As Within, so Without

As With­in, so With­out is a mes­sage of free­dom. We have cre­at­ed the real­i­ty in front of us, and at any time can shift things in anoth­er direc­tion. All that’s required is focussed action.

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Unre­solved “moth­er” issues are com­mon, but remem­ber, so are the fol­low­ing, and more: Unresolved

• father issues,
• issues with depen­dent people,
• issues with demand­ing people,
• issues of sex­u­al attraction,
• issues regard­ing touch and intimacy,
• com­mu­ni­ca­tion issues.

And on and on.

The “cure” to unresolved issues is to let go of what is not working, and experiment with new approaches. 

We resolve the issue direct­ly in front of us. Not for all time (impos­si­ble!) but sim­ply for this time.

“Back to “mommy issues.”

A read­er wrote:

“I’ve been try­ing for years to break the cycle by chang­ing my behav­iour toward my moth­er. How do I get my moth­er to love me? I’ve changed every­thing she asked me to and she still does­n’t love me. She just demands more change.”

Such game playing is not limited to “moms.”

You can’t win some­one’s love (or even their regard) by end­less­ly try­ing to do what they demand of you. 

In the above sce­nario, the “mom” is heav­i­ly invest­ed in prov­ing her daugh­ter either wrong or dys­func­tion­al, or both. 

If the daugh­ter changes her behav­iour to match the (lat­est) demand, “mom” will sim­ply cre­ate anoth­er demand.

Some relationships are never going to work out. Some can be modified. But you will never get anywhere in life or relating if you endlessly attempt to change yourself according to the demands of others.

Here’s the game: 

• They say, “If you love me you’ll do (what­ev­er.)”
• You do what­ev­er. What you have set up is, “Tell me what to do, wrap it in a threat to with­hold love, and I’ll do what­ev­er you tell me.” 
• Like­ly, then, the next thing you’ll hear is, “If you real­ly love me you’ll do this oth­er thing (or behave in a cer­tain way) and I’ll love you in return.” 

And on and on.

In relating, you get what people choose to give you. Playing games changes nothing.

You have total choice regard­ing your response to what they give you, and total choice as regards who you choose to be. 

This blog pro­motes embrac­ing a life approach cen­tered in your self. You become real through cease­less reflec­tion on, obser­va­tion of, and dia­log with your­self. From this reflec­tion, you enact behav­iours designed to match your inner reality.

It’s also about feel­ing your feel­ings, with­out judg­ing them to be “good or bad” feelings. 

Your self-dia­log and your feel­ings are then shared with oth­ers through inti­mate con­ver­sa­tion. The dia­log is nev­er about manip­u­lat­ing oth­ers into chang­ing, nor is it about chang­ing your­self into what oth­ers want you to be.

Look around you, at your life. You, and only you, made this.

You picked, you chose, and here you are, liv­ing this life. Fur­ther, your exter­nal real­i­ty is a pre­cise reflec­tion of who you are, on the inside. (The Bud­dhist ver­sion of this is: “All that you are is a result of what you have thought.”) As with­in, so without.

If you don’t like either your internal or external life (or both,) you start shifting what you can shift (hint: you can’t shift externals!) — your own behaviours, perceptions, ways of understanding.

Hold­ing on to some­thing (a failed idea, a dream of win­ning some­one’s love, a restrict­ed self view) caus­es you pain, and soon it becomes a phys­i­cal block, a stuck pat­tern, and you are des­tined to feel pain and repeat the experience.

Becom­ing an adult is about find­ing your­self in your own con­text, and from there choos­ing how to relate both with oth­ers and with yourself. 

Being who you are is nev­er about obe­di­ence, doing it the way some­one else wants you to. If peo­ple insist that you change to make them hap­py, resist, gen­tly, and be your­self. If they can’t han­dle it, you’ll have to walk away.

Or, you’ll spend the rest of your life try­ing to be who some­one else wants you to be.

Realizing this, and becoming self-responsible, takes wisdom. And wisdom is practice. Therefore, the wise person practices wisdom.

Wis­dom is dif­fer­ent from intel­li­gence. I know many bril­liant peo­ple whose per­son­al lives are in the dumper, sim­ply because they have not cul­ti­vat­ed wis­dom. The wise per­son believes and acts as if they have an end­less list of avail­able choic­es for the sit­u­a­tions they confront. 

It would nev­er occur to a wise per­son to repeat a behav­iour that did­n’t get the results they wanted.

It’s like being caught in a build­ing. One guy goes to the win­dow, and search­es for the crank. The wise per­son, see­ing that the win­dow is sealed, tries the door. The sil­ly per­son stands at the win­dow, say­ing over and over, “I’m sure if I look hard­er I’ll find the crank.”

Often­times peo­ple will com­plain that change takes a long time. They’ll try some­thing, and get slight­ly bet­ter results and think, “At this rate I’ll be at this for the rest of my life.” They make a sub­con­scious deci­sion that, because change takes time, maybe they’ll just go back to doing things the old way.

The results of that way are not what they want — they may even be mak­ing them­selves sick in the process, as their bod­ies break down from lousy choic­es, but the path to anoth­er way seems alto­geth­er too long, too hard.

So, they stop, and sim­ply feel sor­ry for them­selves. And get sick­er. And even­tu­al­ly die. Seems sor­ta sad, eh?

I believe that we are on a path of incre­men­tal change. Who I am at the core of me is not change­able. What can change is how I choose to act, despite who I am at my core.

The begin­ning of change is often a small step into a new direc­tion. Rec­og­niz­ing and cel­e­brat­ing this is far bet­ter than stay­ing stuck in the famil­iar, non-func­tion­al known.

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