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So, last week I tossed out the idea of delu­sion being one of the three things we cling to (the other 2 being attrac­tion and aver­sion.) Which of course begs the question:

why would we cling to delusion?

Well, think of it this way.

Often, when I talk with clients, they give me a list of all the things oth­ers in their life are doing wrong. (By wrong, remem­ber, they mean, “Not how I want them to do it!”)

They present a full and rich story of all of the other person’s sins, both of omis­sion and com­mis­sion. Then they sit smugly back, and ask me to help them fix the other per­son!

Now, I wouldn’t even if I could, because every­one has the right to be how­ever they are, but that’s not the point.

What peo­ple tell me about the oth­ers in their life is a fig­ment of their imag­i­na­tion. A story. A tale.

An illu­sion.

So, my job, if you will, is to dis-illusion them.

One client recently decided to change some­thing in her rela­tion­ship, and then she told me, in glow­ing detail, how her hus­band was going to sab­o­tage things, and how he was going to mess up her plan. Then (I love mir­a­cles) dur­ing body­work, she said, “You know, I just real­ized that I could make that change, and not make a big deal out of it, and I’m sure my hus­band would agree com­pletely with the change.”

Now, get this straight.

I don’t think that her illu­sion was merely her first story — the part where she told her­self, in glow­ing detail, about how her hus­band was going to sand-bag her idea — and that the sec­ond story she told her­self —with him coop­er­at­ing fully —was “true.” Only time will tell what hap­pens, should she actu­ally choose to do some­thing dif­fer­ent.

No, the first story was a story, and so was the sec­ond. It was just a more benign story.

All illu­sion, all made up.

To dis-illusion her, I might say, “Why don’t you just shift the thing, drop the sto­ries, and see what actu­ally happens?”

I don’t know about you, but I still spend way too much time up in my head, telling myself sto­ries, and I even know I’m doing it. In fact, I’ve spent years learn­ing to watch my drama, calmly. As I said last week, mostly I catch myself and stop. Occa­sion­ally, I need a nudge, and Darbella’s more than glad to give me one.

And here’s the kicker: it’s eas­ier for me to see the story-ness about the sto­ries I tell about oth­ers. It’s much harder to rec­og­nize that not only are the sto­ries we tell our­selves about oth­ers total fab­ri­ca­tions of our imag­i­na­tion, but so are the sto­ries we tell our­selves about our­selves.

We lie to our­selves, all the time, and often choose not to notice, to chal­lenge our­selves. To stop ourselves.

While it’s lame and facile to say it, when you think about it, most of us have lit­tle, nig­gling issues that we blow up into earth­shak­ing dra­mas.

And they are espe­cially minus­cule com­pared to the peo­ple, say, of Haiti, where the earth really shook.

But we whine and moan and com­plain about all of our lit­tle dra­mas, and typ­i­cally gather with oth­ers and whine some more.

And noth­ing, really, is going on.

And even in the midst of a real sit­u­a­tion (like Haiti, or a seri­ous ill­ness, or death…) there is only this: I will do what I can do. Sit­ting down and giv­ing up accom­plishes noth­ing, so I will act, and see what hap­pens next.

Now, I know that some of you want to say, “Yes, but all this crap in the world (and espe­cially in my lit­tle world!) is just not fair!”

Well, phooey.

Life isn’t fair. Life just is.

So, what do we do?

Well, we start to notice our own bull­shit. Our sto­ries, eva­sions, half-truths, and unwill­ing­ness to accept total respon­si­bil­ity for our­selves, and only for ourselves.

Once I accept total respon­si­bil­ity, I can do what­ever I choose to do. If I will not change my story (about oth­ers, about myself) I am doomed to sit in the mud-pile, sling­ing clods of dirt at imag­i­nary ghosts.

Here’s a lit­tle story:

I used to hang out with a guy who was a pilot. I’d go fly­ing with him, and he’d even let me steer, once we were up. One time, he decided we should do a series of “touch and go” thin­gies. This means you fly to an air­port, ask for per­mis­sion, and then sort of land, but you just touch down, and then accel­er­ate again and take right back off. It’s actu­ally land­ing practice.

Here comes the illu­sion part.

We headed up to an air­port near Port Elgin in Ontario. We were chat­ting away, and he’d glanced that the big book that has all the maps of run­ways. He’d found the air­port loca­tion, we spot­ted it, and headed in for the touch and go.

So, we’re head­ing for the run­way, and sud­denly, he says, “Oh shit.”

Now, these are 2 words you’d rather not hear in an airplane.

I can’t give you the actual mea­sure­ments, but let’s do it this way. Stan­dard small air­ports have 40 foot wide run­ways. This airport’s run­way was 25 feet wide. My pilot buddy was land­ing “eyes only,” had not looked up the width of the run­way in the book, and was not look­ing at the altime­ter. So, when he said what he said, he’d just real­ized that he was a whole lot closer to touch­ing down than he thought he was, given that 25 foot run­way and all, and we were head­ing in at a much-too-brisk pace.

I remem­ber think­ing (I kid you not…) “Oh well, lovely day for a crash landing.”

So, his illu­sion was where the plane was in rela­tion to the ground, in space and time.

Now, if the pilot had demanded that his story was true (that we were really higher than we were) we’d have eaten the run­way. We’d have also eaten it if he froze, and said, “It’s just not fair!”

Instead, he dis-illusioned himself.

He jerked back on the stick, goosed the throt­tle, and said, “Hang on!” (I always laugh when I hear that. It reminds me of “duck and cover” as a pro­tec­tion against an atom bomb…) so I just had a breath and watched the run­way rush up.

We hit with quite the bang. We even had to fly past an air­port tower to get the guys to make sure the wheels were still attached. They were…

We were fly­ing a STOL plane (that’s Short Take Off and Land­ing, and that’s it in the photo above) so goos­ing the throt­tle actu­ally worked, and the sucker shot right back off the runway.

In short, we didn’t die, nor crash. (Wink.)

We might have, had he not noticed the illu­sion (a real opti­cal illu­sion, yet no dif­fer­ent from the bull­shit sto­ries we tell ourselves.)

He snapped out of it, pulled up, goosed it, and we lived to talk about it.

So, there you go!

Snap out of it, pull up, goose your­self, and get over it.
Now — before you crash and burn.
Yet again!

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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