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Bonds
that Make U s Free, Part 28: The Choice Point
by C.
Terry Warner
Behind all this
discussion about what we can do to facilitate our own change of
heart stands this simple question:
Since we cannot
bring about a change of heart in ourselves directly, what
can we do directly that will indirectly bring
about a change of heart?
The answer is
this: We can do the right thing in response to another's need,
with concern, compassion, or love. Lacking concern, compassion,
and love, we can do the right thing because it is right. The
choice to do this comes at that point at which we decide between
right and wrong. It comes as we decide whether to do as we feel
it would be right to do toward another. Trying to intervene in the
ongoing flow of our lives at other points doesn't work.
Sometimes individuals
come to me reporting that they decided to do the right thing, no
matter what, for a set period of time—a half a day, perhaps,
or a day or a week. Their plan was to do it without quibbling or
hesitating or counting the cost, but just to do whatever they felt
was right to do. These grand experiments almost invariably turn
out the same way, no matter who attempts them. Suddenly the world
seems to become an easier place to live in. Other people begin to
lose their edginess and become more cooperative. Being around them
starts to be a more delightful and fulfilling experience. Ability
to concentrate increases, because the need for self-worry diminishes.
Setbacks don't seem so devastating. Such are the consequences of
doing what's right simply because it is right, even for a short
period of time.
I believe it
crucial to understand that, to the extent that we're stuck in
negative thoughts and feelings, we always get the choice point wrong.
This does not mean that we make the wrong choice. It means that
we choose between the wrong set of alternatives. We think
the alternatives to be various ways of acting or behaving—whether,
for example, to speak out or keep silent, submit docilely or assert
ourselves, punish or indulge, do our duty or refuse, and so on.
But if our hearts are not right, it doesn't matter which of these
alternatives we choose—they are at best pretenses of confidence
or happiness, and at worst hypocritical, a counterfeit of uprightness.
Some of us may
think we have another alternative available, especially if our emotional
life becomes so hard to bear that we ache for a change of heart.
In desperation we try to change our feelings or at least control
them. And we discover we can't. We try to exert our willpower to
stop being angry, envious, critical, bored, snappish, or defensive.
The more we try, the more impossible the task seems.
So the choice
that can change our hearts is not a choice of either our behavior
or our feelings. The first does not affect our way of being
and the second, which tries to affect our way of being, is impossible.
Both of these strategies try to intervene at a point in our experience
where we cannot intervene—where our efforts, however determined,
can make no difference.
The choice point
comes elsewhere. It comes when we decide whether or not to yield
to the truth about ourselves, about others, or about what's required
of us and be guided by it in our actions.
"In
Case of Doubt, Abstain"—Completely
We
need to explore further the matter of trying to control our feelings
or attitudes. People whose negative attitudes, emotions, or moods
cause extreme disruption in their lives tend to resort to self-control
just because it seems the only thing to do. But the more they try,
the more helpless they feel. They seem to be addicted emotionally.
The matter of the choice point becomes particularly urgent for them.
The following story will help us understand why:
Julian had become
very despondent over always being down on the people closest to
him—his family and his co-workers, primarily. He was particularly
judgmental of anyone who received some opportunity or recognition
he wanted for himself. Though he despised himself for his constant
criticisms of people, he couldn't seem to make himself stop. "This
has all but ruined my family," he told me.
What complicated
the situation was that he said he had been trying to do thoughtful
things for the people he judged most harshly, but it didn't help
much. I seldom give advice, but in this case I felt a small suggestion
might give him the leverage he needed. "You've got to impose
abstinence upon yourself," I said. "You can't allow yourself
to entertain even the suggestion of a critical thought. You can't
tolerate thinking about another person's fault. The instant a critical
thought even starts to appear, turn away in your mind. Don't go
there. St. Augustine, who was a person experienced in turning away
from temptations, said, 'In case of doubt, abstain.' That must become
your watchword."
"But people
do have faults. That's reality."
"True.
And what are your faults?"
"I'm always
critical. But I feel helpless to stop."
"You're
saying: 'This is a fault of mine, but not really. It's really
other people's fault, because they make me critical.'"
"Are you
saying I'm just making up an excuse?"
"I didn't
say it, you did."
"What would
I need an excuse for?"
"What do
you think?"
Julian became
very, very thoughtful. "For not being truly kind to people,"
he said.
This might look
like a logical deduction, as if he were concluding it from what
he and I had said. I am convinced it wasn't. Our conversation up
to that point only got him to the point of looking at himself and
attending to what he already knew.
I said, "So
as long as your critical feelings continue, you can't really believe
you're responsible for them, right?"
"Yeah,
that's right."
"Is that
true even when you are trying to battle against those feelings?"
He pondered
a while and then said, "I think I get it! Even when I'm trying
my best to control them, I'm still hanging on to them! I'm using
them for an excuse for not being really kind."
"So what's
the best strategy? Having the feelings and battling against them,
or . . . "
"The best
strategy has got to be to not let myself get started on the feelings
in the first place!"
"Julian,
the point at which you can control your feelings is not when you
are trying to deal with them. Then it's too late. The point at
which you control them is when you choose not to have them at all.
That is the choice point."
At this point
Julian had become pretty excited. "What you mean is, I've got
a chance to stop being critical and judgmental and sarcastic if
I just stop. I can't let these feelings or thoughts get anywhere
near me. I don't have a chance if I have the unkind feelings and
then try to stop them!"
Perhaps seven
months later Julian reported in, with a much brighter countenance.
"It was very hard at first. But I worked at it until I could
make myself do it. I just turned away when a critical thought started
coming my way. I didn't drag myself away, like I was making a big
sacrifice. That had been my old strategy, and it didn't work. Instead,
I turned away quite lightheartedly. It got easier and easier to
think about other people affectionately and appreciate them.
"But if
I cheated in my abstinence program I would get fuzzy and confused
in my brain and couldn't keep focused on what is important to me.
I wouldn't be able to remember all the pain my 'addiction' had caused
me. So I'd get swept off my course.
"I stayed
on course by being very strict with myself, until I was pretty well
free of this demon. But I have to keep on my guard because it would
be pretty easy for me to slide back again."
Julian's abstinence
strategy goes hand in hand with trying to do the right thing. In
fact, it enables a person who has been doing the right thing in
a counterfeit way to finally do it genuinely. It might be best
to think of abstinence and doing right as inseparable. Doing right
is the way we abstain and the abstaining is the way we do right.
The emphasis on abstinence doesn't always seem to be all that
necessary. It's useful when we experience our accusing, self-excusing
emotions as addictive.
The strategy
Julian employed can work just as decisively for other "addicted"
patterns of feeling and conduct. It works for anger. It works for
self-pity. It works for gossip. It works for laziness. It works
for self- disparagement. It works for pouting and sarcasm and temper
tantrums. I have even seen it work for gambling and sexual fantasies.
It works for all the patterns of self-indulgence that linger after
the heart first undergoes a change.
It could be
a very productive exercise to take the habit that most heavily enchains
you and go through Julian's abstinence program, putting your particular
"addiction" in place of his chronic and apparently uncontrollable
fault-finding. The approach he took can serve as either a primary
or a supplementary strategy for dealing with and diminishing any
emotional addiction, even though it seems to us embedded in our
nature. "In case of doubt, abstain."
When the
Right Thing Becomes Easy
There's
a special quality about the experience of doing right when we do
it for the right reasons, and more especially when we do it out
of love. We don't feel that we are having to exert our will or to
insist on having our own way. That doesn't mean we aren't active
and energetic; it means we don't feel any sort of emotional stress.
We aren't having to submit to something we don't want to do, for
we do want to do it, and because we want to do it, it doesn't
feel like a sacrifice. Nor are we worried about what people might
think, or whether we will get any advantage from what we're doing,
or whether we might be wasting our time. We throw ourselves into
the activity, whatever it might be, and feel easy and free in doing
so. What we feel called upon to do may be hard, but not hard to
bear. For we are allowing ourselves to be mastered and guided by
our sense of right and wrong, and consequently we have great confidence
that what we are doing is acceptable and worthwhile. We have no
need to cover or justify or explain ourselves.
When she was
my student, Laura Barksdale wrote this as part of an assigned paper.
She entitled it "On Being One":
I was teaching
part-time in the alternative high school. It's a school for kids
who are struggling personally. They taught me about being one.
I had made a
tool to help me explain self-betrayal. I made it of four opaque,
colored, plastic sheets stapled over a photograph of a human face.
As the sheets were lowered over the photo one at a time, we could
see the face less and less clearly. When the fourth was added, not
even the faintest outline of the face could be discerned. My point
was that by self-betrayal we so discolor our world that we see others
dimly or not at all. One of my students pointed out that the plastic
sheets reflected images the way a darkened mirror would. "Isn't
it interesting," he said, "that when we get deep enough
into doing what's wrong, all we can see is our own self?"
I thought later,
if all I can see is myself, something is wrong. This is a red flag,
a warning, like physical pain—a warning that I can no longer
understand others or feel at one with them.
As I recall
the times I have experienced that oneness, I can remember no awareness
of myself. About two weeks ago I was taking a walk with two children,
Daniel and Kristi, ages eight and twelve. We walked into the fields
on the outskirts of the city. The day was perfect. Daniel said you
could smell autumn. We all gathered up the large milkweed pods and
scattered their contents into the air, creating a slow-motion snowstorm
of floating seeds. The sun was large and yellow, and the children's
hair, blown slightly by the air currents that carried the drifting
seeds, was silhouetted against it. We spent a long time in the fields,
talking and wandering. As I look back, still able to feel that day,
it doesn't come to me how good "I" felt. I was not concentrating
on myself.
Another time
I called my mother on the phone. She asked what I wanted for my
birthday. I told her I'd like her to paint me something. She said,
"Okay, I'll paint the house next week." She rolled off
the most beautiful laugh I've ever heard. Usually I have taken offense
when she has toyed with me. But this time there was no "I"
to do that. My face formed a smile I could not refuse. It was a
richly compelling moment, filled with feeling and love.
One either focuses
on the "I" or sees others through it, never both simultaneously.
If I'm absorbed in myself I'm not being one with others. If I'm
seeing through myself—if I use myself to see—I'm in the
midst of a day like the one I spent with Daniel and Kristi. Either
I'm preoccupied with myself or I allow myself to simply be myself.
I have either the disease or the cure.
*
* *
Since Part
18, we have been speaking of awakening to the truth. We have
called it a change of our way of being, of our negative emotions
and attitudes, and of our heart. You might think that such a wholesale
transformation would be the ultimate objective. It isn't. It's only
Step One. For having awakened, or reawakened, to the truth, we must
ask ourselves, What now? How do we live the life upon which we are
newly embarked? How do we maintain this welcoming, accepting outlook
on everything? What kind of obstacles will we encounter? How do
we stay on course? How shall we measure our progress?
The answers
to these questions are not obvious, nor is putting them into practice
easy. We will turn to these issues in the final sections of this
online serialization of C. Terry Warner's classic, Bonds
that Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves.
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