The Courage To Be Wrong: Regression as a Dynamic In Friendship
Well, the time has come for me to start writing again about the observations and experiences I'm having in my life again. It seems I go through cycles about this impulse to talk in a more-public way about what is going on in my developmental path. And the impulse has arisen again, so I'm going to honor it.
A Standard Blogging Disclaimer
I will likely repeat this disclaimer as I get back into the practice of writing, but please understand that all I'm doing is openly sharing my best observations about the experiences and challenges I go through. My best observations are not static, they are fluid. I experience life as a process of creation, and this process is dynamic, not static. Thus, if my observations are rigid and unforgiving of contrary perspectives, then I am out of harmony with the rhythm of creation: My observations are static (unchanging) while life as process of creation is dynamic (constantly changing, often in a chaotic pattern).
I don't cling to any one perspective, and most of my interactions are a process of coming to understand the perspectives of others, which requires being able to see the same life event from many different perspectives at the same time.
If my words are read from within the above understanding, then people are free to keep those things they find beneficial, while discarding those things they find harmful, or out of harmony with their dance with the world. This understanding makes the process of my sharing of myself honestly, without you needing to defend your perspective of life, or making me wrong so you can be right.
If you have a different way of seeing things, then I honor that as your expression of Who You Are, and the world you are creating for yourself. I welcome your sharing your observation of your experience with me. And so long as you are content with how that process is going for you, then I freely admit that my observations may be wrong for you... hell, they might even be wrong for me. And that's the basis of why I honor your way of creating your world. I recognize that there are many areas of my life where I am not totally enjoying my experience of the world. I'm just doing the best I know how with my inner resources. So I know that by interacting with different worldviews, I may be inspired to integrate beneficial observations that are totally foreign to me at this time!
At any rate, on to something else.
What is on my mind in this moment has to do with two related observations:
1) Learning to trust my higher voices requires the courage to be wrong and learn from my mistakes.
2)Making forgiveness the basis of my lifestyle requires living in a way where forgiveness is the natural choice to make, rather than a forced choice.
So I'd like to take a few moments to discuss each of those observations.
The Courage of Action, Rather Than Reaction
Learning to trust my higher voices requires the courage to be wrong and learn from my mistakes. One of the primary challenges of a spiritual path of development is that of translating spiritual intention into beneficial action. Action is always based on faith, because action is creative--meaning action always moves something unseen into something seen; it moves something from unconsciousness into consciousness.
Action is contrasted by reaction, literally re-action. Reaction is by nature a stimulus-response phenomenon. We take something seen, and change how it is seen. Reaction is by nature unconscious, in that it is common experience for whole friendships to be based on unconscious reaction patterns. We push each others' unconscious buttons, and react unconsciously to those triggers. This is what happens when friendships are based on reactivity, rather than creativity. We constantly rehash the same issues in new circumstances. In this circumstance, all that is happening is a movement from unconsciousness to unconsciousness, in new forms/circumstances.
Thus, the only way out of many unconscious patterns is to take appropriate action. Making new choices requires willingness to take action in a circumstance rather than reacting to it, and this willingness requires enormous courage.
As you move through parts of yourself that are unconscious in a friendship dominated by unconscious reactionary patterns, you must be willing to take appropriate action to move from unconsciousness into consciousness, which is to say to move from self-ignorance to self-awareness.
And in the process of taking appropriate action, you begin to change the way you create your circumstances. You end destructive patterns, and refuse to dabble in them anymore. You move from things you realize are not-self, toward things you realize are self.
Courage To Notice Regression and Not Entertain Guilt
But anytime you re-interpret how you are translating various spiritual principles into your behavior patterns (meaning making a particular action a habit, a new pattern of choice that is repeated) you are going to make mistakes. You run the risk of encountering what psychologists call regression. This normally involves acting out a reactionary pattern that has been repressed from your past, when you were operating from a far more destructive personality than you have now.
Regression is a common psychological experience when one is healing from a traumatic past. The problem is that we often feel terribly guilty about acting out from a place that seems so far "beneath" us, so we resist this process of regression.
There is a principle I have heard called, the elusive counter-intuitive. What this principle says is that when we are dysfunctional, or are not handling an area of our lives in a way that pleases us, there are often principles that are eluding you because they are counter-intuitive to you. You are making an unconsciously destructive choice, and in order to move past this destructive choice you must do things that are counter-intuitive to you. In most developmental challenges, there will be something that could be called, the elusive counter intuitive principle.
Well, it is often counter-intuitive to let go of the guilt over regression. We intellectually know better than behaving that way, but in order to move past the behavior we often find ourselves regressing, or acting out behaviors with which we simply no longer wish to experience. To make progress in our relationship with anger, we find ourselves regressing toward aggressive or passive-aggressive (depending if we prefer on attacking ourselves or others) behavior patterns.
Guilt is the choice to ignore our new experience of ourselves (especially when we don't like it) by substituting self-condemnation for a confidence in the process of development. That confidence is born from the understanding that as you see things more-clearly, you will find new ways of dealing with your aggression, for example. Guilt means we're not quite ready to move on to new behavior patterns. We want to self-flog ourselves a little more, we need some more punishment for being such a bad person before we move onto healthier patterns.
When we move past guilt, speaking specifically of guilt that arose as a result of a temporary regression, we simply learn from our choices. The regression is the learning experience. 'Woah, I didn't enjoy how I made those choices.' And that is what takes courage to notice. When you notice you aren't enjoying your choices, you will naturally make new choices. No force involved. 'Yikes, I didn't enjoy that.' The ability to notice that directly means you move in a swift pattern out of regression and on to progression.
Courage To Forgive
This is why durable friendships require forgiveness. If self-development is the basis of one's life, then they will often go through regressions, where they do stupid things... things they should know better than to do. If a friendship is supposed to endure through seasons of growth, then both individuals must be able to forgive each other for the mistakes that are made in the process of moving through unconscious reactionary patterns.
And this is why forgiveness is crucial to maintaining healthy friendships with people who contribute to your spiritual development. So if we care about our friendships, we learn to forgive easily, and are attracted to friends who forgive us easily. And those friendships then will be durable through challenging periods of your life.
Friendships that are forgiving by nature are a great benefit toward eradicating guilt over our regressions. Because we experience acceptance in those friendships, we find it easier to be accepting of ourselves and others. We become more benign, and less-reactive. Thus having even a few healthy friendships is a great benefit toward self-development. We move through our regressions quickly, and improve our translations of our spiritual intentions easily.
But this requires the courage to make mistakes and then learn from those mistakes.
Making forgiveness the basis of my lifestyle requires living in a way where forgiveness is the natural choice to make, rather than a forced choice.
I'll write on this next...
For now, namaste.
*bow*
A Standard Blogging Disclaimer
I will likely repeat this disclaimer as I get back into the practice of writing, but please understand that all I'm doing is openly sharing my best observations about the experiences and challenges I go through. My best observations are not static, they are fluid. I experience life as a process of creation, and this process is dynamic, not static. Thus, if my observations are rigid and unforgiving of contrary perspectives, then I am out of harmony with the rhythm of creation: My observations are static (unchanging) while life as process of creation is dynamic (constantly changing, often in a chaotic pattern).
I don't cling to any one perspective, and most of my interactions are a process of coming to understand the perspectives of others, which requires being able to see the same life event from many different perspectives at the same time.
If my words are read from within the above understanding, then people are free to keep those things they find beneficial, while discarding those things they find harmful, or out of harmony with their dance with the world. This understanding makes the process of my sharing of myself honestly, without you needing to defend your perspective of life, or making me wrong so you can be right.
If you have a different way of seeing things, then I honor that as your expression of Who You Are, and the world you are creating for yourself. I welcome your sharing your observation of your experience with me. And so long as you are content with how that process is going for you, then I freely admit that my observations may be wrong for you... hell, they might even be wrong for me. And that's the basis of why I honor your way of creating your world. I recognize that there are many areas of my life where I am not totally enjoying my experience of the world. I'm just doing the best I know how with my inner resources. So I know that by interacting with different worldviews, I may be inspired to integrate beneficial observations that are totally foreign to me at this time!
At any rate, on to something else.
What is on my mind in this moment has to do with two related observations:
1) Learning to trust my higher voices requires the courage to be wrong and learn from my mistakes.
2)Making forgiveness the basis of my lifestyle requires living in a way where forgiveness is the natural choice to make, rather than a forced choice.
So I'd like to take a few moments to discuss each of those observations.
The Courage of Action, Rather Than Reaction
Learning to trust my higher voices requires the courage to be wrong and learn from my mistakes. One of the primary challenges of a spiritual path of development is that of translating spiritual intention into beneficial action. Action is always based on faith, because action is creative--meaning action always moves something unseen into something seen; it moves something from unconsciousness into consciousness.
Action is contrasted by reaction, literally re-action. Reaction is by nature a stimulus-response phenomenon. We take something seen, and change how it is seen. Reaction is by nature unconscious, in that it is common experience for whole friendships to be based on unconscious reaction patterns. We push each others' unconscious buttons, and react unconsciously to those triggers. This is what happens when friendships are based on reactivity, rather than creativity. We constantly rehash the same issues in new circumstances. In this circumstance, all that is happening is a movement from unconsciousness to unconsciousness, in new forms/circumstances.
Thus, the only way out of many unconscious patterns is to take appropriate action. Making new choices requires willingness to take action in a circumstance rather than reacting to it, and this willingness requires enormous courage.
As you move through parts of yourself that are unconscious in a friendship dominated by unconscious reactionary patterns, you must be willing to take appropriate action to move from unconsciousness into consciousness, which is to say to move from self-ignorance to self-awareness.
And in the process of taking appropriate action, you begin to change the way you create your circumstances. You end destructive patterns, and refuse to dabble in them anymore. You move from things you realize are not-self, toward things you realize are self.
Courage To Notice Regression and Not Entertain Guilt
But anytime you re-interpret how you are translating various spiritual principles into your behavior patterns (meaning making a particular action a habit, a new pattern of choice that is repeated) you are going to make mistakes. You run the risk of encountering what psychologists call regression. This normally involves acting out a reactionary pattern that has been repressed from your past, when you were operating from a far more destructive personality than you have now.
Regression is a common psychological experience when one is healing from a traumatic past. The problem is that we often feel terribly guilty about acting out from a place that seems so far "beneath" us, so we resist this process of regression.
There is a principle I have heard called, the elusive counter-intuitive. What this principle says is that when we are dysfunctional, or are not handling an area of our lives in a way that pleases us, there are often principles that are eluding you because they are counter-intuitive to you. You are making an unconsciously destructive choice, and in order to move past this destructive choice you must do things that are counter-intuitive to you. In most developmental challenges, there will be something that could be called, the elusive counter intuitive principle.
Well, it is often counter-intuitive to let go of the guilt over regression. We intellectually know better than behaving that way, but in order to move past the behavior we often find ourselves regressing, or acting out behaviors with which we simply no longer wish to experience. To make progress in our relationship with anger, we find ourselves regressing toward aggressive or passive-aggressive (depending if we prefer on attacking ourselves or others) behavior patterns.
Guilt is the choice to ignore our new experience of ourselves (especially when we don't like it) by substituting self-condemnation for a confidence in the process of development. That confidence is born from the understanding that as you see things more-clearly, you will find new ways of dealing with your aggression, for example. Guilt means we're not quite ready to move on to new behavior patterns. We want to self-flog ourselves a little more, we need some more punishment for being such a bad person before we move onto healthier patterns.
When we move past guilt, speaking specifically of guilt that arose as a result of a temporary regression, we simply learn from our choices. The regression is the learning experience. 'Woah, I didn't enjoy how I made those choices.' And that is what takes courage to notice. When you notice you aren't enjoying your choices, you will naturally make new choices. No force involved. 'Yikes, I didn't enjoy that.' The ability to notice that directly means you move in a swift pattern out of regression and on to progression.
Courage To Forgive
This is why durable friendships require forgiveness. If self-development is the basis of one's life, then they will often go through regressions, where they do stupid things... things they should know better than to do. If a friendship is supposed to endure through seasons of growth, then both individuals must be able to forgive each other for the mistakes that are made in the process of moving through unconscious reactionary patterns.
And this is why forgiveness is crucial to maintaining healthy friendships with people who contribute to your spiritual development. So if we care about our friendships, we learn to forgive easily, and are attracted to friends who forgive us easily. And those friendships then will be durable through challenging periods of your life.
Friendships that are forgiving by nature are a great benefit toward eradicating guilt over our regressions. Because we experience acceptance in those friendships, we find it easier to be accepting of ourselves and others. We become more benign, and less-reactive. Thus having even a few healthy friendships is a great benefit toward self-development. We move through our regressions quickly, and improve our translations of our spiritual intentions easily.
But this requires the courage to make mistakes and then learn from those mistakes.
Making forgiveness the basis of my lifestyle requires living in a way where forgiveness is the natural choice to make, rather than a forced choice.
I'll write on this next...
For now, namaste.
*bow*