Enablers and Adversaries (Part 3)

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

The danger during times when we feel like a diminished version of ourselves is that we can naively come to assume or believe that the people who offer to prop us up or help us heal have our best interests at heart. This is seen quite frequently within cults where vulnerable people looking for belonging or a higher sense of meaning to their lives are love-bombed by devotees of the cult leader, while effectively being groomed for membership of something that will prove deleterious to their best efforts at moving productively forward with their lives. While that may appear to be an extreme example, there can also be individuals within our familial and friendship circles who by their own deficit of character or woundedness would be inclined towards facilitating co-dependence or enmeshment with us if they were given the opportunity to be leaned on as a means of support. While no doubt this sounds like a highly cynical take on what motivates some individuals to interject themselves into the challenges that we sometimes face in our lives, I have found that the possibility of encountering these individuals is not to be underestimated.

When we see the world through rose coloured glasses as a consequence of our weakened state of being, we can become too trusting of what others say or how they seek to make us feel, especially if the effect of that would be to numb us to the pain or discomfort that we feel as a consequence of our predicament. While we might long for the temporary relief of this tension or suffering, when we outsource that task to someone who wants to ride in on their white horse to fix our problems from the outside, we unknowingly make the path towards identifying the right actions and solutions that much harder to discern and pursue. Any psychologist or counsellor worth their salt knows this to be true, and when there are avenues of resolution that present themselves to a patient during the process of therapy, they will see it as their task to defer to the patient coming to those realisations themselves, rather than being pre-emptively prescriptive about what they think that person should do in the circumstances. While one could argue that providing these solutions is what a psychologist or counsellor gets paid for, there is also a cost to be borne by the patient, who because they are told what to do are deprived of the opportunity to piece together their own understandings from the broken fragments of meaning that were inherent in the adverse experiences they encountered. And here we have an adversary in the form of a competent psychologist or counsellor appear in the frame again.

I’ve heard it said that if a person finds the therapeutic process to be a pleasurable experience, then they need to seek an alternate form of assistance immediately. Working through our trauma or dysfunction is a naturally uncomfortable and painful experience, and if we are coddled through that process, not only do we risk getting stuck along the journey to healing but we can also retreat into becoming a less resilient and empowered version of ourselves. If someone truly loves us and cares about our flourishing, then this should be the antithesis of what they want for our lives. No doubt, the people who love and care for us the most genuinely have that intention, but they likely don’t have the know how to help us through difficult periods effectively. If that is the case, I think it is better for all involved that they humbly realise their limitations, rather than trying to rush in with a saviour complex to try and fix our problems.

What I’ve observed, especially of late, in the activism space is a pervasive narcissism which manifests in this complex that oftentimes has the counter effect to whatever it is that these activists say they are standing for. Take the current pro-Palestinian protests for example. By focusing their anger and condemnation on the Israeli Defence Forces for the civilian deaths that have resulted from their best attempts at weeding out the scourge of Hamas fighters that still present a threat to Israeli security, these activists are unwittingly fortifying the legitimacy of that brutal terror group whose failures in properly leading the Palestinian territory have been the primary cause of the havoc and suffering wreaked on its inhabitants lives. By deflecting the responsibility (or blame – depending on how one sees it) for what is taking place so that they can identify with the present victims of the conflict, these individuals are in effect enabling the true source of these people’s subjugation. Like fools, they rush in where angels fear to tread.

What the better angels of our nature have to teach us here is the wisdom of enabling nobly (which could otherwise be expressed as ennobling others) and being a formidable adversary to those whose capacities we want to see develop to meet the vicissitudes of life. Personal and collective thriving does not occur if we allow others to indulge the deficits in their character that we call vices. Neither do they cultivate the fortitude to move forward with courage and confidence, if we treat them with kid gloves. In this age of entitlement and victimhood where people are inclined to play that role to garner attention and empathy for themselves, it is worth pausing before we respond to their ‘need’, lest we come to the ill-formed and self-indulgent conclusion that our intervention is necessary for ‘good’ to be done. Those who are truly virtuous don’t have those motives working in the background to orient their behaviour, so we need to evolve beyond our ego to embody the forms of enabler and adversary that can serve others and bring generative life to the world.

Enablers and Adversaries (Part 2)

In a very real sense, adversaries of this type enable our progress forward in a similar way that our encountering of adversity does. Having a very similar etymological derivation in Latin, what we see in these two words is the necessity of turning towards that which challenges or opposes us on our path. Key to this process of progress is our willingness or volition to face what confronts us. In every moment, we have a choice as to how we will respond to the circumstances of life that appear before us, and the decisions we end up making in these instances will be pivotal to the course that our life will take.

In many respects, I think we have a lot more riding on the decisions we make in times of challenge than those we make in times of comfort and stasis. This presents us with a fertile opportunity to exert leverage in changing the course of our lives for the better when we embody courage, strength and resilience (among other human virtues) to face those things that will really test us at the core of our being. In my experience, I have never much grown from decisions I made during easy periods of my life which I was happy to go along with, but where I feel I did take large strides in my personal evolution were during periods of personal hardship.

An exception to this was when I chose to voluntarily take on challenges that would stretch my ability to deal with, and eventually overcome them, such as undertaking my PhD project which I wasn’t sure I could successfully complete at the time I commenced the project. The benefit of choosing to volitionally face what confronts us is that we become energised, empowered and resourceful in ways that we cannot be when we are reactively forced to deal with problems that we feel incapable of effectively dealing with. By reconnecting with the sovereign nature of our spirit from which we are equipped with what we need to meet the challenges that confront us, we enable our own advancement along the path of actualising our potential.

The outgrowth of this self-enabling is that we can serve as enablers of others’ development and progress. This can be done in a variety of ways that are context dependent, and experienced as inspiring by those who are assisted, which is an accurate characterisation of what has intrinsically moved us to affect that contribution. What is not nearly as inspiring and can cause others harm is a faux form of enabling that indulges others dysfunction and fosters a co-dependence which has a disempowering effect on the person in need. There is a lot of wisdom in the saying, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. While no doubt there is a time for giving to others in order to meet an immediate need, over the longer term of people’s lives where a real difference is made, this impact is affected by capacity building that makes others more competent, confident and self-reliant.

It takes a genuine care and selflessness to want to make that contribution to another’s life and to extend those qualities to achieve an outcome that is in that other person’s best interests. This nudging of others towards the precipice of transformation often takes the form of tough love or pushing them out of their comfort zone, which requires sacrifice on the part of the person assisting because they will be fought along the way, and won’t be seen in a favourable light by the person being assisted as they experience their own struggle of doing the difficult work that transmuting one’s dysfunctionality requires. This perceived adversary is in actuality an indispensable ally, without which that person needing help couldn’t find their way back to centre. On any journey to reconciling the broken parts of ourselves, we require guides who have done their own integral work that allows them to effectively lead the way and help us navigate the pitfalls that we don’t yet know will be ours to encounter. Absent of this person who has walked the path, we will find ourselves in the company of those who may promise salvation or success but in our following of their lead are much more likely to lead us astray.       

Enablers and Adversaries (Part 1)

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been giving some thought to the question: who is worse, an enabler or an adversary? Perhaps to most, they would instinctively answer the question by saying that adversaries are worse. But are they really? I guess that would be determined by the intention that we have for our life, and how that orients us to act in the world. Someone who wants to be comfortable and safe amidst the challenges of life will answer this question very differently than someone whose focus is to learn and grow so that they can actualise their potential. As I think about the evolution that I have taken on my own personal journey, I would be forced to admit that I would have likely answered this question differently when I was younger than how I would in the present day.

The meanings of these two words, or perhaps more accurately how I have experienced them as applying to life, has also morphed as I have gotten older. When I was younger, I would have characterised an enabler in more positive terms as those people or circumstances that facilitate the progress of others. While I still feel this definition is largely accurate, I can however now see more clearly the shadow side of the concept that can have a stultifying and harmful effect on our personal growth and wellbeing. Counter to this, how I would have described an adversary in my youth was more myopic and negatively valanced when compared to how I now see the concept. In times past, I would have perceived an adversary to be someone who actively sought to stifle progress of others towards their chosen goal. As I have matured though and perhaps become less cynical of those who on the face of it appear to be standing in our way, I think the concept is better described as those persons who by their presence challenge us to bring forth more of what we have inside of us to overcome the obstacles that we face.

To some, this interpretation of ‘adversary’ may be overly charitable, but what I have found in my own life is that many of the people or circumstances that we may describe in an adversarial manner present us with the best opportunities for growth and understanding ourselves and our relationship to the world in a clearer light. A facet of this can be borne out by how we experience competitors in business or the realm of sports. On the one hand, we might look at members of an opposing team as stifling our desired end in the context of the game (i.e. to score more points or goals), and thus we strive to overcome them to achieve the objective of winning. But beyond this zero-sum outlook that can so often have us limit our focus to the end of victory, there are a number of benefits that adversaries in this context can help to nurture.

Firstly, having these opponents in place forces us to develop our competency in order to achieve the desired outcome. As they say, iron sharpens iron, so out of this testing of our current capacities does the potential for their development emerge. After all, we would hardly call someone who we are so much more advanced than at a particular activity an adversary because that person doesn’t really challenge us in any way to grow beyond our current level of ability. While we might easily win against such an opponent, this would be fool’s gold we are collecting because in reality our abilities would be atrophying and becoming less resistant to worthy challenges from more accomplished players on our level.

We often see this in professional sports when a team ‘plays down’ to their opponents. While the team who is better on paper might end up getting the win on the scoreboard, in the process of getting there they would have performed much worse than they ordinarily would have against better competition because they were not being forced to focus and execute their skills in a superior way to achieve the same result against a better foe. After matches such as this, it is not unusual to hear coaches say a version of ‘there is not a lot that we can take from that game’. Being as much process orientated individuals as they are outcomes focused, what these coaches can appreciate is that even when their teams might win, they can lose valuable ground in achieving the improvement and attendant confidence that is required for sustainable success. With their larger goal being to win an entire competition, which consists of similar, superior and inferior teams to their own, they can’t take much solace from hollow victories such as those against much lesser teams that may actually hurt rather than help their ambitions in the long run.  

A Rarer Form of Gratitude

Photo by Plato Terentev on Pexels.com

When you look at your life and the moments that you might be inclined to feel gratitude in it, what is that in relation to? If you are like most people, the experiencing of that feeling will be reserved for when things are going positively to your benefit. Having a body that is healthy and functioning; being praised by a superior at work; a special moment that is shared with your partner; receiving an unexpected gift from someone close to you; the temperature of the day being just how you like it. While all of this is good and a valid cause for our gratitude, I don’t think that we need to become dependent on things falling our way before we can experience appreciation for what life has to offer us.

Amidst all of life’s imperfections, deficits, losses and chaos, there is tremendous opportunity for each of us to serve a vital reconciliatory or restorative function. Being some of the most meaningful and impactful work we will ever undertake, it doesn’t make sense for us to curse this state of affairs or judge it as something that shouldn’t be, especially when we possess the ability to change it for the better. Even in things that are beyond our capacity to change, the Japanese notion of Wabi-sabi teaches that beauty can be found in nature’s imperfections if we are willing to define reality on terms that transcend the ego’s superficial understandings. While this hyperjudgmental dimension of self would have us avert our gaze from what it finds distasteful or ugly, our higher spiritual self doesn’t have to do this because it doesn’t perceive in separation, or stand apart from what it recognises shares its essence. In this realm of interconnectedness which we understand ourselves as belonging to when we align our being with our spiritual nature, we become receptive to the call to integrity or wholeness, which first animates us and then moves out into the world through our intentions, words and actions.

To conditions of dis-ease, we can bring healing; where there is injustice, we can bring an even hand; where there is conflict and division, we can serve as an instrument of peace and unity; when others suffer under the weight of aimlessness and confusion; our presence can enlighten their path to bring purpose and clarity. Where chaos is sown, we can restore order as a firm foundation from which individual and collective thriving can take place.

A key thread of the above paragraph are the three A’s that we re-connect with when we embody our essential nature: autonomy, agency and authority. It is an illusion, perpetuated by the ego, and reinforced by our evident physical limitations in the world, to think that we are incapable of playing a part in the flourishing of the human condition. As terrible as things have been historically through wars, famine, pandemics, the subjugation of vulnerable peoples, and the like, there have always been people who refused to slink into the narrow confines of victimhood and hopelessness to meet the needs of the moment and serve the purpose for which they were created. While the majority of others looked at those despoiled conditions and helplessly lamented what had befallen them, these beacons of light saw the opportunity in the darkness to make manifest more than what was reasonable in the circumstances to contemplate.

It has been said previously that progress in the world depends on the unreasonable men and women who get their strength, resilience, resourcefulness, and vision from somewhere else. From what I have stated above, it should be clear where the territory I am advocating for you to explore is located. This is the home of not only our supreme giftedness but our latent virtue and golden compass. They are there ready and waiting, even if presently your eyes aren’t open enough to see them.

While you, like I and the world, are mired in our imperfections, we aren’t finished on our journey either, which is worth remembering and being grateful for when we are tempted to cynicism, nihilism or the confused and lonely road of purposelessness.