However it is that we’ve come to perceive the answer
to that age old query, “What is the meaning of life?”
we arrive at it in good part through the veil of our culture
and specifically, our subjective experience of culture.
To one person, the answer may be that the meaning of life
is defined through his or her religion. To fulfill one’s
purpose is to live in such a way that you go to heaven, or
become enlightened, or love or serve the most number of people
right here on earth. It could be that life feels most successful
and accomplished when one is on track towards financial success,
having a nice home, a suitable wardrobe and car that reflects
your status and enough things to play with. For some people,
no matter what else you accomplish, the ultimate purpose of
life includes a biological imperative: we’re here to
create another, build and enjoy a family, to propel the humankind
successfully forward through our family lineage.
For others, the meaning is defined by how close to immortality
you come, perhaps by virtue of your social contributions.
These would be the contributions that enable you and your
values to live on in the hearts and minds of the most people
over the greatest amount of time -- Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven,
Ghandi, Albert Einstein.
When one has an assumption that life is made worthwhile by
virtue of accomplishing some culturally-defined task, then
whatever experience doesn’t fulfill that task can come
to be seen as a waste of life. How many times have you heard
your inner critic telling you that you were wasting your life?
And there's that old adage: “Time is money.” Here's
the notion that life can be misspent when one doesn’t
purchase the best possible outcomes with life’s limited
resource: time. This is a fear that runs deep down in many
people’s hearts.
Just as our physical bodies are composed of many different
kinds of organs and parts that fulfill the various needs that
our bodies have as a whole, so too is our psyche composed
of many parts that exist to express or fulfill our different
psychological needs. Many of these needs exist in opposition
to each other, like our simultaneous needs for connection
and for boundaries. In the development of our ego (or, the
“I am” level where will and choice are exercised
from) we grew up identifying with some of these inner parts,
and dis-identifying ourselves from others. This identifying
and alienating works in many ways but, sooner or later, we
will experience how it doesn’t work. A while back, I
heard my own inner critic telling me that I hadn’t been
spending my life correctly. Like it or not, the inner critic
is always a courier bearing the message that we’ve become
too identified with one aspect of our psyche to the exclusion
of it’s opposite. My inner critic had been worried because
it was positive that my life wasn't adding up to enlightenment,
sufficient material wealth and social currency and I've had
no children. It was concerned that I wasn’t doing enough.
On the one hand I recognized an internal set of values around
making my contributions to society, and on the other hand,
I held a value in just being ordinary – a regular person
-- and in allowing myself to just “be”. Because
my inner critic got fearful that I was wasting my life by
not guaranteeing my place in old age, history, or a perfect
afterlife, my inner critic was speaking on behalf of a part
of me I had been disowning a bit: that special-doer’
self. I decided to reflect on the concerns of this critical
inner voice, to hear and examine what those values were that
I wasn’t accomplishing.
I recognized that ‘special/doer’ self system in
a statement I’ve often made. “How extraordinary
it is, in all the span of known human history, to be a woman,
educated (literate especially) and intelligent, who owns her
own property, without needing to be married or beholden to
her father, without the responsibilities of children (and
even to have the real choice not to have children), to be
healthy and physically able -- how rare in all of history
this is. And even though this is true in my own time and place,
many, many women are not so free. THEREFORE, this part of
me sonorously intoned, I have a duty to all those other women,
to all those other female lives, to use these special potentials
and conditions I’ve been blessed with, to maximize the
benefits of these conditions, not only for my own well being,
but for all women! For the race!!! The species!!! For all
life!!!
Of course, I snickered as I thought this, because right on
cue, the other parts of me swung into position with this wry,
critical observation: “How inflated. How utterly grandiose.”
Unlike my life of a number of years ago when I had been a
complete workaholic, my ‘ordinary/being’ self now
had a place in my life. I’d been content to engage myself
in the smaller things -- keep my home comfortable, enjoy my
garden, go to the market, read, watch movies, have friends
over for a dinner. When I lived from this part of me, I would
be happy to just go for walks, stretch, and get plenty of
rest. This has been what drove my ‘special/doer self’
crazy. “It’s all meaningless activity,” it
harped. “It’s a total waste. I’m not getting
anywhere. There’s no drive. No significant, memorable
contributions. No nothing! What a bore! Life is almost over
and you want to play and relax?!” From a neutral place
of awareness, I could feel how the “special/ doer self’
in particular suffers from mortality. This is also a side
that perceives time as a flow, a uni-directional and constant
movement from beginning to end, from birth to death. To the
'special/doer' side, living from that "ordinary/being'
perspective feels like a big waste of time; it's stagnation.
Life is seen as a growth process; from inspiration to creation,
from little to big, from seed to plant to flower. One needs
to grow to a purpose: to flower, to attain.
This part of me didn’t want the end to come before the
flowering. In fact, from there, I felt that life would be
ending all too soon. This is the side of me that has the generative
drive, a productive urge: a child, a book, a painting, a contribution,
a product, a by-product of my existence that lives on beyond
me, that proves I was here and that I did something with my
life. This part wants to carve my initials into the rock of
ages. All of this is how this one part of me defined the “meaning
of life,” and by openly and neutrally listening to it,
I found that I could honor its perspective without judging
it.
The ‘ordinary/being self’, on the other hand, lives
in the moments. It is like meditation, whether in motion or
stillness. Meaning is an experience one has by being present
in the moment. Reading and learning is not a method to get
somewhere else, it is an opportunity to be present with another
ones’ views or experiences. When I live ‘in the
moment', my experience deepens and expands, becomes richer,
more complex and full. From here, I didn’t see my attributes
or conditions as being unusual or more historically pertinent
than other periods. Every life has always had its own unique
set of conditions to experience. What is most important is
how fully alive in the moment I could be, whatever my circumstances.
From this place in myself, fulfillment comes from enjoying
“what is.” Every moment is the destination, the
accomplishment. Whether one “flowers” or not, one
exists. Existence itself is meaningful and worthy. The flower
can never exist without the seeds, the roots, stem, leaves,
bud and ~ every such moment ~ has merit and must be experienced
as it occurs. When I'm operating from this ‘being-part’,
I, as this "flowering plant", happen all at once.
Time does not begin, move or end. It’s all a present
moment. Time is not a singular direction; it’s an immortal
event. The ‘ordinary/being self’ suffers when I
operate from a strictly linear movement of time because it’s
then that the multi-dimensional, all pervasive moment disappears.
In linear time, the ordinary, present, being-self just evaporates
from consciousness. By I honoring equally the validity of
these inner opposing selves, my inner critic quieted down.
In that moment, the inner critic didn’t have to deliver
the message any more that there is a stifled self in me. I
could non-judgmentally notice both sides and be capable of
acting on either or some version of both.
This kind of awareness process establishes a precarious and
paradoxical sense of calm and dynamism in me, a kind of inner
weightlessness. It’s not unlike the physical sensation
I had as a child on a swing. Back and forth, I’d wholeheartedly
lean into the air, higher and higher, enjoying in particular
those moments when I’d reach the height of one direction
and I had not yet been pulled back down by gravity. I’d
have that moment where I was perfectly balanced between going
up and going down.
I have to be able to recognize the validity of both my ‘ordinary/being’
and my ‘special/doer’ to even have the opportunity
to experience those in-between moments of clarity. Clarity
comes from fully appreciating the contrast and the mutually
exclusive needs these opposites represent. Then begins the
struggle to stay awake to these yin yang realities, the struggle
to exercise free will. Free will arrives when we have real
choice, knowing and honoring paradox, feeling and choosing
our way of being in this particular situation, and staying
connected with the inner consequences.
| J’aime ona
Pangaia |
503.788.8060 |
|
J’aime ona Pangaia is the director
of the Voice Dialogue Center NW, which produces her Voice
Dialogue trainings. She maintains a private practice for evolving
individuals and couples in Portland, Oregon.
 |
Other
Services Include:
Voice Dialogue Training for Professionals
Relationship Issues in the Workplace
12 week Grief Recovery Program
Dreamwork
|
