One of my eternal questions over the past 18 years or so of sharing the feeling behind the inside-out understanding has been “what’s on offer?” In other words, if somebody is touched by this deeper feeling of the formless, spiritual nature of life, is that simply its own reward or is there even more to it?
To my own surprise, a few months back I got an answer that I didn’t really like:
When we wake up to our true nature, we uncover a better way to live.
The reason I didn’t like the answer at first wasn’t because I didn’t sense the truth of it. It was just that something about the word “better” rankled. I’ve had too many experiences of well-meaning teachers, friends, and complete strangers tell me that their way of living was better than mine, justifying their argument by pointing out that their way came directly from the teachings of their preferred spiritual teachers, religious leaders, or disembodied channeled entities who clearly knew more than I did about how to live.
(As a complete aside, I started my life in the world of inner exploration as an apprentice to Stuart Wilde, who began his own journey from London barrow boy to “spiritual barrow boy” by training as a psychic medium. His conclusion was that we can indeed speak to the dead, but that death in and of itself did not bring wisdom. As he pointed out repeatedly, “If you’re as thick as two planks when you’re alive you’ll still be thick as two planks after you’re dead.”)
But when I sat with my answer, I realized that “better” didn’t have to carry any paternalistic or judgmental interpretations. I’ve never actually met anyone who thinks stress, pressure, and fear is better than ease, presence, and joy. And I certainly can’t recall anyone ever making the case that their life would be better if their relationships were worse. So by “a better way to live”, I am simply pointing to the fact that the more time we spend being ourselves, the more gratefully we can experience the positive side of life and the more gracefully we can handle challenging circumstances.
Now the other question that “a better way to live” brings up is “better than what?” Is there a sufficiently universal way people currently live their lives that we can meaningfully point to a universally better alternative?
Here’s what it looks to me:
The vast majority of us have spent our lives with the assumption/belief/thought that there is a right way to be and a right way to live. While the history of human conflict points to the fact that we disagree profoundly about what that right way is, we seem to be united in the belief that there IS a right way.
But what if there isn’t a right way to live – just the way that makes the most sense to you in each moment?
Assuming you’re interested in exploring a potentially better way to live for yourself, let’s engage in a simple thought-experiment:
How would your life be different if you didn’t believe that there was a right way to live? What would it be like if you stopped trying to get life right and knew that you couldn’t get it wrong?
I invite you to sit with these questions not just for a few moments now, but to let them roll around in your mind over the next week or so. Notice each time your brain tries to convince you that you’re right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong, and even more so each time it argues that given your current mood and/or the current circumstances you find yourself in, there must be something wrong with how you’re living, and the people who seem to be in a better mood or in better circumstances must have it right.
As I’ve shared these ideas in the run up to January’s Your Life, Your Way six month program, here are a few of the most frequently asked questions and clearly stated concerns people have presented me with…
I’m not sure that I do think there’s a right way to live. How would I actually know?
In the early years of our marriage it used to baffle and slightly horrify me that Nina would always leave food on her plate. I had been told from an early age that there were children starving in India, so it was wrong and wasteful to leave even a tiny morsel of food behind. While this didn’t make much logical sense to me, even at six-years old, I worked diligently my whole life to be a card-carrying member of “the clean plate club”.
When I raised my concerns with Nina, she admitted that she was baffled and slightly horrified that I never left any food behind, as she had been raised that to eat everything on your plate was greedy and disrespectful of her parents’ ability to provide for her. We both got over it pretty quickly, but it also made it really obvious how arbitrarily we pick up whatever we think “the right way to live” actually looks like.
If you’re curious, take a bit of time to jot down some of the “right ways” to be and to live you’ve picked up throughout your life. If you have a friend or buddy to compare notes with, you might be amused at just how different your answers are.
Surely if we stopped trying to find and follow the right way to be and everyone just began to live their life, their way, there would be utter chaos in the world.
Um… have you looked around the planet recently? Do we really have any evidence-base for assuming that coming from a fundamentally different premise than we do now might not lead to a fundamentally better world than we are living in now?
In my own experience, the less I try to make myself be and behave the way I think I’m supposed to, the more joy I experience, the more tolerant of others I become, and the more elegantly I navigate my life. I invite you to try it for yourself (as an experiment, not as a new “right way to live”), and see what happens.
If there isn’t a right way to live, how will I know what to do?
In part two of this exploration, I’ll share some thoughts and reflections that have come from my own explorations in this arena for myself and with my clients and students. But for now, I’ll leave you with this thought:
We all have an inner sense of direction that emerges from our knowing, wanting, and common sense. When we don’t drown out the voice of that inner GPS with what the Rational-Emotive therapist Albert Ellis called “ought-ism” and “must-erbation”, a fun and interesting way forward becomes easy to hear and follow if we want to.
Have fun, learn heaps, and happy exploring!
With all my love,
