Accelerating Your Personal and Professional Evolution
Today is Thursday, August 28th, 2008
As I have written recently, there has been a shift in the marketplace. In the 20th Century marketplace sales people talked about “closing deals” at best. At worst they talked about “shooting their prospects down like they were ducks in a shooting gallery”. This is not exactly a metaphor we should be living into as we evolve as a culture–and not a metaphor the leading edge of the marketplace will any longer support in the profit centers of the global marketplace, or the Functioning Core, as Dr. Thomas Barnett would say.
You can either use the in-line player by clicking on it below, or use one of the various links to download or play it in another window.
Be sure to see parts one, two, and three here, here, and here respectively.
In this piece we will examine the assumptions that lead to guilt, the structure of shame, and the antidotes to both.
Guilt
Q: “I often feel guilty for things I have done.”
A: [S.N. Geonka ] “Guilt has no place in Dhamma [the path to enlightenment or ‘the law of nature’].”
I assert that guilt serves no purpose in inter-personal relations. No legitimate purpose.
Some say “if the person feels guilty or remorseful, then I can be assured they will not repeat this terrible wrong they committed against me” or “ I am assured of their good character”.
Is this accurate? Let’s examine this together.
Sharon slept with another man, violating the monogamous covenant she shared with her husband. She felt “bad” and out of guilt, told him the truth. She swore it would never happen again. Seeing how badly she felt, her husband felt assured this would not happen again and stayed with her and the marriage commitment. A few years later, Sharon was unfaithful a second time and in fact, carried on an affair with another man. This time she felt she best not be honest with her husband. How many chances would he give her, really? Unfortunately, he found out about it through some carelessness of hers and some direct questioning which followed. Again, she was authentically remorseful and felt guilty for misleading and breaking her husband’s trust—she did not feel bad just for getting caught, rather she felt authentically guilty for what she had done. They separated, sought counseling, and eventually divorced.
Far from Sharon being a fiction of my mind for the purpose of illustration, this story is real, and the name has been changed. And, this is just one example of many I could give of patterns of behavior, remorse or guilt, and repetition of the problem behavior.
Guilt is unreliable [at best] as a guarantee of future behavior. We have all seen people apologize and be guilt-ridden, yet commit the same acts repeatedly.
I go so far in my own relations as to let people know very clearly that their guilt and apologies hold no currency with me. I WANT them to feel free emotionally about any “wrong” they may have committed against me. At the same time, I may not want them to commit the same act against me again—I do want assurance of a shift in behavior and an honest and earnest intention by them to do so through learning. For that, guilt does not help. In fact, it is a hindrance What is simply needed is their acknowledgement of the mistake and their pledge to not commit the act again. If it happens repeatedly, then there are practical choices to be made: do we continue to invest time and energy with this individual?
[Note: While this is not a discussion of egoic development, we can not stress enough the foundational necessity of true esteem for the self for emotional freedom. So many upsets, be they anger upsets, shame, fear, etc., can be traced to a lack of esteem for the self—that is pre-rational or early-rational egoic development. From anger to shame, the variable of one’s egoic developmental stage is undeniably an important factor. But that is another discussion for another time. I have written briefly about egoic stage development and will occasionally refer to these distinctions in this discussion.]
Be sure to see parts one and two here and here, respectively.
Now that we have covered interpretations and extrapolated meanings, what of specific dynamics within each emotion? What of anger? Resentment? Guilt? Shame? What other variables lead to negative emotions aside from lower egoic development? For it is through this knowledge, using our self-reflexive awareness and meta-cognition, that we can notice these dynamics as they are happening, and choose a different path.
Anger. Anger has at least two components.
Often anger is “just-ified”. That is, with respect to justice, we are “right” in being angry. Maybe someone has violated our person or property. Perhaps they have broken an agreement. Perhaps they have deceived us intentionally. We have little choice around the action of others. They will do what they do, as we are all on our own path. However, when we are angry, often we are blaming them for what they have done. This is different and separate from holding them accountable, which is appropriate, but goes further into a game of pre-rational ego.
Let’s say that I had my car stereo stolen. I come out in the morning and I notice it gone and the dashboard area around where it was previously installed is damaged. I call the police and I wait seething in my anger. “what a low-life thief”, I say to myself along with numerous other colorful expletives.
Once the police come they ask me a few questions: “Do you have a car alarm?” Yes, I tell them. “did you hear it go off last night?” No, I tell them, regrettably I did not set it last night. “Were the car locks damaged?” No, I tell them…the car was unlocked…
We can quickly see where this is going. While the crime of the stolen stereo is indeed a crime and may be punished and is an unfortunate violation of my person by the extension of my property, the responsibility is mine to lock my vehicle, set my alarm, and care that my car is secured. Once I begin to take responsibility by asking the two key questions:
The blame will dissolve and the anger will begin to fade away.
[If these I.D.E.A.s interest you, be sure to attend this event.]
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Have you ever experienced the spark and inspiration of synergy? Of course. We all have. It is part of what drives us to want to be in relationship. Whether it is the muse of romance or the creativity that comes form a new business partnership, or the increased power of community and intentionality…we strive for synergy. And yet do we always experience synergy in relationship? Of course not. And at the other end of the spectrum we experience conflict.
There are so many approaches to relationships in these post-post-modern times. Not only are there different forms of relating that have become socially tolerated, if not often fully culturally acceptable, but also, so many ways which we can experience those forms, depending on our evolutionary stage of development.
At the same time, there is a way to approach relating with another human being that is most responsible, takes a fuller view into account, and provides balance, insight, and wisdom.
That approach is to view all relating as quantum relating.
In the quantum world in which we live, do one and one always equal two? No. They do not. Conduct this simple experiment: place one gallon of pure grain alcohol in a container with one gallon of distilled water. It will never equal two gallons. It will never equal two gallons because of the way the two properties interact.
So it is with people and with relationships. If two people come together and they experience synergy, then one and one equal more than two; “greater than the sum of its parts”. If two people come together and they experience conflict, then one and one equal less than two: conflict. We think because we know “one” and we know “one” and one and one equals two that we therefore know “two”. However we forgot to conduct a study of “and”.
Quantum relating is about understanding the “and”.
[Note to the reader: as this series is comprised of excerpts from a book draft, is it not meant to be complete. Some ideas will be developed and others will be left for a later time. Moreover, some of you who are familiar with my work will wonder why I am not covering a certain concept or other. This is for the same reason. It is my hope that in revealing these excerpts free to you now, that these I.D.E.A.s may begin to make a difference in your life...even now.]
*if you have not yet read Part 1: Emotional Imprisonment, you can find it here.
Once we have taken full responsibility for our emotional life and reactions, the next step is to accept and educate ourselves to the fact that our experience is not some amorphous mass—that it has structure. This is one part education and once educated, one hundred parts exercise and daily practice.
It is important to note here that developing facility is not a matter of acquiring this skill or that skill and then you suddenly “have facility”. In technical terms, it is not a binary or digital experience; it is not on or off. It is an analog experience; it is experienced in varying degrees. It is like building a muscle. When building a muscle, you go to the gym or work in some way you have never worked before. At first, you can lift a small amount of weight. After trying this new behavioral pattern, you may be sore. Some people give up at this point. They say, “Oh—this muscle building business is not for me”, and they go back to their old habit patterns. However, for those who continue to work at it, they notice they can handle ever-increasing levels of weight or demonstrate more endurance. They become stronger and are able to handle more.
Eventually they lift large amounts of weight with seemingly little effort. So it is with facility with self.
There is often talk in developmental, transformational, and alternative communities about how polyamorous and/or “open” relationships are more “evolved”. More evolved than…say the conventional forms of monogamy and marriage.
This is an easy trap to fall into, as poly- relationship forms are certainly post-conventional. There was a time when I agreed with this thinking. I used to think polyamory [distinct from what I often see which is “poly-sexual”] was the more “evolved” as is it beyond traditional structures [trans-rational and post-conventional] and by its very nature requires, and often demands advanced communication skills, a solid sense of self, a lack of attachment and more spontaneous and flexible structures than monogamy. Plainly put—it is more challenging.
But that is if it is played clean, which is all well and good on paper…but how often are poly- relationships played clean and played well? Well, not often. In my experience, they are sometimes a morass of jealousy, fear, anger, heartbreak, etc. Additionally, the truth is, monogamy requires other sets of skill development which while different, are equally as challenging. AND monogamy requires all the aforementioned sets of skills and development if it is to be done well and stay alive and thrive. That is to say, high self-esteem and a solid sense of self, advanced communication skills, and agreements between the parties that allow for play and spontaneity as well as growth and evolution within the relationship itself.
So…my thinking has since shifted. I do not think we can assess depth and evolution, using any developmental stage conception, based on form and be accurate very often. Just using the simple three-stage model I often employ of pre-rational or pre-conventional, rational or conventional, and trans-rational or post-conventional, we can see very quickly that the idea of form does not map across to any stage or level.
Here is the crux of my current thinking.
Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? Do I “know” you?
The ultimate spiritual practice is dis-identifying with that which we think is us—objects in our awareness. It may be our possessions. It may be our finances. It may be our looks. It may be our intelligence. It may be our social reputation. It may be our behaviors, our sexual orientation, our beliefs, or ideas. And yet we are none of that.
On the path of Personal Evolution, as we continue to deepen—to evolve—our relationship to our sexuality deepens as well. It may be more accurate to say that our already existing depths are revealed to a greater and greater degree. What this means to you is that as a consciously evolving being, your experience of sexuality [both your own and that of your communion with another] will shift, change, and evolve as well.
Often, when we think of “being responsible”, many of us think of paying our bills, attending family gatherings, being on time, going to work, paying our taxes, etc. While that is accurate, there is a deeper level to peer into. One that affects each of us every moment of every interaction we have with others. And the question is, what does responsible communication look like? What does it mean to take responsibility in our interactions?
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