3) Wholeness: The Power of Self-care
Hurtful actions come from insecurity
Aristotle said “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”
Emotions are tools of change. To sail our boat, we need the wind, but we need to redirect the wind in the right direction. Emotions, too, need to be directed at the right person or situation. Anger, fear, jealousy, or frustration can each be a force for positive change when directed at the true source of our problems but can be hurtful when expressed toward an unsuspecting bystander. We need to “aim not tame.” (from The Winning Edge) In psychology, these ideas are well understood in terms of transference or projection. (For original references, see Jung and Freud.)
Each action we take can either lead toward resolving pain or causing pain, depending on how well the action matches the circumstance. If my child asks for homework help but I am busy with a stressful email, I have a choice. If I am short-tempered with her, I can reinforce a message that she shouldn’t ask for help because it’s not safe. But if I am open and smile at her, even if I say no, I have contributed to a feeling of security. When we look through a lens warped by stress or otherwise, we express ourselves toward the wrong person or for the wrong reason.
This is more likely to happen when we feel insecure or powerless. When we are feeling insecure about our upcoming workday, we might end up snapping at our spouse for not emptying the dishwasher. If we feel threatened by the other side, we might negotiate from a stance of “my way or the highway”.
Caring for ourselves—helping ourselves feel safe—is a fundamental contributor to how we will respond when these situations arise. I suggest that unhappiness or tension sometimes occur because we fail to cultivate a sense of inner safety within ourselves. In these situations, synchronicity can be a powerful tool for widening our context and making ourselves feel safe in an uncertain world.
Self-care is not Self-interest
To sail our boat along a course of increasing harmony, justice, and well-being we can focus a lot on self-care. Self-care might be thought of also as self-love, depending on your preference. In my view, self-care is not an egoic focus on the self, but a commitment to noticing habitual insecurity (as was discussed in an earlier post) and continually adjusting the lens we look through.
In some cases I would say that self-interest comes from a sense of lack while self-care is about discovering Wholeness.
Here, Wholeness can mean seeing yourself clearly, so that your own motivations and needs are not hidden. When you see yourself clearly you are also likely to see your situation clearly, and have a better sense of what effective action looks like. When you realize why you are stressed, you are more able to restrain yourself from taking it out on innocent people around you.
When we misdirect our emotions and experience conflict in our relationships, we can look inside ourselves to see whether we are acting from self-interest. Snapping at our spouse when we are really fearful about something happening at work just increases the sense of separation. We may feel scared about something, and in trying to make ourselves feel better (self-interest) we isolate ourselves.
On the other hand, self-care requires fearlessness and courage. It requires courage to take responsibility for our filters rather than spinning stories to make the situation somebody else’s fault. By opening up to my spouse about my fear, the issue of the dishwasher becomes less relevant and we increase our closeness. This is fearlessness, and it is what I mean by self-care.
The enemy of progress is usually inside of ourselves. If we turn outward for answers or to assign blame, we are not experiencing Wholeness. Being willing to see our own role in our problems is an act of self-care because it allows us to more quickly identify our patterns and take action to really feel better.
Clarity leads to freedom
Author and martial artist Geoff Thompson describes his experience of “spiritual awakening” in terms which vividly illustrate Wholeness to me. Geoff had a flash of personal insight, but rather than brimming with over-confidence or arrogance, he was struck with horror at the many mistakes he had made in the past, mistakes to which he had previously been blind. For instance, he contacted his ex-wife out of the blue and apologized for how unkind he had been to her during their divorce. His only agenda was that he felt compelled to bring Wholeness to his life.
When we are at our best, the quest for Wholeness is more powerful than the urge to be right. Prior to this moment, Geoff couldn’t see himself clearly. He felt he was right, and she was wrong. But he discovered that his behavior had been caused by something hidden from view, maybe a wish to be respected or appreciated. By unconsciously acting from unmet needs, we can find ourselves saying hurtful things.
When we are unconscious of certain aspects of ourselves, it is like being fractured. Like a glass globe that has been shattered, we do not have access to the entire map, only specific shards. We react to one shard without seeing the other related shards.
When we catch glimpses of ourselves acting in self-interest, we can make different choices and get free of old patterns. Geoff’s clarity on his own needs gave him agency to make different choices. Realizing we are wrong can mean freedom from the illusion that we are right!
Self-care lies at the bottom of this because the need to be respected, or loved, or appreciated comes from inside ourselves. Instead of trying to get someone else to respect us, we can identify the filter in us that keeps us from feeling respected and peel back to get beneath it. Underneath the filter, Wholeness exists.
Synchronicity as a tool for self-care
The shift from self-interest to self-care can be thought of as a shift from insecurity (“What can I gain from this?”) to curiosity (“What am I learning from this?”). This is where I turn to Jung’s notion of synchronicity, and Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of flow. By feeling curious about how our experiences flow together in a wider context, we are able to learn something meaningful from each experience.
Synchronicities, or in Jewish tradition “kismet,” are not predictable, but they do seem to be reliable. Some people naturally come to develop a trust in nature’s kismet. Steve Jobs of Apple Computer said this trust is essential, whether it is trust in “your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever…” It guided him to make use of all the elements of his past to create the first Macintosh computer and define a revolution in technology.
I’ve proposed a model for synchronicity based on original research in the foundations of quantum mechanics called “meaningful history selection”. Whatever the correct description is, the key element is that these experiences give structure to life. They provide a broad context for our experiences within which our troubles can be given meaning. When our troubles have meaning, they become less personal, and we feel less threatened.
Synchronicity can help us be confident even when the world is uncertain. It can help us feel safe financially without obsessing over our wealth, or safe in a relationship without checking in constantly with the person. Strategic trust in synchronicity is an act of self-care.
It takes courage to focus on “How can I be more caring?” instead of “How can I be right?” Through this shift we make the world better because we direct our emotions at the appropriate targets. We choose healing rather than scapegoating, addressing the source of the problem without adding new layers to it.
Imagine two people, Alice and Bob, have a conflict at work. Bob is thinking about how to communicate why he’s upset to Alice. Before they get a chance to talk about it, Bob goes to the movies with his family and suddenly has a new insight from the movie. Somewhere in the plot of the movie is a scene which he identifies with, and he realizes Alice isn’t the only one to blame. He becomes more open to what she has to say, no longer defensive but willing to learn.
Seeing ourselves completely is a leap to Wholeness. The clarity that synchronicity helps us find can help both Alice and Bob, or Geoff and his ex-wife, to notice their lenses and catch the opportunities in which to adjust them.
Life often repeats itself—I think of this as an example of synchronicity—but we don’t need to be afraid of these recurring moments. They are teachable moments. They reflect us to ourselves, so that we can learn how to care for ourselves and others to a greater degree.