Archive for February, 2010
Ways To Think About Money
It’s good to be frugal, but not if it’s a way to deprive yourself out of a sense of being undeserving. Here are some more thoughts about how look at money differently. They won’t solve any underlying emotional issues, which also need to be addressed, but sometimes, acting your way into right thinking is a good way to start solving a problem.
When I was a kid, I read a novel called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, about a poor family living in a lower class New York neighborhood. Once a week, the mother gave each of her children a cup of coffee, which was an expensive indulgence for them. One of the children didn’t even like coffee, but she gave it to him anyway because it made him happy. He would play with it for awhile, stirring it around in the cup, sipping at it, carrying it around the apartment, then eventually pouring it down the sink. Neighbors scolded her for being so wasteful, but she was adamant about continuing the practice. It was something both she and her children looked forward to, and poor as they were, she didn’t want to deprive them of this one small pleasure. To her, what they chose to do with the treat was unimportant; being able to give them something that felt extravagant was what mattered.
The point is that no matter what your income level is, it’s important to your sense of well-being to find ways to indulge yourself occasionally. The human spirit needs that; it can survive, but not thrive, on a diet of constant deprivation. Besides, constant deprivation will usually have an opposite effect: binge spending, accompanied by shame and remorse. This behavior is the exact opposite of kindness toward oneself. “I deserve it!” is absolutely true, but if the credit card bill is going to put you into a tailspin, maybe what you deserve is to find healthier ways to indulge yourself.
One way is to rethink some of your views about frugality. If your home is full of cheap items from thrift stores and garage sales, ask yourself this: Would I rather have a bunch of cheap stuff or a few quality pieces? Sometimes, there are great deals to be had at discount places, especially if you know what to look for. But more often than not, the items are as cheap as they cost, and you end up surrounding yourself with poor quality belongings that look cheap, feel cheap, and don’t make you feel good. What if, instead, you bought one or two high-quality pieces that made you feel good inside every time you looked at, touched, or wore them? Good workmanship isn’t a widely held value in our culture anymore, and that’s sad, because there is an innate beauty in well-made goods that somehow nurtures the spirit. Somehow, recognizing quality in objects is a reflection of recognizing quality in ourselves. For this reason, I strongly believe it’s better to have a few quality pieces than a bunch of junk, even if it means your living room or your closet will be sparse as you save up to buy the better items. Higher-end purchases may feel like an unnecessary indulgence, but it’s an indulgence based on self-care, one that will not only feel good every time you use an item, but also provide lasting value, and perhaps even an investment, that cheaper items cannot.
Another question to ask yourself is How valuable is my time? In an effort to save a few dollars, people will drive all over town, buying toilet paper at one store, milk at another, and cleaning products somewhere else to save a few dollars. Or they’ll spend hours poring through coupons and comparing prices. If your budget is so tight that this is essential to make ends meet, then it’s probably a good use of your time. But if not, then you may want to ask yourself if this is really something you want to be doing. Is the time it takes to be a savvy shopper detracting more from your life than it’s adding? Are there other things you’d rather be doing that you could afford to be doing? Are there other ways you could save the same amounts of money that would be more satisfying? For example, could you buy fewer packaged foods and enjoy dinner-making time? Or take the money out of your budget elsewhere–turn the thermostat down a couple of degrees, or walk to the store instead of drive, or simply forego certain items if their absence won’t affect your quality of life? Cable TV, for example, or having your nails done, or stopping for a mocha caramel latte on your way to work. There are dozens of ways to cut out pointless spending–and save you far more money than coupons as well–without giving up your valuable time.
My father wasn’t a very nurturing guy, but he did teach me a few good things, and one of them was to pay yourself first. No matter how poor you are, or how hard it is to make ends meet, you should always set aside some part of your paycheck for savings. Having money in the bank gives you options. It’s power, freedom and security. Regardless of the fact that few people save anymore, it’s one of the wisest, most loving things you can do for yourself financially. I realize it’s a lot to ask, but learning to save is absolutely essential to your sense of financial well-being. So unless you’ll starve or be homeless by doing it, getting into the habit of saving is a powerful way to create a healthier relationship with your money.
Hand in hand with savings goes using credit cards wisely. Have you ever calculated how much you really pay for something if you carry a monthly credit card balance? It’s horrifying, no matter how great the interest rate. So don’t use credit cards for frivolous purchases. Don’t buy groceries with them, and don’t buy things you can’t afford otherwise. Save them for traveling and emergencies. And if you do use them, do so with the intention of paying the balance in full every month whenever possible. There is no worse feeling than being over your head in debt, especially when you’ve been seduced by the easy allure of the plastic.
Finally, find some ways to indulge yourself that don’t involve spending a lot of money. It might sound corny, but buy yourself some flowers, or an occasional dessert, or take a bubble bath, or spend some time alone if that is a guilty luxury for you. There are so many ways to treat yourself lovingly it’s impossible to list them all. Besides, it’s a very personal choice, one that you get to make for yourself. The idea is to do things that feel good and won’t make you remorseful down the road. Like the mother in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you can find small but significant ways to add a sense of richness and luxury to your life without going into debt if you give it a just a little bit of thought.
All of these ideas should help you rethink how you look at money. But how do you go about addressing the underlying emotional issues that may be involved? It’s a complex issue, but a good start might be to see self-indulgence as a normal and necessary part of life, for which there is no reason to feel guilt. Self-indulgence has become a skewed concept in our culture, perhaps because our society identifies self-worth almost exclusively with achievement. Advertising slogans convey the message that self-indulgence is a naughty pleasure that must involve impulsive spending on irrational desires. This is completely untrue, and such thinking can get you into a lot of trouble. If instead you accept the occasional indulgence as a perfectly healthy act of self-love, it’s far more likely to remain inside the bounds of rational choice, one that feels good and nurtures the spirit. Because if it doesn’t do these things, it isn’t really self-indulgence, is it? Rather, it’s yet another ineffective way of trying to get your needs met that doesn’t feel good–or indulgent–at all!
If done in the right way–with self-awareness and without guilt–self-indulgence is necessary and healthy, and an act of self-love. It’s up to you to determine whether or not your frugality fits this description, and if not, what to do about it.
The Garage Sale Mentality
Being careful with money is a virtue. Shopping sales, buying in bulk, buying off-season, using coupons, comparing prices–all are wise practices. No matter what your income, frugality feels good. Nobody wants to pay more than they have to for anything. More importantly, being careful with money is a source of security. It creates a sense of well-being, and taking care of yourself this way is as important as any other way you learn to take care of yourself. Knowing you can spend wisely, and even put something aside for the future, brings about a kind of confidence that can’t be had by any other means. Frugality is a way to feel powerful and in control of your life.
But some people have a skewed image of frugality. If you struggle with self-esteem issues, or grew up in a family where you weren’t valued as much as you should have been, then you may have learned to use frugality as a way to deprive yourself. I call this the garage sale mentality.
People with the garage sale mentality have an uncomfortable relationship with money. They have frugality and self-deprivation confused, so their decisions about money tend to be extreme and irrational, rooted in the belief that they are undeserving of good things. But because they aren’t consciously aware that their views about money are the result of deeper emotional issues, they feel pride in their ability to live in scarcity, even if that scarcity might not be necessary. These people are usually women, as it tends to be women women who have the cultural role of running a household and who most strongly identify their self-image with frugality. When such identification is combined with low-self esteem or other self-worth issues, the garage sale mentality is often present.
Here are a few examples. I know many women who love garage sales (and yes, this was how I got the idea for the title). Their houses are cluttered with items that they beam with pride about because of the great deals they got. But the vast majority of these items are unnecessary, taking up physical and mental space for these women, while many of their real needs go unattended. I believe that such garage sale purchases literalize how undeserving these women feel, and how emotionally needy they are. They long to be filled up, but the only way they feel okay about doing so is with stuff they don’t really want or need. By doing so, they feel like they’re filling their emotional needs and creating a sense of economic security (I’m a wise shopper!), but sadly, they miss the mark on both counts, so neither need ever gets filled in a satisfying way. If the garage sale shopping is combined with impulsive overspending, as it often is, the result is a double whammy of shame and remorse that feels truly awful.
Another friend of mine loves clothes. But because of her self-image of frugality, she would never consider buying high-quality fabrics or name brands. For her, it’s quantity that’s important, so her closet is packed full of cheap clothes. Pilled acrylic sweaters and out-of-fashion prints, ill-fitting suits, vinyl shoes and purses that crease and crack after a few uses. She can afford good clothes, but it doesn’t occur to her that it might be better to have half the amount at ten times the quality, that she would look better, feel more confident, and be more comfortable if she could bring herself to buy better clothes. In this case, she takes care of her needs, but she does so with an unconscious sense of deprivation that she’s not only unaware of, but even smug about: she has admonished me more than once for spending “too much” on good clothes, although my clothes budget is a fraction of hers, and she knows it. I don’t know how she rationalizes this cognitive dissonance to herself, but it is no coincidence that this woman grew up in a horribly abusive family. Her attitude toward clothing is one of many ways she doesn’t take very good care of herself, yet believes she’s doing the exact opposite. (The most glaring example is her fundamental Christianity, which she thinks has cured her painful upbringing, but in truth has only re-created its shame and rigidity on a different level.)
Yet another woman I know takes her frugality to an extreme on every front. She has a six-figure income and lives in a big, expensive house, yet spends money on nothing. She has a beautiful kitchen and loves to cook, but she has low-quality cookware and knives which, if you are into cooking, you know are the two essentials for a cook to spend money on! She’s like this with everything: clothes, food, household purchases; hers is one of the few houses I’ve seen that is truly sparse–no books, no plants, few knick-knacks, entire rooms void of furnishings. It wouldn’t be so noticeable except that her husband is the opposite. He would never consider depriving himself of something he wanted. Maybe she’s compensating for him, or maybe she’s just taken her role as household organizer to the extreme in an effort to gain approval from a selfish and critical partner. Either way, it misses the mark, having the feel of deprivation all over it. And once again, there is a smugness about it that also feels off, as there is no reason for her to deprive herself of anything, much less express pride in doing so or derision for people who don’t (which she does often). Maybe in this case, frugality is a manifestation of how empty and unsatisfied she feels in her marriage (which I know to be the case), or perhaps with life in general.
I mean no disrespect to any of these women; after all, I am one of them, or at least have been in the past. I mentioned smugness a few times because I think it is an important element of the garage sale mentality. People who are simply frugal in ways that aren’t tied to deeper issues lack this smugness. They aren’t concerned with how other people choose to spend their money, or at least, their concern doesn’t have a strong emotional feel to it. So smugness or judgment about frugality is a good way to recognize the garage sale mentality, in other people and in yourself.
Other clues that you might have the garage sale mentality lie in how you relate to money in general. Does the prospect of having it intimidate you? Do you keep yourself in low-paying jobs, unable to imagine yourself earning more? Do you resent or look down on people who are financially successful? Do you worry about your economic well-being and secretly believe you aren’t capable of taking care of yourself on this front? Do you feel dread at making a budget, or obsess over it? Do you frequently experience buyer’s remorse, even over small items? Do you scrimp and save for months and then impulsively spend too much on something you don’t need? All are indications that you may be using money to deprive yourself because you feel undeserving of good things.
Money is a charged issue for most people, regardless what angle you approach it from, regardless how much or how little of it you have, regardless of sex, race, color, or creed. The garage sale mentality is just one of many, many issues people can have around money. It doesn’t make you bad or weird or different, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But if you’re in this camp, or even suspect you might be in this camp, then you may want to develop a relationship with money that feels better and doesn’t involve depriving yourself in unnecessary ways. Like everything else, money is a way we relate to the world, and having a comfortable relationship with it indicates a comfortable relationship with ourselves. It’s a window into self-awareness, and paying attention to it can result in surprising new ways to know, love, accept, forgive yourself.
Only in Retrospect
This might sound like a tautology, but there is simply no way to know what you don’t know. You have ideas, dreams, and fantasies about what it might be like to attain something you really want. But none of these come close to the actual experience. We can prepare ourselves by taking certain actions, trying to have the proper attitude, and put ourselves in the path of the experience we want, but as far as thinking we know what it will feel like when it happens, that is beyond our power. Look at people who chase after fame, then spend their lives hiding from people and resenting how much everybody wants to get close to them. What they thought they wanted turned out to be, in reality, a heavy burden; not necessarily one they’d want to give up, but certainly one they wish they’d had more foresight about and been better equipped to handle.
You might worry that you won’t recognize the good thing when it happens. For the most part, that’s true; you likely will not. But it needn’t concern you, and here’s why. If you are taking care of yourself, trying to do the next right thing, and sowing the seeds of health and happiness, then when good things come along, you will appreciate them instinctively, even if you don’t recognize them immediately. When you begin to move toward the light, good things start to happen. They start slowly, but if you stay on the path, they build, and as they build you develop a better and better feel for what works for you and what doesn’t. This moves you further toward the light, so what you’re doing is creating an upward spiral of good feeling and growth which, despite the bumps along the way, feels so good it keeps you moving in the right direction. Then one day you become aware that you’re not looking at the world the same way anymore, and you’ve solved some problems that once seemed insurmountable, and you realize that the good thing kind of sneaked up on you and sure enough, you didn’t recognize it, but that’s okay because it happened anyway.
You really have to let go not only of a particular outcome, but also of the idea that you’re even capable of recognizing the outcome you want–because chances are, you aren’t! If you’ve never had a thing, then how could you possibly recognize it? Sure, you can recognize the external trappings, but anybody can; they are a tiny fraction of the picture, and a mostly inaccurate one at that. The taste and feel of a thing, the gamut of emotions it evokes in you, its visceral impact, all the stuff that bubbles to the surface because of it, the highs and lows associated with it, the solving of unforeseen problems, the magnificent mysterious details–there is simply no way to recognize, much less understand, these things from an external vantage point. Trying to is a waste of effort.
So what you’re left with, then, is the journey itself, and trying to make the best one that you can, which you do by paying attention to the things you do have some control over: your attitude, your choices, and your actions. That’s the only real option any of us have, anyway, and it is far more important a focus than any particular outcome we might desire.
If you take care of the day-to-day decisions, the others will work themselves out. This doesn’t mean you’ll have endless bliss, as that is not possible. It means that you’ll have the comfort and confidence of knowing you’ve faced your difficulties and the world to the best of your ability, with as much honesty, grace, and earnestness as you’re capable of.
It Doesn’t Matter Where You End Up
Oh sure, it’s important to set goals for yourself. And ideally, where you end up with those goals will be a more satisfying place than where you started out. But when it’s the inner journey we’re talking about, worrying about the outcome is more often than not an excuse to not make the effort. People say things like What if I do all this and it doesn’t turn out how I want? What if (fill in the blank) isn’t worth it? Such reservations usually have more to do with hesitance and fear than they do with genuine concern that self-discovery might not be all it’s cracked up to be. It is all that and more. But the reasons people balk are real and significant, and discounting them is not helpful to anyone who wants to change.
When a person is mired in habits that she knows aren’t working, she usually has valid reasons for hanging onto them, even if it looks like insanity to everybody else. These habits are the only respite from her anxiety that she knows. They are also usually a person’s primary sense of connection to the world. So to give up these habits is to give up the only way of relating to the world. If you’ve ever watched an addict go back over and over to her addiction in a way that is so obviously self-destructive, what you’re really watching is a person terrified of giving up her comfort zone. From this point of view, can you blame her?
Change is hard. Nobody wants to quit doing what they’re accustomed to. Nobody wants to take a long hard look at themselves. Nobody wants to confront their demons or feel their pain or fix their broken ways of dealing with their emotions. It’s an overwhelming proposition, and that’s putting it mildly.
But don’t let worrying about an outcome stop you from trying. You may decide you’re not ready, or that you have other priorities right now, or that you’d rather deal with the consequences of not changing than take on the hard work of change. But questioning the outcome of the effort is not a reason to refrain in any way, shape, or form. Because embarking on a journey of change can only be a positive. There is not a single downside to self-discovery, so you must learn to ignore the fear telling you that there is.
The truth will set you free. Nowhere is this more true than when it’s the truth about yourself. Once you start down that path, the sense of rightness about it is uplifting, exhilarating, mind-bogglingly wonderful. Like a cave dweller who sees sunlight for the first time, more wonderful and radiant than he could have ever imagined from the vantage point of lifelong darkness. When you first start out, you simply have no inkling of the tremendous possibilities waiting for you. Truth will bring you to places you can’t possibly comprehend at the outset. So the goal you set for yourself in the beginning will most likely be far smaller and lower than where you end up.
But most of all, it doesn’t matter where you end up because it’s the dance that matters. Most people look at life as something with a destination. They think that when they get to X, everything will work out. They get there, and immediately start thinking about Y. Then when they get there, Z is the first thing on their minds. None of these destinations fulfilled them like they thought would happen. This is because it is not the endpoint, but the adventures along the way, that fill the cracks and crevices of our lives and make it meaningful.
Learning to look at life as a dance instead is one of the wisest things you can do. You don’t dance to get to the end, you dance to enjoy the music. Life is a song. It is meant to be sung, danced to, enraptured by. What’s on the other end matters, but not nearly as much as you think it does. And if you focus too much on that, you miss out on the beautiful music playing right now–this very instant!!–that you could be dancing to instead of worrying about the music around the next corner.
Things rarely turn out how we want or expect. Sometimes they turn out worse, sometimes better. In the end, having shown up for the dance is all that really matters. If you do that to the best of your ability, things have a way of working out alright.
Sowing the Seeds
(Or: The Importance of Being Earnest)
You may choose any way that suits you; your earnestness will determine the rate of progress. — Nisargadatta Maharaj
Making it to the other side of something may be a mystery, but it doesn’t come out of thin air. Positive change happens to people who prepare themselves for it. Forgive the use of a tired old metaphor, but if you want to reap the harvest of change, first you have to sow the seeds. How do you do that?
In The Power of Getting to the Other Side, I talked about a lot of actions that I thought helped me with personal change. While I know these actions were critical, I neglected to mention another very important aspect. I don’t think any of the actions would have worked had I not had one very specific frame of mind underlying them all: earnestness. That is, I truly wanted to change.
This may seem obvious, but it is actually a tricky psychological game a lot of people play with themselves. It’s easy to tell yourself you’re earnest–”Of course I want good things! Of course I want to change for the better! Of course I’m willing to do what it takes!”–and just as easy to believe it. It’s even easy to take offense at the slightest suggestion that it might not be completely true. But if you say you want to change, yet haven’t been able to make much change happen, the chances are good that you’re not as earnest in your desires as you’d like to believe.
If action is the seed of change, then earnestness–defined by Dictionary.com as serious in intention, purpose, or effort–is the soil from which it will spring. If change sprouts from poorly tended soil it will result in weak, spindly stalks lacking the strength to bear much fruit. But if change sprouts from rich, carefully tended soil, it will bear fruit beyond the sower’s wildest dreams. Earnestness, more than anything else, provides rich soil for change.
Why is earnestness so important? For one thing, it indicates desire, and you can’t achieve much of anything in life without desire. Also, earnestness determines how you’ll deal with obstacles and setbacks, and how enthusiastic you’ll remain when these setbacks occur. Most importantly, earnestness puts learning ahead of self-image, ego, and denial; it will eventually break down all barriers to change and leave you with a wide open path toward whatever hopes, dreams and goals you have for yourself. If your desire for change is earnest, nothing can stop you; if your desire is lukewarm, nothing you do will work.
All that’s left, then, is the question of how to gauge your own level of earnestness (which, as I said, can be tricky). The simplest way to do this is to look at what I like to call the Three E’s: effort, engagement, and enthusiasm.
Effort. First, notice how much effort you’re willing to exert. Do you make commitments to yourself to bring about the change you want? If so, do you honor those commitments? Do you put in the work because, even if you’re exhausted or discouraged or depressed, it feels worse not to? How do you spend your free time? (Not that you need to spend every waking moment on self-improvement. Part of self-improvement is being able to enjoy down time without feeling guilty. The point here is to be honest with yourself about your willingness to change.)
Engagement. How engaged are you in the process? Does it interest you? Are you curious about it? Is your inner world a mystery you want to solve? Do you find yourself lost in thought about it and looking forward to opening the next book on the topic? Or do you feel dread at the prospect?
Enthusiasm. Do you enjoy the process? Do you feel energized by it, excited about it, happy to be doing it? Or does it feel like just another chore to add to the list?
Not everything about change is going to feel good. Sometimes it hurts or frightens before it feels better. And not everything you do is going to result in a positive experience or have positive effects; we all take the occasional wrong turn. But within the context of the sometimes painful process of healing and the normal ups and downs of human fallibility, it’s important to be honest with yourself about how earnest your desire for change really is. If you aren’t, you’ll waste a lot of time and energy sowing seeds in bad soil, time and energy that could be better spent doing something you truly enjoy.
See also:
The Means/End Dichotomy
The Power of Getting to the Other Side
Getting to the other side of something that once seemed insurmountable is probably the greatest adventure life has to offer. Such a journey is truly a leap of faith, the emotional equivalent of jumping off a cliff blindfolded into a great unknown purely by your own choosing. And although such a choice is often made under duress, after other options have exhausted themselves, seeing the journey through to the end generally requires great fortitude. It also results in being permanently changed for the better because there is so much power in discovering yourself capable of doing what you thought was impossible.
This happened for me with sobriety, and also with my significant other relationship, which is the thing people are usually the most curious about. I went from an unbroken pattern of making bad choices to finding my perfect fit. Where once I was terrified of intimacy, I became unwilling to have a relationship without it. How did I do that? What changed?
I wish I could say with certainty what caused the shift, but I can’t. While I can’t discount the role of luck, I know there was more to it. I was preparing myself all along the way, particularly after I got sober and began the self-discovery adventure in earnest. So I have no hard and fast answers (if I did, I’d be rich), but I’ve put together a list of things which I believe contributed, and which I think would be the most helpful for someone struggling with change.
Hit a bottom. It is an unfortunate design flaw in human nature that often, we need to be bloodied and bludgeoned into doing what’s best for ourselves. This is what the 12 Steppers call “hitting bottom,” and it’s true that addiction is one of the hardest things to quit and often only attempted after all other avenues of change have been exhausted. Once the bottom is hit, though, a person often looks back on it as the best thing that could have happened because it was the beginning of real change. I don’t wish a bottom on anybody, as they are painful and unpleasant and truly awful to go through. And yet, if hitting bottom–that is, having serious consequences that force you to start making better decisions for yourself–is what it will take for you to change, then perhaps it is the best thing that could happen; it certainly was for me. Sometimes, it’s the only way we become truly ready.
Develop a support system. Change is hard, but without people on your side cheering you on, change is almost impossible. I can’t emphasize how important it is to have the support of people who want you to succeed. Sadly, if you grew up in an unsupportive family, you may not even know what this kind of support feels like, so the first order of business may be to educate yourself about it. If you have one friend you trust, ask her for help. Go to a therapist. Join a self-help group; there are thousands out there, they’re free, and they’re full of people struggling with the same issues you are. Sometimes you need to shop around to find a fit, but if you persevere, you will. There are millions of people who want you to succeed. If you find just a few of them, it will change your life.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes! All making mistakes means is that you’re out there trying–and sometimes mistakes offer the most valuable lessons. So give up trying to figure everything out and abandon yourself to the adventure.
Sometimes, you have to fly blind, trust what people tell you, and be wise enough to know you don’t know–and can’t know–until you’ve gotten to the other side. When that happens, what seemed insurmountable becomes the simplest thing in the world, and you wonder why you ever fretted about it so.
We Are Already Whole…So What?
The very day I posted “When Do You Feel Most Alive?” I stumbled upon an article about already being whole. The article is talking about the same thing I am, but the approach is from a different angle. It says that we are already whole, so our wounds need not define us because they are not our real selves: our Real Selves existed before the wounds came along, and if we can dig deeply enough to realize our inherent Wholeness, we no longer have to suffer.
I agree with the basic premise–that we are already Whole–one hundred percent. But I think there’s some confusion in the world of personal growth, particularly in those areas that emphasize a spiritual path toward wholeness, as opposed to Wholeness. The lower-case wholeness refers to ego (or self, if you prefer) soothing, healing, and development, while Wholeness is about ego-transcendence–achieving enlightenment. They are equally important (I know many would argue with that), but very different processes. When the gist is that thoughts about your inherent Wholeness can allow you to bypass ego soothing/healing/development altogether, serious problems can ensue.
We are all already Whole, all already aware, all already enlightened. I’ve had those sublime moments of awareness myself, and they have changed me and how I look at the world much, much, much for the better. But as far as finding comfort for my wounds, my question about this sublime awareness is, “So what?” Because finding comfort from such an awareness is temporary at best, illusory at worst, and chasing after it in order to feel better largely sidesteps the ego healing process, a process absolutely essential to a person’s sense of well being. (It also misses the point about the awareness itself almost entirely, but that is mostly another topic.)
The awareness we’re both talking about is that of nonduality, the belief that everything in the Universe is one Entity. Success Consciousness.com describes it like this:
“The philosophy of Nonduality, or as it is called in India, Advaita-Vedanta, says that there is just One Spirit in the Universe, and that everything, living or inanimate, is an inseparable and indivisible part of this One Spirit. Nonduality further says that it is only illusion, caused by the mind and the play of the senses, which makes us regard the world and everything in it as real and separate from us.”
The illusion of separation is called, then, duality, and it is the world the vast majority of us experience a vast majority of the time (permanent enlightenment occurring in less than one percent of the population). In the dualistic world, our default outlook is one of separation–separation of self from others, separation of mind from body, separation of ego from Wholeness. We live this way because, in a very real sense, we’ve forgotten our True Nature. But the True Nature is always present–so present and so much a part of us (or really, we of it) that it’s like trying to see air, which is why it can be difficult to access, particularly with a thinking, worrying mind. When one has a “peek” experience into nondual awareness (which can occur spontaneously in moments when the mind is off guard, or through sustained effort like meditation or some other practice), there is a sense of sublime serenity and confidence in the rightness of the experience. Unfortunately, these peek experiences are fleeting, and without some formal effort at sustaining them, they fade away into the practical demands of the dualistic world.
So yes, we are already Whole. But what does this really mean? If you take the logic to its fullest conclusion, it means that you don’t have to do anything. You don’t need to meditate or try to quiet your thoughts. No action is required to become Whole because you already are; further, no action can make you whole, because you already are. Conversely, any action you choose to take makes no difference whatsoever. There is nothing you can do or not do in this dualistic world that affects your True Nature in any way.
Remember also that this Wholeness extends beyond human beings. Everything in the Universe is a perfect manifestation of this Wholeness, pristine and exactly as it should be right now. This includes not only nature and music and art, but also toxic waste dumps, the AIDS virus, genocide, global warming, slavery, suicide, abusive parents, everything. If you accept the premise of being already Whole, then you must apply it everywhere, to everything, as that is the basic definition of nonduality (as I understand it). You, me, and the entire Universe are whole and perfect in every way, always and forever. I believe this to be absolutely true.
And yet, doesn’t it seem absurd to say there is no need to work for social change, no need to search for a cure for AIDS, no need to take better care of our planet, no need to address abusive parenting, no need to try to improve the human quality of life or help to ease suffering in any way? In the absolute sense, this is the exactly the case, which is probably why one stereotypical image of an enlightened guru is someone who lives alone in a cave–such a person has decided there is no point in making any other effort. And he is right, and such a decision is just fine from a nondual point of view.
However, most people who achieve permanent enlightenment make the effort to teach. Even though they understand the inherent Wholeness of everything just as it is, they choose to help others have that same understanding. Many of them also have opinions about social justice, politics, the environment, and most of the other ten thousand things in the world of conditions. This is because in the dualistic world, some forms of wholeness are better than others. I don’t fully understand why, but paradoxical as it sounds, taking action toward “better” wholeness is the best decision for most of us most of the time.
Since our ego–our conditioned self–is part of the dualistic world, it requires care, nurturing, and a movement toward “better” wholeness. And the belief that we are already Whole has very little to do with that process. Yes, this thought may provide comfort, but such comfort does little to help the healing process. According to Chogyam Trungpa, a great Tibetan master, relying on the belief of Wholeness to comfort our ego is a form of spiritual materialism, which he wrote about in his classic book, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (Shambhala Library)
“Spiritual materialism is the belief that a certain temporary state of mind is a refuge from suffering. An example would be using meditation practices to create a peaceful state of mind, or using drugs or alcohol to remain in a numbed out or a blissful state. …these states are temporary and merely heighten the suffering when they cease. So attempting to maintain a particular emotional state of mind as a refuge from suffering, or constantly pursuing particular emotional states of mind like being in love, will actually lead to more long term suffering.”
It might shock you to think that spiritual practice is not about feeling better, but in its purest form, it isn’t. If the goal is Enlightenment, then spiritual practice is simply, clearly, and exclusively about understanding the true nature of the Universe. Yes, such practice may eventually allow you to transcend your ego, but transcendence is not discounting or diminishing, as a lot of people seem to believe. Transcendence is something else altogether; it can only occur from permanent enlightenment, and until that occurs, the ego plays the lead role in our lives. So the ego is important. Understanding it to the best of our ability is important. And soothing it–feeling better–is important, too; it just isn’t really the point of spiritual practice.
People want to believe that such “spiritual soothing” works because it is vastly simpler and less demanding than all the messy, painful, unpleasant work required to put the pieces of a wounded self/ego back together. They want to believe that the ego doesn’t matter so they can focus on easier problems. But–once again–the ego does matter. Its wholeness determines much about how our lives will play out. A clear spiritual path can certainly help with healing, but it is not the path, nor can it be. Healing the ego is a psychological process, and there are no shortcuts for it, spiritual or otherwise. Intellectual reminders of Wholeness might sometimes be helpful, but more typically, they’re diversions from the real work. And while seeking temporary relief, real issues continue to fester away inside of us.
(Ken Wilber, the great writer and philosopher, does a much better job than I can of describing the ego’s importance here, and also in any number of his books, which I recommend highly to anybody interested in pursuing this topic.)
So yes, we are already Whole. Absolutely and incontrovertibly. And I enjoy being reminded of that. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working toward ever greater understanding, in the world and in ourselves. Our Wholeness doesn’t depend on it, but our wholeness does.