Obscured by Demons

I’ve written before that our perceptions are a version of reality that’s filtered through thought. This is simply a fact or a principle underlying human experience. Here’s a diagram to illustrate it that I’ve shared before:

Thought is one of humanity’s greatest assets. It’s led to our survival, it’s led to our thriving, and it’s one of the strongest outlets of our creative genius.

Thought is also the source of most of our demons. Shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, regret, nightmares, and addiction. Each of those is infused with thought. There’s also a physiological component to these demons, but our physiological reactions and responses are typically guided by our thinking. (I don’t mean to diminish the impact of pain and abuse here - those are a different type of demon.)

Take the stick that looks like a snake. When we’re hiking in the woods and catch a snake shape out of the corner of our eye, we jump back, our heart rate quickens, and our body tenses. We thought the stick was a snake, and all of these physical reactions ensue. The same is true of our demons. Through the filter of thought, we perceive something about others, about ourselves, or about life itself, and we think it’s a snake.

A friend of mine refers to our demons as our shadow side. In our men’s group, he wanted us to do more “shadow work.” Shadows, however, are just blocked light. For example, shadows from trees happen when a tree blocks the light of the sun.

Our demons, our shadows, arise when we allow our thinking to eclipse the light of an authentic experience of ourselves and our lives. In other words, our darkest moments are when the thought filter is so thick that we don't see the light that’s always there.

Even when we’re not in the throes of battling our demons, our view of life is obscured by the thinking of our mood. When our mood is low (a bad mood), our thought filter is thicker. When our mood is high (a good mood), our thought filter is thinner.

So what’s our access to freedom? How do we loosen our demons’ grip on us? How do we get access to love even when we’re in a low mood?

Step 1: Trust We are innately well, inherently wise and perfect, and life is a gift and a phenomenal experience. Our thinking will not often let us see ourselves and others this way, but it’s true. Especially in a low mood, our thinking shows us versions of ourselves and others quite far from the truth. Until we trust that this is the case, we’ll keep trying to solve our problems with more thinking.

Step 2: Ride it out More thinking in a low mood doesn’t clear the waters, it keeps them cloudy. Ride the low mood out without acting from that low mood's thinking. Redirect your attention away from your thinking. Then do it again. And again. When lake water is cloudy, you can’t force the mud back down to the bottom; you’ve got to wait it out and the water will clear on its own. Same is true with your thinking: more thinking from a low mood will just keep swirling the waters. Yes, this depends on trust that your system will right itself, the storm will end, and the waters will clear. Trust it.

Step 3: Foster good feelings There are simple things we can do in any moment to foster a feeling of well-being. It doesn’t take meditating in silence for decades, and it doesn’t take perfect physical health. Get grounded. Practice getting grounded. It’s a physiological and mental practice, and getting grounded also brings a feeling of well-being. Practice this in high moods as well as low moods. Practice it in the middle moods. Fostering this feeling of well-being evens out the dark moments and gives us physical and psychological anchors in those moments when the turbulence is high and the mood is low.

Here are two audio files I created to guide you through a grounding exercise. They're my first go and not too developed, but I hope you find them helpful:

• 12 minute guided meditation. Eyes closed for most of it. Link to recording here.

• 7 minute guided grounding exercise. Eyes open. Link to recording here.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

“You’ve seen my descent, now watch my rising.” - Rumi

---

All of the diagrams above, particularly the mood diagram, are inspired by diagrams Joe Bailey shares in The Serenity Principle. I'm grateful to my friend Pete for turning me onto Joe's work.

Adulthood Isn't an Age

Yes, all those other parents were right: kids grow up too fast. I look at these two middle schoolers that we’ve got at home and I can barely get over how big and mature they’re getting. Facebook’s memories remind me so often of when these big guys were just little guys, and it moves me every single time. My little boys are growing up, and they’re growing up too fast.

Yet, we all sort of know that getting older isn’t the same as growing up. Those countless times that my older siblings told me to “grow up” and stop annoying them wasn’t them asking me to get bigger and get older; they wanted me to act more maturely.

Our societal rite of passage into adulthood is graduating high school and turning the legal age of 18. There may be other familial, religious, or biological rites of passage too (such as taking care of younger siblings, bat mitzvah, and menstruation), but most of us tend to agree that 18 is when we become an adult.

Biologically, we’re ready for reproduction in early adolescence. Neurologically, we’re not fully grown until 24-28 years old. Emotionally and spiritually, many of us don’t ever seem to make it to adulthood.

Until 25 years old or so, our lives are in rapid transition. We change by the month or by the year at the longest. Then, when we finally are adults in a neuro-biological sense around 25, we still experience so many transitions, changes in life status as well as biology. The changes seem to be more subtle beyond age 25, but they’re certainly there (I'm in the midst of a mid-life transition myself).

I think our culture is making a mistake by thinking of adulthood as beginning at a specific age. There's nothing wrong with making this mistake, but there is a missed opportunity. I prefer to think of adulthood as a way of being, an approach, or an experience.

How many of us have lost someone close to us from alcohol or drugs, or watched someone’s life wither in the face of addiction of any kind? How many more of us experience general struggle, stress, and anxiety as we grapple with life’s responsibilities and our own well-being? Then there’s the sense that there’s something more to this life, something just beyond where we are but we can’t quite seem to get there or tap into it.

Add to that our vastly larger shared challenges like social disruption and inequality, environmental degradation, large-scale extinction, and a consumerism that doesn’t satiate our desires yet carries an often unseen wake of negative environmental and social impact.

I don’t write this to catastrophize or try to scare you into caring about what I care about. I’m just being honest about the facts. We face our own individual challenges, we face local and regional challenges, we face national challenges, and we face global challenges. And we face them without a consistent level of awareness, accountability, and realization of our own innate capacities to creatively solve problems and live life in wellness.

The promise of adulthood is realized capacities for well-being, satisfaction, enjoyment, appreciation, community, love, and effectiveness. We, our loved ones, the human race, and the planet are crying to be well. And we’ve all got the capacity for it - we always have and always will.

Whether we know how to tap into it is a different question. There are consistent, effective ways to tap into it, and that's the game I want schools playing.

I propose that we add to the high school foundation of knowledge a foundation of awareness: an awareness of the self as an agent in creating, fostering, and transforming our experience of life; an awareness of the self as innately capable, free, and desirous of living a life of well-being; an awareness of the self as part of a community in fostering well-being in others and our environment.

To me, the real definition of adulthood is fully realizing our response-ability - the capacity to creatively respond to any circumstances without constraint. We all have that capacity built into us as humans; most of us just haven’t learned yet how to effectively and consistently tap into it.

Let’s change that.

Thanks so much for engaging with my work. ❤️

What Do You Really Want?

When traveling in Turkey a number of years ago, I crossed paths with an Israeli woman who was trying an experiment: she was following her impulses. She would only sleep when she was tired, she would only eat when she was hungry, and she would only move when her body craved movement.

I was reminded of her last year when I heard of a student at our school doing the same thing. As an experiment, he was following his impulses to see what life felt like. He had a number of late nights and rough school days, but he stuck with it.

Most of us listen to our desires as if they’re significant and pointing us in some direction that we really want to head. As if the mere idea of refusing our cravings is in some way refusing a part of ourselves. As if the the objects of our desires are what we’re really after and would really lead to happiness.

The objects of our desires are not what we're really after, and the happiness they lead us to is not everlasting.

So, what do you really want?

The first thought that comes to mind for me is a Tesla (any model, please), abundant passive income so I never have to work again, good health for me and my family, and the ability to travel any where at any time.

But that’s not what I mean when I ask what do you really want? I mean what do you want as a way of feeling or being. That’s really what we’re craving anyway. We think it’s the object of our desire that we really want, but it’s not. We are really after the feeling we get to feel when that craving is met.

It really seems like desire is an emotion that can only be satiated by getting what we’re craving. While doing so can satiate our desire at least temporarily, our desire is perhaps not really even pointing to that specific object. What if, like fear, desire is actually pointing somewhere beyond the object of our desire?

Just like fear, desire is a clear emotion - we all tend to know what it feels like. Whether it pulls us strongly or subtly, desire seems automatic and it’s nearly always present to some extent or another. Like fear, desire comes with some of the oldest and most primitive parts of our brains. And as with fear, it’s a really good thing that we feel desire.

You see, the obvious desires are biological in nature and highlighted by biological impulses. Other desires, cravings not sourced in biological needs or desires, are more like longings. In both cases, our desires serve one purpose: maximize reward. When we maximize reward, we increase our chances of survival. Well, that was at least true earlier on in our life as the human creature.

Today, however, maximizing our reward by satisfying our specific cravings is no longer a signal of greater survival. In fact, in a world abundant with unhealthy ways of satisfying our cravings, desire often points in a direction that hurts our survival chances. Sugar, sex, substances, video games, netflix, etc. - when we follow those cravings for too long our quality of life diminishes.

This is because our cravings have never been about these objects of desire. Our cravings are about our well-being.

Let’s take an extreme example of desire: addiction. Those of us who have struggled with addiction of any kind or any level know the strength, danger, and possible pain of desire, as well as the all-too-common interpretation of desire as immoral or wrong. However, we might just be misinterpreting our desire.

Joe Bailey, a psychologist, addiction counselor, and author (one of my favorites), has written that addicts, like the rest of us, are really just looking for a path to a feeling of well-being. Addicts have allowed themselves to consistently find that feeling in substance use. Joe suggests that our desires are always pointing us in a single direction: toward well-being. If we can see beyond the specific, momentary object of desire to the source of all our desire - a feeling of well-being - we might find some additional will-power to skip the cookies and appreciate a feeling of health or turn off the iPad and head to bed.

Fear and desire are always pointing to one place: well-being. It may seem like our desire is about that shiny or sweet object laid in front of us on the table, but it’s not. Mostly, our fears and desires highlight insecurities that we feel, and the fears and desires point us toward feeling secure and well.

It’s not actually Chick-fil-a that I want - I’m looking for a feeling of satiated well-being. It’s not really the alcohol that I want - I’m looking to feel good, secure, and self-expressed. It’s not really winning the argument with self-righteousness and justification that I’m after - I really want to feel loved and supported for who I am.

Here’s a magic question that helps us see through the cravings and fears of the moment to the well-being we’re actually looking for: What do I really want?

Just like with fear, look beyond the immediate objects of desire to where the desire is really pointing. And then remember that true well-being isn’t something we ever have to go looking for, because it’s always with us - always has been and always will be. Allow your inner wisdom to highlight what you really want, and the craving for those Doritos might just disappear.

For me, it's to be unconditionally in love with life, at ease and compassionate, and to be acting in line with my commitment to the well-being of all life.

What do you really want? No need to push, but don't hold back.

Thank you for engaging with my work. ❤️