Choosing Guideposts for Living

I have tried to capture the formula for happiness in what was previously known as my Happiness Keys Document. (Now it is encapsulated in a compendium with the working title: Raederle’s Pocketbook of Self-Directed Wisdom.) This formulaic approach has aided me many times, but it fails to capture the subjective stream-of-consciousness that makes me feel like “myself” – which is, in my own estimation, a happy (or content) version of myself.

For example, just last night I was revisited by the realization of why reading a particular type of nonfiction feels beneficial and regulating to my wellbeing. Reading the heartfelt perspectives of highly intelligent individuals – who had something they burned to share – helps ground me in a will to live through my experience of relation, inspiration, and curiosity. It lends purpose to my life – not through that which I create – but through giving life itself purpose. Works of nonfiction – or philosophy loosely draped in fiction – remind me that there is a “great truth task” (as Dr. Bronner soap bottles tell us), and I am part of that task just by sensing, dreaming, and articulating.

This insight into the value of a certain kind of nonfiction was preceded by the insight that reading itself – even of fiction – helps order my mind through the parade of syntax, narrative, and reason. The simple fact that another being possesses the ability to create a linear stream of words which will carry me through a non-linear stream of symbols is deeply heartening. Their ability to render art in the form of story and concept is so beautiful to behold that it fills my heart with its own yearning to be, whilst simultaneously filling my mind with a desire to understand. My whole being is filled up with a need to create in response to the creations of others.

Perhaps for someone like myself, who requires the dual nourishment of symbology and beauty, my interpretive creations which are made in response to the creations of others, is the true conversation which I most dearly wish to engage in. This appears, for example, in my desire to lead workshops. The workshop itself is something I devise in response to the creations of luminaries who have inspired me, and the participants in the workshop are invited to reply with their own creations. Yet these “conversations” – the game of tag we can play with our creations – have hitherto left me unsatisfied. Creation is an outpouring, and I crave an equitable replenishment from liberated beings, yet I’m surrounded by those held in the shackles of institutionalized thought. The few who have not been shackled are weighed down by the seemingly insurmountable fatigue of constantly being rebuked and condemned by tamed perceptions and judgments.

Returning to the earlier subject: the simple truth of my wishing to formulate my happiness points to a, perhaps troubling, truth about my beliefs: I feel it is superior to be happy. Furthermore, I identify with my happy (or at least content) self in a way that I do not with my unhappy self. My other subjective experiences resent this, and hate having this value (of happiness being superior) thrust at me in any way – particularly if I am unhappy at the time.

Statements which assume happiness is superior include, “When you’re feeling more like yourself,” and, “Happiness is a choice,” and, “When you come around,” and “Things will be more clear by the light of day.” Our culture assumes we will be more sober and sound when we are free from unhappy feelings. Yet I disavow myself of this assumption! The greatest thoughts are not wholly conceived from frameworks of opioid optimism, nor from pits of pessimism. Great wisdom comes from interweaving the cumulative lessons of grief, fear, joy, and satisfaction.

I’m not leading myself down the rabbit-hole which my Dzogchen-minded friend took me on some months ago: that technically, there is nothing objectively superior about health, and that I’ve simply chosen to enshrine it. After having rejected the path his insight led me down, I said to him, “I need a guiding star.” His insight had served as an intellectual distraction, yet what I had truly wanted was helpful guidance.

Even though it is not my aim to wander back down the path of questioning “rightness” along lines of total objectivity, it is useful to note that I’ve enshrined happiness in the same way that I’ve enshrined health – to the point of conflating them with one another. Just because they share a pedestal doesn’t mean they are necessarily related, yet, I believe them to be. And as my journaling revealed to me yesterday, I must second-guess myself far less often. I wish to be as decisive as I was at twenty-nine, if not as I was at nineteen, and that requires a great-deal of self-trust.

Self-trust may be one of the more ephemeral core elements of my formula for happiness. While reading aids me in creating the subjective internal experience I crave, it isn’t the reading in and of itself which I need. It is the camaraderie with another creative, inquisitive being that gives me a greater sense of confidence and self-trust. Those are some of the actual experiences which I need. 

Yet when I’m not experiencing confidence and self-trust, it is too easy to fall into a paradox: how can I trust my own notions of these abstract concepts when I’m experiencing a lack of trust in my own perceptions? This is why one’s ego fights so desperately to defend its own perspective: self doubt can lead to a literal sort of insanity, where no thought or feeling can be trusted. And perhaps this is why genius intellect is rare: only the individuals who can somehow question everything and doubt all conclusions – without doubting their own core perceiving self – can actually achieve nuanced understandings. And of those who can achieve the understandings themselves, only those who can question and doubt endlessly without doubting their ability to communicate can actually go forward and teach the subtle differentiations.

Once again returning to the initial topic: I’m unsure how to capture a subjective state of being in a formula. I could, perhaps, write a hypnotic script for entering a certain state of consciousness, but that prickles my conscience. Forcing myself out of one state into another reeks of heavy-handed control and force. Is it not violent to unilaterally decide that some particular state I’m in is inferior, and thus I should immediately and utterly convert myself to some superior state? Isn’t that the reason why we now possess the coined phrase “toxic positivity?”

It seems wrong to force the change upon myself, like an overbearing parent blathering about “knowing what’s best,” yet it also is the case that I often want out of whatever mental labyrinth in which I feel trapped. Whenever I feel the need to be “rescued” or “helped” is exactly when my “happiness formula” becomes relevant. Thus, there does seem to be a consensus of my inner counsel in the value of possessing an effective mood-shifting formula.

In fact, this goes back to the two penultimate goals which I’ve enshrined: health and happiness. These are logical things to revere above all else because all else which I value emerges from them. 

For example, I value honesty and transparency. If I am not a healthy, happy person, I may not be able to “afford” the rigors of being transparent. It requires a great deal more energy to be authentic without being an ass than it does to simply obscure the truth with polite “white lies.” 

To say that I am “allergic” to something simplifies a conversation, but it also eliminates the beautiful potentials created by true transparency: an enlightening conversation. The “innocent” lie of convenience becomes a wall between me and the other person, preventing true connection or mutual edification. Perhaps this person I’ve announced an “allergy” to has a complex relationship with their health too – or at least has a close friend who does – and has something useful to tell me; I would never discover what they know because I have planted myself in a field of convenience where little enlightenment ever blossoms.

My conclusion is that I’ve enshrined health and happiness rightfully. So it follows that every tool which substantially aids me in the endless process of pursuing H and H is worth possessing. So now I may also conclude that a formula for happiness – and for health – is a worthy goal of paramount importance.

Having established the “goodness” or “right-headedness” of working on perfecting a happiness formula, I can continue to contemplate how to create pathways to happiness which are  more effective than the formula I have assembled over the years.

It seems safe to say that a concrete bulleted list denoting the keys to my happiness is rather limited in its effectiveness. It can point to literal gaps in my most effective self-regulation strategies (such as failure to read engaging books), but it doesn’t serve as a hypnotic induction for changing my state of consciousness. Yet, ironically, the reading of said engaging books actually does serve as said hypnotic induction. 

The hypnotic induction is important, but it is the new state of being which is the goal. As my own formula states, one of the keys to my happiness is “having fulfilling time spent in a wide variety of my fragments” including “vulnerable, creative, guru, student, sexual, driven, spiritual, and playful.” In other words, part of what makes me happy is the visitation to many different subjective states. Each subjective state can feel like becoming a different persona possessing different values and goals, but as different as each state may feel, they are all parts of myself, and to “feel whole” requires visiting each state. Hence why my accumulated wisdom on my own personal happiness states I should have fulfilling time in a wide variety of my subjective states over the course of any given week. 

Merely existing in one or two states over the course of five to seven days makes me quite miserable – which is why I find it anathema to commit to the intense specialization required to make a profitable career in modern times. Being a whole, happy, healthy person is directly at odds with this degree of specialization – for me, at least. Thus, I can toss the idea that I should ever attempt to contort myself into the sort of reliability which most entrepreneurs expect of themselves; an agent or marketer could do that with my work, but I can not. In order to maintain my own healthy engagement in life – a will to participate in the “great truth task” – I must allow, and strongly encourage, a cascading plethora of internal states.

Instead of berating myself for the transition from being an energetic extroverted socialite last week, to being a subdued introspecting writer this week, I can applaud myself for courageously accepting the ever-shifting landscape of what it means to support my health and happiness. And in this self-applause I continue to rebuild the self-trust I misplaced last year.

Further Reflections

What I wrote earlier points directly to why I value inspiration so highly. Inspiration is when we are on the path of “the great truth task.” One could say it is the penultimate indication of health because it is when we are doing what we are meant to be doing. Inspiration points the way, creating a hierarchy of priorities in any given moment with deep accuracy. This is why I feel very directed and purposeful when I am inspired – and conversely quite lost and directionless when inspiration is blocked.

Inspiration becomes blocked when one feels disempowered. One has to believe one is capable of achieving one’s desires. Furthermore, one must have a desire. This is why I reject the idea that we should ever pursue the elimination of desires. To yearn for something seems to be the pinnacle of aliveness. Since I am using health and happiness as my guiding stars – and the will to live that these entail – desire is another lauded experience. This returns me to self-trust, because we must trust that our own desire is actually valid and useful, and that our attempts to bring about what we desire will be fruitful – which is another way of saying that we must experience a degree of empowerment in order to trust ourselves.

Your Identity = Your Boundaries

 

Your identity is the sum of your boundaries: the things to which you say “Yes,” and the things which you say “No.”

What is your favorite food? Your answer is a preference, a boundary, a piece of your selfhood. 

To tell you, “No, that’s not your favorite food,” is to gaslight you.

To tell you, “That’s not a very good choice,” may shame you.

To tell you, “You must choose something else instead,” is to violate you – by violating your boundaries. 

Boundary violation is so painful because it is an attack on our right to selfhood, identity, and ego. When you say “I,” you are referring to your collection of boundaries, which are your preferences. Some of those preferences are needs – which may include physical sovereignty (for example, not being attacked). Some of those preferences are wants – which may include getting to eat your favorite food every day. Needs are rigid boundaries which, when compromised, leave you feeling like less of yourself – less of a whole human being. Wants are soft boundaries which are flexible, workable, shiftable; unmet wants don’t lead to feeling like your selfhood is ruptured.

Your “I” is always partially obscured – still being uncovered by you as your emotions serve as a guidance system, reflecting back to you your personal truths. It can never be wholly seen at once because it is in flux. As you learn, your preferences in life evolve. Sometimes a good friend may respectfully question your boundaries, helping reflect your choices back to yourself. Something such as our “favorite food” will likely change many times. Yet our most critical needs – such as nourishment and compassion – remain constant.

The archetypal notion of codependency is sacrificing critical needs – fundamental parts of your selfhood – in order to experience confluence with someone else. The archetypal notion of narcissism is being unwilling to bend – even about your wants – even if bending could support someone else’s needs. Both perspectives fail to find the deepest intimacy which is found when both parties can put their whole selves forward. The largest difference between the two is that narcissists don’t believe real love is possible for them – or that it even exists at all.

Love is including someone else in your selfhood: to evaluate, prioritize, and consider another person’s boundaries alongside your boundaries. Instead of “you versus them,” the evaluation process becomes, “this need,” versus “that need.” It doesn’t matter whose needs they are, but only how important each need is to the wellbeing of all the networked beings who share love for one another.

Loving requires understanding. You can not include someone else’s needs as part of your own needs if you don’t understand their needs. If you assume that other beings need the same things as you, then you will kill your fish by tucking it into your bed, and you will kill your dog by feeding it chocolate, and you will kill your spouse by starving them of the true intimacy that can only come from truly knowing them.

A loving marriage is built on knowing each other deeply – as completely as possible – and utilizing that knowledge to be able to take their needs into account with every action you take. When choosing a vocation or vacation, ask how this affects your wife. When choosing to meditate or medicate, ask how this affects your husband. Whether you’re arranging your calendar or your closet, ask how this affects your spouse.

A community is built on every community member showing every other member this same love: to learn about them, to come to understand them, to advocate for them. Community takes every person’s boundaries – both needs and wants – and cares for all of them together.

Community doesn’t assume that all people are equal. When it comes to any skill, individuals can be ranked on their ability to perform that skill. This ranking creates hierarchies. Hierarchies of capability aren’t inherently dangerous, but many people instinctively balk at anything which proposes some people are somehow “better” than others – because all too often this is conflated with “more deserving.” Yet true belonging in a community isn’t determined by the sum of your skills: your merit isn’t what makes your needs valid. Community assumes that all of its members have equally valid selfhood, and thus, equally valid boundaries.

Community isn’t built by everyone choking back their feelings and self-sacrificing. Neither community nor marriage can be healthy through compromise – where everyone cuts a piece of their identity away for “the greater good.” If everyone is bleeding from the wounds of their damaged selfhood, it is “a greater bad.” Instead of compromising ourselves for each other, we can instead vulnerably express the truth of our beings and work toward true consensus.

Consensus is the process of understanding, validating, and prioritizing the boundaries of every member of a group – which could be a family, a polycule, a tribe, a village, a team, or a company. When one person in the group says, “This is unacceptable to me,” we must respond with curiosity and compassion. Their “No” may be, in turn, a “No” for us, but we must set that aside for the moment and learn more about their position. We can’t not respond to their truth with love until we understand.

Consensus may be reached through someone retracting a boundary they previously stated. However, in order for this to be a healthy choice, it must be something that is chosen through a profound internal shift. Something that was a “No” for you may become a “Yes” when your understanding of someone else’s need causes a change of heart for you. This transforms something that would have been a compromise – leading to resentment – into something you feel grateful you can give to another cherished being.

Giving something to another should feel warm and good. If, instead, it burns and feels bad, it is because we have confused giving with giving up. To give up part of ourselves – to violate our own boundaries – is not a gift. When you are including others as part of yourself, you can not crowd your selfhood out of the picture. Your wellbeing is connected to theirs, and thus, hurting yourself is also hurting them – and thus, you can not hurt yourself for their benefit. 

Life-affirming communal experience requires knowing the difference between your needs and wants, and being able to put the vulnerable truth of your needs on the table – as well as being flexible about your wants to make space for the needs of others. You must be able to weigh the boundaries of others – and your own – on the same scale. If everyone vulnerably shares their truth, we can work toward solutions that make everyone more whole. Only when everything is shared, and every idea is tried, can we establish whether there is a true incompatibility.

Incompatibility is when our deepest needs don’t align with someone else’s deepest needs. This creates an irreparable boundary conflict. In these cases, individuals may have to leave a job, marriage, or community. But if we are accustomed to the creative problem-solving required to reach true consensus, we may choose to change the context of how we relate to someone rather than cutting them from our lives. Maybe you stay with the company, but move to another position. Maybe you stay married, but create separate sleeping spaces. Maybe you stay in the community, but change the role you play within it.

Both codependency and narcissism believe incompatibility is the baseline reality. It is the belief that you can not be a self-actualized person and have connection, companionship, and community simultaneously. Codependency expresses this belief in incompatibility through self-sacrifice – preemptively violating one’s own boundaries in favor of smoothing relations with others. Narcissism believes that, in addition to being incompatible, connection is impossible, and thus a pure narcissist fails to bend any boundary for any reason. This belief in the conflict between self-actualization and connection is what I call the co-narc pattern. 

Self-actualization is bringing the authentic truth of your boundaries in alignment with the life you’re living. This doesn’t mean you have an epiphany about yourself and immediately abandon people you made commitments to, but it may mean that you tell them honestly about what you’ve realized about yourself and ask them if they see any way to accommodate your truth alongside theirs. This process is about working toward truly honoring yourself whilst also honoring all the creatures with whom you share a bond.

Honoring ourselves is both about having the integrity to listen to our own inner voices of truth and giving others who have become attached to us the opportunity to hear those truths and reflect upon them. Being honorable is listening to their input and needs – even if it seems inevitable that the best course is to change the roles we are playing in each other’s lives.

To be a person of integrity is to integrate our thoughts, emotions, and actions into an aligned stream all working together to uphold our boundaries. When integral, harmonious cooperation is available within the individual, then it is more readily expanded to dyadic bonds, their familial unit, and to their wider community. When people are integrating –  working for one another’s wholeness – great healing becomes possible.

Healing is experiencing the opposite of the pains we’ve been through. These pains consist of boundary violations: some which hurt us by enmeshing us and others which hurt us by abandoning us. Enmeshment traumas include invalidating, caging, and attacking. Abandonment traumas include betrayals, loneliness, and withdrawals. True loving slowly works to heal both kinds of wounds, as it both respects our autonomous, integral selves (soothing enmeshment wounds) whilst also offering the intimacy found in vulnerable consensus-making (soothing abandonment wounds).

Intimacy is seeing into others; loving is compassionately acting on what we see. When the staggering power of this is grasped, we can understand the wisdom in teachings such as loving thy neighbor as oneself – loving thy enemy as oneself. To love our spouse, our neighbor, and even our enemy is to understand, validate, and caretake their boundaries – their selfhood.

When we can caretake the boundaries of all beings in one grand, compassionate consensus process, then we can have world peace. We are “all one or none” – we suffer the consequences of everyone’s trauma. Every shooting, bombing, and war started with a child who suffered deeply and was cut off from connection. When the whole world becomes one community, then we will finally leave the narcissistic relationship we have with the planet, and begin healing the wounds we’ve left on Gaia herself.

True Belonging, Seeking Containment & How Modern Life Limits Connection

True belonging is that feeling where you know that your participation in life itself is completely welcome. It’s taking a breath of air and knowing that you have a right to it. It’s opening your arms and fully expecting a loving embrace. It is opening your mouth and knowing that the words that come from your heart will be received and heard. So few of us know what this type of belonging even means, and even less of us have ever tasted it, much less lived inside it. 

We are always looking for containment in this modern world because we have lost community. True belonging is perhaps too complete and perfect of a concept to hope for. 

We don’t really understand true belonging, because we don’t have it modeled for us and we don’t experience it. But we have lesser forms of it. We have lesser forms of containment – and connection.

The forms of containment available to us may be found where some form of belonging and connection meet. Containment is the primary reason why seeing a therapist does anything for us. And yet, you don’t actually belong there in a “true belonging” sense. Are you aiming for a relationship, but instead simply interacting with a human paid to be a reflection of you? You’re not allowed to know them in return; you are told that your relationship must be limited in order for it to be healing. 

Maybe your experience is the exception, but for most of us, “therapeutic relationships” are chained up by rules and regulations, forced to eke out the bare minimum of connection from a sterile, unidirectional relationship. When one-direction relationships are the ones that are “allowed” to be healing, is it any wonder so many of us are caught up in para-social relationships, or living codependently to someone who doesn’t really see us? After all, aren’t healing relationships limited to flowing in one direction? That’s what the modern therapy model tells us.

There is a reason that so many people don’t want to pay for intimacy of any kind. We want to belong totally, and have multi-directional relationships. We want to trade everything in ourselves for everything outside ourselves. That’s what a true social species is about. Sure, it’s still a barter, but it’s everything for everything. My soul for yours, and yours for mine. 

We belong with each other, but we also belong to each other. Ownership is no longer a bad concept when you would never act against the best interests of your fellow humans. Ownership means to take the utmost care, to shepherd those who belong to you, to take a position as protector. 

Perhaps the closest we get to belonging is to start our own family. We can say that our children belong to us. If we are fortunate, we can say that our spouse, and parents, and maybe even siblings, and grandparents, are ours as well. This is where we belong. It is our home. It is our family dinner. It is our family tradition. These are our family values. These things are deeply soothing to the social animal that we are.

We are one of the most relationally dependent species to ever walk the earth. Our nervous system demands human connection. Our brain’s chemical balance requires it. Our microbiome symbiosis expects it. Our ability to thrive absolutely depends on it.

When we have true containment and belonging at home, we don’t feel so afraid. 

Grief can only happen with containment. We will only grieve insofar as we find containment, and lacking community, we may do our best with the containment offered by music, a journal entry, a parts work session, a bath, a walk in a forest, a cuddle with a cat, or in singing a song. We’ll make do with the catharsis of watching other people grieve on television, or reading about a character in a book with whom we identify. We’ll make do, make do, make do. But all of us are still carrying so much unprocessed grief because none of us have the true belonging which would allow us to express everything in our hearts and feel truly spent, wholly seen, finally complete.

Imagine people who have had the sense of total containment, total belonging their entire life. They’ve never felt disconnected or isolated. These healthy individuals would never agree to go do work that doesn’t speak to their conscience – much less work for a stranger who does not hold their best interests in their heart. These strong people would never need to turn to more ephemeral senses of containment or connection, like I do with social media. They wouldn’t need to chase fame, seek meaning through academic validation, or grapple with their grief through thousands of pages of journaling.

People are so starved for belonging, for a container to hold all of their emotions, they will turn to whatever alternatives are available. These alternatives may carry religious or political connotations – yet the desperate inner child inside each of us may sacrifice one’s ability to critically assess what is happening, as long as we can soothe our biggest inborn need: to be part of the social group. 

A baby that is not touched, regardless of whether it is fed and otherwise healthy, will die. Social needs are the biggest ones we have, which is why people will lie to themselves, hurt themselves, lie to others, and stay in abusive relationships. We will do anything to continue to receive whatever limited belonging we are getting. We hold onto it like it is our life itself – because it is.

It may be a relationship where you are beaten daily – verbally, emotionally, mentally, or even physically. Yet any form of belonging is better than none.

When you understand that everyone needs this so desperately, so completely, it becomes easier to have compassion for every person.

Power Outage

Within seconds of waking, I noticed the silence. No air filters, vents, or anything else whirring.

The power outage this morning was only an hour long, but there was no way to be sure how long it would last. Within minutes I noticed the trade off between heat conservation and daylight. 

If I open the shades, I get enough light to see things, but now I’m letting the warmth out. If we didn’t have a wood stove for heat, this would be a serious concern. 

What if the power didn’t come back for days? How would keep our food cold? Would we put everything outside in the snow?

We decided to fill up a container with snow and put it into the fridge when we some morning selections. If we did this every time we needed something from the fridge, we could probably keep it cold all day. 

There was water in the sink soaking some dirty dishes. We carefully transferred this into a bucket to bring up to the bathroom. That way, when someone took it dump, we could still flush.

Despite being highly aware of the power outage, and trying to conserve things like cold in the refrigerator, warmth in the bedrooms, and water – reflexes would still attempt to turn on a light. We also didn’t anticipate how dark the fridge would be when we opened it: we needed a flashlight for the process of exchanging snow for beverages.

Amongst these concerns and precautions, I noticed a relief. Barred from using my computer, pressured to conserve power on my phone, now there wasn’t much to do with myself. I could relax, crochet, play board game, read a book. Cut off from the rest of the world, watching the snow outside the windows, it felt like Christmas: a winter time to focus on family, crafts, gathering, laughter.

And then the power was back. All of the sudden it seemed silly to be boiling water on the stove. Now there was this bucket of water in the bathroom that we didn’t need to be there. More containers of snow on the front porch. But as I write this, the power just flickered again. So we won’t put away our preparations just yet.

And perhaps I won’t sit at my desk all day. A taste of winter spirit is good medicine.