This is the sev­enth of our new series of arti­cles on The Zen of Let­ting Go, with side ref­er­ences to body­work, breath­work, and energy (espe­cially sex­ual energy) work.

As is usual with this series, I want to talk about what lies beneath each of the indi­vid­ual Chakras.

You’ve likely noticed by now that I’m giv­ing you an overview of life and liv­ing itself, and am using the Chakras only as a frame­work. If you want more Chakra spe­cific data, you can read arti­cles on our main site.

Any­way, what I want to remind you of is this: all work is indi­vid­ual work.

Last week, we looked at rela­tion­ships—and the biggest prob­lem most folk have with them is they can’t get the other per­son to coöper­ate or behave. In other words, “Sally’s” inter­nal process is, “I’m uncom­fort­able and unful­filled in my rela­tion­ship.” Her mind gets hold of the “uncom­fort­able” feel­ing, looks around, and says, “It’s him! He’s not doing (fill in the blank…) right!” I’ve watched this kind of process with hun­dreds of clients over the last almost 3 decades, and never once has think­ing like this caused any­thing to change.

What causes change is what hap­pens when I change how I am relating

Not wait for the “other” to change. Not blame the other. Not manip­u­late the other. Change hap­pens when I change. Period.

So, how I relate to any­one is all about me. It’s like play­ing ten­nis. No mat­ter what my oppo­nent hits across the net, the only thing that mat­ters (to my score) is what I hit back. Imag­ine how lame it would be for some­one to be stand­ing there, yelling at his oppo­nent: “It’s not fair! You’re hit­ting the ball so I can’t hit it back! You must not love me!” Yet, this expec­ta­tion is preva­lent in relationships.

It is not the job of the world, or oth­ers, to coöper­ate with you.

It’s your job to shift, rapidly and ele­gantly, to “hit the ball back,” no mat­ter what’s lobbed your way. Thus, the peo­ple who excel at rela­tion­ships are those who are entirely self–respon­si­ble. For their words, actions, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. They have made it their job to fig­ure out their side of things.

Way back in 1999 (the first year of our e-zine, “Into the Cen­tre,” I men­tioned the book Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson.

“To set the scene: The main char­ac­ter is a com­puter pro­gram­mer named (get this!) Hiro Pro­tag­o­nist. Two other char­ac­ters of note are his for­mer girl­friend, Juanita, and a 15 year old pizza deliv­ery girl, Y.T., (who rides an atomic pow­ered skate­board — you REALLY do have to read this book …) Any­way, Hiro hooks up with his ex girl­friend (who is also a coder,) and they try to stop a plot to con­trol the world through the use of lan­guage (which is why I’m so inter­ested in the book in the first place.) Hiro’s talk­ing to Y.T. about Juanita. He’s hop­ing they’re going to get back together. We pick it up on page 409.

Y.T. says, “Did you hook up with your old girl­friend yet?“
“No, but I have high hopes for that. Assum­ing I can stay alive.“
“High hopes for what?“
“Our rela­tion­ship.“
“Why?” she asks. “What’s changed between then and now?“
This is one of those utterly sim­ple and obvi­ous ques­tions that is irri­tat­ing because Hiro’s not sure of the answer.
“Well, I think I fig­ured out what she’s doing — why she came here.“
“So?“
Another sim­ple and obvi­ous ques­tion. “So, I feel like I under­stand her now.“
“You do?“
Yeah, well, sort of.“
“And is that sup­posed to be a good thing?“
“Well, sure.“
“Hiro, you are such a geek. She’s a woman, you’re a dude. You’re not sup­posed to under­stand her. That’s not what she’s after.“
“Well, what is she after, do you sup­pose …?“
“She doesn’t want you to under­stand her. She knows that’s impos­si­ble. She just wants you to under­stand your­self. Every­thing else is negotiable.” ”

Read that last line. mem­o­rize it. ‘Nuf said.

The 3^rd Chakra is about Self-knowing

I usu­ally say self–esteem, but that one is mis­un­der­stood to mean self­ish, so let’s stick to self–know­ing. Again, it’s all about you—figuring out you.

Devel­op­men­tally, this hap­pens after the first 2 stages. As I’ve writ­ten, The first thing is ground­ed­ness—know­ing that there is safety. Sec­ond, I must learn how to “attach” to oth­ers, in order to get fed, changed, cud­dled, etc.

Once I have fig­ured that out, I begin the process of dis­cov­er­ing myself as a sep­a­rate being.

You see infants play­ing with parts of them­selves with total focus. It’s that moment, for exam­ple, when her hands stop wav­ing about spas­mod­i­cally, and her head looks at an object, and she reaches out and grasps it. In that moment, synapses con­nect, and “hands, akimbo” becomes “my hands, under my con­trol.” At this point our tribes, thrilled we’ve fig­ured it out, rush in with, “Yes! That’s you! You, are, well… you! See! There’s you, in the mir­ror!”

Of course, what’s in the mir­ror is NOT me, but we’ll leave that for another day.

We’re taught to iden­tify our­selves as the “stuff” going on inside the flesh suit, and also the suit itself , although most adults wish we’d focus on the head and the heart, and leave the “suit-ness” mostly alone. We’re also taught that we are spe­cial and unique. Lead­ing to the line,

“You are spe­cial and unique, just like every­one else.”

Mod­ern par­ents, in many cases, are “guilty” of push­ing this to an extreme, expect­ing that their kids will never get hurt, that no one will ever look at their pre­cious kid cross-eyed, etc. All we get is kids who are incred­i­bly enti­tled, and think they are in charge of the house­hold. We reap what we sow. This kind of think­ing, at some level, is where 95% of the pop­u­la­tion is stuck.

To go back to what I said, above, think­ing you are spe­cial and that the world should change to keep you happy is the “men­tal ill­ness” we fight against daily.

The third stage, self-knowing, actu­ally revolves around learn­ing to see into your­self, and love your­self deeply. Para­dox­i­cally, 2^nd Chakra relat­ing is only pos­si­ble when there is an actual per­son doing the relat­ing. In OSHOs book, Tarot in the Spirit of Zen: The Game of Life
, we read:

The word inti­macy comes from the Latin root, inti­mum. Inti­mum means your inte­ri­or­ity, your inmost core. Unless you have some­thing there, you can’t be inti­mate with any­body. You can’t allow inti­mum, inti­macy, because the other per­son will see the hole, the wound, and the pus ooz­ing out of it. He will see that you don’t know who you are, that you are a mad­man, that you don’t know where you were going, that you have not even heard your own song, that your life is a chaos, it is not a cos­mos. Hence the fear of inti­macy. Even lovers rarely become inti­mate. The gen­i­tal orgasm is not all that there is in inti­macy. It is just the periph­ery of it; inti­macy can exist with it, can exist with­out it. …

Love is the goal, and once the goal is clear you start grow­ing an inter rich­ness. The wound dis­ap­pears and becomes a lotus; the wound is trans­formed into a lotus. This is the mir­a­cle of love, the magic of love. Love is the great­est alchem­i­cal force in the world. Those who know how to use it can reach the high­est peak. …

There is no way to be cer­tain about another—first be cer­tain about your­self. And the per­son who is cer­tain about him­self is cer­tain about the whole world. Page 16 to 17

Thus, as we’ve been say­ing, all of the work, all of the deep and inti­mate work of our lives, is per­sonal work—learning to know and love our­selves, and then being will­ing to let our selves be intimate—to be fully and deeply seen. This begins, metaphor­i­cally, with the 3^rd Chakra work of self-knowing.

Here are some tar­get areas for self-knowing

1. Self-knowing is not a pop­u­lar­ity contest

The major­ity of my clients are wait­ing for approval. Some didn’t get it as kids, some got too much, but most think there is some exter­nal stan­dard they “should” be liv­ing up to. I see it when peo­ple ask ques­tions about life, par­ent­ing, relat­ing, on Face­book, of all places . The answers they get tend to fit the cul­ture, and almost never chal­lenge the under­ly­ing assump­tions. (Except when I write back… )

Oth­ers want to live their pas­sion, and are wait­ing for per­mis­sion–from par­ents, friends, spouses, etc. “What if “they” don’t approve?” And I look, and see a lit­tle kid, stuck in an adult body, run­ning ahead 10 steps, then look­ing back to make sure mommy is still in sight.

Oth­ers have begun the explo­ration of their inter­nal the­atre, and are unwill­ing to risk putting it all out there. “What if they don’t like it?”

It’s impor­tant that you DO have a cou­ple of peo­ple around you whose views you trust—(I call this the “inti­mate cir­cle…”) I can think of about 5 or so in my life, Dar­bella being #1 on my list.

This is not to say you “blindly fol­low.” (I’m going to use the sin­gu­lar “per­son” here, but mean “small group of inti­mates.”) Once you have found “some­one” you trust, open up to that per­son and then shut up and listen.

Oh. It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that this per­son is almost never a rel­a­tive, as in, “No one ever got enlight­ened in their fam­ily.” The job of par­ents is NOT to hatch “BFFs.” It’s to cre­ate inde­pen­dent, free-thinking adults who go out and live their lives, mak­ing a difference.

So, the key is to sit with your­self for a bit (or sev­eral decades…) and get to know your­self, and to be in dia­log with a few trusted oth­ers, to share and to receive feed­back. And here’s a hint: if you don’t trust your sig­nif­i­cant other with this data, what’s your excuse for stick­ing around?

Open your­self to all of that juicy, shad­owy stuff buried deep, and kept (by you!) out of reach. Dig in there (likely with the help of a ther­a­pist / body­worker) and bring it out. Stop wait­ing, and wait­ing, and be yourself.

2. Self-knowing sel­dom fits the sta­tus quo

To really know your­self is to enter (as I just said) that shad­owy (Jung’s “Shadow”) world of the not-politically-correct. Our tribes con­spire to keep us from stray­ing too far from the cul­tural norm. They apply pres­sure all though our grow­ing years—pressure us to fit in, to not make waves, to look for exter­nal approval—all the things that get us safely to adult­hood. We do need to learn the rules, after all.

How­ever, being a true adult requires a big leap. We take what we’ve learned, and explore its rel­e­vance NOW, as an adult. For exam­ple, look­ing for approval makes sense when we are 5. Not so much at 25. Expect­ing res­cue when we fall is nor­mal at 2, not so much at 22. Expect­ing uncon­di­tional love at 3 is OK, not so much at 30.

The price of self-knowing is sep­a­ra­tion from the masses. Peo­ple who have writ­ten about this or taught it (includ­ing me!) fig­ure that 5% of the pop­u­la­tion actu­ally gets this suf­fi­ciently to risk the wrath of the sta­tus quo. And this wrath, for most, is noth­ing more than benign neglect! Peo­ple don’t under­stand you, and can’t con­trol you, so they ignore you! They can’t, for the life of them, under­stand why you’re not blam­ing oth­ers, whin­ing, being mis­er­able, try­ing to get ahead by step­ping on oth­ers, etc.

Stay­ing cocooned in the sta­tus quo seems safe, but ulti­mately noth­ing much hap­pens, and then you die. Step­ping out of tribal expec­ta­tions means enact­ing your spe­cial­ness. And yes, you are unique and spe­cial — in that only you can bring your gifts and tal­ents to the world. Just like every­one else. 5% do, 95% stuff it.

Stop stuff­ing it!

3. Self-knowing is honest

Avoid­ance mode is epi­demic. What do we avoid? Well, any­thing we pre-judge as negative.

The Bud­dha began his road to enlight­en­ment by dis­cov­er­ing that the out­come of life, for all of us (short of a fatal acci­dent) is, old age, sick­ness and death. Many have trou­ble with that one. The great insight is that this is the future for your­self and every­one you see.

Now, one option is to get all depressed, and scream, “It isn’t fair!” Guess what? Noth­ing has changed. The other, 5% option, is to stop wait­ing for things to get bet­ter some day, stop wait­ing for a fan­tasy per­son or career to res­cue you, and to live right now as fully and com­pletely as you can. You have no dis­cernible future, but you surely have right now.

Resis­tance to self-knowing is always about judg­ing that what I imag­ine ought to be hap­pen­ing is “bet­ter than, and fairer than” what is actu­ally hap­pen­ing, AND THEN just sit­ing there, wait­ing for things to change. Many, many peo­ple I know have detailed fan­tasies about how things ought to be, and are piss­ing their days away, expect­ing a miracle.

On the other hand, shift­ing pretty much any­thing in the here and now,means that you have a chance at a dif­fer­ent future. We are not pow­er­less. We are lazy. We want things to come eas­ily, with no crit­i­cism. Or, we’re fix­ated on some­thing we believe hap­pened in the past, and won’t change until the past is undone. Non­sense, but there it is.

I can choose to do some­thing right now, or I can wait (and remember–thinking about chang­ing is not chang­ing — it’s men­tal mas­tur­ba­tion…) for res­cue, for approval, for “the can­vas to paint itself…” Hon­esty is all about explor­ing the depths, and then sell­ing tickets!

4. Self-knowing is self-acceptance

I like to say that the way to begin is to set things at “zero,” and start from there. In other words, to drop all of the self–judge­ment and self-recrimination, and accept that things are, and you are, as it and you are, right now.

When Dar­bella and I were work­ing with the injured work­ers, this was our start­ing place. Most came there say­ing, “I wish I felt like I did before the acci­dent.” Think­ing like this was the cause of their suf­fer­ing, their mis­ery. Sure, I guess we’d all say it would be “nice” if they hadn’t been injured, but so what? Feel­ing sorry for our­selves (or oth­ers) changes pre­cisely noth­ing. How you are right now is nei­ther right / wrong, nor good /bad. It’s just how you are, right now.

You can stay as you are (the choice of 95%) and whine about it, or you can start where you are and begin to shift actual behav­iours. In the case of our injured work­ers, they shifted their lan­guage into self-responsible lan­guage, (“I am choos­ing to feel…” as opposed to “You make me feel…” etc.) began to med­i­tate, stretch and do Qi Gong, and showed up at a weekly group as opposed to hid­ing in their room. In other words, they took “where they were,” accepted it as “true,” and then acted differently.

ALL of who you are and how you are is the essence of you. Beat­ing up on your­self for your sup­posed “flaws” changes noth­ing (as does beat­ing up on other for theirs!) Rather, with­out judge­ment, we look at who and where we are, keep doing the things that get us what we choose, and chang­ing things that keep us stuck.

5. Self-knowing is freedom

You can’t be you if you think some­one else knows bet­ter than you what you ought to be doing. Ulti­mately, it’s all about your choices. Free­dom comes from exer­cis­ing free will. This is not licence to dom­i­nate or imprison oth­ers in your games. It’s accep­tance of total self-responsibility.

Free­dom comes when I know that every­one else is off the hook for how my life is going. I am were I am pre­cisely and only because of my choices to date. I can, at any time, do some­thing else. Or, I can choose to stay stuck where I am.

Free­dom is know­ing this, and choos­ing well.

Next week, voca­tion and the heart!