I've invested a lot of time in trying to get better. Really I have - I
mean a lot of time. And I wouldn't have invested a lot of
time trying to get better unless I was convinced it's
possible to get better (this much is obvious to me: if I didn't
believe
it's possible to get better, I wouldn't have pursued it). The thing is
the
belief
that it's possible to get better, wasn't something I decided to try out
or take on - like a new religion, like a new role, or like
a new job, for example. Rather it's automatic, built in, an
unquestioned foundation of our
epistemology
- in a
word,
it's inherited. It's an unexamined yet wholly accepted and
widely agreed on notion. And look: the notion that it's possible to get
better, really implies more than that: it implies both life and I,
require I somehow must get better - like a duty, like an
obligation.
Now, when I'm referring to getting better, I'm not talking about
getting better at something - like, for example, getting
better at
playing
the guitar, getting better at archery, getting better at
surfing
etc, you know, pursuing skills that improve with practice. Rather I'm
talking about getting better experientially if you will.
I'm talking about the kind of getting better which would result in
having a better experience for myself of being me. The success
of this kind of getting better would be measured by having a better
experience of myself as a human being ie by having a better experience
of what I feel like being in my own skin. And I was
certain that given whatever it was that I experienced when I
experienced myself being in my own skin, I needed to get
better. It's that kind of getting better I'm referring to.
Here's the trouble with getting better: built in to the very notion of
"getting better" is "it's not OK the way it is", yes? Even when
there are ways to temporarily propel us in the direction of getting
better, the trouble is once they're no longer in
play,
the current state ie the ground of being (if
you will) is still not better ... which is to say it's still not OK the
way it is. Moving in the direction of getting better, is to move away
from that which is not OK the way it is. And that which is not OK the
way it is, is always not OK the way it is. I soon discovered I
could never get better enough to get far enough away from that which is
always not OK the way it is.
Some time around now (it may have been closer to
when I met Werner for the
first time,
but nonetheless some time around now) it dawned on me that
the wish, the hope, the
prayer
of getting better merely serves to avoid experiencing the way it is ie
it merely serves to avoid experiencing whatever it is I'm experiencing.
When I got that, it altered just about everything in the way I handled
myself in life from then on. It was massive for me.
Something profound had shifted. I became
interested
in (no, it was more than merely becoming
interested
in: it was I became
committed
to) what it would take (or not take) to be OK
with all of it - exactly the way it is and exactly the way it
isn't - ie to accept what it feels like for me to be in my own skin,
without trying to change anything, without trying to get better.
Be careful: if you hear "without trying to change anything ie without
trying to get better" as giving up, or as courting apathy, or as
devolving
into not caring etc, I'm sorry: it's none of the above. There's another
context
in which to hold it ie there's another possibility for looking at it:
"without trying to change anything ie without trying to get better" is
manning up ("manning up" as I use it in a personal sense,
applies as equally to women as it does to men) to experiencing whatever
it feels like to be in my own skin, without trying to avoid the
experience, without trying to change it, without trying to get better.
The trouble with getting better (which is to say the trouble with
trying to get better) is it takes me away from
experiencing the experience of being in my own skin exactly the way it
is and exactly the way it isn't.
It's in taking me away from experiencing the experience of being in my
own skin exactly the way it is and exactly the way it isn't, where
trying to get better becomes an enabler, a co-dependent in
avoiding and / or suppressing my experience of being in my own skin,
whatever that experience may be.
Try this on for size: the inherited investment in trying to get better,
is an enabler, a co-dependent in avoiding and / or suppressing
experiencing being in your own skin, exactly the way it is and exactly
the way it isn't. The
freedom,
the bigness, the
acceptance,
the willingness to experience being in your own skin
unflinchingly,
unfiltered, exactly the way it is and exactly the way it isn't, without
futilely
trying or wishing or hoping or
praying
to get better, is a
powerful
access to
transformation.