WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT?
Chapter Three
The Circumstance-Determined Reality
When people are unaware of the issue of filter, they have little option but to govern their life by what they "see." For most people, this takes the form of what might be called a CIRCUMSTANCE-DETERMINED REALITY: they give their own creative power to life's content. Or, said more accurately, they create "life" creating them! That is why people use absurd and irresponsible phrases such as "that made me angry." Very seldom do we hear people speak more honestly, along the lines of "I created 'that' making me angry." Given enough time, it is even common to find people whose primary expertise in life is the creation of anger in the presence of any circumstance. Of course, they are not aware that they are doing this, thinking instead that the widest range of people, things, and events (to name just a few) really do have the power to "make them angry."
As time passes, a person can begin to employ a negative filter as a matter of habit. Once such a negative filter is picked up on a habitual basis, it can appear to be a fixture in an individual's life. It isn't, of course. In fact, a person must continue to pick up that filter, moment by moment. If they let it drop for a moment, perhaps inadvertently, and pick up a "Plus" filter, they are likely to describe their "experience" as an "exception to the rule" or "luck." With the habitual filter in place, there is a tendency to append negative labels to almost any of life's content as it sails by us. People have been trained to think that the imposition of such labels is a function of "judgment and evaluation" instead of creativity. In other words, if you are "intelligent," you should be able to "figure out" whether something "is" positive or negative. The person who "sees" something as positive is often "put down" (as a Pollyanna, crazy, or etc.), as though they lack the crucial-to-life ability to see the negative or are otherwise oblivious to "how it really is."
Eventually, rather than appear stupid or naive, most people simply attempt to present a "balanced" view of anything showing up around them. It is devastating, though, to drag Minus into every nook and cranny of life. Given the short and long-term effects, there may be few things which exceed "bringing Minus to the party" for sheer stupidity and naivete! Historically, Minus has not "balanced" Plus in the human experience. Rather, it has demolished it. And, in the process, it has often produced mentally unbalanced people!
Have you ever been excited about something, only to be "squashed" by a person who "couldn't see what you were so excited about?" Of course, the object of your excitement was not, in and of itself, "exciting." It was only exciting because that was the way you were creating it. Sadly, people have not been trained, for the most part, to co-create the excitement of others, at least not consistently and effectively. The result is a nasty tendency which can kill off some of life's most wonderful possibilities. The most available in the possibility "childhood," for instance, gives way to "less than that" as parents, teachers, and others decline children's invitations to participate in their joy.
Of course, it would make sense to teach our children to create themselves as something other than "squashed" in the presence of life's content. After all, they will probably encounter many people during their lives who will challenge their ability to keep creating the most life has to offer. It is not a smart thing, for example, to turn over your steering wheel to those who the "politically correct" might refer to as the "enthusiastically-challenged." We have only two options in these matters. Either we take responsibility for "playing our own game" in life, or we risk being constantly at the effect of the creations of others. The latter will remain unattractive - often deadly, whether literally or figuratively - until people begin creating their lives through a Pure Plus filter as a matter of habit.
Children who have been raised to be creative after first putting in place a Pure Plus filter have a fighting chance of generating profound winning consistently and effectively. It is predictable, though, that such children (especially the younger ones, who are not yet "wise to the ways of the world") will think it bizarre when people around them create their lives after putting in place a plus-MINUS filter. A good parent will want to teach a child to be sensitive about such matters, at least as long as there continue to be so many people walking around who are unwittingly creating themselves through a plus-MINUS filter. It won't do, given their sheer numbers and the probability of encountering them in public places, to have small children go around pointing and saying things OUT LOUD like, "Mommy, look, there's a BIG person who is making up a BAD MOOD!"
It will be interesting to see whether such children will eventually lead the rest of the population away from participation in one of the most broadly-damaging forms of human activity on the planet, the "zero-sum game." In any zero-sum game, the pluses and minuses, taken together, cancel each other out. The most common encounter most of us have with the zero-sum game involves the unfortunate use of the word "but": "You are a wonderful person [student, employee, spouse, whatever], but..." The word is a killer, pure and simple. Other than obliterating whatever preceded it, which more often than not is something drawn from the Plus side of the spectrum, the word serves little useful purpose. For example, it is almost never an agent of accuracy. When people sling their "but's" around, unintended devastation of the truth is almost always the result.
I bumped into an acquaintance of mine some time ago in a market. She is a young attorney. At the time, she wasn't looking terribly happy, which has always struck me as an oddity in extremely attractive people. I suppose some part of me thinks that, for those graced with such things, it would simply take too much work to create unhappiness, that the "default position" would just naturally be joy, even a smug joy. In any case, she had been working on a creation for some time, the central feature of which was her "conclusion" that her marriage was "one of those 70% things." The reader may have experienced such a judgment being imposed from time to time: "You and I have a wonderful relationship ....BUT..."
Now, anyone who has ever been in a relationship with another person for more than twenty minutes knows that the more accurate statement would be: "You and I have a wonderful relationship ... AND it's the worst one I have ever seen!" In other words, as an astute person will notice, ALL the potentials exist in a relationship, moment by moment. A relationship exists, first and foremost, as pure potential, just like any of the individual participants. Neither a person nor a relationship is a "thing," uncomfortable as that may be for those who have a certain preference for "certainty" and "predictability" in life. Yet, human creative power being what it is, once a person declares a relationship "a 70% thing," that declaration will take on a "reality." Without a willingness to create it differently, it will always show up like a 70% thing. And there will always be "evidence" for that creation, just as there is always evidence for any alternate creation! Of course, there is never any evidence for the evidence, but that fact seems obscure, at best, to those taught that their judgments and evaluations are "real" instead of created!
It would not be my first preference to be married to someone who hadn't gotten past this stage of development, as it would be difficult to have so much as a great recreational experience with such an individual. Another partner might readily co-create such an experience as "100%"; through her plus-MINUS filter, my attorney friend would most likely only "see" 100% of 70%! Unfortunately, as soon as the toxin of Minus is shot into any "interpretation" in life, the result will always be something which is "a little bit pregnant" with Minus. My friend will have to begin to see life from a different place if happiness is ever to be a real possibility for her. I suspect she is able to "judge" herself happy 70% of the time, more or less, given the holographic nature of these things. It is possible to get a pretty good reading on the percentage of Plus and Minus in a person's habitually-used filter by asking a few questions ("How is your relationship? Your day? Your health? How was breakfast?"), and then taking an average!
At the moment that my friend can create her current relationship as 100% wonderful, a new world will open up to her. At that moment, for example, she would be able to choose whether to keep it or move on to another. Of course, people regularly leave their relationships. There is a huge difference, though, between leaving a relationship as a creative act and departing as a reactive act. When people do the latter, they are much more likely to fall into some "the grass must be greener elsewhere" scenario. When they arrive at the next place, they eventually discover that it "looks" the same there, too. Of course it does! They are still peering out at life through the same filter!
It is in exactly this sense that life's content, the stuff on the other side of the filter, can become too important to a person. When people say they have "lost themselves," this is what they are referring to. The only "self" they ever had to lose, really, was the part of them which was able - and willing - to create in life's presence. A caricature of the devolution from creative to reactive can, on occasion, be seen in the image of the tourist-photographer. Actually, "photographer" is exactly what they are not, since a photographer is a person consciously and deliberately creating images. "Tourist-picture-taker" would be more accurate. Their camera almost becomes their excuse for not being fully present during their stay in life, their way of insulating themselves. One suspects that, when they get home and view the prints, they will not only wonder who took some of the particular shots, but also why they were not, themselves, in the picture! One wonders why they bother to take off the lens cap. Of course, sometimes they don't.
A particularly wise mother of my acquaintance once commented that she had realized she could either take pictures of her children or play with them. Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. The issue, though, is not keeping such things "in balance" (as though that could be "measured" any better than a relationship can be!). ALIVENESS lives in the question, "What do you really want, what relationship would you love to create with your child (or relationship, or career, etc.)?" This question casts the one asking it into the role of passionate participant, instead of dispassionate observer. Or, at a very minimum, it opens the door to such possibilities. Interestingly, it is often the "dispassionate observer" who appears "passionate" in life. If you look closely, though, their "passion" is usually anger, sadness, or frustration at the particular manner in which life is insisting they participate. It might be said that dis-passionate is to passionate as dis-ease is to ease.
A person who is looking "over there," to the stuff on the other side of the filter, to tell them how their life is going or how they should participate with it, is living in jail. No matter that the jail is of their own making, they will "feel" confined. With the exception of those moments when life "fits their pictures," lines up in accordance with some mental construct, their aliveness, their passion, will be a derivative of Minus. A person can arrive at destinations such as depression and ill health when they employ this ducat, but their train doesn't stop at joy or satisfaction. Or, in the event that it does, it will not be in the station long enough for them to get off, let alone take up residence! When it appears that life's content actually can dictate to us what is possible in its presence, the meaning of the word "responsibility" is savaged. At that moment, it can only appear that life's content has the creative power and is "responsible" for what happens around us.
The loss, though, is not simply of a "sense of responsibility" for what is happening around ourselves. It is much worse than that. Instead of noticing the degree to which we are, in fact, astonishingly creative beings, most people think they are actually limited to the possibility "react (respond) well to life." In fact, there is too much life out there to react well to all of it. The alternative - the only alternative - is to create in life's presence. Of course, if you think about it, you will notice that any reaction is also a creation, though it seldom appears to be. It might be said that a "reaction" is a creation which does not look like a creation. People are heard to say, for example, "I didn't think, I just reacted." Relatively speaking, there are always more options which can be created in the presence of life's circumstances than there are available "reactions." The reactions available are simply a subset of the full range of creative possibilities.
Instead of developing into fully responsible (creative) beings, people attempting to react well become merely "response-able." Such people try with all their might to be "competent," which can become totally preoccupying. The task is impossible, as it requires more capacity than any individual could ever have. Again, there is far too much life out there, too much content, to "manage" all of it with any degree of success. The recently coined word "proactive" is an attempt to deal with the limitations we place upon ourselves when we fail to "own" our own creativity.
In addition to "the impossibility factor" of the reactive posture into life, there is a tendency for any reaction to "add mass" to already-existing realities. This is unfortunate if the already-existing reality is, or even appears to be, unwanted. Often, the only way out of the unwanted is the deliberate choice to create what is truly wanted. If a person is unaware of the full range of creative options, there can be a sense of being "boxed in," having limited choices. My friend who attempted suicide nearly created his own death when he unconsciously participated in this process. It goes without saying that others have killed themselves in this manner. People who commit suicide, for instance, are (among other things) declaring their belief that they have no better options, let alone wonderful options. This is a classic example of "not playing with a full deck," as it fails to hold options such as "the miraculous."
In simple fact, every person on the planet has each and every card which exists in a full deck. They may be unaware of this critical fact, for one reason or another. At a minimum, most people are not taught to think of themselves as pure potential first and "thing" second. For example, children "described" (created) by parents, teachers and friends as "fat" or "not very bright," are likely to eventually buy into that "definition" of who they are. It may take them years, if they get to other possibilities at all, to notice that they can also create themselves as physically fit or brilliant. In any case, it is unlikely that most of us will ever experience the full range of possibilities which lie dormant in us. Of course, given the nature of some of those potentials, it is certainly just as well that we do not experience them. That does not mean the potentials are not there, though!
One of life's great challenges is to learn how to live with all the potentials we have. I recently was told about a fellow who had punched his wife in the face. He was determined, even after that fact, to deny that the possibility "violence" really does live in him, as it lives in every human being. He had, after all, "never done anything like that before." In his system, then, "she" must somehow have been responsible. She had no doubt "made him angry," and also "made him violent," per the discussion above. In truth, he created himself being angry, which is seldom one of life's senior choices. He followed that creation with his extraordinarily stupid, to vastly understate the matter, choice of the creation "hit." It goes without saying that this fellow's use of his creative power is hardly an exception among humans, which is the reason Scripture suggests we not throw stones in the presence of such creations as these.
This usually-gentle person, almost anyone would say, was "well-educated." At some future point, people will not be considered well-educated until they are, at a very minimum, aware of the potentials which reside in them. It is simply insufficient, for purpose of functioning in life, to be aware of mere subject matter and activity potentials, such as those which exist in mathematics, literature, music, or the human body, without being aware of the full range of human potential itself! As society, we taught this fellow to live in denial of his very own potentials. We set him up to eventually "surprise" himself, as well as horrify and shame himself at damage he had done. (He will, I suspect, eventually own up to, take responsibility for, the fact that he was, indeed, the one who, from his own point of view, created the damage!) Had he been taught from a very early age that every human being, including himself, has the "violent" card, as well as all the others, he might have thought through how he wanted to "be" with regard to that potential.
He will probably now go through the difficult, sometimes excruciating process so many people - men and women, of course - must eventually pass through. We call it "coming to terms with" one or another of the unpleasant (or worse) potentials which reside in ourselves and others. It is mandatory that we begin to teach people that they are not "things." It will be worthless, or worse, if this fellow simply "concludes" that he is, after all, a violent "thing," just as it is counterproductive for his wife to think of herself from now on as a "thing" which "brings out violence in men" (which was the tunnel she was heading down when she and I began speaking). If that is as far as they get with the matter, they will probably spend the rest of their lives "resisting being bad again." Given the tendency for resistance to add mass to an unwanted reality ("you get what you resist"), they will probably lock themselves into the cycles of peace-violence-peace-violence that so many are now in.
The moment people realize they really do have a particular negative potential, they at least have the option of choosing not to play that card in the future. Of course, such a "choice" can only show up like a "commitment"; it does not assure they will never play the card again. In other words, a human choice does not turn a person into a "thing," either. For myself, I would much rather be around people who know their potential for violence and are well aware they prefer not to engage in it. In my experience, the latter group of people is flatly safer to be around than those self-righteous sorts who lead with phrases like "I would never..." There is much greater strength in a genuine prayer along the lines of "I hope I never..."
The notion that humans have all the potentials, each at 100%, might be called THE LAW OF MULTIPLE 100%'s. It suggests that our choices, the things we create from day to day, are of vastly greater importance than the mere fact that any particular potential exists in us, whether or not that potential has actually ever manifested around us. This opens whole new possibilities for human interaction. For example, the fact that a person holds a card called "depressed" need no longer be interacted with as though they were a depressed thing. Instead, the relatively simply discussion can proceed along the lines of, "Okay, you now know you have that potential, and that you can play that card, create that reality, at any point in time. How aware are you of your other potentials, especially the ones you would actually prefer to create? If you are unaware of the latter, let's get on with the process of discovering them in yourself." In the absence of this type of self-knowledge, and this type of discussion, life can be an amazingly, and unnecessarily, difficult place to be!