The fourteenth secret is about total understanding. Understanding is not the same as thinking. Understanding is a skill developed in awareness. It’s what you’ve made out of your potential. A baby turns into a toddler by developing the skill of walking, for example. This skill represents a quantum leap in the baby’s awareness that reaches into every corner of existence: Brain patterns change; new sensations arise in the body; uncoordinated movements become coordinated; the eyes learn to view the world from an upright, forward-moving perspective; new objects in the environment come within reach; and from the threshold of the first step, the baby enters a world of unexplored possibilities that might culminate in climbing Mount Everest or running a marathon. So it’s not one skill we are talking about but a true quantum leap that leaves no part of the baby’s reality untouched.
The difference between a toddler and a marathon runner is that the level of understanding has deepened, not just on one front but for the whole person. Whenever you perform an action, you are actually expressing a level of understanding. In a race, two runners can be compared in such areas as mental discipline, endurance, coordination, time management, balancing obligations and relationships, and so on. When you see how far-reaching awareness really is, you begin to grasp that nothing is left out.
Understanding changes the whole picture of reality.
Being able to affect your whole reality at once is the essence of “simultaneous interdependent co-arising.” There is no limit to how far your influence can reach but to find that out you must engage life with passion. When you do anything with passion, you express every aspect of who you are. Passion releases all the energy you possess. At that moment you put yourself on the line, for if you throw everything you have into a pursuit, your defects and weaknesses are also exposed. Passion brings up everything.
This inescapable fact discourages many people, who dislike the negative parts of themselves so much, or are so intimidated by them, that they hold their passion in check in the belief that life will be made safer. Perhaps it will, but at the same time they are greatly limiting their understanding of what life can bring. In general terms, there are three levels of commitment you can express:
1. Going into a situation only far enough to meet the first real obstacle
2. Going into a situation far enough to conquer some obstacles
3. Going into a situation to conquer all obstacles
Using this model, think about something you passionately wanted to do well, whether it’s painting, mountaineering, writing, raising a child, or excelling in your profession. Honestly assess where you are in that endeavor.
Level 1: “I’m not satisfied with what I’ve accomplished. Things didn’t go the way I wanted them to. Others did a lot better than I have managed to. I lost my enthusiasm and got discouraged. I still keep doing what I have to, but mostly I’m skating on the surface. I feel I have mostly failed.”
Level 2: “I’m fairly satisfied with my accomplishment. I’m not always at my best but I keep up with the pack. I am counted on as someone who knows what they’re doing. I’ve overcome a lot to get to be this good. I feel mostly like a success.”
Level 3: “I mastered what I set out to do. People look up to me and consider me the old pro. I know the ins and outs of this whole thing, and I feel deep satisfaction about that. I rarely have to think anymore about what’s involved. My intuition carries me along. This area of my life is a major passion.”
Each level of commitment reflects the understanding you are willing to achieve. If you didn’t know human nature, you might suppose that a single activity like painting, mountaineering, or writing could be treated separately, but the whole person is affected because the whole person is being expressed. (This is why it’s said that you get to know yourself on the mountain or in front of the blank canvas.) Even if you pick a very narrow skill, like running a marathon or cooking, your whole sense of self shifts when you succeed with passion as opposed to failing or backing off.
The willingness to reach inside every part of yourself opens the door to total understanding. You place your entire identity on the line, not just an isolated part. This may sound daunting, but actually it’s the most natural way to approach any situation. When you hold some part of yourself in reserve you deny it exposure to life; you repress its energy and keep it from understanding what it needs to know. Imagine a baby who wants to walk but has these reservations:
1. I don’t want to look bad.
2. I don’t want to fall down.
3. I don’t want anyone else to watch me fail.
4. I don’t want to live with the burden of failure.
5. I don’t want to expend all my energy.
6. I don’t want any pain.
7. I want to get things over with as fast as possible.
For a baby these reservations seem absurd. If any of them applied, learning to walk would never happen, or it would happen tentatively. The chance for mastery could never present itself. Yet as adults we resort to these reservations all the time. We deny ourselves mastery as a result. No one can change the fact that all the negatives of a situation express themselves the minute the situation arises, along with all the positives. There is no escaping the internal decisions we’ve made.
Everything you’ve decided about yourself is in play at this moment.
Fortunately, these individual decisions can be reexamined and changed. Since all the negatives are right in front of you, you don’t have to go searching for them. What people experience as obstacles in life are reflections of a decision to shut out understanding. If you shut out too much understanding, you become a victim, subject to forces that bewilder and overwhelm you. These forces aren’t blind fate or misfortune; they are holes in your awareness, the places where you haven’t been able to look.
Today, try to look at one of the decisions that has kept you from totally engaging in life, which may be included in the list just above.
I don’t want to look bad: This decision involves self-image. “Looking good” means preserving an image, but images are just frozen pictures. They give the most superficial impression of who you are. Most people find it too hard to get past self-image. They fashion a certain look, a certain way of acting, a certain level of style, taste, lifestyle, and status that gets assembled into who they think they are. Their self-image is applied to every new situation with only one possible outcome: They look either good or bad. Long ago such people decided that they would never look bad if they could help it.
This decision can be countered only by your willingness to forget how you look. I’m sure you’ve seen slow-motion films of Olympic runners crossing the finish line, drenched in sweat, their faces distorted with effort, expending every last ounce of themselves. In their passion to win they haven’t the slightest care about how they look. This gives a clue to your own situation: If you are really focused on the process at hand, you won’t consider your appearance.
Today, take the following ideas and follow them through until you understand how they apply to you:
• Winning doesn’t have to look good. The two have nothing to do with each other.
• Being passionate about something looks good from the inside, which is where it really counts.
• Looking good from the inside isn’t an image. It’s a feeling of satisfaction.
• You won’t be satisfied as long as image is on your mind.
I don’t want to fall down: This decision revolves around failure, which in turn revolves around judgment. In the field of painting, every masterpiece is preceded by a sketch. Sometimes these sketches amount to a few rough scribbles; sometimes they require years and dozens of tries. Did the painter fail when he made a sketch? No, because it takes stages of development to master a skill. If you judge your early efforts to be failures, you are putting yourself at odds with a natural process.
People who are afraid to fall down usually were ridiculed or humiliated in the past. This is one area where parents pass on negative judgmen
ts with terrible effect—failing is something you inherit from someone who discouraged you. Fear gets attached to failure by connecting it to sense of self. “Falling down means I’m worthless.” Next to looking bad, the second most crippling mental reservation is fear of falling down and feeling like a worthless person.
Today, face yourself honestly and confront how much of this fear is inside you. The degree to which you judge yourself is the degree to which you need to heal. Most people say they hate to fail, but behind the word hate can be a wide range of emotions, from devastating collapse of the self to mild annoyance at not doing your best. You can sense where you belong on the scale. Give yourself a rating:
• I feel devastated when I fail. I can’t shake the feeling for days, and when I look back at my biggest failings I relive how intense the humiliation was.
• I feel bad enough when I fail that I usually walk away. It takes a lot for me to get back on the horse, but eventually I will. It’s a matter of pride and self-respect.
• I take failure in stride because it’s more important to accomplish what I want to do. I learn from my failures. There’s something positive in every setback. If you can learn from your mistakes you haven’t failed.
• I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I stay centered and watch how I perform in any situation. Each response shows me a new aspect of myself. I want to understand everything, and from that perspective each experience is like turning a new page in the book of evolution.
Having assessed where you stand, develop a program for change that is suitable to that stage.
First, people at this level are oversensitive to setbacks and take them so personally that they keep reopening old wounds. If this is you, go back to the basics. Find something very minor to accomplish, such as making an omelet or jogging around the block. Set aside time to do this activity, and as you are engaged in it, feel what it’s like to succeed. Be like a good parent and praise yourself. If things go a bit wrong, tell yourself that it’s all right. You need to reformat how you feel about setting a goal and reaching it.
Inside you there is a discouraging voice that you notice too quickly and give too much credence to. Slowly develop a connection to the voice of encouragement. That is also inside you but has been drowned out by the voice of criticism. Gradually increase the challenges you are able to face. Go from making an omelet for yourself to making one for someone else. Feel what it’s like to be praised. Absorb the fact that you deserve this praise. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else—you are where you are and nowhere else. Keep reinforcing your successes.
At least once every day, do something that looks like a success in your eyes and that earns you praise from either yourself or someone else. Be sure that the external praise is sincere. It will take time, but you will notice after a while that the voice of encouragement inside you is beginning to grow. You will learn to rely on it, and you will come to understand that it is right about you.
Second, people at this level feel bad enough about falling down that they often walk away from new challenges, yet they don’t feel so bad that they are devastated. If this is you, you need more motivation because you are on the cusp of wanting to win but are reluctant to risk failure. You could tip one way or the other. To increase your motivation, you can join a team or find a coach. Team spirit will help you override the discouraging voices inside you. A coach will keep you focused so that walking away is not an option. Pick a level of activity that won’t overtax your self-confidence. It’s more important to internalize the elements of success than to conquer a big challenge. A team doesn’t have to mean sports—find any group that has esprit de corps. It could be a jazz band, a volunteer group, or a political party. External support will help you over your internal hurdles. You will come to understand that those hurdles aren’t mountains; they can be whittled down into small peaks of achievement.
Third, people at this level are more encouraged by success than discouraged by failure. They have positive motivation in good supply. If this is you, you may succeed for a long time but eventually find that external rewards are no longer satisfying. You need to set a completely internal goal for yourself in order to grow. Among the most valuable internal goals are learning to be more intimate, learning to serve others without reward, and learning about the depths of spirituality. Aim to gain more understanding of yourself without any outside accomplishment. Over time, the distinction between success and failure will begin to soften. You will start to see that everything you’ve ever done has been about the unfolding of yourself to yourself. The greatest satisfactions in life come about when that unfolding is the only thing you need.
Fourth, people at this level have conquered failure. They enjoy every twist and turn in life, being satisfied with experience of every kind. If this is you, aim to deepen your mastery. Your remaining obstacles are subtle and belong at the level of ego. You still believe that an isolated self is having these experiences. Aim for detachment and expansion beyond this limited self. For you, the deepest spiritual texts and a personal commitment to one of the four paths will bring great satisfaction.
I don’t want anyone else to watch me fail: This decision revolves around shame. Shame is the internalized fear of the opinion of others. Their disapproval becomes your shame. The cliché that people from the East cannot bear to “lose face” refers to shame, which can be a powerful social force. The answer to shame isn’t to become shameless in your behavior. Many people try that solution as teenagers, hoping that their intense self-consciousness can be overcome by external acts of bravado, like joyriding or dressing outlandishly. If you easily feel ashamed, you’ve made an internal decision that needs to be changed.
First, realize that what others think about you is often dependent on whether your actions are good or bad in their eyes. Social judgment is inescapable, and we are all affected by it. However, others will try to shame you through words, tone of voice, and behavior. Stand aside from your own situation and watch how this works. Read a tabloid or watch a celebrity gossip show. Be aware of the constant stream of insinuation and judgment. Get comfortable with the fact that such treatment of others exists. You aren’t here to change it, only to become aware of how it works.
Second, withdraw from shaming others. This behavior is a disguise for you. You think that if you gossip, tear people down, try to look superior, or in any other way go on the attack, you will find protection from your own vulnerability. In reality, all you are doing is immersing yourself in the culture of shame. Step away; you can’t afford to be there any longer.
Third, find ways to earn praise that makes you feel like a good person. This is different from praise for what you accomplish. You no doubt can do many things that would get somebody else to say you did a good job. But what you lack is praise that heals your sense of shame. That can come only when emotions are at stake. You need to feel the warmth of someone else’s gratitude; you need to see admiration for you in somebody’s eyes. I’d suggest service to the poor, the elderly, or the sick. Devote some time in a volunteer program to help the needy in any way that you define that term. Until you reconnect on the basis of love, with no hint of personal criticism, you won’t be able to separate yourself from feelings of shame.
I don’t want to live with the burden of failure: This decision revolves around guilt. Guilt is the internal knowledge of wrongdoing. As such, it has its place as a healthy reminder from your conscience. But when guilt gets attached to the wrong thing, it can be destructive and unhealthy. Guilty people suffer most from the inability to tell thoughts from deeds. They are burdened by things that are purely mental rather than actions in the world. Sometimes this is called “sinning in your heart.” Whatever name you give to it, guilt makes you feel like a failure because of your horrible past.
Guilty people don’t want to face new challenges for fear that when they fail, they will feel more guilty, adding to the burden of the past. To them this sounds reasonable, but in actuality, guilt itself is extremely unre
asonable. As with shame, you can break guilt down into its irrational components:
• Guilt doesn’t accurately measure good and bad. It can make you suffer for trivial reasons.
• Guilt is a blanket that tries to cover everything. It makes you feel guilty about people and things that have no bearing on your guilty actions except that they happen to be in the vicinity.
• Guilt makes you feel overly responsible. You believe you caused bad things to happen that in truth had nothing to do with you.
• Guilt is prejudiced. It finds you wrong all the time without any chance of reprieve.
When you understand these four things you can begin to apply them to yourself. Don’t try to force guilt to go away. Have your guilty reaction, let it be what it is, but then ask yourself: “Did I really do something bad?” “Would I condemn someone else who did the same thing?” “Did I do the best I could under the circumstances?” These questions help you get a more objective sense of good and bad. If you find yourself in doubt, seek the opinion of a nonguilty, noncondemning person.
“Who did I actually hurt?” Be specific; don’t let guilt be a blanket. You may find that you’ve never really hurt anyone. If you still think you have, go to the person and ask how he or she feels. Discuss your actions. Try to reach the point where you can ask forgiveness. When it is given, accept it as genuine. Write the forgiveness down as a mental note. Whenever your guilty voice accuses you again, hold up the piece of paper that proves you’ve been forgiven, saying, “See? It doesn’t matter how you try and make me feel. The person I actually harmed doesn’t care anymore.”