"A person's
'Way
Of Being' is what is going on with them
internally.
It is made up of some combination of that person's mental
state
(their attitude or
state
of
mind),
emotional
state
(their
feelings
or emotions), bodily
state
(their bodily sensations), [and] thoughts and thought processes (and
that includes
memories
[and decisions]
that might be
present).
In other
words,
a person's
'Way
Of Being' is what is going on with them
internally
in a given moment or in a given situation."
You've heard it before. You've heard others say it to you. You've heard
yourself say it to others. You may have even heard yourself say it
to yourself. We say it when explaining something we've done, or
when explaining something about ourselves. We say "It's just
the way
I am.". We also say it to others and to ourselves when
justifying something we've done, or when justifying
something about ourselves. We say "It's just
the way
I am" - it implies "I have no choice but to be this
way.".
If you
inquire
into it further, given the implication there's no choice of being any
other
way,
you'll notice beneath the surface of "It's just
the way
I am" is a certain resignation, a resignation which may
look like acceptance and which may sound like
acceptance. But if you tell the
truth
about it and 'fess up to it, that's all pretense. It's not acceptance.
What it really is is resignation - like this: "It's just
the way
I am, and I have no choice but to be this
way,
so I'm stuck with
the way
I am.".
This
"the way
I am" ie this
internal
state
ie this
way
of being seems at first glance to be formed, fixed, and
inflexible ie it seems to be something over which I have no choice or
control, and over which I have no
power
to change or shift. Oddly enough, even though I'm resigned to it, I
still protect it and I justify it. I even make excuses for it, and I
defend it - all of which is to say for the most part, I'm in
survival about it.
Upon close scrutiny accompanied by
unflinching
honesty, you'll see that all we've ever accomplished by protecting our
way
of being, is to obfuscate its malleability. What does that mean?
Protecting that which we call
"the way
I am" ie my
"way
of being", caused it to become solid. It's become coalesced. It's no
longer malleable. And malleability / flexibility was the once
abundantly obvious characteristic of our
way
of being, an assertion which is easily validated by
watchingchildrenplay.
Wait! There's more.
Consider
this: in proposing that our
way
of being's characteristic isn't fixed and was once abundantly obviously
malleable, it's possible there's not merely oneway
of being for us. Rather it's possible there are many
"ways
of being" for us, each of which are malleable. The
trap
we fall into when we assert our own so-called
way
of being is "just
the way
I am", is to overlook the at first not so obvious: there's more than
one possible
way
of being. So any
way
of being, isn't "the"way
of being. Rather it's merely "a"way
of being, and inherent in its essential makeup is the quality of
malleability ie the quality of being able to be changed, replaced,
discarded, or swapped out and exchanged for any one of many other
ways
of being, all of which can be
created
ie called up at will at a moment's notice.
Over
time
we've lost our sense of flexibility with regard to our own
ways
of being. We've come to assume that we have one
way
of being ie
"the way
I am" which somehow forms the core of our lives and is inflexible, and
which we have no choice but to adhere to and perpetuate.
Consider
we have instead access to anyway
of being.
How
we access any
way
of being is by the
linguistic act
of inventing it as a possibility. What does it mean "by the
linguistic act
of inventing it as a possibility"?
If, for example, I've been withholding myself from someone, I'm not
stuck with being that
way.
I'm not stuck with "withholding" as a
way
of being. I can, for example, invent the possibility of "being
generous".
Notice that a new
way
of being is a possibility. So it
works
better saying "The possibility I'm inventing for myself and my life is
the possibility of being
generous"
rather than saying "The possibility I'm inventing for myself and my
life is the possibility of
generosity".
It's the former which invents being
generous
as a
way
of being. Try both on for size. You'll get the distinction. The
possibilities of new
ways
of being are brought forth in
languaging
them.