Joely wrote a post about there being no “there” to go to and it got me thinking about where I was going on this (for lack of a better word) journey I’m currently on, that was originally started by a sense that I was in the wrong place.
There is no “there” to get to
The post mentioned (to paraphrase) the idea that being “nearly there” in terms of personal development is an ongoing situation. That you don’t really ever get “there” because “there” is the make-believe utopian state of perfection that no person will ever reach.
This makes a lot of sense, but only I think after getting to the point where mindfulness has become a habit, at least for me. I have gone through a series of steps that means I can, with hindsight, see how this has been true for me. So far it’s been like this:
- At first there is the learnt numbness (for many different reasons; so many of us do learn it however)
- Then there is the dissatisfaction
- Then the decision to find another way (such a big deal at that time – and it is something to celebrate for each person)
- Then the drive to find some big white light
- And then the gradual realisation that it was something very small all along that needed to change
It’s the last part that I think is the realisation that there is no “there” to get to, that we aren’t broken, that we don’t need fixing, that we can accept ourselves as we are now, that we’ll never be finished and have no issues to work on.
This last step is accepting that we simply need to bring mindfulness into everything we do.
It’s almost disappointing
It’s such a small thing and yet it’s affect is so very profound. Only when you’ve had time to see the massive impact that it’s had, to not just learn that mindfulness will do this and intellectually understand the principle, but to have actually experienced the massive changes that come about from being mindful, only then does it not seem like the tiniest thing.
So to get to that last step we* have to build up the change into something massive in our heads. We have to feel that there’s something massively wrong with the way we are at first, we have to break through the inertia of living unaware, and it’s so hard to take that first step that we need an image of some amazing revelation, some bright white light, to get us going and keep us going through the difficulty that follows.
Unless we almost trick ourselves into trying out mindfulness in various different forms (possibly along with lots of other gimmicks) we can get stuck searching and researching for the grand unified theory of life without actually making the final realisation.
*We = people like me, not everyone
It’s rocking my world
For me, right now, this realisation is thoroughly profound. I’m starting to see how chas can write that we should “revel in it“, it being the fact that we make up life as we go along, make mistakes and keep going anyway.
In fact, I was drafting a comment to respond and started writing things like “I’m not quite there, I don’t think” and “I’m still just not quite there yet. Even if there’s no there to get to!” Writing this post however has given me the perspective to see that I am there! That this was just my “Tell myself I’m not ready so I don’t have to do the big scary thing of being out there in the world” pattern showing up again.
A perfect quote
I’m not a big fan of the ‘stick a quote under a title to make it look fancy’ way of writing, but for me, sometimes, a good quote is able to represent the meaning of a big jumble of thoughts. It’s not really even a quote since I’m not sure if Byron Katie actually said these words, but it’s something I’ve written down, inspired by her work, and it sums up all of this for me quite nicely.
I’m doing the right thing, I just need to be thinking something different.
