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Bonds That
Make Us Free, Part 25: Further Along Than We Might Suppose
by C. Terry Warner
We have studied
the power of sincerely and seriously asking ourselves the question,
"Might I be in the wrong?" This leads us to another question:
How can we bring ourselves to the point of asking that question
with the required sincerity and seriousness?
The answer may
surprise you: Anyone who asks the second question sincerely has
already asked the first question sincerely. If we honestly wonder
how to be honest with ourselves, we have already shifted toward
an honest attitude. Any degree of doubt about whether we
are right shows at least the beginnings of an earnest desire to
reconsider our ways. Such honest concern lets a little light enter
our minds, and in that light we can begin to see differently what
we have been doing.
Recall Glen,
the man who resisted the pressures of his wife, Becky, to throw
himself into their annual Christmas projects. He found himself feeling
trapped. He could, he felt, submit like a mindless slave to all
her demands, giving up the possibility of getting somewhere in his
career and doing other enjoyable things with the children, or else
he could stand up for himself and draw the line. From his point
of view, she was forcing him to choose. And as long as he kept himself
boxed into this accusing interpretation of her, these were his only
options.
But imagine
the following turn of events. Glen asks himself the momentous question,
"Might I be in the wrong?" Here is how his inner conversation
with himself might unfold: "This is no way to be in a marriage,"
he says to himself. "I've been resisting Becky and critical
of her for nearly half a year every year. What would it really cost
me to put my heart into the projects she plans? Why am I acting
as if I would self-destruct if I willingly did what she wanted me
to do? And why am I so defensive ? Why do I work so hard to insist
upon my own way?
In asking himself
such questions, Glen is escaping the trap. He is not reacting in
either of the ways he had thought were his only choices. He is not
submitting abjectly to Becky, and he is not defying her. Instead
he is looking honestly at himself. This opens him to possibilities
for responding to Becky that were not available a moment before.
What possibilities?
Think about this. By considering that he may have been in
the wrong, Glen reconsiders his wife. "After all," he
realizes, "she's only trying her best to make our life together
good. Her hopes and dreams are for the children. That's what all
her projects are about. What would it be like to have to battle
your spouse in order to get good things done?"
Now Glen is
no longer convinced that Becky is the cause of all their problems.
He's able to see her in the same truthful light that revealed to
him so much about himself. And seeing her differently, his feelings
toward her change. They become more considerate. The possibility
of treating her in a genuinely kind and helpful way is reappearing
in his world. He's letting light into his soul.
How profoundly
fascinating it is to realize that the way forward is simply to consider
whether we might be in the wrong!
This realization
distills for us a significant truth about what I've called a
change of heart. We do not make progress in our way of being
by working hard to make events go our way, using all our wit and
skill to outmaneuver or overpower others to make them bend to our
will. We get nowhere by forcing onto them our plan for making ourselves
happy. But good things do start to happen as soon as we open ourselves
to the light or truth that flows to us from others, so that it may
write itself upon our souls.
With the material
of this section in mind, you may need to reassess what you have
been thinking about yourself. You may have been asking yourself,
"How can I reconsider my ways when I'm barreling ahead in the
strife of events, guarding myself against my enemies and trying
to be successful?" But precisely because you are asking yourself
that question, you already have the answer. You are already reconsidering
your ways. You are already responding to light that previously you
may not have been open to receive. You don't need to find out how
to get started on the path of self-honesty; you're already on it.
You may still have a distance to go, but you're on it. You will
confuse yourself if you think you need to look elsewhere for the
right path when you're walking along it already.
Relationships
that Make Us Better
In reading so far, you may have been befuddled by a question
that has often puzzled me. When we're "in the box," seeing
others resentfully and distorting the signals that come from them,
how can we suddenly perceive them truthfully and compassionately?
All the clues available to us distort our image of them. We have
discussed some of the means by which our false interpretations can
be broken down. In this section and the next we will learn about
other resources that can help us do this.
Some of the
most significant of those resources are those other beings—people,
animals, even plants to some extent, and God—in relation to
whom we are or can become more considerate. Our relationship with
them is not collusive. These are examples of such relationships:
Relationships
in which we and the others involved are considerate of one another.
Relationships
with beings who are examples for us, whether we know them personally
or not.
Relationships
with someone inconsiderate of or oblivious to us, toward whom we
are considerate because of our understanding of and service to them.
In each of these
kinds of relationships we are different in our way of being—less
accusing, defensive, and petty—than we are in collusive relationships,
and more open and caring. These non-collusive relationships give
us especially good opportunities to yield ourselves to the truth
and to become truthful individuals. They give us leverage to break
our collusions and heal our relationships with our colluders.
The following
seems to me to be the principle that should guide our effort to
be honest, open, and understanding, and bring an end to our collusions:
We can cultivate
relationships in which we become more considerate.
Then, when we
return to our old collusions, we can bring our more considerate
way of being with us, and be less vulnerable to old offenses and
provocations.
We can think
of cultivating such relationships as a peaceable way to invite a
"transforming intervention" from others into our present
way of being. We can also think of it as a peaceable way to bring
a potentially transforming intervention into the lives of our former
colluders. They have no choice but to react to the change in us,
and the chances are good that they will respond in kind.
Let me illustrate
the way we can invite others' transforming interventions into our
present way of being:
Paul, a teenager
I know, found himself under a great deal of pressure to smoke marijuana.
He was with a group of schoolmates whose acceptance he wanted, traveling
in a van with them through a neighboring town. When they pressed
him to smoke the drug, a round of rationalizations began to develop
in his brain. But then he thought about his family, about how much
he admired his parents and their kindness to him, and about a younger
brother and two sisters who looked up to him. The pressure from
the others was getting unfriendly. At a stoplight he jumped out
the back door of the van and walked seven or eight miles home.
How Paul behaved
in relation to those boys—or in other words, his insecure,
approval-seeking way of being—disposed him to accept the drugs
he was offered. But this was not the only relationship in his
life. He had ties to others—his family members—in
relation to whom he wasn't so self-absorbed. He could awaken himself
to and reconnect considerately with them by turning away, in his
imagination, from the immediate situation. That mental act drew
him back into a more assured, less anxious way of being. That
is what enabled him, with a suddenness that otherwise would be incomprehensible,
to reverse his response to his peers—almost as if, in that
decisive moment, he had been transformed into a different sort of
person. He responded to those boys not as one bonded primarily
to them, but as one bonded primarily to his family.
Remember Jenny
and her "difficult" nine-year-old daughter, Erin (Part
21). When Jenny participated in a class with people who were
looking at their lives honestly, she changed. In her relationship
with them, she became a different sort of person than she was in
relation to Erin. In this different setting, her sense of herself
no longer depended on whether her little Erin showed well in public
settings. Having withdrawn from being insecurely wrapped up in herself,
she could now see her own small-mindedness for what it was, and
she could appreciate in a measure Erin's valiant struggles to forge
her own place in the family. The transformation that occurred in
Jenny as she related to others in the class carried over into her
relationship with Erin and transformed it also.
Perhaps we ought
to pause a moment to put a frame around the truth we have just considered,
because of the key role it can play in helping us to come to ourselves
in honesty and be liberated from the attitudinal and emotional lies
we often live.
Our understanding
of right and wrong has power to take hold of us because it is rooted
in truthful, living relationships with others.
Thus Paul, the
teenager, fleeing the situation in which he might have taken drugs,
was not moved to action by some remembered rule, though that might
have been part of it. He was moved by a living connection with certain
people who made the rule matter to him. In his case, his considerate
relationship with his family members instilled in him a lively sense
of what he ought to do.
Who are these
beings to whom we owe so much?
Who
are these others whose relationships with us can be so empowering?
They are beings seen or unseen, factual or fictional, living or
dead. They have perhaps respected us, believed in us, possibly counseled
us. Perhaps we have served them when they needed us. We might know
them personally or might have only read or heard about them—for
instance, a parent who died when we were young, or a noble figure
we have encountered in literature. Possibly they are not adult or
even human; little children and animals can show us how to love.
They might not even be visible to us. Socrates, one of the wisest
of our race, said that from his childhood he received guidance from
a "spirit" that warned him whenever he was about to do
wrong. And many in the Judeo-Christian tradition speak similarly
of a personal, spiritual influence that silently speaks in a "still,
small voice."
Whoever these
other beings might be, we are not defensive or mean-spirited in
our relationship with them but are bonded to them in some form of
idealism and love. With them, we are more straightforward, free
of self-deception, and whole. The secret of their impact might lie
in the understanding they extend to us, or in their example of putting
the truth or uprightness or love first in their lives. It might
even lie in the need they have for us to serve them. The point is
that, with them, we are most ourselves, most aligned with the light
that beckons us to follow an upright course, most absorbed in what
really matters rather than in ourselves. Through our bond with them
we find ourselves coming, like them, into a proper relation to truth
and right, and we feel within ourselves a stirring spirit of respect,
caring, and gratitude.
More about
Example and the Truth
Consider
again the matter of example. Jenny hugging her daughter with genuine
love, the mother thanking her daughter for cleaning the bathtub,
the broker trying to make things right with the man who was suing
him, the woman who helped me get onto the freeway—these individuals
had an influence on another person not just by their love, though
that was part of it. They did it also by their example.
Think about
what happens when others undergo a change of heart in response to
a change in us. They do not become our admirers or disciples—if
they did, they would only vary the style in which they are colluding
with us. No, independently of us they become devoted to the
truth and capable of the generosity and love that the truth always
awakens. Think about Robby's father, Hal: Part of what melted his
resentment was Tom's courageous honesty in seeing how he had wounded
his little brother.
This happened,
too, with the man who hated Eli. Despite the attacks he suffered,
Eli firmly kept to his resolve never to return to his violent ways.
Over time, this example humbled Eli's enemies. It became clear that
Eli was not just putting on a show. He did not call his persecutors
rapists. His fidelity to the truth could not be called counterfeit.
Observing this reverence for the truth, his erstwhile enemies were
drawn to it themselves. Seeing Eli's courage in embracing the truth,
they were emboldened to embrace it too. His example enabled them
to recognize the violence in their own hearts.
I have frequently
observed the profound influence of personal example in classes and
seminars sponsored by the Arbinger Institute, the group that shares
the concepts discussed in this book. Such seminars are designed
to help individuals, families, and organizations bring about the
kind of transformation in their way of being that I have been describing.
The way this teaching unfolds matters. For example, the teacher
takes care never to give any advice, for advice too often invites
collusion. Why? Because some individuals resent having others take
over their judgment and tell them how to direct their lives, even
if the advice-givers are billed as experts. Others willingly turn
responsibility for themselves over to such "experts" and
do all they're told in a manner that counterfeits trying to do better.
So in these
classes we do not analyze people's stories or tell them what to
do. Instead we share true stories of self-betrayal, collusion, and
the like, and invite people to write stories of their own—from
any source. (Sometimes we mention that a story drawn from observation
or experience is always better than a fictional one. It's quite
impossible to make up stories as bizarre as what happens in real
life.) Participants may share their stories if they wish, though
they need not do so; we avoid invading anybody's privacy.
What happens
in such a setting? For the large majority of people, hearing others'
stories enables them to see their own experiences in a new, truthful
light. They realize—usually instantaneously—that a story
another has told is their own story, only with different
details. This realization seems to sneak past their defenses. There
is something almost irresistible about another person's facing and
honoring the truth, without fanfare of any kind, but with courage
and clarity and assurance. The other participants feel invited,
even emboldened, to stand unflinching before the truth themselves.
By opening ourselves
even a little to the remarkable spectacle of other people reconsidering
their lives, we begin to reconsider our own.
Drawing on
the Sources
Like
love, the light or guidance or truth that influences us exists only
in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice,
however widely circulated. (Even when we're influenced by reading
books, an author is speaking to us, bringing to mind some of our
personal relationships or inducting us into new relationships.)
Through our relationships with exemplary people, through our own
example, and, as I believe, through God's influence, that light
spreads its moral illumination over our world. In most cases we
have little or no awareness of where it is coming from, yet it guides
our responses constantly and subtly haunts us for our misdeeds,
calling us to reexamine our ways. It blesses us particularly if
we have been carrying on in distress or strife, for when others
intrude into our lives with their love or example, they make us
wonder whether it's really necessary to live in such an anxious,
suspicious, and guarded way. Those who have never had such relationships
stand less chance of experiencing a change of heart.
My friends at
the Anasazi Foundation, who run a remarkably successful wilderness
experience for troubled youth, say that teenagers who as children
were deprived of considerate relationships are less likely to turn
from their troubled ways than those with some strong early-life
bonding to family or other caretakers who lived by lofty values.
The Anasazi folks have encountered a number of notable exceptions,
but this rule holds enough of the time to remind us that although
the influence of considerate beings from our past may not be apparent,
it can nonetheless play a crucial role.
We need not
be passive regarding these empowering relationships. We can spend
time and effort actively cultivating them. (Of course this does
not mean that we neglect our present partners in collusion, especially
our family and others who need us. The very point of drawing emotional
strength from relationships in which we are more considerate is
to grow in our ability to turn the people we see as enemies into
friends.) In our social activities, in our imagination, in reading,
in meditation, or in prayer, we can concentrate on these empowering
relationships and thus become more whole, serene, self- forgetful,
and confident. We can draw our primary sense of who we are from
such relationships. We can then reenter our collusive relationships,
or enter potentially collusive relationships, better equipped to
welcome others and treat them generously. We will have no reason
to resort to an I-It way of being. The more we actively engage ourselves
in bonds of love, the less susceptible we will be to getting ourselves
stuck in anguished bonds of collusion.
In
the next section, we'll look at some other sources of power that
lie open to us as we combat distorted perceptions in our relationships....
This article
is part of a serialization of Bonds That Make Us
Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves by
C. Terry Warner.
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