A Change of Heart

© Wayne C Allen

It’s a Mir­ror

I’m not going to spend a lot of time review­ing the myr­iad of arti­cles I’ve writ­ten over the years, detail­ing what can and does go wrong in rela­tion­ships. The short­hand is pic­tured in the above image—finger-pointing is a sym­bol for the dance of right­ness, cor­rect­ness, obe­di­ence, and manipulation.

There’s an odd expec­ta­tion that oth­ers should be there as we want them to be, doing our bid­ding, and chang­ing when­ever we issue a direc­tive. And when they don’t, out come the histrionics—whatever it will take to break the other person’s resolve.

The best rela­tion­ships, on the other hand, offer noth­ing other than a mirror.

Next week, we’ll be look­ing at the bal­ance of self-knowing, and I’ve found a pile of new stuff to quote. But one line has stuck in my mind since I read it a few days ago:

Hap­pi­ness requires a cer­tain sur­ren­der… Your unhap­pi­ness is threaded through your idea of you. Hap­pi­ness would over­turn some things you know about your­self. Hap­pi­ness asks, “Are you will­ing to be a dif­fer­ent you?” Or, “Are you will­ing to be not you?“
John Tar­rant, Bring Me the Rhi­noc­eros, pg. 147

I want to talk next week more specif­i­cally about what “being not you” might look like. The best way to dis­cover this, I believe, is in relationship.

The Tao of it all

The Tao is the energy of life, the un-named thing that runs like a cur­rent through every­thing. Once you catch a glimpse, you can choose to see with dif­fer­ent eyes.

In other words, what if it was pos­si­ble to see things just as they are, and at the same time to drop the judg­ments, sto­ries, and dra­mas we nor­mally con­nect to the things of our life?

Mir­ror­ing is a tech­nique for reflect­ing back what you see another doing. In a sense, it’s all about help­ing your part­ner see two things: 1) the issue, and 2) the drama being cre­ated over the issue. In a sense, it’s a call back into the present moment, by dis­con­nect­ing the present issue from the past and future projections.

Now, the idea of self as mir­ror has its mis­uses. One per­son Dar­bella and I knew was a mas­ter at using mir­ror­ing as an escape. We would offer to hold up the mir­ror for her—so that she might see her stick­ing points, and imme­di­ately she’d say, “That’s your issue which you are pro­ject­ing (mir­ror­ing) on me .” Our intent was benign—to say, “Are you aware of this?” Her intent was to run quickly away from self examination.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my back goes up a bit when Dar says, “You might want to look at what you are set­ting up there.” I am so invested in my story, my pre­con­ceived notion of what is going on, that I have to really work at “just look­ing, just see­ing.” I want it to be the way I imag­ine it, as I have my self, my view, and my dis­tress all rolled up in the game.

Dis­tress?

Yup. We’ll say more about this next week, but the quote above is a reflec­tion on a line from the Bud­dha: “Are you afraid of this hap­pi­ness?” The hap­pi­ness he was con­sid­er­ing is the Tao—the essen­tial nature of every­thing. If we are not afraid, then every­thing is per­fect, just as it is. What we see, what we feel, who we are at our cores—it’s all “just as it is, right now.”

OK. I know. You’ve been con­di­tioned to find end­less things wrong with your­self and emphat­i­cally with every­one and every­thing around you. You’ve spent a life­time blam­ing and fin­ger point­ing, and your sense of enti­tle­ment and right­eous indig­na­tion has empow­ered your life—and your misery.

Giv­ing this up is scary—who will I be if I am not judg­ing every­thing and find­ing it wanting?

But, it’s a mad, bad world

Yup, and right now, in this moment, all there is, is this arti­cle and wher­ever you are sit­ting. Now, I know. Ter­ror­ists are shoot­ing up Mum­bai, peo­ple are dying of aids and star­va­tion, and war is every­where. The econ­omy is in the tanker, and all is grim.

I ask you to look at your suppositions.

Philo­soph­i­cally, we can all agree that no ter­ror­ism, food for every­one, no dis­ease, and an end to war would be a “good thing.” But think, really think, about your approach to such to such top­ics. If they do not touch you directly, you sim­ply bitch, and moan, and com­plain about them. You might march, or make a dona­tion, or write your Con­gress­man or MP, but in the end, your grip­ing about the plight of oth­ers changes noth­ing. It’s just another topic for the weekly bitch-fest down at the local water­ing hole.

If you do con­front any of these issues directly, you know that there is noth­ing gained by grip­ing. You have to deal, imme­di­ately and clearly, with what­ever it is. The more clar­ity and direct­ness you can bring to bear, the more likely you will shift things, a lot or a bit.

Most of what you make your­self mis­er­able over is stuff over which you have no control.

It’s up there, rat­tling around in your head. Most of my clients have one or more fam­ily mem­bers they are mad at, think abused them, or who are not liv­ing right (accord­ing to them.) They tell me in glow­ing detail what’s wrong with these other peo­ple, and how they should change. If the topic is the econ­omy or pol­i­tics, same thing.

I sug­gest that the point of rela­tion­ship is to learn more about yourself.

Notice when you are up in arms over some­one else—how emphatic you can get about how you life is mis­er­able because of oth­ers. In order to find bal­ance you must learn to let go.

This is the real point of relating—to bring one or two peo­ple along for your ride, and to give them per­mis­sion to really see you, hear you, and wit­ness the fool­ish­ness that goes on between your ears.

If you allow your­self to let go of your sto­ries, eva­sions, block­ages, and judge­ments, you’ll find that things around you sim­ply exist on their own. They are as they are, and they really don’t need you fix­ing them. You begin to see the light, the Tao, of every­thing, and you let them be. You find a deeper sense of self-meaning, as your self is all you can work on directly.

Some­times, reach­ing out is reach­ing in

Then, as you reach out, you find that one or two inti­mate friends—people will­ing to walk with you, be with you, and emphat­i­cally to call you on your fool­ish­ness, your blam­ing, and your games. And you can do the same for them.

Dar and I still bitch and moan. We find all kinds of things not to like about life, about the world, about peo­ple we know. We lis­ten to each other as we strip flesh off of the straw dogs we cre­ate, and we laugh. When we make our­selves mis­er­able, we encour­age the active expres­sion of the emo­tion, while clearly deny­ing that the cause is “out there.”

And mostly, we hang out with­out judge­ment, lis­ten­ing to each other, laugh­ing with and at each other, and not tak­ing the dra­mas and games very seri­ously at all.

This week, exam­ine your rela­tion­ships. Won­der which ones are worth sus­tain­ing, and how many of them you can “just have,” with­out the sto­ries and mis­ery. Per­haps, you can let go of the need to make your­self mis­er­able, as you judge, label, and attempt to fix. You may just find that the end result of drop­ping the games is an over­whelm­ing rush of hap­pi­ness. Right here, right now, in this very world, no mat­ter how it appears.