There are parts of us we know well - those that are in close - and parts of ourselves we know less well - the more hidden, invisible parts. Sometimes, simply giving a part its appropriate name allows us to see it and to interact with it more skilfully. The inner critic is one such part. Seeing it, naming it, entering into a different kind of relationship and conversation with it - all of these can be powerful moves in having it take up a more helpful and life-giving place in the constellation of entities each of us calls 'I'.But there are also parts of each of us that we have disowned or split off and that we barely see as part of ourselves at all. These may be parts of ourselves that we dislike, or judge, or abhor. Or they can parts we long for, but do not feel are available or appropriate for us. But parts of us they are, and since we can't bear to identify our experience of them with ourselves, we readily project them into others.So often, when we find ourselves disliking other people, when we get irritated by them, feel judgment or scorn or disdain or even hate towards them, we're seeing in them what we most dislike or scorn or are irritated about in ourselves. A simple way of saying this is that what we encounter in them reminds us so strongly of what we're trying to get away from in ourselves, that we try get away from it in them too.The very same process can also be in play with those we are drawn to, admire, or put on a pedestal. In this case perhaps we're seeing in the other, first, a reminder of split-off parts of ourselves that we deeply long to be reunited with but do not consciously know as our own. We feel drawn to the other person, or good about ourselves around them, precisely because of the feeling of wholeness and re-unification it brings about it in us.Perhaps it becomes obvious when described this way that the work for us to do with people who irritate us is not to try to change them (which in any case does not address the primary source of our irritation or anger or frustration) but to find out what it is about ourselves that we dislike so much and work with some effort and diligence to understand, turn towards, and accept it.And with people we love and admire the inner work for us to do is much the same if we want to love and admire them for who they are rather than because a hole or an emptiness or a longing gets filled when we're around them.Then, we can find, it's more and more possible to be around a wider range of people with openness and warmth and genuine regard. And it's also more possible to be close and compassionate with those we love most, who are so often the very people with whom we have the most difficulty because it's in them we find parts of ourselves most readily reflected.
Famous
I sit in the darkness, watching my daughter and her friends singing, dancing and performing with such joy and exuberance in a local musical production, and right when I could release myself into joy and wonder a dark, coiled-upon itself part of me claws repeatedly - 'You should be able to do that', it says.On a gloriously sunny May Thursday, I'm hosting a conversation about leadership with a group of thoughtful, principled people who run a large hospital. Right when I could be at my most curious, open and available, there's a part of me that tells tugs, hard - 'You should be better at this', it says, 'You should be like them.'In my living room, a long afternoon of freedom available to me, I'm reading Robert McFarlane's beautiful book 'Underland', and I find myself checking the time again and again. 'You shouldn't be here', it says and, more perniciously, its tendrils of shame that I haven't published a book, that I don't know what to say, that I'm not famous, slip through the gaps in my thoughts and wrap themselves around my heart.On the tube, in the shower, watching a film, holding my loved ones and, more than anywhere else, in the dark of the night, the endless voice of comparison keeps speaking its poison. Its promise is alluring enough - salvation. If I'm equal to or better than the ideas it has about me, or the people it measures me against, I'll be saved. Once I'm well known enough, or have made a world-changing contribution, I'll be safe. If I make sure never to annoy anyone else, or disappoint them, if I keep up an image of gentleness or responsibility, everything will be OK.As my dear friend and colleague Lizzie Winn says, all of this has us 'pretzel ourselves' into ever more distortions. And as the poet Naomi Shihab Nye reminds us in her poem Famous, there's a more straightforward way to be in the world, one filled with dignity and aliveness which recognises the uniqueness of the being we already are,
... famous in the way a pulley is famous,or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,but because it never forgot what it could do
It may seem like a paradox, but it's often when we give up our crazed attempts to be what we're not that we have the greatest chance of flourishing and unfolding fully into what we are. It's when, as Lizzie says, we can inhabit our qualities wholeheartedly, that we find the deep reserves of kindness or courage, wisdom or attentiveness, that allow us to meet the world.Naomi Shihab Nye shows us early in her poem that all our attempts to save ourselves by holding ourselves in the grip of a comparison (such as with fame) are inevitably doomed by the transience of everything:
The loud voice is famous to silence,which knew it would inherit the earthbefore anybody said so.
As Simon Seligman so beautifully writes, in response to those lines:
'We are but a moment, and all around us nature and time, and the silence that came before us, are unfolding as they must. And so our voice, our moment, can only speak for itself, now, as we find it, and should let go of any hope that we will silence the silence. It is always there, it should always be there, and without it we would not be able to hear our own voice anyway, just as light has no meaning without the dark. The silence does not need us to confer upon it any meaning or purpose; it knows it will inherit the earth. We get to dance within and upon it for our span; it allows (indulges?!) us in this, and lets us witter on as if we were in control. But the water will close over our heads, the gravestone will be subsumed into the earth, and our one job is to accept and embrace both our living span, and its end, in time.'
Our one job - to accept and embrace both our living and its end. I know when I can do this, I can sit in the dark and watch my daughter, and let myself be overcome by joy and love and sheer wonder that she is here. I can work with a group of very capable leaders with curiosity and openness and truthfulness, without holding back and without closing down. I can love and speak and listen and create without holding onto a myth of safety or salvation. I can much more readily give up the demand for safe passage and instead participate, turning towards life with a whole-heartedness and playfulness that's robbed from me when I'm caught in comparison with how I am supposed to be, or how things are supposed to be. I stop pretzeling myself to try to get life to go my way.-The poem, Lizzie and Simon's wonderful words, and everything I've expressed here came from conversations in and around the Turning Towards Life project. You can hear the episode that includes Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, and much else, on our website here, and on our podcast.
Photo by Laura Wielo on Unsplash
Both sides
In the ancient Jewish tradition, people are thought of as having two primary orientations to the world - an inclination towards good (yetzer hatov) and an inclination towards evil (yetzer harah).The inclination towards good draws us out of ourselves towards what is most compassionate and most principled. And the inclination towards evil draws us towards our most self-centred interests, from which we care only for ourselves and not for others or the world.Surely, in this way of thinking, the inclination towards good is itself good and should be cultivated, and the inclination towards evil is bad and should be extinguished? No, say the rabbis, they are both good, and both necessary.How can this be?With only the inclination to good we risk spending all our time basking in the wonder and awe of life. Many possibilities for action are denied to us, because they cannot be known to have positive outcomes. The inclination to good, on its own, is noble but paralysed, unable to decide what to do when uncertain about consequences, when the world in all its complexity and unknowability becomes apparent.And so we need the inclination to evil also. Given free rein, it dooms us to a life of self-centredness, of action purely for our own gain. But without it, say the rabbis, nobody would create anything. We would not build houses, bring children into the world, nor do the difficult and creative work of shaping the world around us. The inclination to evil, with its indignation and rage and cunning and huge creativity is what brings us into purposeful action.Denying either side leads to trouble. It takes both inclinations in a constant dynamic tension to have us act in the most human, and most humane ways.And this is the foundational task facing each of us if we want to act with integrity in the world: we must find a way of knowing ourselves fully so that we leave nothing of ourselves out. We have to stop denying and pushing away the parts of ourselves that we don't understand, or don't like so much. We have to take our fear and confusion as seriously as our hope and our joy. We have to stop pretending to have it all together.Integrity is exactly that - integrating all of it. When we bring our hope and our fear, our nobility and selfishness, our love and our disdain, our serious adulthood and playful childishness, our light and our darkness, each informs and shapes the other in a constant dance of opposites. And this is what brings us into creative and purposeful and appropriate action in the complexity of the world.
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Con-trick
How easy it is to be up to something while simultaneously denying it.I have sophisticated strategies for trying to be in control while looking like I'm being inclusive, for trying to get people to love me while looking as if I'm just trying to help, and for being stubbornly attached to my own view while looking as if I'm asking what other people think.All of these allow me to hold on to a particular kind of self-image (kind, accommodating, self-effacing) while simultaneously getting my own way. And they involve some sophisticated kinds of denial - spinning stories that blind me to my real intentions.When I relate to other people in this way, things can get pretty complicated.Sometimes, though - sometimes - I am able to see what I'm doing while I'm doing it. The intentions which I was subject to become object, moving from the background to the foreground, and then I have a chance to intervene and to take responsibility for what I'm doing.I am less had by my strategies. I become someone who has them.This move, making what we are subject to become object to us, is at the heart of all profound developmental transitions. Every time something moves into view (a part of us, or a way we're thinking, or a way we're constructing the world, or a way we're being shaped by our interactions with others) it affords us more freedom to act, a more inclusive view of ourselves and others, and a greater possibility to take care of whatever and whoever it is that we care about.And this move requires that we get onto our own con-tricks - all the ways we'll convince ourselves of our rightness and deny our part in what's happening.Often, it seems, what I'm hiding from myself about my intentions is pretty much the worse-kept secret of all, known to everybody else but me. And that is why, for each of us to develop, it's so important to be surrounded by people who extend love our way, who see us for our goodness, and who extend the kindness and respect required to tell us the truth (with care for timing, and in ways we can hear and understand), rather than keeping what they see to themselves.
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Part of ourselves
How easily, how readily, we see in others - we project onto others - what we don't want to see about our own lives. And how easily our projections turn others into an enemy to be corrected, scorned, hated or feared.How easily we end up enslaving ourselves with all this. We lock ourselves into battles in the outer world, when what we want to correct, what we hold in contempt, what we need most to be reconciled with is actually part of ourselves.
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We don't do introspection
"We don't do introspection", they said to me. "None of this fluffy, self-indulgent, navel-gazing here", they continued. "We do action."
Of course. If you're going to lead as they were, in a global organisation, then right action is critical. But what they meant by "we don't do introspection" was "we aren't prepared to look at ourselves".
If they had an inkling, and most of us do not, of how much their actions were being shaped, out of their view, by
their personal preferences,by their fears,by years of habit,by their avoidance of reminders of childhood experiences (mostly shame),by the expectations their parents handed them,by their inner critic,by their longing to be appreciated, liked, respected, feared, in control
then they would perhaps have taken introspection or some rigorous self-observation more seriously. They would have been brave enough not just to look at their actions, but to look upstream at what was giving rise to them.
But they didn't.
They had asked for help because they'd been amazingly effective in taking action - action that had landed them and their organisation in deep trouble.
And now they were trying to get out, with the same excuses, and by doing more of what had got them into difficulty in the first place.
Crazy, and sadly all too common.
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A luminous garment
We've allowed ourselves to become obsessed by youth.The way this has shaped our public lives is quite easy to see, from the relentless focus on youthful beauty in our media to the cruelty of causal ageism in the workplace.What's harder to see is how it is affecting the narratives we have about ourselves.We see all the ways that growing old is a falling apart, an endless series of losses, a disintegration. And so we try to stave it off, denying what is happening to us. As we grow older and as the time remaining to us diminishes, we become diminished in our own eyes. In this way we rob ourselves and others of our dignity.But here is an account of ageing from the Jewish mystical work, the Zohar, which points to a different possibility:
All the days of a person's life are laid out above,one by one they come soaring into this world...If a person leaving the world merits,he comes into those days of his life,they become a luminous garment.
Such a different way of looking, this - our inevitable, inescapable ageing as a gathering and weaving of the days of our lives into a single luminous garment. We wear the sum of all we have been and done in our bodies, on our faces, in our entire way of being in the world.This gives us growing older as an integration, a chance to unify ourselves, turning towards the shadow parts that we pushed away when we were younger.And it invites us to give up our dependence upon looking good or being liked, so that we can have our ageing usher us into the fullness of our humanity.
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The ask and the answer
We can learn a lot by making distinctions between things. When we're able to name differences - for example, between enlivening and deadening, generous and fickle, ethical and manipulative, truthful and untruthful - we make it possible to observe what would otherwise have been invisible to us, and take action on the basis of our observations.Being able to distinguish between necessary and sufficient, for example, opens many avenues for moving beyond technical solutions to our problems and into what's meaningful, principled and life-giving. The distinction between feedback and requests allows us to decide when we're trying to help another person learn, and when we're secretly trying to get something we want from them. And the distinction between when it's time to exert ourselves and when it's time to rest makes it possible for us to pay attention to the ongoing energy and flourishing of our lives in a way that's not possible if every moment is just another moment taken, on not taken, for work.But while distinctions are necessary, we can run into big trouble when we let them harden into dualisms - an either/or, is-or-is-not understanding of the world. Because dualisms introduce separation between things that are rarely actually separate. When I say 'I'm right and you're wrong' I create a dualism that leaves no space for my wrongness, and for your rightness. When we harden into 'I'm scared of speaking in public, but I love being by myself' we leave no room for the parts of us that long to be heard by others. And whenever we make sweeping and certain judgements about others based on their gender, sexuality, politics, business practices, skin colour, preferences and commitments the dualism we create blunts our capacity to see anything else about them, and very little about our own complexities and contradictions.Very often, if we're not careful, our dualisms imprison us and our capacity to respond to the world. And, when we start to look at the deeper dualisms that seem self-evident, it's not so clear that they are as solid as they seem, either.Is it really the case that what I call 'me' is over here and that 'you' are fully, and only, over there? If we allow the dualism to soften we can ask deeper questions: What about the ways we're always in the lives of the people we love, even when we're not with them physically? Even when we're no longer alive. And what about the trail of words, objects, influences, impacts we leave behind and around us? Can we really say, absolutely, that they're not 'me'? What compassion might arise when we start to see that 'they' are 'me' and that 'I' am 'them' in very many ways? And when we see that what we are sure is only in others - all that we despise, fear, reject - is also in ourselves?Can we say for sure that there's a thing called 'work' that's separate from 'life' such that the two need to be balanced against one another? Is life really the absence of death? Is death, really, the absence of life? And can we say, with any absolute certainty, that we're separate from what's around us?When our distinctions harden into dualisms we easily close ourselves off to learning, to curiosity, and to a direct encounter with the world. It's a difficulty made harder for us because so much of our contemporary culture and education thrives on dualisms, on certainty, on knowing.And for this reason making distinctions but letting our dualisms soften enough that we can call them into question is necessary work for all of us. It's the work of not knowing. Or perhaps, better said, the work of letting our questions be more important than our answers.
Part of ourselves
How easily, how readily, we see in others - we project onto others - what we don't want to see about our own lives. And how easily our projections turn others into an enemy to be corrected, scorned, hated or feared.How easily we end up enslaving ourselves with all this. We lock ourselves into battles in the outer world, when what we want to correct, what we hold in contempt, what we need most to be reconciled with is actually part of ourselves.
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Seeing through it
Given how often our naturally associative minds fill in the gaps in our experience with the ghosts of memories, projections, and transference, what are we to do?Let's start with understanding that all these processes are entirely natural and - in many circumstances - entirely necessary. Faced with something new and unknown, it's quite reasonable and very helpful that we have the kind of minds that enable us to predict what might happen and take action on the basis of our predictions.But let's also understand that in many situations our associative understanding of the world causes enormous trouble: when I try to gain your approval as if you're a parent because of the way you have positional authority over me; when I treat you as I do my younger brother because you're a peer on my team; when I project onto you those aspects of myself I don't like or can't tolerate, and judge you or criticise you because of them.As I have written here in recent days, each of these can lead us into all kinds of difficulty because we are no longer relating to the people around us as they are. So how can we work with colleagues, lead an organisation, parent or be a friend in a more truthful way, a way which is responsive to what's happening now and here rather than what was happening then or over there?Perhaps a powerful and insightful place to start is to take up the discipline of regular self-reflection. Buy yourself a journal - something you'll be pleased to write in. And a pen that you'll enjoy writing with. And then write, daily. You can uncover wonders with just a few minutes of attention each day (some hints on how you could do this are here).Write about what you see in yourself - your thoughts, what you experience in different situations, and the actions you find yourself taking. In particular, write about what it feels like to be with others. Where do you feel small, diminished, like a child? Where do you feel grandiose, puffed up beyond your normal stature? With whom do you feel judgemental, angry, resentful? Whose company are you drawn to?And then, most importantly, write about what each of those feelings remind you of. It's here that there's the most uncovering to do - that the watchful, vigilant state you find yourself in with Paul reminds you of the feel of being with your father when you were small; that Dana irritates you the way you feel irritated with your sister; that you long for signs of Karen's appreciation for you like you did with your mother.Often it's just the seeing of our transferences, projections and memories that allows their grip on us to start to loosen - that allows them to move from having us so that instead we can have them. And such self-reflection is vital work for all of us to do, if we want to take responsibility for the systems, communities, organisations and families in which we live our lives.
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