Live, With Courage, Your Truth

The Rules for Being Human - 
Cherie Carter-Scott

12.Your answers lie inside you. Children need guidance from others; as we mature, we trust our hearts, where the Laws of Spirit are written. You know more than you have heard or read or been told. All you need to do is to look, listen, and trust.

Let's try this as a definition of maturity --

mature people, normally, are self-referential. Less mature people expect others to provide their answers.
Part of being self-referential is understanding you have your own answers.

I can't tell you how many times I've been with a client, and the client has a huge shift in understanding regarding some major issue. There's this moment where the person kind of goes blank -- as they drop inside to evaluate what's been learned. Then a lot of words come -- about getting it -- finally -- and seeing things differently. And then, almost always, there's some form of "But I knew that!" And they are right. They did know, in their hearts and souls.

As I've said countless times, the paths we walk, initially, are not well thought through. They're the result of our conditioning -- what we are trained to do through our interaction with family, school, church, and our experiences growing up and surviving our childhood and teen years. 

If you have teens around you, or remember that time in your own life, you'll know that teens in general think they know everything, are into rebellion at some level, and are quick to blame their parents or themselves for everything and anything.

In this process, they individuate somewhat from their parents. Our culture, however, doesn't encourage independent thought and action. We want our teens to grow up, but also, and I suspect, more importantly (for many) to fit in.

Now, if we are honest, most of us adults know that teens really don't know all that much. It's why we don't go to teens for financial advice and why precious few teens are brain surgeons. They're just kids, trying on opinions.

But, get this. It's not like when they hit 20, suddenly they figure it all out. They just get older. Off they go, to work, to university, into relationships, and they take their rule book with them.

I find, for example, that when I'm criticized (interestingly, this reaction never happens with clients - just in my personal life), I often have a knee jerk internal reaction that's kind of like, "This isn't fair, you can't treat me this way." If I stay with that feeling, I recognize that I "feel" about 6 years old, stomping my feet, having a fit.

Now, most people don't have a reflective moment -- they simply pitch the fit. "He made me so angry." "What else could I do? It wasn't fair! I had to yell." Whatever. What happens here is that the old, old scripts of our childhood and youth take over, and we do what we've always done. And we find ourselves in a mess.

Another example: if the assumption is, "I always screw up," then, as we've said the last two weeks, the filters kick in, and since we're already feeling badly about ourselves, we simply look around for more things to feel badly about. There is not a moment of reflection and self-examination in this -- this is, plain and simple, a knee jerk reaction -- un-thought out.

Maturity comes when we begin to explore the depths of what we believe to be true. In my book, Living Life in Growing Orbits, the first chapter is all about exploring these beliefs, which I call "Rock," or core beliefs. As we begin to unpack what we believe, we may suddenly have a shift like I observe with clients. We begin to wonder, to be curious, about "why" I believe something to be true.

We may stun ourselves with the understanding that much of what we believe is inherited thinking or behaviour. Some of it is immature behaviour, something I believed when I was six. I still believe it because I haven't chosen not to.

I met with a new client yesterday, who is 55 and says he's depressed. He's on leave of absence from work, his second leave in 5 years. He says he has nothing in his life that gives him meaning, and his marriage is shaky too. He says, "Well, I've never been the sort to communicate. We didn't talk much in my family. And I don't hug. No one in my family ever hugged or touched. My dad retired at 60 and was dead at 61. He didn't have anything that meant anything to him."

Now, all of this was said with a straight face, as if, because that's what his father did, that's what his family did, he has no other choice but to follow along. Including, maybe, dying at age 61.

This isn't "the way he is." His behaviour, lack of passion, lack of drive, is not hard wired in there somewhere. He simply observed and was dealt with in his family in a certain way, and he uncritically adopted the same behaviour. He is now getting the same results his father got. He thinks it's hereditary.

Phooey.

I asked him to pretend he wasn't depressed, just for a moment, and think about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He looked at me like I was nuts, then went inside, then said, "I'd want to be helping people," and listed some ways he could do that. He then smiled and said, "That's the first positive thought I've had since November"

Now, of course, he's not "cured" (there's actually nothing wrong with him - he's not even "depressed" -- he's just stuck.) What he did was go inside and access his own, inner wisdom. He broke the cycle of despair he was creating for himself, dared to question his belief that "my life is meaningless," and immediately saw another path, one with an ending beyond dying at 61.

Inside of us is a still point - a place where "me" (my ego) does not exist, where it is quiet and calm, where I can be quiet and calm. If I go there, go inside, into the centre (get it???) and simply sit there in silence, I begin to see that all of the little dramas I create are simply ways I choose to keep myself stuck in my ego. I see that I am doing a dance with myself, taking myself way too seriously, identifying myself with what I do, as opposed to who I am.

My inner wisdom knows, as a good Buddhist knows, that all is maya, all is illusion. What I see around me is the current version of the story I am telling myself, and nothing more. Other people I am involved with are seeing (presumably) the same thing I'm seeing, and are telling themselves another, radically different story. Not one right (mine, of course . . ) one wrong. Just different versions of maya. Illusion.

My inner wisdom knows I can tell myself any story I choose to tell, including the one I tell each week in Into the Centre. Just a story I amuse myself with. True at some level for me, and maybe of inspiration to you. But you will do with what I write what you choose to do with it, in your still point.

Recognize this: nothing is graven in stone. You are simply whom you choose to be, in this moment and the next. If you are troubling yourself with your way of being, you could choose to go inside and find another way. Or you could choose to stay stuck.

The only immature way of being is to stay stuck without knowing you are stuck thus spending the rest of your life waiting for rescue.

As the poster on Gloria's wall says:

No one is coming.

Next week: something new!