Dit is prachtig! Je kent ondertussen Steve Pavlina misschien wel, de schrijver die ik al jaren volg omwille van zijn baanbrekend commitment naar groei op alle gebied in het leven.

Ik had al langer zo'n gevoel dat alles niet helemaal klopte... Steve heeft zo'n hoog bewustzijn op andere gebieden als zaken, voeding, spiritualiteit... Waarom is dieje pee niet polyamoureus??? It didn't make sense to me.
Hij is zelf 15 jaar getrouwd en heeft twee kinderen. 2009 wordt blijkbaar voor hem het jaar van relaties. En bam! in zijn eerste post daarover schrijft hij dat hij poly gaat!

Super, dat gaat hem zeker verderbrengen in zijn leven!

Veel van wat hij schrijft resoneert heel sterk bij mij, het is alsof ik het had kunnen schrijven. Zeker dit stukje over liefde geven:

Sharing love and connection is my main motivation for wanting to experience other intimate relationships. It’s not about trying to get something from other people. I don’t feel I’m coming at this from a place of neediness, at least not in the sense that I need something from other people.

What I’m feeling is that I have this massive energy source of love inside me, but I lack the channels to fully express it. I want to let it flow, but all I’m doing is keeping it bottled up. Some of it flows into my relationship with Erin of course, but there’s still more to give.

Sharing emotional intimacy is great, but I’ve felt stunted by my inability to cross the physical intimacy border and take the sharing of love and connection to a much greater level. I think some amazing things will happen by dropping that limitation from my life.

Obviously I can share love through writing, speaking, and talking with people. However, my most natural manner of expressing love is through physical intimacy, especially touch. I give Erin massages all the time. If I see her sitting on the couch, it’s hard for me not to start squeezing her. When we go to bed at night, I usually massage and cuddle her first. Sometimes I play a game to see how much massaging she can handle before she’s so sleepy that she asks me to stop. We also have sex pretty often, especially since I know how to put her into a receptive state. A foot massage always sends her to la-la land. :)

But I still have the capacity to share more attention and affection than Erin can receive. If I give out as much as I feel inclined to give, she eventually starts rejecting it. Consequently, I always have to hold back. Some of this desire for expressing affection gets channeled into my writing, which is a way for me to reach out and connect with lots of people, but since that medium is a mismatch for physical intimacy, I often feel stunted trying to express love through the written word.

Why can’t I just become a massage therapist on the side and touch people all day long? That wouldn’t be appropriate because in my case, sensual touch leads very naturally to sex. I’d have a hard time holding back. Touching, kissing, massage, and sex are all part of the same bundle in my mind.

Physical and emotional intimacy go hand-in-hand with me. I’m not exactly sure why, but it’s hard for me to separate the two. A physically intimate relationship with a woman would make me feel very connected with her, and I’d automatically want to connect with her emotionally as well.

I’ve no idea how easy it will be to follow this path, but at least I know that others have already done it, so hopefully I can learn something from them.

I’d never want to do anything deceptive, so I wouldn’t start a relationship on false premises, like by pretending I’m a single guy. I’d need to find women who could understand my situation without going kittywompus. I have to imagine that somewhere on this planet, there must be other women who are open to exploring physical and emotional intimacy without major hang-ups and possessiveness issues… hopefully ones who like being massaged a lot.

Ook wat zijn vrouw Erin schrijft in de opvolgende Q&A vind ik inzichtrijk:

Is there some fear? Yes, there is some fear. My ego is having a field day with this one. “What if he finds someone he likes more than you?” “What if he stops spending time with you and the kids?” “What if someone comes along who takes him away from you forever?” Knowing it’s my ego talking to me, I can say back to it, “I know you’re trying to protect me from a future pain that you think is coming. I love and appreciate your desire to protect me, but there is no need. I will not dwell in fear.”

I took some time to connect with my higher self because I was more interested to hear what she had to say than what my ego had to say. We had a lovely conversation. Here is what she expressed to me:

Love is boundless and expansive. It should not be contained. It is not meant for love to live in compartments, but to be shared openly and honestly with all. The more that love is shared, the greater the unity among you. Marriage is a man-made construct, like religion or language. Anything that constricts love is not in alignment with oneness. You can never be diminished when love is shared. Indeed you are diminished when love is controlled or when you try to own another’s heart.

Later schreef ze ook op het forum: I know better than to take a decision based on fear.

Dit alles sterkt mijn geloof dat polyamorie een natuurlijke evolutie is op het ontwikkelingspad van ieder mens. Wel, om precies te zijn, de evolutie is inzien dat we onnatuurlijk bezig zijn.

Wim

Labels: pavlina, polyamorie

Uit Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet:

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Labels: gibran, inner game, joy, kahlil, pavlina, prophet, sorrow

Alhoewel onze Steve ongebruikelijk voor hem de laatste tijd wat zever zit te verkopen qua motivatie versus egoïsme , wil ik dit brokje toch even opschrijven voor mezelf.

What helped me push through this resistance was facing the fact that my physical body will die someday, and for all I know, it could be today. A million people die on this planet every week. One of those weeks will be mine. One will be yours. I realized that if I wanted to live consciously, I had to live in such a way that I was ready to die each and every day. If I don’t feel ready to die, I know I’m doing something wrong. Specifically, that wrongness is the act of pushing my dreams and desires into the future, thereby stealing power from the present and driving myself into a lower state of consciousness. If I consider that today may be my last day on earth, I can’t give in to fear. I have to summon my courage to push through that fear.

Labels: angst, bewustzijn, pavlina

Trouwens, nog een interessante nieuwe gedachte voor mij via Steve Pavlina over dat egoïsme. Ik vertrek vanuit een idee van egoïsme, uiteindelijk doet ieder mens alles voor zichzelf als je daar eerlijk genoeg in bent. Nu Pavlina stelt daar tegenover dat dit 1 van 2 paden is: het ene is alles voor jezelf doen, het tweede is dat je alles doet voor anderen. Nu ik geloof niet in dat laatste, want ik geloof niet in een onzelfzuchtige daad. Zelfs als je pakweg dakloze weesjes soep gaat eten doe je dat omdat je denkt dat je dan naar de hemel gaat, omdat andere mensen dan naar je opkijken, of omwille van het goed gevoel dat dat geeft bij jezelf. Nu het feit dat ik daar niet in geloof, duidt sterk aan op welk pad ik zit :)

Maar wat dit me deed inzien, ik beschouwde dit als absolute waarheid terwijl het een spiritueel geloof is, die kern-kern-kern-geloven die je diep binnenin beslist hebt als basis voor je wereldbeeld.

Maar daarna zegt hij iets waar ik wel volledig in geloof: dat de twee wegen uiteindelijk naar exact hetzelfde leiden. Soit, hij legt het beter uit, dus lees zijn site maar, maar het is alleszins een interessant inzicht.

Wat ik ook mega-interessant vind, is dat Steve in zijn podcast angst voor publiek spreken ontleedt via de oorzakelijke ketting net zoals ik altijd doe, alleen voor het allerlaatste geloof splits hij af van mij. Ik beschouw het fout brongeloof het idee dat andere mensen je waarde bepalen (egoïsme), hij beschouwt het idee van individualiteit, dat mensen geen deel zijn van elkaar als fout (non-dualisme).

De ketting zelf laat ik als een oefening voor de lezer :)

Wim

Labels: egoïsme, filosofie, pavlina

Aha! Herkenbaar (van Steve Pavlina). Je kan zelfs specifieke posts aanduiden van mij waarin het onderstaand verschijnsel zich voordoet, dan word ik superanalytisch en kom ik uit op een paradox of vraag. Ik heb op de moment een gevoel dat ik er weer één achter de rug heb. En effectief ook nu weer zitten analyseren en paniekerige vragen zitten stellen aan iedereen.

As you raise your consciousness, you’ll experience periods of confusion as you take the next “quantum leap” in front of you, followed by periods of deepening mental clarity. Another term for these periods of confusion is the Dark Night of the Soul. This is when your whole reality makes very little sense to you, and you become uncertain of everything. It is a time of massive cognitive restructuring. Your mind is refactoring its code to complete the jump to the next level. It has to scramble the old patterns in order to make room for the new.

However, once you complete one of these leaps, you enter a period of incredible clarity. Everything in your life starts to make sense on a whole new level. It’s like someone adjusted a focusing dial on your mind.

Labels: bewustzijn, inner game, pavlina

Dieje Pavlina schrijft verrekke relevante sjit. Eén ervan is zelfs het meest wetenschappelijke artikel over het bestaan van God dat ik gelezen heb, zo intellectueel verkend als mogelijk is. Hier nog een goeie.

In the book Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins, there’s a hierarchy of levels of human consciousness. It’s an interesting paradigm. If you read the book, it’s also fairly easy to figure out where you fall on this hierarchy based on your current life situation.

From low to high, the levels of consciousness are: shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, pride, courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, enlightenment.

While we can pop in and out of different levels at various times, usually there’s a predominant “normal” state for us. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re at least at the level of courage because if you were at a lower level, you’d likely have no conscious interest in personal growth.

I’ll go over these levels in order, mostly focusing on the ones between courage and reason, since that’s the range where you’re most likely to land. The labels are Hawkins’. The descriptions of each level are based on Hawkins’ descriptions but blended with my own thoughts. Hawkins defines this as a logarithmic scale, so there are far fewer people at the higher levels than at the lower ones. An increase from one level to another will result in enormous change in your life.

Shame - Just a step above death. You’re probably contemplating suicide at this level. Either that or you’re a serial killer. Think of this as self-directed hatred.

Guilt - A step above shame, but you still may be having thoughts of suicide. You think of yourself as a sinner, unable to forgive yourself for past transgressions.

Apathy - Feeling hopeless or victimized. The state of learned helplessness. Many homeless people are stuck here.

Grief - A state of perpetual sadness and loss. You might drop down here after losing a loved one. Depression. Still higher than apathy, since you’re beginning to escape the numbness.

Fear - Seeing the world as dangerous and unsafe. Paranoia. Usually you’ll need help to rise above this level, or you’ll remain trapped for a long time, such as in an abusive relationship.

Desire - Not to be confused with setting and achieving goals, this is the level of addiction, craving, and lust — for money, approval, power, fame, etc. Consumerism. Materialism. This is the level of smoking and drinking and doing drugs.

Anger - the level of frustration, often from not having your desires met at the lower level. This level can spur you to action at higher levels, or it can keep you stuck in hatred. In an abusive relationship, you’ll often see an anger person coupled with a fear person.

Pride - The first level where you start to feel good, but it’s a false feeling. It’s dependent on external circumstances (money, prestige, etc), so it’s vulnerable. Pride can lead to nationalism, racism, and religious wars. Think Nazis. A state of irrational denial and defensiveness. Religious fundamentalism is also stuck at this level. You become so closely enmeshed in your beliefs that you see an attack on your beliefs as an attack on you.

Courage - The first level of true strength. I’ve made a previous post about this level: Courage is the Gateway. This is where you start to see life as challenging and exciting instead of overwhelming. You begin to have an inkling of interest in personal growth, although at this level you’ll probably call it something else like skill-building, career advancement, education, etc. You start to see your future as an improvement upon your past, rather than a continuation of the same.

Neutrality - This level is epitomized by the phrase, “live and let live.” It’s flexible, relaxed, and unattached. Whatever happens, you roll with the punches. You don’t have anything to prove. You feel safe and get along well with other people. A lot of self-employed people are at this level. A very comfortable place. The level of complacency and laziness. You’re taking care of your needs, but you don’t push yourself too hard.

Willingness - Now that you’re basically safe and comfortable, you start using your energy more effectively. Just getting by isn’t good enough anymore. You begin caring about doing a good job — perhaps even your best. You think about time management and productivity and getting organized, things that weren’t so important to you at the level of neutrality. Think of this level as the development of willpower and self-discipline. These people are the “troopers” of society; they get things done well and don’t complain much. If you’re in school, then you’re a really good student; you take your studies seriously and put in the time to do a good job. This is the point where your consciousness becomes more organized and disciplined.

Acceptance - Now a powerful shift happens, and you awaken to the possibilities of living proactively. At the level of willingness you’ve become competent, and now you want to put your abilities to good use. This is the level of setting and achieving goals. I don’t like the label “acceptance” that Hawkins uses here, but it basically means that you begin accepting responsibility for your role in the world. If something isn’t right about your life (your career, your health, your relationship), you define your desired outcome and change it. You start to see the big picture of your life more clearly. This level drives many people to switch careers, start a new business, or change their diets.

Reason - At this level you transcend the emotional aspects of the lower levels and begin to think clearly and rationally. Hawkins defines this as the level of medicine and science. The way I see it, when you reach this level, you become capable of using your reasoning abilities to their fullest extent. You now have the discipline and the proactivity to fully exploit your natural abilities. You’ve reached the point where you say, “Wow. I can do all this stuff, and I know I must put it to good use. So what’s the best use of my talents?” You take a look around the world and start making meaningful contributions. At the very high end, this is the level of Einstein and Freud. It’s probably obvious that most people never reach this level in their entire lives.

Love - I don’t like Hawkins’ label “love” here because this isn’t the emotion of love. It’s unconditional love, a permanent understanding of your connectedness with all that exists. Think compassion. At the level of reason, you live in service to your head. But that eventually becomes a dead end where you fall into the trap of over-intellectualizing. You see that you need a bigger context than just thinking for its own sake. At the level of love, you now place your head and all your other talents and abilities in service to your heart (not your emotions, but your greater sense of right and wrong — your conscience). I see this as the level of awakening to your true purpose. Your motives at this level are pure and uncorrupted by the desires of the ego. This is the level of lifetime service to humanity. Think Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dr. Albert Schweitzer. At this level you also begin to be guided by a force greater than yourself. It’s a feeling of letting go. Your intuition becomes extremely strong. Hawkins claims this level is reached only by 1 in 250 people during their entire lifetimes.

Joy - A state of pervasive, unshakable happiness. Eckhart Tolle describes this state in The Power of Now. The level of saints and advanced spiritual teachers. Just being around people at this level makes you feel incredible. At this level life is fully guided by synchronicity and intuition. There’s no more need to set goals and make detailed plans — the expansion of your consciousness allows you to operate at a much higher level. A near-death experience can temporarily bump you to this level.

Peace - Total transcendence. Hawkins claims this level is reached only by one person in 10 million.

Enlightenment - The highest level of human consciousness, where humanity blends with divinity. Extremely rare. The level of Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus. Even just thinking about people at this level can raise your consciousness.

I think you’ll find this model worthy of reflection. Not only people but also objects, events, and whole societies can be ranked at these levels. Within your own life, you’ll see that some parts of your life are at different levels than others, but you should be able to identify your current overall level. You might be at the level of neutrality overall but still be addicted to smoking (level of desire). The lower levels you find within yourself will serve as a drag that holds the rest of you back. But you’ll also find higher levels in your life. You may be at the level of acceptance and read a book at the level of reason and feel really inspired. Think about the strongest influences in your life right now. Which ones raise your consciousness? Which ones lower it?

One thing I like about these levels of consciousness is that I can trace back over my own life and see how I’ve been moving through them. I remember being stuck at the level of guilt for a long time – as a child I was indoctrinated into a belief system where I was a helpless sinner, being judged according to the standards of someone at the level of love or higher. From there I graduated to the state of apathy, feeling numb to the whole thing. By high school I had reached the level of pride — I was a straight-A student, captain of the Academic Decathlon team, showered with accolades and awards, but I became dependent on them. I hit the level of Courage in my late teens, but the courage was very unfocused, and I overdid it and got myself into all sorts of trouble. I then spent about a year in neutrality and moved through willingness and acceptance during my 20s with a lot of conscious effort. At present I’m at the level of reason and getting closer and closer to completing the leap to love. I experience the state of love more and more often, and it’s guiding many of my decisions already, but it hasn’t yet stuck as my natural state. I’ve also experienced the state of joy for days at a time, but never with any permanence yet. That state is a pervasive feeling of natural euphoria, as if I’m exploding on the inside with positive energy. It literally forces me to smile. I’ve been in that state for most of this morning, probably because I haven’t eaten anything yet today (I find it easier to hit that state of consciousness when I eat lightly or not at all).

We’ll naturally fluctuate between multiple states throughout the course of any given week, so you’ll probably see a range of 3-4 levels where you spend most of your time. One way to figure out your “natural” state is to think about how you perform under pressure. If you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice because that’s what’s inside. What comes out of you when you get squeezed by external events? Do you become paranoid and shut down (fear)? Do you start yelling at people (anger)? Do you become defensive (pride)? What happens to me under pressure is that I become hyper-analytical, but recently I just had a pressure situation where I handled it mostly by intuition, which was a big change for me. This tells me I’m getting close to the unconditional love state because in that state, intuition can be effectively accessed even under pressure.

Everything in your environment will have an effect on your level of consciousness. TV. Movies. Books. Web sites. People. Places. Objects. Food. If you’re at the level of reason, watching TV news (which is predominantly at the levels of fear and desire) will temporarily lower your consciousness. If you’re at the level of guilt, TV news will actually raise it up.

Progressing from one level to the next requires an enormous amount of energy. I wrote about this previously when discussing quantum leaps. Without conscious effort or the help of others, you’ll likely just stay at your current level until some outside force comes into your life.

Notice the natural progression of levels, and consider what happens when you try to short-cut the process. If you try to reach the level of reason before mastering self-discipline (willingness) and goal-setting (acceptance), you’ll be too disorganized and unfocused to use your mind to its full extent. If you try to push yourself to the level of love before you’ve mastered reason, you’ll suffer from gullibility and may end up in a cult.

Going up even one level can be extremely hard; most people don’t do so in their entire lives. A change in just one level can radically alter everything in your life. This is why people below the level of courage aren’t likely to progress without external help. Courage is required to work on this consciously; it comes down to repeatedly betting your whole reality for the chance to become more conscious and aware. But whenever you reach that next level, you realize clearly that it was a good bet. For example, when you hit the level of courage, all your past fears and false pride seem silly to you now. When you reach the level of acceptance (setting and achieving goals), you look back on the level of willingness and see you were like a mouse running on a treadmill — you were a good runner, but you didn’t pick a direction.

I think the most important work we can do as human beings is to raise our individual level of consciousness. When we do this, we spread higher levels of consciousness to everyone around us. Imagine what an incredible world this would be if we could at least get everyone to the level of acceptance. According to Hawkins 85% of the people on earth live below the level of courage.

When you temporarily experience the higher levels, you can see where you must go next. You have one of those moments of clarity where you understand that things have to change. But when you sink into the lower levels, that memory becomes clouded.

We have to keep consciously taking ourselves back to the sources that can help us complete the next leap. Each step requires different solutions. I recall when making the shift from neutrality to willingness, I listened to time management tapes almost every day. I immersed myself in sources created by people at the level of willingness until I eventually shifted. But a book on time management will be of little use to someone who’s at the level of pride; they’ll reject the very notion with a lot of defensiveness. And time management is meaningless to someone at the level of peace. But you can’t hit the higher levels if you haven’t mastered the basics first. Jesus was a carpenter. Gandhi was a lawyer. Buddha was a prince. We all have to start somewhere.

Look at this hierarchy with an open mind and see if it leads you to new insights that may help you take the next leap in your own life. No levels are any more right or wrong than others. Try not to get your ego wrapped up in the idea of being at any particular level, unless you’re currently at the level of pride of course.

Interessant model, he? Zelf oscilleer ik rond reason. Meestal val ik terug in acceptance, ik ga ook al dikwijls in love. Ik denk dat ik al wel eens joy heb bereikt, maar dat zijn maar momentjes.

Wim

Labels: bewustzijn, levels, pavlina, spiritualiteit

We hebben nog een experimentje gedaan. Steve Pavlina schreef over hoe je levensdoel kan vinden in 20 minuten:

1) Open een tekstverwerker
2) Schrijf bovenaan: "Wat is het ware doel van mijn leven?"
3) Schrijf gewoon het antwoord op wat in je opkomt
4) Herhaal stap 3) tot je moet huilen. Dat antwoord is je doel.

Soms ga je dingen tegenkomen die je raken, maar niet to tranen brengen, die markeer je, en als je vastzit kan je daarmee verdere permutaties maken.

Ok, dit klonk zo belachelijk, simpel, en wacky, maar ergens had ik gevoel dat ik begreep waar vandaan dat zou kunnen werken. Hey, never hurts to try! Wim gets scientific:

Ik schreef er 191 op en had nog niks. Ik wou verschillende keren stoppen. Enkele dingen sprongen wel op ("passie" en "bewust"), maar niks serieus zwaar. Ik ben drie kwartier mee bezig geweest, toen moest ik ophouden.

Vandaag nam ik me koppig voor om 's avonds nog eens te proberen en door te duwen. Ik zet me weer ervoor en laat mijn vingers ratelen met mijn aandacht puur om mijn gedachten, zonder zelfs naar het scherm te kijken. Dat ging ietsje te goed, de woorden stroomden nogal. Wel grappig dat je af en toe tussen de stream of consciousness dingen zag staan als: "blijven doorgaan", "verder schrijven", "gedachten ordenen". Uiteindelijk focuste ik me terug op de originele vraagstelling.

Ondertussen was ik al meer dan een uur terug bezig. Rond 328 begonnen mijn antwoorden te convergeren, maar echt een doorslag kwam maar niet. Nu is formulering voor mij erg belangrijk, volgorde, komma of niet, ik ben een proza-man. Dus uiteindelijk ging ik van alle stukken alle mogelijke combinaties af en markeerde degenen die met het meeste pakten, en zette die op verschillende manieren aan elkaar. In totaal na 2,5 uur had ik het, mijn 478ste antwoord. Met enige verdiende trots kan ik u mijn levensdoel presenteren:

Passioneel intens van het leven genieten. Bewust worden en zo ook leven. Schoonheid in het universum brengen. Mensen diep raken en inspireren tot datzelfde leven.

Ja, al mijn grote waarden zitten er zo wel in: groei, creativiteit, genot, verbondenheid. Nu de reden dat het zo lang duurt, is dat je eerst alle valse zever (voorgekauwde, door jezelf, je omgeving of de maatschappij) uit je hoofd moet krijgen. Pavlina schrijft dat als je niet al wat oefening hebt in introspectie en je eigen gedachtenprocessen en emoties sturen, dat dat dan best 3 sessies van 5 uur kan duren. Nu, ik heb daar al serieuze oefening in, maar ik deed er nog zo lang over. Het hielp me veel om even in zelfhypnose te gaan om zo beter te richten op de vraag toen ik te vrij aan het associëren was.

Trouwens een zeer interessante Zen-meditatieve techniek.

Wim

PS. Ik kreeg er ook nog volgende gedichtje uit, dat ik jullie zeker niet wil onthouden :)

bewaar gerust
gewaar bewust
alwaar berust
in een gevust
gevaar berust

Toch maf he? Hoe zoiets ontstaat.

Labels: levensdoel, pavlina, spiritualiteit

Hier een oplossing van Steve Pavlina op mijn paradox:

How do you balance self-acceptance vs. the drive to grow and improve yourself? On the one hand, it’s a good idea to accept yourself for who you are… faults and all, right? But on the other hand, isn’t it also a good idea to set goals and aim for something even better than what you already experience now? How do you resolve this conflict?

Is compromise really the best solution?

I believe most people simply compromise. They don’t fully accept themselves as they are, but nor are they fully comitted to lifelong growth. I think that’s a lame solution though. Why not have both? Why not fully accept yourself as you are and also be totally committed to lifelong growth? Can’t you enjoy both? Is there a way around this apparent conflict?

I often receive feedback, both publicly and privately, that suggests that because I’m so openly committed to personal growth (which should be obvious to anyone who spends more than a few minutes perusing this site), that therefore I must not like and accept who I am right now. It’s assumed that since I keep pushing myself to grow in new ways that I must be sacrificing the self-acceptance side.

The linear mindset

Why does there seem to be a conflict between self-acceptance and growth anyway? I think the conflict is actually a result of a particular mindset. I’ll refer to it as the linear mindset.

The linear mindset says that your life is like a point moving down a line segment. Your life is a journey through time. The end points represent your birth and death. The points behind you are your past. The points ahead of you are your future. And your present moment is a little dot on that timeline, slowly inching its way towards your death.

Every point on your life line can also be said to have a certain quality. You can look at any point on the line and measure your instantaneous state at that point. On any particular day of your life (past, present, or future), you can pose questions like: Where do I live? What’s my job? What’s my net worth? Who are my friends? What’s my relationship status? How much do I weigh?

Self-acceptance vs. personal growth

Within this paradigm it’s only natural that the conflict between self-acceptance and growth should arise. Once you start labeling some points of your life as being of “higher” or “lower” quality than others, then you have the means to compare any point to any other. How does your life today compare with your life five years ago? Are you richer? Happier? Healthier?

Now you have to decide how much you want to push things to improve in quality as you progress through life. You can accept your current position as adequate and opt to simply maintain it, or you can strive to achieve something greater. You can also adopt the belief that your life is largely out of your control, in which case your best bet would be to learn to accept whatever outcomes you experience, regardless of how you might rate their level of quality.

The more you accept where you are, the less motivation there is to grow. And the more you push yourself to grow, the less satisfaction you derive from your current position. You might end up oscillating back and forth along this spectrum, sometimes being very complacent and other times being very driven.

Limitations of the linear mindset

The linear mindset is very common, especially in the Western world. We love to measure things and assign them grades and ratings. Which car is the most fuel-efficient this year? Is company X more profitable than it was last year? How fit and healthy am I?

And that mindset certainly has value, especially in business. I’m not suggesting that it’s an inherently undesirable paradigm.

However, there are areas where this model works, and there are areas where it doesn’t. And one of those areas where it doesn’t work so well is your self-image.

Trying to apply the linear mindset to your self-image creates the conflict between self-acceptance and growth. Instead of merely measuring various aspects of your life and noting how they change over time, you identify with them. I am richer than I was last year. I am more depressed than I used to be. I went from being a telemarketer to being a sales manager.

When you identify with the positional aspects of your life, you pull your ego into the picture. Your sense of self then becomes dependent on your particular position.

If you primarily think about life in terms of hitting new highs, such as better health, greater net worth, or a more anal job title, then what happens when you experience a setback in your position, maybe even a big one like being charged with a felony?

We all experience setbacks. It’s only a matter of time. If your self-esteem is based on your position, then you’ll suffer greatly when your position declines. What would it do to your self-esteem if you lost all your money? What if you gained 50 lbs? What if your life mate dumped you? If you lose your position, will you lose your sense of self?

Even more problematic than a real loss is worrying about the possibility of a loss in advance. You may hold yourself back because you fear becoming too dependent on a certain position. If you stay low, you don’t have far to fall when things go bad. Gaining a few pounds over the holidays isn’t as painful when you’re already 50 lbs overweight. Going broke isn’t so terrible when you only have $1000 to your name vs. if you’re a multi-millionaire. And how much worse can your relationship situation get if it’s already lousy (or nonexistent)?

Perhaps by setting up camp in mediocre land and staying far away from super-achiever, you’re protecting your ego from inevitable setbacks. You know that even the most successful people in the world experience setbacks, so why would you risk subjecting yourself to such dramatic highs and lows? What goes up must come down, right?

The underlying problem is that by rooting your sense of self in something that will fluctuate, like the current position of any measurable part of your life, you’re going to suffer in one way or another. Either you’ll push yourself to achieve, achieve, achieve, and then suffer emotionally when things take a turn for the worse, or you’ll become attached to outcomes to an unhealthy degree, such that you may sacrifice your ethics to maintain your position. Or you’ll settle for much less than you’re capable of achieving and probably give yourself regular beatings for being too lazy and for over-procrastinating – you’ll always be haunted by the knowledge that you could be doing better. Or lastly you may decide to withdraw from society in order to escape/transcend this whole punishing process; but still your contribution is far below your potential.

Beyond the linear mindset

This whole situation is basically win-lose, isn’t it? You have to compromise somewhere. You can’t play the positional growth game full out and still accept and enjoy every moment along the way, right?

Or can you?

Let me suggest an alternative paradigm.

Instead of rooting your sense of self in your position, which is changeable, what would happen if you rooted your sense of self in something permanent and unchangeable? Stop identifying yourself with any form of positional status, and pick something invulnerable instead… like a pure concept that nothing in this world can touch. Examples include unconditional love, service to humanity, faith in a higher power, compassion, nonviolence, and so on.

I’m certainly not the first person to suggest something like this. Stephen Covey wrote about this in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He refers to it as true north.

When you root yourself in unchangeable ”true north” principles, you may still measure the various metrics of your life and notice how they change over time, but you won’t make them part of your identity. Hence, you keep your self-esteem separate from your particular circumstances.

This isn’t easy to do. Covey himself has admitted how difficult it is for him personally. But you don’t have to be perfect to get results from this paradigm. Even a small move in this direction will reduce the conflict between self-acceptance and growth. Essentially you’ll gain the best of both worlds.

Separating position from identity

By rooting yourself in the permanent, your position detaches from your identity. This makes it possible to unconditionally accept yourself as you are while still courageously playing the positional growth game, regardless of the outcome. Self-acceptance and growth are no longer in conflict because now they don’t apply to the same thing. You’ve separated your identity (self-acceptance) from your position (growth).

Covey’s true north principles are based on effectiveness. Mine are based on fulfillment, so they’re slightly different, but there’s certainly a lot of overlap between them. For example, one of my principles is service to the highest good of all. This is close to Covey’s principle of thinking win-win. Either version of this principle is independent of position. You can be homeless and forgotten, or you can be rich and famous, and you can still do your best to serve the highest good of all and to think win-win. These principles do not depend on circumstances; circumstances only affect the manner in which you’d apply them.

Detaching ego from outcomes

If I were to look at a snapshot of my life right now, I’d rate it as excellent in terms of its positional (i.e. growth-related) aspects. Last week three of my articles were featured on the popular list on del.icio.us (one of them in the #1 spot), two were picked up by reddit, two got digg‘d, one got fark‘d, one got furl‘d, and one got spurl‘d. I received 320,000 visitors and 664,000 page views that week, and I topped my one-day Adsense record too ($330.69 on April 12). On Thursday I did a magazine interview, on Friday I did a nationally syndicated radio interview, and on Saturday I joined the Las Vegas National Speakers Association and went to my first meeting (Lou Heckler was the guest speaker). Later today my family and I will enjoy an Easter picnic in the park with some friends, and I’ll spend the rest of the day having fun and relaxing. Positionally everything is wonderful. Lots of higher highs.

But if I let my self-esteem and my identity get too wrapped up in these external outcomes, I’ll be setting myself up for ultimate failure. When the pendulum swings the other way, and of course it eventually will, I’ll get frustrated with my less than stellar performance. And from there it’s a slippery slope into the realm of ego-driven attachment to outcomes. What will happen when my traffic or income takes a nosedive at some point? I’ll either resist accepting my present situation, or I’ll withdraw into a shell and settle for mediocrity for a while, or I’ll put on a fake front and pull an Enron. None of those are good solutions.

The solution is upstream… to keep identity and position as separate as possible. I find that a couple practices help a lot with this: journaling and meditation. I’ve been doing both for many years, and these practices help me keep my internal compass aligned with true north principles that aren’t going to change within my lifetime. I keep my sense of self rooted in permanent concepts like service, awareness, and peace. Those concepts don’t change, so my deepest sense of self remains fairly fixed. That makes it easier to fully accept who I am in every moment. But on the positional side, I’m still able to enjoy the pursuit of positional growth and play full out without settling for underachievement.

If I stray from these practices for too long (more than a few weeks), I gradually fall out of alignment with true north. I eventually get sucked back into the prevailing social climate that loves to identify people with their positions. For example, while I was doing my polyphasic sleep experiment, some people started identifying me with polyphasic sleep. And that’s OK until they start becoming too attached to that person-position pairing. Positions are always temporary, so it’s best not to become overly attached to them… whether in yourself or others. It would have been problematic if I fell into the trap of letting my ego become overly attached to my position as a polyphasic sleeper. The ego resists positional changes it perceives as negative — it doesn’t like to be wrong. So I might have clung to polyphasic sleep even when it didn’t serve me as well as monophasic sleep.

Have you fallen into any person-position pairing in your own life? Do you derive your sense of self from things that are changeable and vulnerable, such as your income, your job title, your relationships, or any other form of status? How much energy are you investing in defending those positions out of fear?

When you loosen your attachment to positions, you don’t have to defend them. I disliked when people started giving me labels like “the internet king of polyphasic sleep” (not my words)… because if you’re a king, then you’ve got a kingdom to defend. People like to attack kings simply because of their position as kings. I’d rather not be perceived as a king of anything positional, since I don’t want to spend my time defending temporary positions that are eventually going to crumble anyway. Trying to defend your position as if it were the real you is a losing battle. None of the positional aspects of your life are going to endure, so it’s best not to become too attached to them. Enjoy them while they last, but don’t seek your self in them.

When you root your self in something permanent, then your sense of self is effectively untouchable. Your position can be attacked, and you can still defend it if you like, but you won’t feel irrationally compelled to defend it out of fear. You won’t feel you’re being personally attacked when your position becomes vulnerable.

Enjoying inner peace

What I’m really getting at here is inner peace. When you keep your sense of self away from third-dimensional positions, your position can rollercoaster all over the place, and you can still be at peace on the inside no matter what happens. You don’t have to withdraw and be totally passive. You can enjoy being an ambitious overachiever and set and achieve goals like a maniac — and have a great time doing it. But meanwhile you don’t seek your identity in those fluctuating outcomes.

As you can probably imagine, because of my position running one of the most popular personal development sites on the Internet, I receive an abundance of both praise and criticism, ranging from genuine gratitude to spiteful bashing. At the extremes on both ends, some of it is downright bizarre; some people canonize me while others demonize me. Here’s a recent post which labels me a narcissistic Satanist. If I had a nickel for every time….

Now if I were to begin identifying with these fluctuating reactions to my position, I’d drive myself nuts. But I’m quite content to allow other people to retain full ownership of their reactions, extract the constructive and useful feedback, and go on about my day in peace. Aside from meditation and journaling, even simple things like playing with the kids or going for a walk help me stay grounded. It’s funny to go from reading someone’s review of my apparent Satanism to seeing my 2-year old son wander in and say, “Daddy, I wanna cookie.” Partly I think the reason I have two kids is to help me keep things in the proper perspective.

If you find yourself succumbing to the ego-position trap, add some practices to your life like meditation, journaling, time with kids, time in nature, and so on. This will help you reconnect with what’s most sacred to you (your own version of true north principles) and keep your identity separate from your position. Then you can experience drive without attachment, ambition without ego, and peace without passivity.

Hij raakt een paar mooie punten, maar 2 belangrijke zaken die wat meer in de verf gezet mogen worden in zijn tekst zijn:
- je moet ervan genieten te groeien, dus het doen omwille van een positieve emotie
- je moet je beslissingen maken ook uit het ervaren, en niet enkel uit denken

Wim

Labels: geluk, paradox, pavlina, spiritualiteit