“What do you think I should do?” he asked. “I want to feel better about my job, but don’t know what to do. Frankly, I’m not particularly spiritual, and am just looking for practical advice.”

This young man is not alone in his perception of his job as drudgery. Many people strive for success and admiration at work and pour energy in to the promise of their careers, but somewhere along the way find that the anticipated rewards either do not materialize, or do not provide the happiness that they had hoped for, leaving them feeling stuck, trapped, bored, frustrated, drained, duped or depressed. I know this, because at times in my career I’ve also experienced all these feelings.

Here’s what I’ve learned, and what I told the young man:

First, you need to objectively identify why you are so unhappy at your work. There can be several categorical reasons:
1. Your type of work: Perhaps you are in a field that you find inherently unsatisfying, or you feel called to a different type of career. Maybe you are a lawyer, yet yearn to be an artist; or you are an artist but are drawn to business; or you work at a large company but dream of being an entrepreneur.
2. Your work environment: Maybe you are dissatisfied with your company, and experience your boss as abusive or insensitive, or are in conflict with your co-workers, or find your corporate culture demeaning, or feel undervalued and not listened to.
3. Your personal situation: Are you unmotivated because the time demands of your job have hurt your relationships with your family, friends, and community, leaving you feeling exhausted, resentful, and unbalanced in your life?
4. Your attitude: Hovering over all these reasons is your attitude. Do you look for problems and faults, or do you see possibilities for growth? Do you view people as threats and competitors, or do you see others as fellow human beings who share the same struggles and desires as you do?

Let’s look at ways to address each of these reasons:
1. Many people I speak with tell me that their jobs are not fulfilling, but can’t identify alternatives. In those cases I recommend an exercise that you may find useful: Make three lists. On the first, write down all the things that you are naturally good at. On the second, all the things that you enjoy. And on the third, all the things that are meaningful to you. Don’t hold back or edit your responses; just write what comes to mind. Now, look for a theme that comes up in all three lists – that’s an indicator of your true purpose. An immediate answer may not appear, but you will be pointed in a direction. We are energized when we do something we enjoy, excel at, and that is meaningful.
2. If your work environment is truly toxic to your mental and physical health, you ought to consider leaving. If you decide to stay, though, and want to be satisfied at your work, you must truly commit to your job, and to the success of your peers, co-workers, and your company. Once you do this you will naturally find ways to contribute, and will suddenly discover that you are not a helpless victim, but are a crucial and valued member of an interdependent community. This is not a Pollyanna, unrealistic vision, but is exactly how successful, energetic people approach their jobs.
3. In order to feel satisfied at work it is crucial that we live balanced lives. Plan meaningful time with your family, exercise regularly, find community activities that involve you in the needs of others, and explore hobbies that allow for creative release. Most of us have much more available time than we think, but we often squander this time watching TV, or in some other activity that we think will bring relaxation, but that actually drains us even further. Finding balance is about commitment and discipline.
4. Once you implement the first three recommendations with positive intention, you will suddenly discover that your attitudes have changed. You will lighten up and have more energy. You feel more free, engaged, relaxed, optimistic, and grateful, because you will have discovered possibilities for your job and your life that had been hidden under the cover of limiting, negative attitudes.

I suspected that one or more of these reasons applied to the young man’s situation, and wished him the strength and courage to implement lasting changes that will transform how he views his job, himself, others, and the purpose for his life.

I also shared a quick thought with him about “spirituality”. We may think of spirituality as naively idealistic, or something reserved for special times and activities, but “spirituality” is, essentially, the experience of a transformative connection. In other words, we are “spiritual” when we connect deeply with ourselves, others, and the Divine, in a way that strips away our defensive fronts, revealing our true selves. We have all had these experiences - in the beauty of nature, at the birth of a child, when we commit to love, care for another, or in the moments of creative “flow” - and spiritual practices are developed to help train us to make these connections in a regular, deliberate way. In this way, the recommendations above are all spiritual practices designed to help us find more peace, purpose, and fulfillment in everything that we do.

I’ve come to learn that many people, like this man, have difficulty encountering God in a way that is consistent with the realities of their lives, the workings of their minds, and the revelations of science. Most of us have wrestled with such impediments, which can seem to be insurmountable walls, separating those who “believe” from those who question, with no apparent reconciliation possible.

Surprisingly, a story in the Bible presents impediments to understanding God, and also responds with answers that the man who came in to my office would probably find unexpected. This story is well known - even to those who have never read the Bible - through the movie visions of Cecil B. Demille and Stephen Spielberg. One day, the shepherd Moses wanders on to a mountain, where his life suddenly changes. The text tells us:
An angel of God appeared to him [Moses] in a blaze of fire from amid the bush. He saw, and behold, the bush was burning in the fire but the bush was not consumed. Moses thought, “I will turn now and look at this great sight – why will the bush not be burned?” God saw that he turned aside to see, and called out to him from amid the bush and said “Moses, Moses”, and he replied, “Here I am”.
Embedded in these four sentences, which describe Moses’ epiphany – his awakening to the Divine presence -, are several typical impediments to experiencing God, along with associated avenues for resolutions. Below, I present these impediments as first-person statements, similar to those voiced by the man who came in to my office:

Impediment 1: I see no proof of God’s existence. I’ll believe when I see an obvious demonstration
The Bible is filled with spectacular miracles, which may lead us to look for God in such spectacles. The revelation to Moses, though, comes through a little, unassuming bush that has caught fire. This little bush teaches us that God can be found when we pay attention to the everyday miracle that surround us – the things we all too routinely take for granted: a beautiful tree, the workings of our bodies, the wonder of our minds, the gift of our children, friends and our jobs, and the life force - “burning” but unconsumed - coursing through the veins of a little bush. When we consciously place our awareness on these everyday miracles, the presence of the Divine is revealed.

Impediment 2: I can’t prove God’s existence rationally, which is the only way to knowledge.
If we can’t logically prove God’s existence, then isn’t God just a wishful delusion, a manipulative construct of control-based religion, or a pre-rational fantasy? Moses, however, had a direct experience of the Divine presence, calling him to his life’s purpose. Intellect can provide a valuable categorical framework, but, as Moses discovered, God, like love, is experienced, not conceptualized.

Impediment 3: A relationship with God will make me arrogant and/or sheepish.
To some, it may seem that those who believe in God are giving up their individuality and intellect by buying in to a packaged, unquestionable, unprovable doctrine, leading to the paradoxical combination of arrogant certainty that one has exclusive ownership of Truth, along with the abdication of personal questioning. Not a very appealing picture. Moses’ response, “I am here”, though, is not a surrender of individuality, nor acceptance of a religious creed, but is a declaration of full readiness to listen, a commitment to serve, and a desire to receive guidance and wisdom. This is the true posture of a relationship with the Divine.

Impediment 4: “Spiritual experiences” are just feel-good self-indulgence.
One of the unfortunate aspects of much modern spirituality is that it can often turn toward self-involvement, based on the belief that the primary goal of such spiritual practices is to receive Divine personal reward; to be given special “powers”, to be protected by life’s suffering, and to have a level of clarity that raises one above others. Moses encounter teaches us that a deep spiritual path makes us more sensitive to the needs and feelings of others, less enthralled by the tug of our egos, and propels us to socially beneficial action. Moses is called because he needs to perform a task that will eventually lead to the transformation of the world.

I wonder if these explanations would have made any impact on the man who came in to my office. Maybe not…. God is not found in explanations. Maybe, though, these points would have given some direction to his search, or at least have helped him to see that the “battle” between faith and reason is built on a false foundation, and that there are ways of understanding God and religion that can dissolve his impediments, open him to new possibilities, enrich his life, and help him to find purpose as he searches for work in these difficult times.

We clearly live in times of enormous change. Many of us, though, may wish that things could stay put, or return to some version we have of “better times”. We may feel a desire for solid, familiar ground, and out of a sense of uncertainly we may be feeling fearful and insecure. In this fearful state of mind, though, it is very difficult to act positively and to find wisdom, because when fear arises our self-created defenses go up, dampening our deeper knowing, and unseating our sense of confidence and connection. In this way, we may tend to reject change and its accompanying feeling of uncertainty.

But we can view uncertainty in a different way. Uncertainty can be a great gift, causing us to re-think our established, fixed way of seeing things, and opening the way for transformation - from stagnation to movement; from limitation to expansion. In this light, uncertainty is the calling card of change and growth, and is a cause for optimism, not fear. This is the essential process of evolution. Periodic - often dramatic and unpredictable - changes occur, leading to the creation of new, more advanced species that further the process of awareness and diversity. Without change there is no life, because without change there is no growth. Without change our mind, body, emotions, and spirit begin to atrophy, solidify, and decay. Charles Darwin himself noted this succinctly:
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

In order to be responsive to change, we must have the confidence to look at our situation as honestly as possible, assess where previously held beliefs and actions are keeping us from growing, and muster the strength to implement a new course of action. This requires that we become conscious of our internal mental dialogue, and challenge fear-based assumptions against reality. If different action is needed, we will then respond based on information, not reactionary fear. In essence, these external changes result in our own internal change, and are the catalysts for personal and communal growth.

We all know people (and we may be one ourselves), who faced an unexpected change that felt completely unwelcome when it occurred, but who now look back on that event as a key positive turning point in their lives. Through addressing this change, and accepting the uncertainty that followed, that person (you?) experienced growth that would not have happened otherwise. Uncertainty and change are the agents in our lives that propel us, often against our will at the moment, to growth; exposing the hidden defenses that we’ve created to protect us from revealing our insecurities. Once exposed, these defenses begin to weaken, and we allow something new and positive to enter. This is what is meant by the famous, often quoted truism:
As a door closes, a window opens.
By going through that window – though it may be a tight fit - we can discover a landscape of possibilities that we may never had known existed if the same old door that we’ve been walking through for all of our lives had not suddenly been closed. From this perspective, uncertainty and change are great gifts of grace that present great opportunities for growth.

The Talmud, the compellation of Jewish thought, in addressing one who is struggling with the difficult feelings of uncertainty and uninvited change, says,
…let him be sure that these are the chastening of love
Like a parent who, out of love, insists that her child turn off the TV (or log off of Facebook), put down the candy bar, and stop hitting his sister in order to exercise, study, get restful sleep, make peace with his sibling, and eat good food, we are often forced to change, from an Infinite Love that desperately desires our healthy development. The child may resist – and perhaps resent - these changes, unwilling to acknowledge that these are ultimately for his own good. Accepting uncertainty and change requires faith - the knowledge that we are watched, guided, and protected, and that our lives are purposeful and meaningful. Although we may not often understand why events are unfolding, faith gives us the peace to face these events with confidence.

Uncertainty is the calling card of change and growth, and is a cause for optimism, not fear. So, instead of feeling fearful, or hoping that things will somehow return to their old familiar patterns, we can embrace our current situation of uncertainty and change with great optimism, knowing that we are heading toward an individual and collective future that will be better, more prosperous, more compassionate, and more wondrous than we can yet imagine. Then, if we are willing, we can walk through a new door that opens to the untold, unimaginable potential that is our birthright as human beings.

Here, then is the essential paradox that is at the foundation of all paradoxes: How can Consciousness know and be known when It is all that is, and there is no possibility for anything else, since something else would be just a subdivision, or a fractal of the whole, simply looking back at Itself? The only solution was to create something that is “other” – that is different, but accessible to the whole. Yet, how can something else possibly exist, since pure Consciousness is all there is, and anything else would contain elements that it does not possess? Where would this new element come from? The “other” can not exist outside of Consciousness since, at this point in our imagining, before the Big Bang, there is no “there”, and no “thing”.

Somehow, the infinite Desire to Become overcame this irreconcilable paradox (we’re here after all!), and Consciousness “contracted” Itself to allow for the possibility of something “other” to be born – something that It could enter in to a relationship with - and an infinitely small “point” was created to allow for the potential of space, time, and matter to appear. But since this situation is impossible (how can anything exist that is not part of, and connected to, the whole?), during an infinitely small time Consciousness flooded back in to the point, imbuing physicality with the eternal element of Consciousness, triggering the first event, the Big Bang - an ejection of endless consciousness through finite space. And that original orgasmic scream of creation still reverberates throughout the Universe. (In1964, the accidental discovery of this reverberation as cosmic radiation earned Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson Nobel Prizes)

Because physicality is animated by Consciousness, everything that exists contains the capacity to be, and the desire to grow. We have seen this process take place, as inanimate clouds of elemental gasses slowly evolved in to stars and human beings. But, how can pure Consciousness – timeless and formless – interact with physicality – limited and organic? The transient can not be mixed directly with the Eternal because the physical would then be instantly destroyed; or better expressed, instantly returned to its Source. Some system must have been created to allow for this paradox to happen in order for physicality to even be possible, because physicality without consciousness is inanimate and mute.

We can, then, imagine layers of increasing dense “filters” that slowly “dim” pure Consciousness so that the physical can partake of it and be part of it, while remaining physical. This process is like slowly diminishing the power supply from the electrical substation to your house to allow your toaster oven to operate without frying its hardware. Unlike the toaster, however, we can consciously ascend these “filters” to higher and higher realms where there is more pure Consciousness, and bring glimpses of these realms back to physicality, thereby raising the level of our existence closer to our Source, and bringing more consciousness in to the world. This is how Consciousness can know and be known by physical creatures.

The desire and purpose of creation is for physical matter to evolve in to self-awareness, and this can only happen through the choice to struggle to grow beyond the limitation of physicality. If we automatically connected to the Source of our consciousness there could be no growth and no relationship, since there would be no choice. There can be no meaningful relationship with an automaton that has no free will. There can also be no obvious system of reward and punishment. Imagine a system in which whenever someone does “wrong” they are struck by a lightening bolt, and whenever we do “good” gold coins float down from heaven? Then there would be no choice; only coercion and fear of punishment. Love has no meaning if it is not freely given. You can not love someone who you fear, and love can not develop when one panders to authority in order to receive desired rewards. We want our children, for example, to do the right thing not because they fear punishment, or hope for reward, but because they choose to do so in spite of temptations to do otherwise, and in acceptance of the consequences that may delay personal gratification. Only then are they truly adults, and only then can they enter in to healthy relationships of love.

Embedded in physicality, then, is the possibility of, and attraction to, unconsciousness – the temptation to choose to reject the inherent desire toward growth and relationship. Because pure pre-physicality Consciousness could not know of limitation and imperfection that is inherent to physicality, (matter being less than Consciousness Itself), It “assumed” that conscious physical creatures would automatically be drawn to It, since It is the very Source of existence, and the only Reality: Why, It “wondered” would anything choose stagnation and decay over growth, or hatred and death over love and life? The appeal to unconsciousness, therefore, was made very strong. Perhaps too strong… This may be the only “flaw” in the perfection of creation, requiring Consciousness to periodically intervene and provide guidance. These are moments of grace and revelation, documented by sages and mystics, and experienced by human beings since the dawn of our species.

We can now make this essential statement:
The purpose of creation is the desire of Consciousness for relationship. The only way to fill this desire is through our choice to nurture and expand our own consciousness to higher levels of awareness, thereby increasing the relationship.
The final cosmic paradox, then, is this: We are something that pure Consciousness, our Creator - what religious systems often refer to as God - is not: we are physical. And, we can actually do something that our Creator can not; we can grow and evolve by adding more awareness to the realm of physicality through our own choices. And by doing so, we literally sanctify creation, elevating our existence, and growing ever stronger and clearer in our connection to Consciousness, as we journey together toward an unimaginably glorious future when we live in undiluted awareness of our true nature and great purpose.

Let’s journey back approximately 13.7 billion years, to the Beginning of Everything - the moment in time when time itself began:

All that is and ever will be - all space, time, and matter - is contained within an infinitely dense and infinitely hot primordial “egg”, the size of an atomic nucleus. Within .000000000001 of a second, the four forces of nature - the strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic and gravity - begin to separate as this egg expands at a speed faster than light, and within .0001 of a second the Universe is nearly a mile in width, and trillions of degrees hot. The Universe continues to expand and cool as simple elements meet to form new substances, and the pull of gravity collapses clouds of cosmic gasses in to stars, and then planets. Chemical-rich cosmic debris bombards our little Earth, fertilizing its land and air, birthing life. Simple single-celled organisms grow more complex and diverse, until suddenly self-aware beings arise who can begin to wonder why they were born, where they come from, and what they are meant to do.

This description is based on the familiar theory of the Big Bang. Just 80 years ago, however, the accepted theory was that everything that exists always existed in an unchanging and unchangeable “steady state”, and that the Universe consists solely of the Milky Way Galaxy. Then, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that many of the glittering objects that everyone thought were nearby stars are actually incredibly distant Galaxies, and in that one moment humanity learned that the Universe is hundreds of billions of times larger than we had thought. Hubble also observed that every object in the sky is moving away from every other object. If this is so, it was postulated, all matter must have, at some distant moment in the past, emerged from the same point. Suddenly, the comprehensible, predictable notion of the Universe was shattered forever, and scientists discovered that there seems to be, in fact, a Beginning of Everything.

This Beginning, though, is stranger and more elusive than anyone could have imagined. Scientists recognize that they can not understand the precise moment of the Big Bang, because a tiny fraction of a second before this event all reason breaks down, and everything that we know about reality collapses in to incomprehensible impossibilities. Newer propositions, such as String Theory, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and the possibility that ours is just one in an endless creation of Multiple Universes, do nothing to clarify this dilemma. It appears that there is simply a moment in time that is inaccessible to human rationality.

Does the trail end here, then, a tiny fraction of a second before the Big Bang? If so, we are left with several essential questions, such as: How can order emerge from chaos? How can something come from nothing? Why did physical creation happen at all, and How can inanimate, simple unified matter eventually become the incredible diversity of life?

In order to explore these questions, let’s journey back again, approximately 13.7 billion years, plus .000000000002 of a second or so, to bring us to a moment “before” creation. We can get a glimpse of this pre-physical existence by examining a component of our being that is not physical; that is not restrained by space, time, and matter, yet is intensely real. This component points us toward an understanding of creation that complements the Big Bang theory, yet resists the scientific method, because it is not physical in nature. It creates our very experience of life, giving us the ability to form abstract concepts, to remember, to plan, and to emotionally connect with others. This is our consciousness.

We may think that consciousness is simply the electric impulses in our brain. These impulses, however, are just the carriers of thoughts, not the thoughts themselves, and certainly not the totality of our awareness. Inexplicably, our physical body produces, or contains, non-physical awareness. Even if our entire consciousness is defined by the activities of the brain, we are still left with the basic question: What animates the brain - what is its “power source” -, where does consciousness come from, and how does it interact with us? We may phrase the question of consciousness as follows:

How is it that there is a non-physical component to our physical being that is unrestrained by the limitations of space, time, and matter; that allows us to be self-aware, and to which we can connect?

This is not a theoretical question, because there is nothing closer to us than our consciousness. It is the very core of our being, defining who we are, and is the vehicle for our lives, our growth and continued evolution. Without consciousness we are just lumps of organic matter. The exploration of consciousness, though, takes us beyond the realm of science, which utilizes measurable and repeatable observation, and in to a different way of knowing, relying on our experience and intuition - that which we immediately recognize as true, even though we haven’t processed the information rationally.

Because consciousness is non-physical, we can say that it did not necessarily originate in the primordial egg, but exists “outside” of physicality, and that it somehow came “through” the Big Bang co-mingled with physicality, bursting in to existence embedded in space, time, and matter. This is not as fanciful a leap as it may sound. After all, just as all matter that exists, and will ever exist, began in the primordial egg, any quality that we have now must have existed at the moment of creation as well, because in order for us to have it, it must have existed then, in a potential state. All our emotions, thoughts, and desires, then, were formed by the essential energies that came in to being with physicality at the beginning of time.

And, because consciousness is not dependant on physicality to exist, we can envision it as existing “before” the creation of physicality. That is, we can see Consciousness (I capitalize it to indicate the pure consciousness - eternal and unchangeable -that existed independent of a physical vessel in which to “dwell”) as the only reality before the Big Bang, existing without time and space. This Consciousness contains/contained the seeds of all the varieties of consciousness that we experience in their essence: pure Being, and pure Desire to Become. Pure Being is the eternal “now” of existence, forever re-created moment by moment, and the Desire to Become is the urge to grow toward the future, which is embedded in all life as the need for relationship - the desire to know and to be known; to love and to be loved. This is the mechanism of evolution.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week, in which we explore the questions of suffering, and the very reason that we are here.

We are learning the hard way the devastating results of an unrestricted selfish focus on short-term monetary gain: of bad bankers doing bad things. And we are seeing the public’s anger at the people who pursued vast quantities of wealth, seemingly without concern for consequences to others. As the cartoon suggests, then, does the pursuit of wealth necessarily label us as “bad”? This may lead us to believe that we have only two options: to relentlessly pursue wealth and risk following the path of those whose irresponsibility led us to this point (and become a “bad banker”), or reject wealth as inherently corrupting, and focus instead on the development of morality and spirit? The best of philosophical and spiritual teachings tell us that there is a higher resolution which leads to an understanding that allows us to experience wealth while maintaining a path of growth and concern for others. These teachings urge us to move from a mode of greed to one of abundance.

To many, these terms may sound similar because both are associated with wealth and prosperity. It’s not surprising, therefore, how much confusion – in my experience - there seems to be around this distinction. So, in order to make the difference very clear, please allow me to present a very simple metaphor:

Two young brothers are each given a pile of birthday gifts from their parents. One child quickly opens the presents, and after he is done feels let down. “Is that it?” he complains. “How come I didn’t get all the stuff I was hoping for?” He compares his pile to his brother’s. “Why did he get such good stuff? That’s not fair”. He feels slightly sick, and then is suddenly angry.
The other child opens his gifts. “Wow!” he says. “Look at all these gifts.” He plays happily, and feels good knowing that these gifts came to him from his parents simply because he is their child. He looks over and sees the anger on his brother’s face. “I wish that he could feel better so we could play together”, he thinks.

This is a deliberately simple example because the essential differences are simple: different basic beliefs in the fundamental workings of the cosmos. We can distinguish between greed and abundance as follows:

Greed,
• begins with belief that there are limited resources, leading to a feeling of lack - that there is not enough for everyone.
• flows from the fear of not being good enough as one is and with what one already has, leading to hording and accumulation for its own sake, with the hope that “someday I will have enough to feel secure”.
• builds the desire to only receive, leading to selfishness and sole reliance on one’s own limited energy source, producing fatigue.
• sees wealth as an end in itself, stemming from the sense that life is basically meaningless, leading to depression.
The Greek philosopher Epicurus said of greed,
“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”

Abundance,
• begins with recognition of the incredible richness and diversity of creation, leading to knowledge that, if treated with respect, there is more than enough for everyone.
• flows from a love that come through the recognition that wonderful gifts are given to us “unmerited”, leading to gratitude.
• builds the desire to participate, leading to the urge to give, and increased energy from the limitless Source.
• sees wealth as a tool and a gift, stemming from the knowledge that life is inherently purposeful and gracious, leading to happiness.
The motivational teacher Wayne Dyer said,
“Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.”

Of course these differences manifest with an infinite variety, depending on the person and their experience and inclination, but this framework presents the essentials of each. The ancient Jewish book of wisdom, “Saying of the Ancestors”, asks, “Who is rich?”, and answers, “One who is happy with his lot”. This does not mean that we should be complacent, and not strive to increase our wealth, or that we should eschew ambition, but tells us that abundance can not flow when we are not grateful for the gifts that we already have. In fact, gratitude frees us to pursue prosperity free of attachment. Like the child who sits amid a pile of presents and complains that he does not have enough, though, ingratitude shuts out abundance because - to stay with the earlier metaphor – a good parent will not give any more gifts to one who is ungrateful for what he has.

When we look at the incalculable vastness of space and the unbelievable diversity of species and resources on our planet, we see that the essential urge of creation is endless abundance. We do not need to be “worthy” of abundance because it already exists, just waiting for us to recognize and appreciate it. And this abundance has been provided to us as a blessing of our birth. Wealth, then, is a blessing that facilitates our purpose and supports others. From this perspective, greed is a distortion of the intuition of infinite abundance; when we project that intuition on to physical objects and our own fleeting needs.

There has been much written recently about how to tune in to and attract abundance. Unfortunately much of this has focused merely on receiving desired material gains, as if there is a magic secret for manipulating the Universe in to giving you the stuff that you want. True abundance, though, is a two-way flow of giving and receiving – not only material wealth, but attention, concern, and love. The greatest abundance flows when we too desire to be a blessing to others, paradoxically creating more abundance for us. As Joel Osteen said,
“When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance. “

I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. Why am I so worked-up over this little incident?, I asked. As my breathing slowed I began to relax, and let myself feel the emotion; the sense of indignation, personal offense, and obsessive replaying of the event. I knew this feeling well because I had taught others about it, and now I was experiencing it directly. The teaching that I learned is:
That which irritates us most about others is usually an aspect of our own personality that we dislike, but do not want admit to ourselves.
Then the encounter came in to focus. I was anxious to get a seat on the train, and was tempted to rush on to grab the first available seat. But because of my self-image as a “spiritual person” I let others in front of me. The tall bald man’s aggression, however, was a reflection of my own feelings of anxiety about getting a seat, but I was unwilling to admit that I too am pushy, so I vehemently condemned him in order to reassure myself that I’m not like him. His unwillingness to recognize me as a “spiritual person”, though, brought my self-image in to question, prompting the thought, Maybe I am the pushy jerk here. (If he had smiled and congratulated me for letting others ahead I would have gladly stood for the trip, feeling secure and validated.) But that was very difficult to look at and accept, so I immediately rejected that option, and blamed him. And the internal drama grew… Whew!!

This insane dynamic – the reluctance to accept parts of ourselves that don’t fit the self-image that we’ve created, who we like to think that we are, and who we want to appear to others – is actually a universal human experience. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung named it the “shadow”, because it contains the thoughts and feelings that we’ve subconsciously sent to the dark shadows of our psyche, hoping not to be found, out of fear that our self-image will be challenged. If our self-image is, for example, I am self-sufficient, I am humble, I am caring, or I am spiritual, then natural thoughts and emotions which conflict with this self-image, such as feelings of incompetence, need for adulation, self-involvement, or anxiety about getting a train seat, will be disowned to the degree in which we identify with the self-image. We then lock these thoughts and emotions behind a wall in our psyche so that we can avoid looking at them, where they remain stagnant, stuck at the age when they were repressed, never growing, and never maturing. We may think that we’ve eliminated the unwanted feeling by locking it away, but there it waits, ready to emerge when provoked. If unaddressed, our shadow qualities can damage our relationships, limit our effectiveness, and make us anxious, depressed, and frustrated.

So, how can we recognize our shadow side? Emergent shadow emotions have a particular quality that differentiates them from other responses. The following are a few common indicators:

Inappropriate reaction to another’s actions: This may take the form of under-reacting (“numbing out”), or over-reacting (“acting out”)

Recurrent complaints about others: Unless we live in a sealed environment that is, improbably, composed of a particularly annoying brand of human being, we need to look to ourselves as the common factor.

Snap Judgments: When we find ourselves making a snap judgment about someone that we just met or do not know, it is likely that we are projecting an unwanted aspect of ourselves on to the other.

What to do? The following are a few suggestions for positive actions:

Embrace your shadow as an opportunity for growth: The central commandment in the Bible is “And you will love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, you will love others as you love yourself; to the degree that you can accept yourself, with all your perceived shortcomings.

Ask for honest input from a trusted friend, and LISTEN: Our friends and families usually see our “blind spots” - those troubling aspects of our personality that are obvious to everyone but us. It requires courage to listen and seriously consider that the other person may be telling us something that is true and useful.

Don’t take yourself so seriously. Find humor in the situation. OK, I am feeling pushy. It’s not the end of the world, and doesn’t mean that I’m not “spiritual”. It just means that I’m a human being who wants a seat – just like the tall bald man.

The good news is that we tend to unconsciously select spouses, friends, work and social situations that bring our shadow forward. We do this because, in our hearts, we want to be known and accepted for all of who we are, and we are drawn to these people and situations that we intuit will help lead us toward repair and wholeness. In this way, people who bring up our shadow side are our teachers, to whom, if we can, we ought to feel gratitude. So, dear tall bald man, thank you for inspiring this message and helping me to be aware of my own aggressiveness. But, in the future, please don’t push!

Hi,

This is Alan Lurie, author of “Five Minutes on Mondays”, and this is my very first blogging experience… (It took me a while to get a cell phone too). I hope that you enjoy.

My wife and I subscribe to NewYorker magazine. We ordered this magazine hoping that the sophisticated articles, witty fiction, and list of goings-on around New York City would make us more cosmopolitan. In truth, though, each week we place the new issue in the magazine rack in the bathroom where, when I have a spare moment, I only read the cartoons. One cartoon has stuck with me: A man is sitting at a table across from a young woman. He is well dressed, his hair is carefully combed, and with a dapper expression on his face, he leans forward to talk to the woman. The first frame shows him speaking, with the caption, “me, me, me.” In the second frame he continues talking with again the caption, “me, me, me”. The third frame repeats this pattern. Finally, in the last frame, he sits back and says, “Well, that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?”

We laugh at this self-involved man, who only seems to care about himself and how he appears to others, but most of us do care very much what other’s think of us. We care because in our hearts we have a deep need to belong to a community. This need is built in to our very structure; we crave the warmth and safety of community, and dread the possibility of being abandoned and rejected. None of us can live alone, and this need to belong begins in childhood, when we are totally dependant on others for our very survival. We are inherently communal creatures, so we naturally care what others think of us in order for us to understand our role and position, and to know that we are valued and safe. As demonstrated in the cartoon, though, our care for what others think of us can manifest in unhealthy ways when, from feelings of inadequacy and the anxiety that comes from the possibility of loosing security, the need to belong leads to fear: the fear of judgment and rejection, of being labeled in a way that is counter to our desired self-image, and of the uncertainty that would result should we need to change.

These fears put us in the position of either living our lives as puppets to the perceived opinions of others, or as a drive to dominate others so that we can feel safe. Either way, our relationship with others becomes one of control of controlled - controlled by the perceived opinions of others, or controlling others so that they will think well of us. At the extremes, we can loose our identity in the desire to please or the drive to manipulate: clearly not a good way to live, and certainly not a path to health and growth.

There are many New Age teachings that tell us that we should not care what other’s think of us; that, according to a popular saying, “What others think of you is none of your business.” At the level of control/controlled this is absolutely true. When we feel inadequate we tend to project these feelings on to other people, and we will then constantly be on the vigil for confirmation of our worth. In order to change this pattern we must first learn to stop worrying about what we think other people might be thinking of us, and instead remind ourselves that we are inherently worthy as human beings, with the capacity to decide for ourselves how to live our lives. On the other hand, we do live in relationship to a community, and what others think of us reflects how well we interact, our impact on others, and personal areas that require attention and growth. So, how can resolve this dilemma? Are our only choices to care what other people think of us and become neurotic worriers, or stop caring and become insensitive and irresponsible? Not exactly wonderful alternatives!

The good news is that these are not our only choices. As individuals we can engage in three basic categories of relationships. The first is an internal relationship with ourselves - an I-I relationship. Here, we introspect and look inward so that we can better know ourselves. Meditation practice helps us to grow this relationship. Since this relationship, essentially, is a monologue, it has limitations, though. If we only rely on our interior conscious to guide us, we can develop blind spots (those things that everyone sees in us, to which we seem strangely unaware), and if we truly stopped caring what other people think of us, we could fall in to solipsism, in which we only recognize ourselves as real, and become oblivious to how our actions affect others.

The second type is an I-It relationship. This is the relationship that we have with inanimate objects, but also can be how we relate to others - as objects of our needs. One who cares about the opinions of others out of fear of abandonment is relating in this way; relying on other people in order to feel better about himself and to confirm or reject his worth (me, me, me). Although it seems that I-It is a two-way relationship, like I-I it is also essentially a monologue, since the only feelings that objects have are the ones that we project on them. Here, the advice to stop worrying about what others think of us is absolutely right. The Bible displays this dynamic in the famous story of the spies: Moses sends twelve spies in to Canaan in order to bring back a report of the inhabitants. 10 of the spies return in panic, saying that the land is filled with giants. “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them”, they say. Of course there were no giants, but the spy’s own self-perception as small and weak led to them believe that others saw them the same way, sapping their confidence, and undermining the needs of the community. Because of this negative self-image, the entire generation was deemed unworthy to enter the Promised Land, and the Israelites had to wait for the next generation, born in the wilderness, to enter the next stage of human development - freedom.

The last type or personal relationship is I-You. Here, we engage others as fellow human beings who have the same needs and desires as we do. In this way, instead of looking to others for self-validation, we can create healthy relationships of support and nurturing where we care about what the others think because we value their opinion, and know that their input is for our benefit. This is the only relationship that is truly a dialogue. The great teacher of this type of relationship is the theologian Martin Buber. In 1923 Buber wrote his famous essay, Ich und Du, usually translated as I and Thou. Buber asserts that I-You relationships happen when people meet without agenda, without pretense, in honesty and authenticity. Buber says that such encounters are powerfully transformational because in those moments of deep connection we experience the Divine in the other. That spark of recognition is God’s presence in the world. At that moment we are quite literally looking at the face of God in the full presence of another human being. Buber writes (in a style that is poetic and mystical);

The basic expression, I-You can be spoken only with one’s whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, and can never be accomplished without me. I require a You to become me; becoming me, I say You. All actual life is [this type of] encounter.

In other words, the only way that I can truly know myself is in relationship to another. I am incomplete alone because I need the dynamic of a deep relationship with another to become myself as an image of the Divine. In this way, I do care deeply about the regard that others have for me, but not in order to control or be controlled, but so that I can rise to my true self.

Imagine truly living in this consciousness - in the awareness of the Divine in other people and, consequently, in yourself! In this way, you would hold other’s opinion of you in high regard, as a vehicle for growth, without fear or rejection. This can be very difficult, even in romantic and family relationships, since we tend to shield ourselves from this level of intimacy. This type of connection is especially difficult in business, since most of our relationships are transactional, and we naturally tend to fall in to an I-It approach. But a more profound connection will create a stronger bond of loyalty, and help us to better understand the deeper needs of our co-workers, clients, and peers; to feel their concerns as our own, and to grow together. It requires the courage and existential confidence to drop our shields of defense, and let another person see us fully, so that we can see them fully. This is a connection of love, and is the only avenue we can choose if we hope to create a better world for ourselves and for our children.

Wising you well,

Alan