I am indebted to Paige Rose PhD who contributed material for this
conversation.
She spoke it as a
gift:
with kindness,
with consideration, and above all with empathy. She said "Be at home in
your experience.". She spoke it as if she was
reflecting
on it /
inquiring into it
for herself, as if she experienced it for herself before recommending
it. Her "your" was the generalized "your". She wasn't saying it to me
specifically. But it was as if she were. She was speaking a truth which
she'd realized for herself that
worked
(it's actually quite profound) and was now
sharing withthe world.
Her "be at home in your experience" is wise I thought. It was
transformative, if you will (and she wasn't even
a graduate).
We're all in the
ongoing-conversation-in-the-world
in which we're all hell-bent on changing the experience ie in which
we're all hell-bent on changing our experience. And she
wasn't only suggesting we stop attempting to change our experience. It
was more than that: she was exhorting us to be at home in
our experience. Indeed. How profound. How utterly refreshing! Aren't we
spring-loaded to do exactly not that? Aren't we
spring-loaded to try to change it?
It takes something to fully grasp
the automaticity
of the way we try to change things. We're spring-loaded to change our
own experience, just as much as we're spring-loaded to change
the world
or at least to try to. Be careful: that there are things, conditions
etc in
the world
that we'd do well to change, is not the point here (it's actually a
distraction). We've been trying to change
the worldforever ... and how's that going for us? The more we try
to change
the world
ie the more things change, the more they stay the same: "plus
ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (as
Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr says pithily).
Don't get me wrong. Wanting to change
the world
comes from a good place - to which
any leader
who cares about her people will attest. People of goodwill everywhere
recognize we could do better. But it's not the merits of the idea
that's the problem. The problem is it's a spring-loaded idea ie it's a
good idea, which is spring-loaded - which means it's on
full-automatic,
driven by survival. And any good idea spring-loaded, on
full-automatic,
and driven by survival is no different than a bad idea
spring-loaded, on
full-automatic,
driven by survival: both bring zero possibility of transformation, of
anything new, zilch, nada.
We're so spring-loaded to try to change our experience (how many times
have you heard "I'm working on myself"?) and
the world,
that the practicality of ever being at home in our experience is
dismissed out of hand. Try it on. See if you can be at home in your
experience without changing one iota of it. Get to know what
it's like, exactly the way it is. Stop changing things long enough to
see what being at home in your experience is really like. Later if you
want to, you can always go back to changing
the world
(it'll surely still be there, waiting for you to change it) as before.
But hopefully by then you'll get what it is to be at home in your
experience, and what it offers: the possibility of not being
spring-loaded in a
world
which is patently spring-loaded. That's real power.
That was when I realized how much I respected and appreciated her. That
was when I totally got it. She
shared
new ideas without
being attached
to them. If they
worked
for you,
they were yours.
If they didn't
work
for you, she wasn't diminished. You didn't have to agree with her for
her to be at home in her experience. At least you don't get "at home"
that way. You get it by trying it on. And she embodied what she spoke.
I admire that quality in people. Greatly.