in touch with the idea of “just being.” That, and visiting old friends… who will also be at the retreat. It’s funny, how some of my closest friends are people whom I may see for a few days a year… and otherwise we just keep up by email. And I know some of you read these pages… so “see you next week!”

Most of all, though, I am just looking forward to “going.” And I look forward to being in a place that’s out in nature, where there’s no cell phone reception and no computers. Maybe you’d insist that I am “running away from technology,” but I’d insist that I am running towards quiet time.

Meanwhile, someone else I know is also on the road, travelling across the country. I hope she’s staying safe, out there….

The Helping and Healing professions– when you get down to the nitty-gritty– live and thive on some variation of “offering advice.” 

Advice can “be” many things. No doubt the intent is generally for it to be “helpful,” although my personal experience bears out the notion that much advice is ”helpful, in a controlling sort of way.”  How often do we try to help someone simply because they “could use help” and how often are we helping because we (Secretly? Subconsciously?) feel the need to control their environment in such a way as to make it more pleasing/less threatening to ours?

It has long amused me how even the most “enlightened” Teachers often have an inner need to control their followers and disciples, sometimes even mocking and bullying them during those moment of self-discovery, where the student finds a perception that is different from the Teachers. To “natural cynics” such as myself, I detect an undertone of control called “keeping the student forever in the dark.”  

And yes, “everybody has to eat.” 

Much so-called advice is “nebulous and confusing” (often as part of the effort to control), having the appearance of helpfulness, but requiring such extensive “interpretation” that the seeker is left largely stagnant, trapped by a fog of “what does this mean?”  

“Your path will be determined by the eagle on the flagpole, where the chair flies at night.” 

Wha…aaaa????  

A friend recently sent me one of the many lists of “tips” to reduce suffering, originating from one of the many, many self-realization and personal growth disciplines. Things like:
 
“Feelings are just feelings”
“Nothing is personal”
“Judging yourself is pointless”
“Worrying is meaningless”
“Planning does not matter”
“You don’t have a personality”  

And so on….  

After many years of study, I understand what is being “said” there.  But to the uninitiated (as well as to the “initiated” with a tendency to follow blindly), those can easily be interpreted to mean that we ideally ”should just not care” about ANYthing…. which is actually more toxic, than it is helpful, in my opinion. Letting go of unhealthy attachments is one thing, but what I think of as “calculated indifference” is no more than a form of “psychological sloth” that allows us to “check out” of– and abandon responsibility for– being active participants in our own lives. 

One of my Teachers once described it as “Spiritual Idiocy.” 

In my experience, it’s very important to understand that the spiritual points on a list (like the one above) are probably best used as an antidote for being fixated on or compulsive about behavior patterns. On the scale of spiritual awareness, “apathy” and “peace” may have similar appearances, but one is very passive, and one is very active… and knowing the difference is essential.

Balance matters.  

If you have a compulsive “inner critic,” learn to take no notice of judging yourself. However, an inner critic also serves a healthy purpose of pointing out to us when we did something less than wise.  

If you are obsessively concerned with what others think about you, and become completely “other referencing,” then “stop being concerned” is a great antidote to bring balance. Yet, if we wander through life giving no care to others’ thoughts… it would make us pathologically self-absorbed narcissists. It’s difficult to live by the words “we’re all connected” while being “utterly selfish.”  

If you are fixated on your feelings, to the degree that they serve as an anchor that keeps you stuck, then perhaps recognizing that they are “just feelings” can be very helpful. However, healthy feelings are often signals to us that something isn’t as we want it to be. For example, anger tells us a boundary has been violated. Sadness and joy are core parts of the human experience.  

Advice, and “lists” can be great– but only when the Teacher understands how to frame the Learning in a context that matches the student’s awareness. Absent that, we run the risk of getting lost in the fog.

For some reason… beyond the usual background roar of voices inside my head… I have recently been contemplating the issue of “compromises,” and the impact they have on our lives.

On some (fairly rational, I suppose) level, I see compromises as types of ”psychic transactions” we all seem to make, at various times in our lives. Actually, we probably compromise every day… agreeing to pay some sort of “psychic price” for some sort of “psychic benefit.” In a sense, it’s the “marketplace” of our inner lives, which subsequently becomes our outer realities.

Are you with me so far, kids?

Most compromises are very simple. I may not particularly want to have Mexican food for lunch, but you really do… and I am willing to pay the “price” of Mexican food (or “not-Thai food,” as the case might be) for the “benefit” of your company at lunch.

Simple ’nuff.

The line, however, gets blurrier when we get into some of the “major purchases” of our lives. Relationships, careers, where to live, values, spirituality, approaches to self-development…

If you listen to most pundits (I do, although I don’t necessarily take their advice), there seems to be a popular belief that “you always have to compromise.” Which– to my ears, anyway– is essentially a different way of saying “You can never have exactly what you want.”

But is that really true?

How do we know that’s true? Do we even know that it’s true, or are we merely compromising ourselves on the altar of “majority opinion?” I am sure that it has escaped few people’s attention that the world frequently seems to know more about “what’s good for us” that we– ourselves– are credited with knowing…

The more I look at it, the more it strikes me that we ultimately end up in some psychic version of “The Price is Right,” in which we are tasked with figuring out what our bottom line “price” is. And although many people are not sufficiently ”awake” or “present“ in their own lives to notice these choicepoints… this is often where “the rubber meets the road” in our existences, and where we may find ourselves on a slippery slope of some kind…. be it the slope of “popular opinion,” or one of our own making.

So compromise really exists on two levels. We not only compromise on what we agree to want/have, but we also compromise on the “degree of perfection” we’re willing to accept.

Or not.

And people are very different, in their approaches. You may be a “43%-er” while I’m a “92%-er.” We would/might have a hard time seeing eye-to-eye, because what one person would call “good enough,” the other would see as “royally sucking,” even when their intentions are identical.

Ultimately, I have little doubt that we compromise, but that the more important issue is really about what we compromise.

My thoughts on compromise have been percolating somewhat more after I talked to my mother, yesterday. My mother is 85, and lives “retirement life” on a golf course in southern Spain (well, not ON the golf course, but you know…). We generally talk, once a week. We get along just fine, but no matter how much I try to communicate to her “who I am,” she really has no idea. And I don’t mean that in the stereotypical “parents don’t understand their kids” way; I mean it in an underlying “core values” sense. Specifically, she doesn’t grasp why things are “so important” to me.

My mother– in many ways– IS “one big compromise.” By extension, that’s the model I went into the world with, when I left home. It was also a model I largely followed till my early 30′s (and beyond, as I continued to map my own fires of Hell, and gain self-awareness), and it was a model that did not serve me well, even though its “public face” came across as “open-mindedness.” Patches of this model remain, in places, like those hollows in the mountains where you suddenly find remnants of winter snow, in June.

Anyway, my mother ”purchased” some very Big Ticket Items in her life. Most glaringly (whether it was conscious, or not), she was willing to pay the “price” of “little love, no passion,” for “money and status.”

Twice.

I’d be willing to buy the argument that “maybe she wanted it that way,” if it weren’t for the fact that she is quite aware of this fact, and during the occasional but rare ”intimate” conversations we manage to have (when gaps open in her swirling cloud of rationalizations) she grows quite wistful in contemplating ”All That Wasn’t.”

Which brings me back to the question:

“What price are you willing to pay, and for what?”

Of course, it’s not always that cut and dry. As I observe humanity, and learn from my own suffering and the suffering of those I love and care about, I realize how much of the suffering stems not from the choices– the “price/benefit” transactions– themselves, but from the (dis)illusion we get locked into that our compromises are somehow “permanent” and “irreversible.”

Life is forever changing. What is “True” today may not be “True” in a year; five years; 20 years from now. “Situational” compromises abound, but it seems to be a part of human nature to interpret the temporary as “permanent.” We enter so many situations with the mindset (inside) that “it’s just for now,” yet outwardly our lips move and speak words of “permanence.” My point being that some choice we make might be fine and dandy within a timeframe of a year or two, but not twenty or thirty.

And yet… we live in a world that seems to have an (unhealthy?) love affair with “permanent.” Finite. Closed. End of story.

It’s a shame really, because it strikes me that when we make choices against a backdrop of “permanence,” we often close ourselves off to the possibility of short-term “perfection.” But that’s a whole other blog…

Having walked around in this neat little circle, I find myself with another question:

“What is compromiseable, and what is not?”

Where do we draw the line at “good enough?” Where are our “non-negotiables?” Do we choose to live our values, or do we merely pay lip service to them? Is there a similar– but different– “price” to pay for living our truth with less compromise? Are there things that cannot (or should not) be compromised? What (if anything) are we compromising by choosing to not even look at these issues?

During the 20-odd years I have spent in/around the self-growth/spiritual awakening/self-realization/enlightenment business, the one constant seems to be the way people’s journeys tend to revolve around the discovery of ways in which they have “sold out;” ways in which they have either “fallen asleep to their core truth” or “prostituted their souls” in service of I’m-not-sure-what. I have certainly recognized myself in that pattern, many times.

Life is weird.

We admire people for “uncompromisingly sticking to their values” (when it suits us), while simultaneously condemning them as “inflexible and narrow-minded because they won’t compromise” (when it suits us).

What is your bottom line?

How much of yourself are you willing to “pay” to get some perceived “benefit?”

Financially.
Spiritually.
Physically.
With your values.
In love.
In friendship.

Are you living your values, or compromising them?