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Shifting baseline syndrome… bullying, low performance, judgmentalness, IQ…
I wrote about that yesterday. But today I want to write about the shifting baseline in the other direction. The direction we’d all like to shift our baseline. towards love, peace, harmony, togetherness, joy, and maybe even productivity.
Of course in a pull-popping, superfood guzzling world we all want instant.
There are a few examples for an instant shift that lasts…
Near death experience is one of them. But near death is what most dead people experienced right before they actually died… so it is risky. Gurdjieff played Russian roulette with it. I don’t recommend it.
I had the weirdest of dreams last night. People and even a dog needed to be killed. And there were boxes, endless boxes. And I was looking for some sleeping pills to make the dog first fall asleep so it doesn’t yelp. I know, I know, but it was a dream. I don’t remember the context, although something happened last night that would make even the mildest of people get angry. The coach I had an appointment with, the coach that had sent me countless reminders never showed.
I waited till the end of the scheduled call before I sent an email and went to bed.
I managed to block it out of my mind, but the dream, killing, kind of makes me think that I was angry, deep down. Not for the dude not showing, not even for disrespecting my time, but for what it means about the company, and what it probably means about their promise of handholding.
Ever since I was a first-grader, I was craving someone guiding my hand.
Guiding my handlike my first grade teacher did when we were first making letters 2-3 inches tall, on newspaper. I don’t like to be touched, but that touch was purposeful and calming… I want that.
So when the sales pitch included the words handholding, I was sold. Now I have my doubts.
Am I a handholding teacher? I think so. But few are doing anything where handholding is useful.
Anyway, back to the upward shift of the baseline…
Sometimes, it seems, watching a student do it helps the teacher understand the process fully.
Until the student distinguishes for themselves the boulder there is little or no real help a teacher can give so that the shift can happen. Just telling someone what they should do is still a have-to or a should, not theirs.
Although I loved that warm hand on mine when I was seven, I had to feel MY hand make the circle (it was the letter ‘o’) to really get the hang of it. So when that hand went away to another student’s hand, my hand was still making the near perfect circle: I got it. It was me making the circle.
There is a boulder that blocks even the sight of the way. The sight of becoming what we say we want. That boulder is often what you start first seeing and then see it disappear when you ask the question ‘what would I need to give up to have that? That result, that feeling, that beingness?’
Most people who come to me to be trained, have the boulder ‘living life in a hurry‘.
So what would they have to give up to experience being present? Experience putting all power into what they are doing?
The answer is interestingly what the Reality Challenge focuses on, the shoulds.
I should be already doing something, the next thing, or something different. That is what needs to be let go.
It’s a pesky one, like a fly, like a mosquito, you hush it away and it keeps coming back. Buzzing around your head, disturbing your concentration. I have that when I have a call… and the time of the call is getting near.
But normally I don’t think of the next thing: I allow some paper to hold it while I fully engage with what I am doing.
That, allow some paper to hold it, is a secret very few people have, or even get.
I watch people hold things in their minds, and then they are surprised that they can’t get out of their minds… Duh.
I can only see some actions, like seeing them having to reset their passwords. I have been using Roboform ever since it was created… So I don’t have to keep any of my passwords in my mind. I use a free scheduling app, so I don’t have to remember any of the actions I promised or planned. So I can be 100% with what I am doing, and not worry about the next action.
That is a boulder, thinking that you’ll remember.
Anything you need to remember is a hindrance to being present, a hindrance to creativity, curiosity, and being present. All the ways of being that are part of that pleasant way of being that you say you crave.
But thinking that you are not in a hurry when you are is a dead giveaway. Or thinking that you are done with a step because you did it once, or because you thought of it once, is delusional thinking.
There needs to be a shift… And a shift ALWAYS has a visible component.
If others haven’t remarked that something changed, then nothing has changed. You live in DELUSION CITY.
Another boulder that everyone who comes to me has is something to forgive.
We’ll make our own meaning for the word forgiving… it will make it easier AND harder.
Forgiving is giving up the right to use, giving up the right to be entitled to use what someone did, or what happened as a reason to do anything.
That was literally my first boulder when I started this work. My parents abused me as a child. And I used that to be an entitled victim. entitled to behave like a brat. Entitled to punish others. Entitled to curse. To be unkind, even cruel.
I think that entitlement is underneath sociopathy and psychopathy… not an illness. Entitlement. ‘I experienced something bad, and that makes me entitled to whatever I say it does.‘
Serial killing or simply serial not carrying your weight, not doing your part are all equally the same boulder. You need to give up the right to use it
if you want to be someone you can love, if you want to live a life you love.
Now that I am looking, it is clear that being dissed, being stood up last night could entitle me to be angry, to say f… them, or to look for greener pastures elsewhere.
I have had clients carry that entitlement to hate me, entitlement to never trust me again, after I said something they didn’t think was true about them. And that boulder still holds them back in life… still causes their misery or lack of success. Obviously I am not the only person they resent.
It’s not easy to give up the right. And it feels dangerous. What if it happens again?
It feels like opening up yourself to a world of hurt.
Interestingly what makes you vulnerable is your resistance. No one kicks an open door.
I learned that from fighting wolves. When they offer up their neck or their belly, the other stops cold…
When someone calls you a name, you can argue or you can say: you are right. No more argument.
When my student admits that she is stupid, when she admits that she is an entitled b.i.t.c.h… all fight ceases… And what is there is the love that was always there. The brilliance that was always there. The beauty, the joy, the exuberance. Underneath that entitlement crap… underneath the boulder.
I give up my right to punish, I give up my right to use hurt to justify any action. I will give as before.
PS: If you look, every beingness word (distinction) that begins with the letters ‘re’ belong to that same boulder, forgiveness.
Regret, remorse especially. Where you punish yourself. Resentment where you punish others. All the same boulder. You can give up your right to punish.
