The Hidden Cost of Associating with Low-Character
Author's Note: The proper way to read the following blog is as a note I have written to myself. I am the 'you' that I'm referring to. I'm looking directly at an insane part of myself, and talking to it.
I share it because I feel a conviction that sharing my inner dialogue with myself in this way will help others see these issues playing out in their lives, as well. For I am not under the delusion that I am alone in dealing with my own mental insanity. I know there are others who show symptoms of dealing with the same insane metnal attitudes that I'm experiencing. So if someone comes across these words, who is wrestling with their own insanity... perhaps my candor with msyelf will be of benefit. Maybe a part of their own mind that needs a boost will become more amplified, and another part will be a little quieter. Maybe it will contribute in this way to some peace of mind.
If so, then I am grateful--for something beneficial has been created by my self-destructiveness.
Noticing The Cost of Associating With Low-Character
Directly Noticing The Experience of Acute Anxiety
So what I'm doing now is noticing an insane mental projection that I tend to make when certain conditions have been triggered in my unconscious mind, the parts of myself that I'm "not in touch" with.
I am noticing a circumstance where I experienced heightened anxiety, only to find out clearly that there was no actual reason for it.
And I want to be very precise in what I mean by this. So please give me your full attention right now, I'm choosing my words very carefully... putting a lot of my attention into them.
There have been times in life where you've experienced anxiety, and it was nothing more than an unconscious reaction to what was going on in someone else's unconscious mind. Meaning, they had no conscious intention of hurting you, but there were unconscious programming that influenced them to do hurtful and destructive things.
And I'm not speaking ONLY of some grand malice, some homicidal fantasy playing out in someone's mind. What I'm saying is that many times when you experience anxiety, because I pay attention to that feeling over the course of time the circumstances that triggered the anxiety play out, and you learn the truth of what was really going on. And you notice that the anxiety you felt was because there were hidden motives and intentions, that the body-mind organism instinctually recognizes, and then puts the body on heightened alert.
And as a self-aware person, if you notice your body go into hyper-alert mode, and you don't understand what it is about your circumstances that would generate this instinctual reaction within yourself, you might experience perfectly legitimate anxiety because you don't know that on some level you are in danger. That's what the body is responding to. "I'm in the presence of someone who means to harm me." And that experience is just like anxiety, in that you're afraid that someone wishes to harm you, even if you don't know exactly who it is.
So what I'm saying is that I am noticing an experience you just finished going through where I notice you were experiencing acute anxiety, but as the situation played out... I discovered it was all in your own head. There was not an intention--unconscious or otherwise--to harm you, but it experienced it that way, nonetheless.
And the reason I'm so certain that this is what happened is cause I understand how the immediate past conditioned you to see things in a destructive way. I can see, within the experiences of my past in this circumstance, how I have conditioned you to expect to be harmed. To prepare for it, for you really don't know when it could happen. So the body goes into this hyper-protect mode, and start feeling acute anxiety, which includes the body generating various hormonal reactions to get prepared to defend with force.
I notice that it is this mental conditioning, within the context of a some relationships you have had and are having, that created the experience of acute anxiety, which had a profound effect on how I experienced the last 36 hours.
And when you see something like this within yourself... it's so deflating. I've had this experience a lot of times in the last three years. So for me, it feels like, "Oh great, I'm insane in yet another way!" (Sarcasm on very high!) I feel so small. Cause this wasn't an isolated incident. I can notice that I've done this sort of thing in many of my relationships for MOST of my life. But I never saw it directly till now. I could always find a legitimate reason for the anxiety that I actively hide from conscious awareness.
Noticing The Cyclical Pattern of Acute Anxiety
Each time I've had to deal with acute anxiety, there was an uncovering moment where I suddenly realized I was experiencing anxiety attacks and didn't even know it. By anxiety attack, I mean the moment when you first notice you experienced an acute anxiety reaction for no legitimate reason at all. The reason you didn't notice the anxiety, is you've always just presumed that you were having a natural reaction to your circumstances. Yes, you notice anger, but it seems a natural extension of the circumstances. "The circumstance made me angry; I didn't do it."
But then you notice that... no, actually you did make yourself angry for no reason at all.
And when you notice how profoundly this affects you, how painful it is to put yourself through something like that, you just feel this frustration... where you just know that this has to change in your life. You CAN'T tolerate doing this to yourself any longer.
And so then, big changes happen. You start challenging your mind on all sorts of surly reactions to things that happen. You feel like your mind is bullying you around, so you stand up to it now. You challenge your reasons for allowing yourself to feel anxiety about anything. Every so often, you notice that an experience of anxiety served you in a circumstance. You avoided an emotional catastrophe because of the anxiety.
And at this point, your vigilance is diminished. It's not conscious, but you just lose interest in challenging your reasons for experiencing that anxiety.
This is the pattern I've noticed in dealing with my own anxiety over the last three years.
Noticing The Root Cause of Acute Anxiety As an Experience
And I'm noticing that moment again, where I experienced acute anxiety over nothing. This time I can see exactly how my mind was conditioned to experience the anxiety.
And now I understand the importance of something that I have struggled to accept for a long time. This is a repeat lesson for me, one I learn at greater and greater depth every year or so. I have had such a hard time accepting the truth of this lesson, which is nothing more than me learning to apply a true principle to my relationship with myself.
The lesson is: Only maintain friendships with individuals who treat me with high-character.
The Importance of Associating With High Character To Create Natural Virtue
By high-character, I mean personalities that have integrity, and who have matured in the art of forgiveness within a friendship, and who have developed virtues like generosity, lovingkindness, dignity, humility, and self-mastery.
Now for me personally, I apply this principle to include those who are actively developing these virtues in their lives. If someone has hangups, but they recover from them quickly and do not let serious grudges to develop, or bitterness to dominate their mind for a long time, or don't make it a habit to take on an unforgiving attitude, then I welcome them as a friend. I'm willing to go through pain in the process of creating something beautiful in a friend's life. And what could be more beautiful than helping someone become more virtuous?
So the way I apply the principle in this way: Only maintain friendships with individuals who intend to treat me with high character.
Why is this crucial to developing peace of mind, a stable mind?
Well, as I wrote in a previous blog, Joy comes from the natural choice. In the experience of joy, as an expression of a stable, peaceful mind, there is no room for something called "anxiety." In joy, "anxiety" vanishes. It doesn't exist in the experience of joy. And what is joy? The experience of Infinite Love.
You experience the circumstances of your life as an expression of Infinite Love--this is a lifestyle based on joy, the experience of Infinite Love.
You can only experience joy if you naturally make virtuous choices, including the choice of how you see and react to others. It must be a natural choice.
How can virtue be a natural choice in life? By only associating with virtuous people in my friendships, or people on a path to become virtuous.
Noticing The Cost of Associating with Low-Character
The cost of violating this principle is that you expose yourself to mental programming that will condition you to experience things in destructive ways, which will lead to you experiencing destructive emotional reactions. Those destructive emotions--ill-will, greed, self-deception--are self-reinforcing, meaning the more your mind is exposed to interactions with that programming, the more you will experience the shadows of those negative emotions--anxiety, anger, and insecurity (the feeling of being unsafe).
What I'm saying is that when you're trying to develop a virtuous lifestyle that makes joy your way of experiencing life, then one unintended consequence of maintaining friendships with people of low-character is that you become more like them.
Virtue needs time to develop within. It must be undisturbed, so it can grow and begin to dominate the mind, thus changing how we experience the world. When virtue matures, and becomes the dominant mental attitude in the mind, then it can withstand exposure to low-character patterns without being affected.
But until then, maintaining friendships that are not virtuous--that do not consistently generate the experience of joy--means that if you are not the equivalent of a trained monk, or a proven saint, then you will regress into destructive mind patterns, and start fighting with your world again.
If you learn to let go quickly of people who treat you with low-character, which allows them to reapproach you later without having harmed you... which makes it effortless if they really love you, if you can learn this... then you can develop strength within virtue, and then when you choose to begin exercising your creativity, anything you choose to do with your life with thrive. You have mastered the art of finding relationships that are mutually beneficial, and when you have mastered this skill it becomes very easy to create relationships with others that allow you to take your beneficial intentions and manifest them.
There really are a lot of wealthy people in the world who love the experience of being inspired to share their wealth with people of good intentions. There really are a lot of people of high character that are wealthy. Like attracts like. They manifest their wealth by helping you create wealth. "Look son, it's not that hard, let me help you do it."
Can there be anything more joyful, more an experience of Infinite Love, than manifesting beneficial intentions with others of high character? Taking beneficial intentions, and making those intentions "show up." Is there any doubt that Alex Grey experiences enormous joy as his lifestyle as he creates The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.
At one time, Alex Grey was an artist with an idea that would take millions of dollars to make real, and he simply put the offer out there to donate to make it real. And now there is a Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in NYC. Is there any doubt that this is a source of enormous joy for Alex Grey?
This is the type of lifestyle that those of high character enjoy. This is how virtuous people live. They live a lifestyle of joy.
This is what I say 'No' to when I associate with people of low character at this time in my life. By saying 'Yes' to associations of low character, I say 'No' to a lifestyle of joy, of high character.
Instead, I just keep rediscovering every few months that I'm insane. I experience the realities of low character--anxiety, anger, insecurity.
Realize, I'm writing this note directly to myself. When I write 'you', from the voice of 'me' talking to 'you.' I'm talking directly to myself. I'm trying to hammer something into my own mind. I'm calling myself on my own bullshit.
I just want it to be real clear to myself what I'm losing by clinging to relationships of low character.
I'm losing living a joyful lifestyle, like one of my heros--Alex Grey.
*bow*