We have the ability to make commitments and take responsibilities at a level that is greater than our preferences, our likes and dislikes, and our personal comfort. It is impossible to be a victim of any person or any thing. We only play-act being a victim to achieve an energetic or emotional payoff. For example, we justify complaining so that we get the payoff of a familiar, and therefore known and comfortable, although agitated, internal emotional state. We justify betraying someone’s trust so as to have the payoff of taking revenge on them. If we have things arranged a certain way with people or things in our life it is only because we have arranged them to be that way and have not arranged them to be any other way. This insight opens the door to a large number of rather interesting experiments to do. For example, today, now, go change something either externally or internally that has been making you feel like a victim. Notice that in de-victimizing yourself (similar to de-worming a cat) you have the option of changing external conditions or of changing the internal story that you have made about the conditions.
For example, this morning I woke up at 5:25 so I could sit for meditation at 6:00 and start working on this manuscript at 7:00. But, I live in Munich, and it is winter, and it snowed last night. Our duplex neighbor has this serious consideration that shoveling the snow out of our shared driveway should be an equal task, and a local ordinance says that residents must shovel off their sidewalk before 7:00 AM. Sometimes our neighbor shovels the snow before I am even out of my pajamas, and he does this for three days in a row. By that point I fear that he resents me for shirking my duty. As you could well imagine, here is a goldmine of potential victim stories! Previous occupants of our apartment used the opportunity in abundance. I am not interested is continuing the tradition. But how can I see this laptop keyboard begging for my dancing fingers and instead go out there in the cold dark morning and not feel like a victim? I cannot change the neighbor’s habits. Nor can I, this moment, change the law.
What is left for me is to change my internal story about my morning, about what shoveling snow means to me. But what story could make it worthwhile to experience shoveling snow as exactly what I really want to do right now? What about this: I could then write about the experience in this book! Voilà. I am instantly transformed into a happy man enthusiastically shoveling snow.
The neighbor even came out to see what all the happy shoveling was about.
Avoiding Possibilities
Why is it that we think we don’t have enough time when we have all the time there is: we have all the time that anyone else has, and we are choosing every moment what to do with that time. If we choose to do anything it is only because we have made time to do it. If we choose ever to not do something, we simply do not make the time to do that thing. We are time makers! Yet we try to blame other people or the circumstances for choosing what we make time for! This is truly amazing!
Many of us hand over our lives to some little voice from our mind that says, “I’m tired! I’m exhausted! I have to have one of those! I can’t do this! I deserve a break today!” and then choose to go unconscious, thinking that things should be some way other than the way they are. It is amazing that we do not simply enjoy things as they are, or reinvent our experience of them if we want.
We typically glance over the dry, barren landscape of our life, looking for minimalized, mediocre opportunities, rather than realizing that we ourselves hold up the veil that makes the surrounding look dry and barren. We refuse to bathe in the ocean of possibilities spreading out in every direction in every moment. We make the wealth of options that are sitting at our feet invisible and inaccessible. Rather than creating noble, lively, juicy, dynamic, dignified, challenging opportunities for ourselves and others out of available materials, or better yet, out of nothing (a material which is readily at hand, anytime, anywhere, for no cost – if we have the space for it!), we go around like crippled elephants at a fashion show thinking there is no opportunity to be found, and that nobody loves us besides.
It is amazing that we have made ourselves afraid of the power of insanity. Without knowing it, one of our first considerations in making any decisions is whether or not we will appear to be sane. If the gap between our possible behavior and the appearance of sanity is too great, we will not do it. If the gap between the behavior of someone else and what is typically recognized as sane behavior is too great, we will call the police. By rejecting anything that even appears to be insane we simultaneously reject one of our greatest powers: the power of incongruity.
Insanity is where nonlinear possibilities and orthogonal moves come from. Relationship is ongoing nonlinear creation. If we do not have access to insanity, we cannot go nonlinear to create relationship. No wonder our relationships seem dead. We straightjacket ourselves so that we appear to be sane, but our pretended civility asphyxiates the aliveness of our interactions. In each moment relationship is sourced through invention. Love is invented. Right here, by us, with what we have right now. Life without inventing love is like finding an outdated coupon for thirty cents off a jar of mayonnaise, lying faded on a dirt road.
In the moment we commit to being the source of love in our life (or the source of love in someone else’s life, or, if we are really insane, the source of love in life itself) even though we do not know how, life becomes simultaneously horrifying and exhilarating, the most fulfilling of endeavors. (We may think that we already know what this means, but consider the possibility that we do not. Consider the possibility that we do not even know that we do not know what this means. This is not new-age philosophy. This is consciousness expansion. There is a big difference. We can discover the difference.)
We have become experts in avoiding possibilities. You can prove this for yourself with the following experiment: If you really wanted to be Loving in any situation, find who stops you.
SECTION 4-C
The Box
We usually forget that the number and variety of possible new actions that we could take in every moment and in every circumstance is practically unlimited. We forget that we always have direct access to all possible options. We forget that if someone backs their car into our car we could invite them to dinner or call our mother. We forget that if our child wants our attention we could stop talking on the telephone or teach them a new song to sing. We forget that when our partner doesn’t hold our hand we can hold theirs.
What causes us to behave the way we behave? What causes us to ignore the untold numbers of options that seem available to other people but not available to us? Why can we do something that another person cannot, and vice versa? In answering these questions we notice that differences between us and other people derive from specific factors: attitudes, assumptions, beliefs, expectations, reasons, perspectives, concepts, prejudices, meanings, conclusions, projections, opinions, stories, decisions, interpretations, strategies, and so on. These are the factors that establish and regulate our relationship to the infinite possibilities available to us in each moment.
MAP OF THE BOX
These factors are the structural components of what we could call our “Box.” Our Box stands like a firewall between us and the rest of the world. The Box has been recognized and called by other names, such as worldview, mind-set, belief system, psychological defense strategy, personality, mentality, self-image, comfort zone, ego structure, or identity. We will simply call it the Box.
What is the purpose of our Box? Through simple observations we can discover that the Box serves to buffer us from the unknown. What is in the Box is the known. What is outside of the Box is the unknown. The purpose of our Box is protection, comfort, self-definition, and security. When it comes to the bottom line, the purpose of our Box is to insure our survival.
How does the Box assure our survival? Through controlling our behavior with regard to our environment. The Box acts like a 360-degree filter, controlling everything that we can perceive and everything that we can express.
Who made our Box? There are two answers to this question. The first
and by far the most common answer, the answer we use without thinking is, “They made my Box” – parents, society, culture, and the media. The second answer is less common: “I made my Box.” These are the two choices. Since the experts are still arguing the “nature or nurture” question, we get to choose which answer we use.
What is the difference between the two answers? If we choose answer number one, that “they” made our Box, then if we want to change our Box we must wait around until “they” make up their minds to come and do whatever it takes to change our Box. How many of us are waiting around for Mom or Dad to come and hug us, to tell us that we are wonderful, that they love us, that they are proud of us. We are powerless victims waiting around for “them” to heal us and make it different for us.
If we choose answer number two, that “I” made my Box, then we are no longer victims. We do not have to wait around for anybody to do anything. We can make new decisions and redesign our Box any way we want, any time we want, for any reason we want, without asking permission from anyone. We are then fully responsible for our Box, for ourselves, and for what we make out of our lives. Making choice number two means we have no one else to blame about who we are and how things turn out for us. No one else to blame ever again for anything.
Leaving the domain of ordinary human relationship begins by making choice number two, “I made my Box.” Welcome to responsibility.
From Protection to Imprisonment: The Mechanics of the Box
A bird’s eggshell is designed to protect the baby bird until it can stand on its own two feet. A chrysalis is designed to protect a caterpillar’s transformation into something that can fly. Likewise, the Box is designed to defend us until we are ready to shift from childhood to our life as a free and natural adult human being.
The transition from childhood to adulthood is intended to take place at around fifteen years of age. We are not structurally capable of taking responsibility before fifteen. But, tragically, our culture does not provide a rite of passage for us. If we do not go through the process that changes the purpose of our Box from its originally defensive and purely survival-based purpose to a mature, expansive, self-development, evolutionary purpose, our Box, which once protected us, then becomes our prison.
If your Box is dedicated to defending itself, then the purpose of your actions will be to protect your positions, blame or attack others, compete for resources, justify yourself, regard yourself as “right” and others as “wrong,” feel resentment, and as a last resort destroy or isolate. These strategies are the foundation for creating Ordinary human relationship. If you change the purpose of your Box from defending itself to expanding itself, then your actions will have a completely different quality. A Box dedicated to expanding itself directs your actions toward exploring new territory, going beyond restrictive limits, self-development, discovery, trying new things, learning, growth, welcoming surprises, experimenting, and so on. Reading a book such as this and practicing with the suggested experiments is a Box-expanding action.
Our Box long ago concluded that if it can survive, then we can survive. That ancient decision still holds dominance until we radically change the game we are playing. We certainly have proof that if our Box can defend itself then we can continue to survive. But here are some striking examples of the opposite:
• A driver yells at another driver who offends him, even when the emotional outburst makes his lack of attention quite dangerous for himself.
• People buy things on credit even when they cannot afford to have those things. When debt becomes overwhelming, people feel nervous, lose self-respect and live miserable lives.
• Instead of being truly angry or truly sad, people mix the two feelings together and talk themselves into a depression that seems hopeless enough that they might even commit suicide.
• People get cosmetic surgeries and surgical implants to look “good.” The procedures may make them unwell, permanently disfigured, or even dead from medical complications.
• A smoker can drown when ocean waves drag him into the sea because the smoker’s highest habitual priority is to keep his cigarette from getting wet, even if it costs him his life.
• People continue to consume costly products and services that they do not actually need to live well. The heavy cash-flow demand forces them to work in cold, competitive, unsatisfactory jobs that cause high stress and a scarcity of nurturing that can take years off their life.
• Psychosomatic illnesses claim thousands of otherwise healthy human lives each year.
• Fanatical religious beliefs that promote an “I am right, you are wrong” positionality create deep hatred in people and result in wars where many people die.
• Individuals, businesses and governments imagine that there is a lack of resources and then conclude that the most effective solution is to fight against each other for control over those resources. This directs our immense ingenuity toward promoting lethal conflicts, rather than using this same ingenuity to work together and find collaborative solutions. And so on.
Our Box is extremely resilient, fast, clever, subtle, and justified in its self-defense. Without us making intelligent conscious efforts to create alternative options, our Box will minimize chances for intimacy and will control where we can go with relationship for the remainder of our days. The defensive Box dares let no one closer to us than the limits of our Box, because if someone gets nearer to us than the limits of our Box they could turn around and see that we have a Box. To avoid being discovered as a sham, the Box prevents us from experiencing true intimacy. Without the possibility of intimacy, new territories in relationship are never revealed.
This Box model is world shaking: You have a Box; you are not your Box. If you understand and recontextualize your worldview to include this one idea, you will never have a conflict with another person again for the rest of your life. You will see that any conflict that arises is not your conflict. It is your Box’s conflict. And your Box does not have a conflict with the other person. Your Box has a conflict with the other person’s Box. Just because your Box has a conflict with another person’s Box does not mean that you have a conflict with them. The distinction between you and your Box is a paper-thin sliver of light that creates freedom of movement between you and your Box. This frictionless gap means that you need never take an action dictated to you by your Box. It is just your Box doing the Box thing. This gives you tremendous freedom of movement – and, what is even more exhilarating, freedom of non-movement! You do not have to react anymore. Herein lies the value of thoroughly understanding “Box mechanics,” the study of how Boxes work both internally and relationally.
Boxes Come in Layers
A first step in Box mechanics is to notice that Boxes come in layers. This means that our lives, our families, our professions and our cultures can be understood as an intertwined complex of nested Boxes.
MAP OF BOXES COME IN LAYERS
This diagram of layered Boxes is simplified to clearly indicate that we live in Boxes within Boxes. Interracial and intercultural issues become far easier to understand and approach when they are reduced to the laws of Box mechanics. Many conflicts become transparent when it is known that the first purpose of the Box is survival, and that a Box can have other purposes.
In reality, the relationships between nested Boxes are never so cleanly map-able as is suggested in this diagram. Neither are the Boxes themselves mere quadrangles as shown. Boxes have milliards of elegant and sophisticated interfacing surfaces and angles, as will be investigated later in Chapter 7, Edgework. Of importance is to recognize that no matter how twisted the relationship between Boxes is, no matter how irregularly shaped the Boxes are, they are still Boxes and subject to the laws of Box mechanics, the first law being: You have a Box. You are not your Box. And neither are they.
In the Map of Boxes Come in Layers there is one Box that is distinguishable from all the other Boxes. This is the Box of the individual person. This one Box is unique in all the world of B
oxes because it is the only Box that can take responsibility. No other Box can take responsibility. For this reason when I refer to the term “Box” in this book I will be speaking only about the Box of the single individual human being. This is the Box that, like it or not, bears consequence. This is the Box that either sustains or chooses not to sustain any of the other Boxes at work in the world. Clarification about the one Box that can take responsibility is motivating towns in America such as Point Arena, California, to pass a “Resolution to End Corporate Personhood,” meaning that the law no longer recognizes corporations as responsible entities. Then, directors of a corporation are held personally responsible for the actions of their organization instead of being able to hide behind a fictitious corporate identity.
18 Standard Boxes
Over the years of working with people we have come to recognize about eighteen standard Box defense strategies. All of them are effective. (See pp. 86-87) The list is not intended to be systematic or all inclusive. The value of this list is reading through it to recognize which defense strategies your Box uses. You may also recognize a number of your friends in this list.
None of these strategies is better or worse than any of the others. They are all very ordinary and all very human. The point is that consciousness creates freedom. As you become more and more aware of exactly how your Box defends itself and how your Box interacts with other Boxes, you gain a greater chance of being able to behave in ways not originating from your Box’s defense strategy. What was once an imperative can become an option when your Box expands.
Expanding Your Box
Expanding your Box means acquiring real behavior possibilities that were not available before. Two methods have been discovered to effectively expand the Box, a push method and a pull method. The push method comes from Werner Heisenberg. The pull method comes from Santa Claus.
Radiant Joy Brilliant Love Page 14