Boundaries for Beginners (Part 3)

In this important domain of relationships, the metaphors of doors and walls can also be instructive in teaching us about healthy personal boundaries. I have already talked about holes, being the unformed parts of our identity that prevent us from growing into our fullness and possessing the solidity of an individuated character. Doors are those parts of our developed psychological skin that we control by determining whether and when to open them. With the handle for this door being on the inside of ourselves, we are able to preserve the power to influence what comes into our lives and what we don’t have to internalise. Just like the saying that says, it is not what happens to us in our lives that determines our course, but how we respond to those circumstances that makes the difference, the difference that having this type of door makes to our life is significant because it allows us to self-determine what we will allow to shape and impact our inner life.

In a world in which we are constantly being bombarded with messaging and susceptible to experiencing overwhelm, this is no small thing. Having this door in place is like a resilience shield that provides a barrier to those harmful or discombobulating influences, while preserving our focus and energy for those people and things that are most pivotal to sustaining the vitality of our lives. Contrast this to the type of door where the handle is on the outside and it becomes clear why the feature of autonomy is so important if we are to preserve our sanity. When the ability to close this door is beyond our control, then effectively we are relegated to the role of marionette that can be manipulated by the whims of others puppeteering tendencies. This is especially dangerous if those with a psychopathic or sociopathic profile sniff out this weakness and put us in their crosshairs, for we will be like putty in their hands to be depleted and disposed of without mercy.    

Walls are something different altogether. These are places in our psychological skin that have been impenetrably calloused over due to the experiencing of a series of hurts. One of the forms in which we see this is the person who swears they will never love again because they have been burnt by their prior relationships not working. Not wanting to open themselves up to having to experience that pain again, they erect a wall to protect themselves from that outcome eventuating in the future. While this may sound like a justifiable decision in light of what has occurred, it is actually detrimental because it closes off the possibility of encountering and engaging in a genuinely loving relationship. Not being given the room to enter their heart, it is the one who hides behind the wall that is effectively kept prisoner until the suffering inherent in that role leads them to want to break the wall down and pursue something more life-giving to their soul. Some people arrive at this place at the cost of healing their trauma, while others never do, and often it is difficult work that requires the intervention of a psychologist or counsellor. But this work is always worth it because it facilitates an unburdening of negative past emotions that no longer serve who we seek to become.

When I think of these walls, I often think of communist countries that have at one time or another isolated themselves from the rest of the world. In the process of them doing this they deprive their citizens of the best the world has to offer them, while also denying the world the best of what their unique national culture has to offer. It should hardly be surprising that such a state leads to depression in economic activity and the suppression of the human spirit under totalitarian rule. Similarly, when an individual allows their trauma to rule their daily experience of life, that is when severe mental health conditions such as depression are given licence to occupy their mind and have an insidious broader working on the circumstances of their life.

While of course this condition can be genetically or biologically rooted in an individual, to the extent that we can develop our boundaries to avoid its onset or other negative internal states, we should do so. Wellbeing and the building of confidence to successfully navigate the world comes from the healthy development of boundary function and the attendant competence in knowing when to open doors in the different areas of our lives and when to close them. Fostering also a wisdom of discernment and the preservation of our rich inner resources, we should not squander these gifts, for only when we know the source from which they come can we deliver them effectively where needed.

Observing the Veil of Time (Part 3)

As I lived in this experience at the most fundamental level, I felt such love and gratitude for the blessing of my mind and body, and the spiritual awareness that allowed me to observe their delightful dancing. Being orchestrated to perfection in their alignment, I smiled to myself knowing that in that moment there was no better place I could have been. In moments like these, I find it next to impossible to feel what it means to be bored.

With boredom being a judgmental reaction of the ego that is deprived of its addiction to excitement, this need to be consumed by something that titillates our attention takes so much away from our enjoyment of life. Representing a symptom of unconsciousness, boredom has the effect of impeding our engagement with the unfolding of life in a way that is both dysfunctional and stress inducing. Caught in the chasm that separates our reality from where we desire to be, we know not what it means to be free. Freedom in this context means being available to exercise autonomy or responsiveness to what is before us.

The love and gratitude that I felt upon perceiving the connection between my mind, body and spirit would have been absent had I given in to the temptation to be bored. By indulging this dissatisfaction, my heart would have been numbed to the presence of those blessings, and what I would have expressed emotionally would have reflected the void or lack that I perceived my circumstances to represent.

Never are we contented when we feel that we do not have enough of what we want or need. Studies have shown that people who don’t feel that they have enough time to do what they want are less happy and fulfilled than those people who believe that they have enough time in the day to do what matters to them. Time, in this respect, is very similar to money, in that levels of happiness are generally higher in members of the population who have the financial means to support their basic wants and needs.

When we feel like we don’t have enough time in the day, we do not feel in control of our own life. This leads us to suffer because in our mind we become dependent on something outside of ourselves to function effectively. Diminishing our confidence, we feel less competent, and what we produce as a result does not exhibit what we are truly capable of achieving. This, I experienced firsthand when I worked in the law, and like other lawyers, had my mode of working determined by the billable hours system. While that system has some practical utility in quantifying costs for work performed, its downside, amongst other things, is that it fractures attention in a way that tends to diminish the quality of the work performed. Some might argue that this is a necessary limitation in a busy field, and that claim has some merit, but undoubtedly it comes at a cost to the professionals who are doing the work. The degeneration of mental-health and well-being amongst lawyers in recent times is evidence of this, although the cause of these problems can’t solely be laid at the feet of the billable hours system.

What I can say from personal experience is that when I moved into academia from the law, I did feel myself becoming more creative and capable of producing what bestselling author Cal Newport describes as ‘deep work’. Removed of the constraints that too often roused the negative emotions of anxiety and self-doubt, I found myself much better able to engage with the work and those around me, which was important in establishing a sense of belonging. I have long surmised that one of the causes of depression which some lawyers experience, stems from the sense of isolation that the billable hours system, by its nature provokes. Having an artificial narrowing effect on focus towards the work to be completed on the matter that is right in front of them, the casualty of that hyper-attention or pseudo presence is the sense of connection that those lawyers feel to their colleagues and the purported systems of in-house support that surround them.

Slow Build; Long Burn (Part 1)

During the process of completing work on my first book, I have been forced to ruminate on the internal factors that have allowed me to get to this point in my life. From a vocational standpoint, the journey that I have taken to become the person who can write these words has been far from straightforward. From dropping out of school in year ten to working firstly as a deckhand on a lobster boat and then as a security guard, to going back to complete high school then six years of university studies, to starting a career in the law then leaving that to live in London while selling cosmetics, to relocate back to Perth before giving myself fully to my calling as a teacher in a university context and writer, while undertaking and completing another four years of study to earn my doctorate.

As winding and sometimes painful as the path has been, the quality that principally saw me through was the long term perspective which allowed me to routinely sacrifice the experiencing of pleasure and fun in the present, for a future objective that was meaningful to me at a much deeper level. An example of this was when I was finishing my high school equivalency and commencing my university studies. During that time, my friends were partying a lot and working hard to buy themselves nice cars and clothes to impress the women they were interested in. While the hedonistic part of me wanted to do the same thing, I knew within myself that if I gave in to that temptation I would in some way be mortgaging my future, and betraying the potential that I had been given to actualise.

What is really weird as I write this is that at that time I really had no clue about what the highest version of my life would look like, and what the path to get there would be. Despite this lack of clarity, I found myself guided by the strong sense that if I could invest in my future self by delaying short term gratification, that would lead me in the right direction and open up opportunities to live into my fullness. Thankfully, that proved to be the case, and by listening to my awakening daemon at these critical moments, I managed to avoid many of the pitfalls that could have otherwise tripped me up, and taken me down a rougher road to learning life’s lessons.

While I have come to a place of peace now about this way of living my life, in the moments when I had to make these difficult choices, it could feel agonisingly difficult and lonely in choosing this road less travelled. So many of those friends from my early 20’s are no longer in my life, and the fracturing of those friendships was no doubt hastened by me prioritising receptiveness to my inner call above living up to the expectations that they had of me, and the conventions that they chose to be bound by. I even went through a period in my mid 20’s when I was somewhat of a pariah, with no close friends to spend time with, which made me feel depressed and nihilistic about the way in which society conditions us to live our lives.

As unbearable as this could sometimes seem, what kept me going was the realisation that I was still very young and had my whole life ahead of me to put together the pieces of who I was, and what I was destined to become. With time on my side, I found hope in the belief that things would get better if I continued to do the work of unfolding myself and honouring the natural inclinations that I had come to trust by this stage. Another pivotal moment which buoyed my understanding that there was a greater purpose to my life, happened some 10 years earlier when my father died of cancer. Being a devastating event for a then twelve year old that really threw my life into chaos for the years following that loss, what it reinforced for me was that there was a reason behind his death that would shape who I was to become in his absence.

Had my mother died instead of my father, I could see my life taking a much different trajectory than it has. While my father was a wonderful and dutiful man, I believe that under his stewardship I would have been influenced to take a much more conventional path than I did walk, primarily because he himself had to out of necessity. Raised on a farm in York and sent to a boarding school in the city, when he completed his final year he chose to forego what appeared to be a very promising sporting career to enter the police academy because that was what was expected back then. If you weren’t going to continue your studies, then you needed to enter the workforce and make yourself useful to society, and once you did this, then the path was to advance in your chosen career. It is only in recent times that the idea of a mature age student has become acceptable, and those of his generation didn’t generally perceive this as a smart or respectable pivot to make.   

My Unvarnished Relationship with Social Media (Part 4)

Invariably, things are almost never as good or bad as they are presented through these channels, but if we refrain from cultivating the space to realise this, then we will either be tempted to adopt a jaded nihilistic perspective, or suffer from the Pollyanna syndrome, where we become hopelessly optimistic about the state of the world because of our unconscious indifference to the real challenges that others face in their lives. If I admire anything about social media, it is those users who are able to hold this tension in what they authentically embody through their presence. By their strength, courage and vulnerability, they invite others into a deeper experience of what it means to be human, and can be powerful agents of change to this end. While the current state of consciousness pervading these platforms may limit their ability to influence others at this time, as we take steps to evolve, I foresee their voices being amplified, which will enable them to reach a broader audience and make more of a positive difference to the life of the world through the enactment of their animating purpose.

Only will these platforms evolve to achieve the lofty aims of their founders when those who use them exercise their power to holistically be themselves. Being within their grasp to be exercised through the means of deep reflection and spiritual journeying, among other practices, the outcome of this is to reorient the popular, but erroneous, advice to ‘just do you’. Why I say ‘erroneous’ here is because all too often when people are just doing themselves, they are not really acting from a spiritually connected and conscious place, but from a righteous ego based perspective that basically says to the world, “f— what you think. I am going to do and say what I want and anyone who has a problem can go to hell!” Reinforcing their perceived entitlement to think and act in this pseudo authentic way are a number of popular ‘self-help’ titles that reek of this same subtle arrogance (see ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’ and ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k’ for example).

Clearly these titles have been rather unoriginally crafted to play to the crowd that sees itself as having to defy something external in order to define an identity internally. While no doubt these authors have profited from taking that tack, I don’t think that the same can be said about the social culture that they have helped to propagate. Authenticity at the deepest level doesn’t require any form of crafting on our part, for who we are in our essence is already present in the world. If we care to allow that, which is a very different thing from crafting it, then we don’t need to direct any attention towards playing the misguided ‘fighting the world to find ourselves’ game, which will only entrench us further in our fractured ego, cause unnecessary conflict and division, and repel others from what we forcefully assert through our indignant attitude.

If I could present an alternative to this superficial ‘just do you’ advice, it would be, if you don’t know who you are, don’t do anything and just be in your own company. To do anything without the accompaniment of being is to perpetuate some form of dysfunction in our environment. French Mathematician Blaise Pascal recognised as much when he ruminated that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s (and woman’s) inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” A good first step in effecting this return to a holistic state is to disconnect from the digital world, and the people in it who feed this false sense of who you are. Cultivating space in this way helps us to stand in our truth, recognise a beauty in ourselves that is more than skin deep, and find a path to meaningfulness through genuine connection with ourselves, others and our vocation.

Whatever are the titillating hits of pleasure that our connectivity rewards us with, they can never substitute for the joy of being fully present to life as it is unfolding in this moment. As much as that sounds like a cliché, it is incontrovertible that the richness of life that we experience firsthand through our conscious perception, can’t be replicated in a digital form. In the same moment that we are consumed with trying to take the perfect picture of our family or the sunset for our Facebook feed, our engagement with the essence of what matters in life suffers, and we are left the worse for it. Better are we to hold loosely the intermediary that hampers our freedom to find and appreciate the simple sacred in everyday life.

As I reflect on everything that I have covered here, I can unequivocally say that the quality of my life has been immeasurably improved by minimising the time that I spend using social media. By getting clarity on the particular reasons why I would use its platforms at this time in my life, I have avoided the trap of justifying my use through the ‘any benefit’ rationale which argues that any benefit that can be derived from the use of the technology is good enough reason to use it. Clearly, such as rationale is flawed when the side effects of this mindless use can be the scientifically proven harms of anxiety/depression, negative self-concept/inadequacy and addiction, among other things. If you are going to use social media, my advice would be to take stock to ensure that there are compelling reasons for doing so. Only if these legitimate benefits are present, will it hold the capacity to serve you in actualising the best version of yourself that has something of substance to offer the world.