A good friend and mentor of mine, someone I listen to perhaps even more than I listen to myself, shook me to my core a week or two ago when he questioned the wisdom of one of my more heartfelt, if quixotic, hopes. Now I’m plenty used to hearing that I have my head in the clouds, or more accurately up my ass, but this was the last person I expected to say nay, and it affected my equilibrium, my self-trust, and my mood for over a week. I went whirling off into the usual unhappy and obsessive cycles, digging and digging for the tragic flaw in the foundation of me, frustrated to the point of tears with my perennial fuckup-ness, trying on alternate, more “realistic” possibilities and scenarios that felt like nothing so much as generic prison jumpsuits I had to wrestle myself into. It felt awful — and I couldn’t stop.
In short, I just plain violated myself. I went right back to the early belief that I needed serious fixing, and that forcible change was indeed warranted — no matter how bad it might feel to me. As if I were an out-of-control teenager about to be sent to one of those dubious military-style “boot camps.” Kicking and screaming.
If you read my last post, which was actually inspired by an entirely different situation, you know how susceptible I am to this sort of thinking. Especially when the message seems to be coming from a highly esteemed source.
I was feeling particularly miserable one day in particular when nothing could shake me out of my funk — not an hour of meditation, not a yoga class with a fun instructor, not a pleasant chat with a friend. Everything felt like a losing struggle. I found out, through a person in the know, that I’d gotten someone important an inferior gift thanks to my own cluelessness. I felt like crying over that. Soon afterward, my dinner companion called to say that she couldn’t pick me up, and I had been counting on the ride, as my old beetle wasn’t running well. This just added to my growing feeling of defeat. Once I decided to ride my bike to our rendezvous, thunderheads moved in, seemingly out of nowhere, and it started to pour. Literally pour. I stood looking at the sheets of rain coming down hard, and I gave up. And then I started to laugh. Who can argue with the rain? A crazy person, maybe?
But wasn’t that what I had been doing? Fighting with the is-ness of things, including my very own state of being?
**
After my conversation with my mentor, I had picked up a book by Esther and Jerry Hicks, or Abraham, if that’s what their disembodied friends want to be called. (They’re sort of the grandparents of the popular manifestation movement, which was more or less appropriated by everyone else.) I was seeking some sort of radical faith injection, or at least some relief from my suffering, and headed straight for the woo-wooiest section of the library to browse. I felt too wounded to be proud. The book’s title, The Astonishing Power of Emotions, caught my eye. What would these folk have to say, I wondered, about my feeling so completely shitty?
A lot, as it turned out.
The authors introduce the metaphor of the natural flow of our (timeless, inner) beings as a river and our (finite, physical) selves as being in a boat on that river. Our thoughts may be either upstream thoughts or downstream thoughts, paddling our boats furiously against the current or letting it carry us where our true selves want to go. Our feelings function as indicators of which way we’re headed. “Upstream” thoughts are stressful, and create greater unhappiness; “downstream” thoughts bring a sense of peace and well-being. “Nothing you want is upstream,” they write.
All of which struck this skeptical sculler as brilliant.
“So we beat on,” ends a book widely considered to be the Great American Novel, “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Such poetic and melancholy words, penned by an alcoholic after a devastating world war. Fitzgerald’s tragic hero seeks to gain control of the present in order to recreate the past. Given our national myths about hard work and struggle, and our quest for global control, perhaps it’s only American to row against the natural flow of things — and make ourselves unhappy.
The one teaching of Eckhart Tolle that got my attention more than any other was what he had to say about resistance and allowing. In a nutshell: in saying no to what already is, we only create greater unhappiness for ourselves, and act, or more accurately react, from a place of negativity. If we can embrace whatever the present moment brings, we allow ourselves greater peace of mind and are able to act more effectively. I thought of Tolle again recently when I reached the end of Herman Hesse’s classic Siddhartha, where the restless protagonist finally learns exactly this sort of allowing and presence from his close association with a river.
So now here were Esther and Jerry, and all their invisible playmates, advocating relaxing into our natural state of well-being by “letting go of the oars” and being carried by the current of our being. According to them, everything that feels bad indicates resistance, or paddling against the current, including my own raging frustration, impatience, anger and hopelessness. “The belief that there is something to overcome points you upstream,” they say. Any sort of urgency, the feeling of needing to get “there” right now indicates some kind of pushing-against, is a red flag for an “upstream thought.”
My forced attempts to entertain an entirely different vision for myself upon (what I experienced as) someone else’s prodding were giving me a case of rower’s hernia. I was going strenuously against the flow of my own inner current. What was needed here, as the authors advised, was surrender — even though I was impatient to get somewhere. (In retrospect, it was perhaps this impatience that infected my friend and prompted his frustrated response on my behalf.) “I am where I am, and it’s okay,” to borrow a mantra from the end of the book. If I could just quit struggling, my boat would naturally turn around and float downstream, and I’d wind up somewhere — somewhere, if you take the authors’ word for it, I’d want to be.
You must find a way to feel good now, where you are, they reminded me. You can’t wait for a change in circumstances or other people to make you happy. (So basic, yes, but how do I keep missing it?) Decide how you want to feel and then figure out a way to feel that way regardless of what’s happening. Improvements occur externally when your internal landscape changes for the better. (Tolle said as much, too.)
**
The sudden downpour that day made things very easy, and very clear, in a way that other circumstances often don’t. Here was the rain; what now? I’m sure I could have remained resentful and resistant about the day’s unexpected twists and my crappy mood for hours, and made a pretty abysmal dinner companion for my poor friend. As it was, I laughed, and quit wishing for different weather, and took the g-damn car anyway.
By the time I got to our meeting place, the sun was coming back out.
A good friend of mine has given me the same river analogy to help me cope with life. It’s a good one, just a matter of making it stick, that’s all
I count myself fortunate that I’ve always had a strong sense of myself. By around the eighth grade, I’d figured out that I was never going to belong anywhere, that everyone wanted me to fit in more than I was able to comply…so fuck it. Long as I was going to be a misfit, may as well be a happy misfit. You could say that’s when I became an existentialist, when I became fascinated by individuality and identity.
My father was rather stoic, a get-along go-along kind of person. This was counter-balanced by my mother, who was temperamental, forceful, argumentative, and quick to criticize (loving, as well, in her way, but still–). I can still hear my father’s frequent lament, “Jesus Christ himself couldn’t satisfy her.” Actually, that’s not a bad sentiment to impart to a young kid: the recognition that trying to satisfy other people, even loved ones, can be a misbegotten effort.
The downside to being on the autistic spectrum is that you find yourself isolated from other people. The upside is that you are your own center of gravity. Just like everything else in life, it’s a trade-off.
I confess to not really understanding everyone’s Manichean view of the world, that our selves are a dichotomy, of good and evil, of mind and body, of emotion and reason, of left-brain/right-brain. Reductionist as I am, I just can’t break it down that way into any workable model. I’m not saying “all is one” or whatever else I don’t remember about “Parmenides”. Duality is certainly applicable in a lot of cases, but when as a view of our selves it fails to deliver any useful answers, maybe we should adopt a different understanding.
I do not advocate surrender, or going along to get along. I have a defiant streak, but at 40 I find that it doesn’t assert itself as often as it used to. Best term I’ve heard for the essence of my life philosophy comes from a grunge lyric.
Evenflow.
Sing it with me: “On some day yet/He’ll begin his life again”
Then conjure up the image from the video, of Eddie Vedder climbing up that balustrade in the Moore Theater, looking down at the crowd, and then taking a stage dive. Whispering hands gently led him away…back to the stage, unharmed.
So: next time anyone asks about me, you can tell ‘em, “He can’t help when he’s happy he looks insane”
LOL at your final quote. I always loved that video. (Or was it just Eddie?) But think about that image for a minute: what did he do but surrender, and trust?
Even five years ago I would never have advocated such a Taoist approach. It was antithetical to my defiant railing against the rain.
But that unlikeliest of things has happened after all these years: I’ve changed. And I have to say, I’ve never been as consistently happy.
“My secret is this: I don’t mind what happens.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Hmm. Is that what he did? Perhaps we define the terms differently, but the way I see it he didn’t surrender: he simply took a chance, which to me isn’t the same thing. Sure, that’s trusting to luck, but sometimes that’s a good strategy. And most times, the consequences aren’t as terrible as we make them out to be. (OK, I confess, I’ve never taken a stage dive. That’s OK, though.)
Evenflow. Take it as it comes. All of it.
Still looks almost like a “leap of faith.”
Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to.
“Stagedive of faith”–I’m using that.
Still doesn’t represent surrender (necessarily). I remember you thrashing to the Violent Femmes. You didn’t look like you were in the throes of surrender….
Ah, but you had no idea why I was thrashing, no? That really doesn’t have to do much with this thread, I don’t think. It has a lot more to do with my latest post about how profoundly unhappy I was for most of the days of me yoot.