Allowing and Believing
Quick summary: Lately I have noticed that not all obstacles are nearly as insurmountable as I had previously thought… I am not intending to suggest that environmental roadblocks do not exist… instead I am suggesting that perhaps the greatest wall keeping us from our ambitions, life paths, meaning, desires etc are related to an inability to allow. The question I am posing today is simply this – what would come to be in your life if you allowed yourself to try and what would come to be in your life if you allowed yourself to be different from the masses. In order to allow you must believe… not in the certainty of the future… but in yourself in the moment.
There is a trend in this country that most people can see but only a few are doing anything about. To a degree we have allowed our subjectivity to be hijacked so that many of us in some way or another are following a path and making daily decisions that are against our best interests and that are dually against the best interest of the whole or the collective.
It is easier to move with the flow of the norms of your specific time and geographic location… and sometimes of course it is nice to do so. But if those norms are not particularly healthy and those norms move you away from life satisfaction, familial connectivity, integrity and happiness than how do we escape the pull to be ‘normal.’
Externally there is a pull… this pull is almost greater than a suggestion… this external pull seemingly has a power that could almost be measurable…
This pull uses the cognition “should” and accepts no contrary information… this pull is rigidly dogmatic unconscious of dialectics in any sense.
This pull will use the suggestion “you should” in a way that will effectively result in guilt if you are to resist the cognitive persuasion.
Some of the norms of this country suggest at times that:
– You should watch hours of TV a day.
– You should eat unhealthy food to ‘save time’.
– You should work unhealthy and counter productive amount of hours a day, as that is what everyone else is doing.
– You should neglect the needs of your body such as exercise for ‘more important’ activities like television and work.
– You should spend the majority of your efforts acquiring objects.
– You should suppress most emotions and exaggerate your anger.
– You should do what is ‘normal’ as anything else would be selfish.
Normal is not particularly healthy these days. Allowing yourself a life which respects your body, emotions, individual meaning, and thoughts is an effective way for you to be a healthy influence on others and for you to be helpful to those around you…
To help others you must help yourself – doing things for yourself is then both selfish and selfless at the same time (this is a dialectic).
You have an equally strong force within you that can offer balance to the external pull towards norms.
You have the power to allow… to allow yourself what you intuitively find to be the choice which is simultaneously in the better interest of you and the collective.
As you begin to allow yourself to make the healthier choices you find that there is a last ditch effort exerted by the norms to encourage a fear to grow inside you.
“What if” questions might start to exert there influence on your behavior. Generally the ‘what if’ question is a leading question… “What if a catastrophe…”
At this point you must allow yourself to believe… and not with a type of faith which is rooted in future thinking… a faith in the moment…. a faith in your intuitive ability to choose a direction that is in the best interest of the individual and the collective.
I understand that this seems a bit as though I am oversimplifying… perhaps.
If you would feel more comfortable it could be a good idea for you to break up this occurrence into percentages.
What is it that would benefit you and/or those around you? How much of your inability to engage in this benefit is external and how much is internal?
Imagine yourself to be a different person… a person that would allow themselves to engage in the beneficial action you find yourself ruminating about… now imagine if you allowed yourself to be that person.
you are that person.
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Allowing and believing is a great blog. I like to think of the pull to do for others and the pull to do for self as an interactive single concept. To your point, I do think there is a dialectic dialogue and struggle within this concept as well. In some ways it feels like an inappropriate dichotomization of the English language. For example, I am a human being with needs of my own and I try to meet these needs (e.g., listening to music I like, spending time with my favorite people, etc.). In addition, as a social creature I am constantly giving to the world (listening empathically to others, donating to charity, lending a friend money, etc.) however, this also feeds into my own personal wants/desires(i.e., internal boost for giving myself to another person/cause). So we could connect the two concepts by calling give-take, selfless-selfish, or just make up a new word (e.g., wizlebow). The point being in connecting these concepts we would stop viewing things as one way or another.
For example, a woman I know really values the brand new Porsche she has recently purchased. She washes it, takes pictures of it, and openly talks about her love and pride for this car. Many humanistically oriented individuals may see her as selfish and consumed with materialism (dichotomous view), however, what they don’t know is that this car represents more to this woman than just a possession. She tells me privately that this highly coveted possession symbolizes her escape from generations of poverty and addiction. She tells me that her grandparents made her promise from age 5 that she was going to go get a college education and give her children a better life than they could ever afford. This story is not to discount the fact that she also thinks the car is pretty and likes how fast she can go in it as well, however, it’s meant to broaden the narrow view that people can be just purely selfish or purely selfless. I’m sure that every time she looks at the car it fulfills her in a way to give more to the world (i.e.,a self-augmenting internal mechanism).
WOW – thanks for the comment… we seem to be like-minded individuals – I love getting into conversations concering dialectics… indeed sometimes I wonder if my brain is limmited in its’ ability to fully understand ideas such as good and bad being ultimetely the same thing… sometimes I even take things a step further and say things which sound crazy… like bad, good, irony, a fish, atmosphere, opinions etc are all fundamentally the same thing (what are they if you infinitely deconstruct them? projections of a consciousness on consciousness)… I enjoy your thoughts – If you put some of your ideas up on my forums page I would very much appreciate it (you can start new topics) or if you want to guest blog we can talk…