We Are Not "Moral Achievers"

It could just be a failing of American culture, but I see it plenty in other cultures I encounter, too. We, individually, have a need to demonstrate our worth, our worthiness, by doing what is necessary to prove to ourselves and others that we are "moral" and that we are "achievers." Put more simply, much of what we choose to do with our energy is aimed at proving that we are good, and we do that by trying to show that we are better than other people. Better morally. Better in what we have been able to achieve.

This is what allows rich people to look down on middle class people, and the middle class to look down on the poor. This is what allows someone who goes to church to look down on someone who does not, voters to look down on non-voters, followers of certain fad diets to look down on everyone else, "high achievers" in any field to look down on the rest of their colleagues.

Whatever we are doing, we frame it for ourselves as a moral achievement. We do this to soothe any suspicion that we might not be good enough. (There is no need.) We use it to prove to ourselves or anyone who is looking (at our Facebook feed), that we are somehow better than "others," therefore we are good. Yet it is never quite satisfying to do this. We feel the need to keep on doing it, hoping eventually to demonstrate once and for all that we are worthy.

The way out of this dissatisfaction and perpetual insecurity is to learn to accept that we are already worthy and have nothing we must prove to demonstrate this.

When we can accept this, we are also freed from the tyranny of constantly comparing ourselves to others. We no longer need to be better than them. We no longer need them to fail for us to feel successful. We no longer see them as some "other" who must be avoided, or even shunned, in order for us to keep our "moral achiever" status. We can recognize, without fear, our own failings as well as the failings of others. We can accept ourselves, and everyone else, as imperfect, but still absolutely worthy of love. We no longer need to feel superior to, and therefore separate from, other people. We can love everyone without needing them to be perfect. We can live without insecurity. We can live without our worth being dependent on looking down on someone else. We can have empathy for others who also are still learning, who also still navigate this life imperfectly.

We can live freely, as though a great weight has been lifted from our shoulders. We can love freely, knowing that love is always available for free and in infinite supply, without anyone having to do anything to be worthy of receiving it.

I Am No Different

"I am no different." This thought appeared in my head a couple years ago in a rare moment of attempted meditation. Naturally, on some levels it is not true at all—on all the unimportant levels. However, on the most fundamental level, it is very true.

In our ceaseless attempts to prove to others, or to ourselves, that we are good enough (see previous post), we typically are not really trying to prove that we are as good as other people. We are trying to prove that we are better. That we belong in the "good person" camp and others, for various reasons, belong in the other group.

There must be people who call themselves "a bad person," but I would venture that a solid 95% of people consider themselves "a good person." When such a good person does a bad thing (an affair, a crime, a physical attack, a rude gesture), they consider themselves "a good person who did a bad thing." Hmm. I see. So what is a bad person then? Also someone who did a bad thing, and that is why they are "bad." Then how can a person do a bad thing and still be a good person? Hmm. Oh, because it is you, and by definition you do not consider yourself a bad person, even with the evidence (your bad act) to the contrary. So, then, what is it that distinguishes you, the good person who did a bad thing, from a "bad" person who did a bad thing?

This is really a fruitless discussion, and in that last paragraph I am being facetious. At its root the issue can be boiled down to "me, good; other person, bad." Just as you will never meet someone who believes someone else's religion is correct and his own is wrong, just as you will never meet a nationalist who believes that someone else's nation is superior to his, just as you will never meet, for example, a black white supremacist, when it comes to dividing the world up into good people and bad people, or right and wrong, it is virtually a 100% certainty that you, or anyone, will put yourself in the "good people" group and the "right" camp.

This ugly tendency, this lack of imagination, is precisely where so much conflict arises. This is where our wars come from, our massacres, our injustices. "Me good, you bad. Me right, you wrong. Me better, you worse."

B.S.!

So unnecessary, too. So avoidable.

I do not believe in "good people" and "bad people." I believe in people. I don't say that everyone is the same, because everyone is at least a little bit different than everyone else. I do say, though, that I am no different from anyone else. What does that mean, really?

It means that I recognize that I, like everyone else, sometimes behave in "good" ways and sometimes in "bad" ways. It means that everyone has certain fundamental needs for attention, recognition, and most importantly respect and love. It means that there is not a contrast between "good" me and "bad" other people. "I am no different" means that I am also imperfect, I also sometimes fall short, I also struggle to do what I know I should.

Most importantly, it means that I do not feel superior to anyone else or better than anyone else. I do have a few talents. I am more skilled at some things than some people. But that is separate and different from being better than anyone, fundamentally, as a person.

At its deepest level, it means that I can connect with virtually anyone, and feel connected to everyone. I have empathy for whatever they are going through. Because I do not need to be better, or to be considered "good," I am freed to fully recognize and fully accept their humanity, which while unique in its own way, is at heart, the same.

I am no different.

Already Good Enough

The second-best thing I ever learned was that none of us—me, you, anyone—has to do anything to prove we are good enough, that every person is already good enough, already worthy, already lovable, already worthy of love.

I could just stop this post right there. If you can take that in, reflect on it, accept it, and believe it, about everyone around you and also about yourself, in most cases (in my experience) you will just have undergone a life-altering revolution in your views on everything and everyone.

Most of the time, however, we are so conditioned to believe otherwise, that accepting it takes some time, and even some convincing.

The best book I ever read, explained this more thoroughly than I could here. One part of that explanation talked about self-righteous people and perfectionists. A self-righteous person, the author said, is someone who does everything to show and prove to others that s/he is good enough. A perfectionist person, is someone who does everything to show and prove to himself or to herself that s/he is good enough.

Ouch.

What is worse, though, is that our attempts to prove ourselves worthy arise from our own deeply felt belief that we are not yet good enough. We think we have to prove our worth. We think we have to do more to earn respect, acceptance, and love. What could be more sad? What could be more false?

In the same book, the author makes the further point that while each of us is frantically scrambling to earn acceptance from others, neurotically checking every so often to see if we are accepted yet, the others from whom we are hoping for acceptance are, themselves, scrambling to earn acceptance from us! As he puts it, we have appointed them to our jury, but their verdict on us never comes in, because they are too busy waiting for our verdict on them.

The truth is, you do not have to be perfect to be worthy or to be lovable. A child is lovable just as it is. So is a puppy. A grown person. A dog. What makes it so hard to believe that you are worthy and lovable just as you are, too?

Maybe there is no answer to that. Maybe there is. People can be cruel. Our own thoughts can be, too. More on both of those topics later. In the meantime, just know that a person's cruelty has almost everything to do with them (their own suffering), and very little, nothing really, to do with you. As to your own thoughts, this is what I tell people about that: There are already enough people in the world who will criticize you or put you down; there is no need for you to be doing it, too. If anyone should be on your side, encouraging you, supporting you, being your cheerleader, it should be you!!

You do not need to prove anything. You are already good enough, already worthy of love.

As is.

Do Just One Thing

It is easy to feel powerless, that what you do will not make any difference, that you might as well not even try—to feel that things are just stacked against you and that no matter what you do, it will not help, or might even make things worse. While I do not struggle with those thoughts, I can still take a moment to truly accept that something really is going my way, or that someone really is interested. The first are symptoms of learned helplessness, while the last is a residual deficit of self-esteem, an error which I recognize and can correct or not fall into most of the time, just not yet in every moment. (More on how that is done in later posts.)

Powerlessness is easy to correct. It takes effort and repeated practice, but the practice is only this: Do just one thing.

The trick is that it should not be the thing you always do. In some way, it must be different.

Whether you are facing your day, or contemplating your situation at the present moment, think "What is one thing that I can do that will help make things better?" It does not have to be a big thing, and it does not have to make a big difference. A small action or change of thought leading to a small improvement is enough. In fact, it may just be that the smaller it is, the better!

Why would the smallest action or thought be the best?! Because in certain states of mind, a bigger action might seem too daunting, too impossible, or too unlikely to work. This is false, of course, but that does not keep people from believing it.

The smallest action or thought is best, the best place to begin, because even the most seemingly powerless person can believe that they can do something small. Even if they are not convinced it will make any difference, at least it is easy enough to try it, and see. The most important thing is not the size of the action, but just the fact of getting started taking action.

The next most important thing is to keep taking actions or changing thoughts. One a day is enough to start. A few a day is a good place to work up to. The results will not always be what you might have hoped, perhaps, because trying can lead to failure or to success. Failure, though, is just a part of reality, but not a reason to stop trying——though after a few failed attempts, trying something a little different (or even completely different), would be a good idea! As one book I readput it: "Do more of what works and less of what doesn't."

With lots of practice, and the positive reinforcement that comes from experiencing power over your life, and your environment, and your thoughts (not necessarily in that order), you may even get close to living every moment of your life with a feeling of power to make a difference. At that point, it will be so automatic as to be almost unnoticeable that, in each moment, you are subconsciously asking yourself that important question:

"What is one thing that I can do now that will help make things better?"

NOTE: The question is deliberately not "What is the one thing I can do now…", because there are always many things you can do to help make things better. It would be an error to think there was just one.

The World Outside

The best thing I have learned, and what I try to share with anyone I know, is that life is at its worst when you are filled with concern for yourself, but that life is at its best when you are aware of, connected with, concerned about, and care for others.

The Rumi poem in the first post touches tangentially on this idea. It describes the ignorance of someone who is in his own world, knowing no other world, and contrasts it with an attempt at a description of the full beauty and complexity of, well, everything.

Where this poem holds back a little (even if Rumi, himself, does not always), is that it does not venture further into the idea that the self itself(?) is an illusion. If that is too much for you, then the idea that the self is isolated and separate from all that surrounds it.

Then again, Rumi is hinting, I believe, that however much we might recognize that our experienced world "is vast and intricate" with wheatfields, mountain passes, orchards in bloom, millions of galaxies, and so on, our known world is every bit as pale, in comparison to the reality of all there is, as the embryo's world is pale in comparison to ours.

We are limited in our thoughts, our imaginations, our perceptions. True reality is infinitely more vast and intricate than we allow ourselves to believe.

Instead, we focus only on what we have experienced and, with that, consider our knowledge complete. We allow no possibility that we might be mistaken; we allow ourselves no chance be open to and to experience something better.

In the worst of cases, we close ourselves off not just from curiosity and experience of the wider reality, but also shut ourselves off from experiencing even the reality of other people, remaining in the isolation of that most lonely of places, our separateness, our (illusory) selves.

The world outside is vast and intricate

Inspired by everything, hoping to be helpful.

This blog is inspired, also, by this passage from the poet, mystic, and philosopher Rumi:

...Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding."

You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.

                              Listen to the answer.

There is no "other world."
I only know what I've experienced.
You must be hallucinating.
—
Rumi (1207-1273)
From the poem "Wean Yourself," in The Essential Rumi,as translated by Coleman Barks