無 / 有 – Sungwon Peter Choe Online

Why Does This Keep Happening To Me?

You always end up in relationships with guys who like to conserve water by not flushing. You always argue with your girlfriend about how many ex-girlfriend tattoos you have (what’s her problem, anyway??). You always get stuck with chicken-beheading duty down at the ranch. Why don’t things change? Why don’t you ever have any luck?

To put it bluntly, you’re not ready for change. You’re not ready to change. You’re used to and comfortable with things the way they are. One way to look at it is that you haven’t learned what you’re “supposed” to have learned from a particular level of experience, so you can’t move on. You’re doomed to repeat it. Everyday is Groundhog Day (imdb | amazon).

Bill Murray and friend in Groundhog Day

What? Does the universe really conspire to provide you with experiences that are valuable lessons? Are you really the center of the universe, a special snowflake? Yes and no. It’s simply that whatever level of consciousness, emotional development or morality you’re at is how you’ll experience pretty much everything. For the purposes of self-development, reality is absolutely (haha) subjective. Your understanding of every experience you have is filtered through your own unique perspective. Hell, even if you are capable of being aware of having a certain experience is based on your interpretative framework, your ability to be aware of it in the first place. The universe doesn’t have to prepare a conspiracy of lesson plans for you. The way you perceive any experience is itself the teaching. (But you are a special snowflake! Who’s a special snowflake? Yes, you are! Daddy’s wittle fluffy-wuffy special snowflake!)

You're a special snowflake! =^.^=

Thus you do not change because your understanding of reality remains fixed. If you always interpret a similar experience in the same way, you will always have the same experience. If you always respond with the same action, you’ll always get the same result.

So how do you break out of your current reality? If you want to experience something new, if you want to change, you have to develop a new understanding, a new perspective, and then respond accordingly. Or you can do it the other way around and change your behavior first, see what happens, and then develop a new interpretive framework.

Developing a New Perspective

For social relationships, the easiest way to gain a new perspective is to take that of the person with whom you are in relationship with.

For example, how could she do that to me? I don’t know, that’s a good question, isn’t it? Let’s actually try to answer it.

Adopt her perspective for a moment with compassion. Have you ever done something like that? Could you ever do something like that? Once you have developed some compassion for her perspective, it looks less and less like she’s wronged you. You may have simply expected more from her than she’s ready to give. Maybe she doesn’t express her affection in ways that you need (some respond more to words, others deeds, still others physical affection). Can you still be upset at her when you can empathize with her perspective? Well, yeah, I guess you could, but you’d start to feel silly about it after a while.

Taking another perspective like this allows you to take back control over the situation. You can not easily control another person (at least not without being a major dick). You can not easily force them to change (most of us aren’t ready to, right?). But you can control how you interpret the situation and how you respond. Since reality is subjective anyhow, changing your perspective of the situation will actually change the situation. That doesn’t mean you always get what you want; it means you can control whether not getting what you want will upset you or not. (It might, however, help you stop looking for what you want in the wrong places…)

(Note that the Integral 3-2-1 process describes a similar, more detailed way of using perspectives to work through your own psyche. It’s an excellent technique for dealing with your Shadow.)

New Action: Outside the Comfort Zone

Changing your behavior entails taking new action. You can tell when you’re taking new action when you’re outside your comfort zone. So if you want to take new action that will lead to growth, you have to do something you’re afraid of (not mortally, of course, don’t go skinny dipping in piranha-infested waters because you misunderstood me). Tim Ferris even argues that defining your fears may be more important than defining your goals. Generally, facing your fears will change your reality fairly automatically. You’ll be doing things you never imagined that you could do. You gain confidence. Your sense of self expands.

Note that while moving outside of your comfort zone when you’re ready leads to growth, being forced too far outside your comfort zone leads to trauma. A 13-year old needs to begin getting away from his parent’s authority and care to learn to assert his independence. A 3-year old who is taken away from caring parents can be psychologically scarred.

Under the Blanket: Inside the Comfort Zone

Oh wait, so there’s a comfort zone? Yeah, which means if you’re not changing, you’re in it! And that’s perfectly fine. You don’t need to be changing all the time, just know that if you’re all comfy under the covers, you’re not growing. You change when you’re ready (which would probably be about when you’re complaining about your life, if you needed a hint). When you want to move on to the next set of experiences, you know what you have to do.

Unprecedented Opportunity: The Moral Imperative for Growth

You and I are the luckiest people who have ever lived. The simple fact that, for example, you are reading this blog marks you as one of a handful of global elite supported by a complex and highly developed social infrastructure and culture. You enjoy enormous wealth, privilege and opportunity the likes of which have never before been seen in history. (Take financial wealth alone. If you make only $25,000/year, you are among the top 10% of the richest people in the world.)

We are among the first generations for whom self-actualization is a real possibility. We have the opportunity to choose where we live, even becoming global nomads  if we wish. For the first time in history, all the world’s knowledge, it’s sciences, philosophies and religions are open to us. We have now the opportunity and means for deciding our own social roles. We can choose what kind and how many loving relationships we want. We can choose meaningful and fulfilling work. We can enjoy searching for and living our individual life purpose. Even our parents never had such freedom. We are near Gods, creators of our own destinies.

At the same time, the world is coming apart at the seams, offering up monolithic and fearful challenges that threaten life as we know it. This is the inherent danger that lurks at every increasing level of societal development. As we know from Spiral Dynamics, each new level of collective consciousness solves problems of the previous level and also creates new ones.

With the emergence of each new level, not all of human society progresses to the next level. Only those societies and indivduals at the cutting edge. The increasing complexity of cultural conflicts comes as a result that we have people and societies living at -all- levels of consciousness, but with access to the technologies and ideologies of all the other levels. Thus ethnocentrically-centered political and religious leaders with weapons of mass destruction. The distance between the lower and higher levels of consciousness grow. Each level brings greater opportunities for freedom and expanding consciousness, but also greater dangers for fucking it all up on horrific scales. The stakes get ever higher.

We privileged are extremely few. The daily reality for much of the world is brutal. Most live in horrifying poverty, in the midst of war or at the mercy of overt and severe political and religious oppression. As we elite enjoy more freedom and more opportunity, those below experience even more poverty. For poverty exists as the distance between what some have and some do not. The more we have, the more impoverished those without. A moral responsibility lies on us all to close this gap.

There are two ways in which we can meet these challenges, both in the present and in the future. In the now, we must seek out direct solutions through community activism, non-profits and other such initiatives. We use these tools now available to us to express our compassion.

Unfortunately, these short-term solutions are not enough. Most of them do not address the root cause of humanity’s problems, which is a narrow view of self. Lower levels of moral consciousness focus on what is good for the self as individual, one’s family, one’s clan. Most of us do not extend our compassion and understanding beyond an ethnocentric or nationalistic frame. The average level of consciousness is simply not great enough to overcome this selfish self.

Pursuits like self-development and spirituality are critical in raising the average level of global consciousness. It seems selfish to work on oneself when there is so much altruistic work to be done in the here and now (and indeed it must be done, we can’t all leave a man bleeding to death in the street to chase down his killer), but lasting solutions to our 1st-tier (see Spiral Dynamics) problems will only come when a critical mass of us have reached 2nd-tier levels of consciousness. Otherwise we’ll always just be cleaning up after own bloody mess.

For you and I, heaven on earth is within reach for a pittance of blood, sweat and tears. Yet most of us are barely even aware of the opportunities that are laid at our feet. We subconsciously inherit the social structures and values of our cultures, instead of consciously choosing our own and becoming our own personal anarcho-utopian islands of free and full individual men and women.

For the good of all, it is necessary to pursue your own passions and grow into your own true self. Increasing freedom for you is increasing freedom for us all.