Love is openness. When you allow yourself to open, then love can flow unimpeded. When your heart is open, you can commune with your lover, or anyone else. You can open with them in oneness. Whether you are having sex or discussing politics, you can open and commune as one love expressing itself through two bodies.

When you are open and the other is not, you will feel it. When your lover lashes out at you with vicious criticism, your heart feels slashed and wounded.

Eventually, your heart closes in order to feel less vulnerable. Yet you still desire love. Behind your walls of protection, your yearning backs up into frustration and then anger. Filling with rage, you may finally strike out at your lover, trying to hurt the one who has hurt you. You both close even more. You want their love and they won’t give it to you, so you punish your lover for not loving you, and then he or she closes down more and punishes you back.

To break this cycle of closure, you can learn to practice love. You can practice remaining open even when your heart reflexively wants to close in order to guard itself from hurt. You can choose to feel the hurt and practice to stay open. Instead of closing in anger, allow yourself to feel your deep sorrow, your raw yearning, the wounding slashes of your lover’s anger, and practice opening. By staying open, the cycle is broken, and your love awaits your lover’s readiness to open.

In response to your lover’s hurtful words and actions, you can practice love. Instead of holding your breath, you can breathe deeply and fully. Instead of tensing your body, you can relax your belly while you breathe and feel deep hurt. Instead of turning away, you can look into your lover’s eyes while you feel their pain. You can serve your lover’s openness by offering yours.

Feel into your lover’s heart, beating yearningly, waiting for love behind their unloving guard. Rather than reacting to unlove by closing down, you can remain open and deeply connected, breathing and feeling the deep heart openness which hides behind the hurt of your lover.

You can practice this openness and deep heart-contact with everyone you love—in fact, with everyone. Whoever you are with, look into their eyes. Feel through their mask or social face, and feel into their heart’s desire; they want to open, to connect and feel deep love, just like you do.

With whomever you choose, feel through their layers of habitual guardedness, their muscular tension, their lonely closure and protection. Without actually touching them, you can allow your heart to feel theirs. Inhale and exhale love with them as if doing heart-to-heart resuscitation from a distance. All of this can take place in a fraction of a second, casually, even with a grocery store clerk who remains unaware of any practice on your part.

Life is a lesson of love. Your life feels full in every moment you stay open as love, however painful or joyous the love is. If you close, even for a moment, then you are creating unfulfillment in your heart and pain in the heart of those who would open in love with you.

For your life to feel profound and full of love’s power, practice opening at all times, including times of hurt. Feel and breathe your heart’s deep hurt, and the hurt of others, without closing. Offer the openness of your heart to everyone, and especially to those who are wounding you. The only alternative is to close and live unfulfilled.

David Deida, Naked Buddhism (Later released as Blue Truth)

So we learn to be safe. We lock our car doors, put a seatbelt on, drive defensively, and pay more for a car with airbags. Safety first. And a lot of times, like with the common car, our fear is useful in order to protect our physical selves. If our body dies, that’s kinda the end. So an extra couple hundred bucks for airbags? No problem.

But there’s another kind of fear, outside of the realm of your physical body, that we respond to. I believe it could be argued that the loss of love – another way of saying it is that our heart might get hurt – is at the root of all emotional fears.

We do things to “play it safe” with our emotions. We erect walls around our hearts, we put on personas in public that we believe others will more readily accept, we hide our deepest and truest selves, and we generally don’t let people in past a certain point. If we did, if we truly opened our hearts to someone, we risk heartbreak…a risk with consequences we believe are far too great.

We go through life getting people to like our personas. We enjoy the company of “nice,” and “safe” people. People who are just as messed up as us and disallowing of their heart to be seen. After all, they couldn’t risk heartbreak either. And there we go through life, falling in love with personas who have fallen in love with our own personas…our egos fighting each other…wondering why we’re never truly seen and why we’re always struggling to relax into our own deepest nature.

And we do this in the hopes that people will see our heart, yet we’re not willing to show our own.

And then someone comes along. And they want you to see their heart. They want you to see that you’re in their heart. And they want to help you dissolve the protective walls around your heart with love, one at a time, day by day, for the rest of your life.

And if you believe the risk of the consequences is too great, you won’t let them in. The problem is that the love you want requires risking your heart. To be Love is to be vulnerable.

And the fear that started all of it becomes the fear you live with. Its insidious nature preventing you from the thing you wanted to be all along: Love.

The opposite of fear isn’t courage. Courage is taking action alongside or in the face of fear. The opposite of fear is Love. When you are Love, you are not afraid. When you penetrate fear with love, it’s as though you’ve turned on a light in a dark room – lightness always penetrates darkness.

Fear is the only thing in the way of loving. Fear is why we settle. Fear is why we’re unfulfilled. Fear is why we’ll always be seeking fulfillment. And fear is a choice.

You can be fulfilled and as your deepest, truest self whenever you want, so long as you choose to be Love and move from Love.

As we’ve noted, modern men are, in general, more at home with thinking and action than with feeling. But only with a certain kind of abstract, objective, and impersonal mode of thinking. We are good at scientific investigation, accumulating data, market research, and rational analysis. We are not so good at linking up our minds and our hearts and thinking clearly about the deep experiences and longings of our lives. We are much more apt to ask “How can we do it?” than “What’s worthwhile doing?” As Aldous Huxley once said, “Our means are human. Only our ends are ape chosen.” We are good at technological modes of thought, but ignorant of the art of meditative thinking. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that we have become machine-minded. Our minds, our hearts, and our genitals often seem to exist in exile from one another. It is not that we think too little – we will certainly not be healed by irrational emotionalism or mindless fanaticism – but that we haven’t learned to think in a holistic manner.

We need to acquire a heartful mind…

Sam Keen – Fire in the Belly

The way that you live is probably not your true destiny.

How would you live if you were fearless, if you lived your life as an expression of your deepest heart?

As an act of unrestrained love, you might become a mother, a politician, or a writer. Perhaps you would invent a vaccine, create a business, or perform music. You might become a farmer, a teacher, or an attorney. Love moves each person in a different way.

The way love moves you is your true destiny. When you don’t add fear to love’s force, your life unfolds unimpeded. Each day is a flowering of your deepest gifts. At work, with your family, and alone, each moment springs open from the depths of your heart.

How can you allow your true destiny to unfold? In this moment, allow your breath to be full, strong, and tender, as if pressing love from your deep belly into the softness of your lover. Relax your muscles, open your senses, and feel into the world around you, as if feeling into the light of a dream, breathing this light in and out. From your deep heart and soft belly, offer love outward in all directions as far as you can open to feel. Your true destiny unfolds freely when you live every moment open and shine as an offering of love.

However, if you add fear to your life—as most people do—then your moments take the shape of your cringe. Anxiety about money clips the artistry of your career. Fear of loss stifles honesty with your lover. Your gut tenses because you don’t really want to be where you are. Fear is the opposite of love.

Few men or women live their true destiny. Most follow a trajectory bent by fear. Your true destiny is lived by giving everything and loving open without waiting.

If you wait to open fully, then your heart aches as your life curls in the shape of your chosen consolations. Your bedtime snuggles and TV rituals can assuage your pangs of unlived love for a while, but your heart’s pain of closure slowly accumulates to unbearable.

Sometimes a crisis exposes your heart fully open. Your business unexpectedly fails. Your child becomes terminally ill.

Stripped of what you most cherish, you are left out in the open and unprotected.

One way or another, you come to face the truth: Everything you acquire is eventually lost. Every body you hold eventually dies.

You have been waiting to give your deepest gifts, waiting to love without holding back, while your life—everyone’s life—passes.

You have bartered your true destiny for false comfort and muted agony.

You can stop waiting. When you are ready, you can intentionally breathe open as the full truth: Love is who you are. This moment is as open as you are willing to be. All your guarded moments are life wasted.

You can start opening fully now. If you feel fear, if you are waiting for more security or comfort, if you are holding back your gifts or closing down your love, then feel your act of closure fully. Feel the tension in your muscles, the clenching of your jaw, the hardening around your heart. Feel fear’s shape, in your muscles, emotions, and life choices. Feel the brightness of the moment constrained by your apprehension. As you feel yourself doing the shape of fear, breathe more fully, in and out.

As you inhale, expand your belly more fully, filling your deep gut with love’s light and energy. Then, as you exhale, offer love outward to all, relaxing your muscles open, feeling out into the colors of the world as you continue breathing. Feel others more deeply. Feel their hearts’ longing and joy as you breathe their aliveness in and out of your heart. As if breathing the light of a dream, breathe the aliveness of the entire moment in and out. Continue opening, feeling all, breathing all, loving open, allowing your actions to unfold as your deepest offering.

When fear returns, which it probably will, feel the shape of your closure. Feel your fear, feel everyone’s fear and darkness.

Inhale everyone’s fear deep into your open heart and exhale love’s open light as an offering. Relax and feel everyone so openly that you feel as everyone, as their shape, as their fear, as their deep heart’s love. As everyone, open and breathe. As the shape of the entire moment, open and breathe. If closure remains, feel, breathe, and open again, without end.

Your true destiny is lived by opening as love and offering your deepest gifts, moment by moment. How you do this—as a mother of three children, as a hermit in a cave, or as a political leader—is for you to discover as each moment unfolds open as unimpeded love.

If you have opted for a life shaped by imagined security, you can feel your true destiny in your heart, waiting to be lived, wanting to open as the offering of your life. As you breathe open and offer your deepest gifts of love, your life can flower afresh. As you slowly open your heart’s cringe, your business may show a new style. Your sexual depth may open to your lover more fully.

Anything can happen as your heart unfurls and your moments open wide as love.

Your true destiny may seem far less predictable than the imitation you have spent years holding in place. The choice is yours in every moment. You can hold the shape of a consoling lifestyle for decades. It only costs your life.

David Deida, Naked Buddhism (Later released as Blue Truth)

The exception is this: you’re talking explicitly about snuffing the life out of something that at one point was living and, now, is not.

This includes, but is not limited to, the following variations:

• killin it
• killed it
• killingification of the itness

And if you decide to retweet this post and say I “killed it,” I’m going to come after you, your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend, kids, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, second cousins, all of those people’s pets, those pets’ parents and those pets’ offspring, and I will block you all from the internet.

More than once, I’d plowed through five+ packs of cigarettes in a night. For a while, I smoked ~40 (the equivalent of two packs) unfiltered, hand-rolled cigarettes a day. (I also hocked up tar throughout the day.)

I tried quitting several times. It never worked.

When I finally quit, I’d been a pack-and-a-half a day smoker of Marlboro Reds…one of the harshest/heaviest filtered cigarettes you can buy.

And when I finally quit: It was easy. I had only one craving the next day and it was both minimal and short-lived. (April, 2007.)

…

I discovered something about behavior change with that experience of quitting smoking. What I discovered is that quitting anything requires some sort of replacement. You can’t just take something out, it must be replaced.

What I “replaced” my smoking with was the pursuit of good health. I changed the way I ate, exercised more and made the choice to commit to a new way of living in which smoking wasn’t a part.

I find myself recurrently reminding myself of this. I leave a town and must make new friends. I quit a hobby and replace it with another. A relationship ends and I learn to give and receive love in a new way. I end a job and find a new direction for my career. I let go of a lifestyle decision and choose to replace it with something else.

In a sense, there’s a seeking of physical+physiological+psychological equilibrium.

For as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve changed any unwanted behavior by choosing to commit to the new behavior. And when I do that, it’s easy and there’s no looking back.

Over time, this is how I’ve evolved, consciously or not.

And I’m not looking,
I’m not looking,
looking for anyone,
for anyone else.

And you’re going to do,
what you’re going to do.
And we’ll both go,
wherever we’ll go.

And maybe one day,
the phone will ring.
And it’ll be you.
It’ll be you.

And I hope,
I really hope,
I’ve not…
I’ve not met…

And that’s the truth.
And it’s my truth.

Unless I’ve met…
Until I’ve met…

In one way, relationships can be seen as a way to give and get something. What that is isn’t important, and is almost always different from person to perst. The point is that it fills some level of need for us.

Relationships are also contextual. In some relationships, we might go to them for love. Others, we might go to for fun. Others, we might go to for sex. Others, we might go to for deep emotional connection.

What I’ve seen – for myself and others – is that we’re always aiming for some sort of “fullness” through our relationships. As people come and go in our lives, new relationships are sought and formed where we unconsciously seek to maintain that balance.

The different ways we do this are depth and breadth. If you’ve ever noticed, you might find two similarly balanced people, where one has a lot of casual friends and the other might only have a few people close to them but with more intimacy and closeness. This is an example of this distinction.

I don’t think one is better than the other. But I do believe it’s important to know what you really want and where you are. Moving to a new town so many times in the last few years has helped to make this more obvious to me.

For example, I’ve just moved to Boulder and, on one hand, it’s important to me to meet as many people as I can – breadth – as I get settled into this new town. At the same time, I desire connection and intimacy – depth – and it’s been important for me that I develop both.

I’ve met some truly amazing people out here, both casually and deeply, and continue to notice how the balance plays out, both for myself and others as we’re continually looking to reach equilibrium in our fullness.

Our weapons failed.
We were far apart.

When the rust wore through,
and the wood decayed,
and our armor grew holes,
and we had no choice;
our weapons fell,
our armor let down,
and we went to find the other.

These are all things I’ve done that I will never, ever, ever encourage anyone to do. Each one is a pain in the ass in a new and different way. And if you ask me, I’ll tell you all about how much of a pain in the ass it is.

And if you still want to do it, if you see for yourself that what’s on the other side is worth the amazing pain in the ass, then you’re going to do what you’re going to do.

…

The trouble with knowing what you want is that you don’t have it…but you know you could. You’re not going to settle. If only this or that or…

But the great thing is that when you know what you want and when you have a goal, you have a direction, focus and somewhere to place your effort and attention. There’s a purpose…something greater. Great things can happen when you know what you want.

But the thing that no one ever talks about is: When you get what you want, then you lose it.

It’s gone.

And it’s not just gone, you had it and were so far from knowing what to do with it when you had it…that you ended up losing it.

You begin to learn that wanting and having are two very different things.

Now, instead of just having to focus on a direction, you’re faced with “Why didn’t this other direction work? If I thought that could work and it didn’t, why do I think this new thing will work? Do I really want it that badly? Am I certain this is what I want? Do I want to want it, or do I want to have it? Why’d I lose it in the first place? Will I be able to get it again? If I do, will I be able to hold onto it?” …

And then we’ll talk about drugs, or starting a business, or free soloing some rock face, or some crazy diet, or quitting college, or falling in love…

When I feel wronged or a sense of wrong, by definition, I am positioning myself in a place of righteousness.

“When all the world recognizes beauty as beauty, this in itself is ugliness.”
- Tao te Ching

Righteousness will always prevent deeper awareness and will disallow healing. It’s easy to feel righteous when I feel wronged. That doesn’t mean there are no lessons for me to learn.

First, I find my flaws and bring them to at least a level of competency. e.g. I overanalyze things and decide to work on learning to feel through more situations.

Or, second, I decide I am whole as I am, and work every day to realize this. e.g. Learning to accept my shortcomings, inner peace, etc.

Despite the pull to think or believe so, this isn’t an either-or question for me…do I decide on the first or the second path?

It’s a combination of both.

”What did your face look like before your parents were born?”
- Zen Koan

In the moment before you were born, your psychology was a blank slate. No emotional triggers or patterns. No love. No hate. No frustration or fear. No happiness or optimism. Your psychology was, essentially, a void.

(I realize that being human means certain things including DNA, genetics, pre-birth trauma/experiences, etc. For the sake of this conversation, set those situations aside.)

From the moment you’re born, that blank slate gets filled up. Quickly.

You’re born into a state of near-terror. You cry…no, you wail. A series of strangers takes you here and there and pokes and prods…a catastrophic change from the serene contentment of life in the womb.

Welcome to the world, little buddy.

Your brain stem (the same part of your brain that’s shared with reptiles) goes into fear, releasing chemicals into your body that are absorbed by the uniquely-human part of the brain that gives us our psyche, personality, ego and more. The soft, plastic, moldable nature of your brain begins a rapid transformation as neurons fire and neural networks are laid down like highways and roads bringing you to every stretch of the country. This road takes you to fear, this road takes you to joy, this one takes you to anger and this one takes you to ecstasy.

As you grow older, day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year, those pathways are torn up, reinforced, destroyed or created anew. It’s those that are reinforced that make us do those things all the time and we can’t figure out why we do them and we know we shouldn’t but we still do and when it’s happening we don’t know it and after it’s done we’re wondering why we did that because we know better, right?

Eventually, our brain becomes molded to produce chemical and psychological effects triggered by the causes that swirl around us each day. Our life turns into a Rube Goldberg machine or something akin to the game Mouse Trap, where this trigger or that trigger makes this other thing happen which leads to that other thing we do and the next thing we know, we’re wondering why this relationship didn’t work out – again – where that gallon of ice cream just went and why an Audrey Hepburn movie we’ve seen a million times is playing…again. (I might be picking on girls here with the ice cream and romance movies, but us guys have our own patterns, too. Get drunk, chase girls, work out, throw ourselves into our work and wake up three months later incredibly productive…and unfulfilled.)

And we look back and say “Fuck. There go my twenties.”

But somewhere in there, you might learn that you have a choice. That, before that thing gets triggered – that habit or reaction or pattern that’s been reinforced your entire life – there’s a very brief moment. A moment to choose.

And when you acknowledge that moment and begin seeing it here and there and over there, too, as you do so you might begin to see that it’s not a moment at all. It’s an entire second. Then five seconds. Then ten. Then twenty. Then thirty. Then a full minute. And the next thing you know:

You have a choice.

Now, you’re no longer gripped by your psychology, but instead gripped by the responsibility of creating your own psychology; the responsibility of creating your own experience of life.

The blank slate you were given when you came into this world had become fully covered in chalk. You now have an eraser and your own piece of chalk from which to draw. Where fear, hatred, anger and frustration once dominated, you may now choose openness, love, patience and understanding.

Or not.

It’s your choice.

Acknowledge Problem -> Identify Sources of New+Desired Ways of Living -> Conscious Brainwashing -> Deliberate Practice

Each of the steps is equally important, and I’ll expound on them in other posts. But, as I’m in this particular stage right now, I’d like to talk about the process of what I call conscious brainwashing.

In this stage of reform, personal development, change, whatever you want to call it, the basic idea is to drill into my head the new way of thinking. It’s purely a thinking act (to be followed by the action of Deliberate Practice) where newly-desired ways of living/believing are repeated, over and over and over, from as many different ways as possible.

If you’re studying art, you might study the works of every major artist of the past 600 years that resonate with you. (I did this with Paul Rand and Dieter Rams when studying design.) If you’re a business person, you might read every autobiography of business leaders you respect and admire. (I did this with Toby Hecht.) If you’re an athlete, you might study the top athletes and trainers of all physical disciplines. (Those who know me know of the many stupid things I’ve put my body through.)

But that’s just the beginning.

The first part of the process is to identify the new ways of looking at a situation, choose which ways you want to embody, then repeat the thinking of experts you choose over and over and over and over, in as many ways as possible.

There are some personal development folks with books that I’ve read 10 times. There are 20-hour lectures that I’ve listened to over a dozen times (For perspective, that’s six weeks straight of a 40-hour a week job.). And there are chapters of books or lecture segments that I’ve read or listened to 50+ times. There are authors, lecturers, etc out there that I own every piece of work they’ve ever published. And I’ve read/listened to it all. Multiple times. Sometimes repeated days in a row, sometimes with months or years in-between.

(Most people think that I just like to road trip for the shit of it. I do, but I also make that time a priority so that I can focus, without distraction, on this part of my process. It’s incredibly valuable time to me.)

Over time and with repetition, I’ve found that this kind of repetition begins to change my own thinking. My language changes, my perspective changes, my thought processes change, my beliefs change…my thinking as a whole changes and I begin to adopt this perspective and apply it in multiple contexts.

This shouldn’t be chosen lightly, however, which is why I use the term “conscious brainwashing.” It really does feel like brainwashing and if you aren’t careful choosing to study the perspectives that are right for you, you might have to work even harder to undo some of that errant thinking. Imagine what might happen if you listened to conspiracy theorists for four hours a day, three months straight…

The most important thing here is that I get enough repetition from enough different perspectives to round out the new way of thinking as much as possible. For example, the past few weeks, I’ve been in a heavy David Deida rotation (I’ve been studying his stuff for years, and something significant has recently clicked into place) and have purchased every work he’s done, including some rare unpublished essays he wrote 10-20 years ago. I’ve watched every YouTube video of his and have over 75 hours of his lectures and lecture segments in my library. I’ve got every one of his books and read parts of them most days.

Obsessive? Maybe. But what’s the cost of living an unexamined life?

For me, I equate the cost of not rigorously pursuing knowledge and personal/psychological/spiritual growth like I do continually eating unhealthy foods: eventually, you have to deal with the negative consequences one way or another.

And I have to say that I’m pretty nervous about publishing this post.

First, it exposes a side of me and a style of thinking that I’ve developed over the past four years, almost completely in solitude and in private. It’s not that others don’t think this way, but I’ve never shared this style of thinking with others. I’m taking a chance on whatever your model is of me, completely changing. If you and I have had conversations about life before, you might notice this style is very different. Second, this style of thinking is so intuitive and metaphorical that, when I was first exposed to it, I thought it was horse shit. Kick in psychological projection and, bam, my subconscious mind believes you’re going to think it’s horse shit, too. Third, I’m making assessments that, nowadays, are delicate: masculinity and femininity. People have very strong feelings about them, regardless of how developed those feelings might be. A few people (mostly women) have flat out argued with me for weeks or months based on a simple, conceptual understanding that was different than their own. What’s interesting is that they always came around, every one of them, so much so that this kind of thinking is now their default.

Finally, I’ll be writing more like this on this blog. This is how my thinking, philosophy and perspective has evolved. It feels much more natural to me than referencing data and statistics and research. While research is useful and has its place, it’s also stale and lacks humanity. I believe that we have more answers within us than we give ourselves credit for. I believe there’s a part of us that has been disconnected through the evolution of western culture; the part of us that dives within to find our answers, rather than seeking them outside of us. When reading this style of writing (here and elsewhere), consider taking a dive within and seeing how it resonates at your own core, regardless of what others think or what the statistics tell you. You know your own truth better than you know.

Before I go into this, I’d like to make a couple of requests and clarifications. (This whole section should probably be its own blog post.)

I request an uncommon level of openness to the ideas I’m going to present here. Some of them may be challenging because of your own preconceptions, while some may be challenging because you see these things in yourself. All I ask is for your openness to this perspective. I don’t at all expect you to adopt it or believe it. Run it through your own belief systems, take some time with it, and see if and how it fits.

I’d like to clarify that masculine and feminine are not gender traits. These are also not “either, or” traits. We all have a masculine side and we all have a feminine side. In the past, I thought of masculine/feminine as a single slider knob, with masculine on one side and feminine on the other. I now see it as two different knobs and those knobs are placed in every context of our lives; from business to music to philosophy to art to emotions to thinking to sex and loving…it’s a contextual frame of which we always have some sort of mix of masculine and feminine within us.

If you’re willing to remain open, read on.

I believe that, in addition to turning within and discovering our truest natures, that our relationships offer us the next greatest and clearest perspective of who we are and what our values have become at that moment. For me, every relationship (particularly during difficulties) – romantic, friend, family, colleague or otherwise – seems to expose me to more of my own faults, strengths, weaknesses and gifts. Likewise, this same thinking process becomes applied to others who are in my life. I’m fairly introverted and prefer to have a smaller set of very close friends than a large number of acquaintances. Not only do I prefer this, but, looking at my life, this is also what I live.

When I have a romantic relationship end, I spent most days thinking through what happened, why, what I could have done better, what they could have done better (from my requests), what we both did well or not and what gifts we both enjoyed giving and receiving.

I came across this quote recently that echoes an observation I’d been intuitively been making:

Energy is not depth. The more energy and less depth you have, the more nuts you seem to someone who’s got consciousness.”
- David Deida

As I’ve been making this distinction, I’ve observed people with a tremendous amount of feminine energy. After all, it’s something I inherently find attractive.

But I see a lot of people who simply aren’t connected with her own depth. Their disagreements may be shallow. Working on things together might only be on the surface. Activities and time spent together may rarely run deep. Focus might change quickly, distractions prevail and there may be a general inconsistency that permeates this kind of person’s being.

These aren’t bad people. In fact, most of them are pretty incredible and I love them dearly. Some simply aren’t in touch with the depth of their own femininity.

And, looking around, I see many women – the majority, in fact – who are very disconnected from the depths of their own femininity as well.

* Note: This is a relative assessment of depth. There are plenty of women (most?) who have a far greater depth than I, and would find me shallow, comparatively.

What does this mean? Let’s first say this: Depth is not a “static” assessment. Someone isn’t X amount deep and always remains exactly that deep or not for the rest of their lives. Depth is something that can be cultivated.

Look at it this way: If you want to dig a hole in the ground, how deep is the hole? The hole is as deep as you choose to make it.

Put another way, and with a metaphor I find to be quite representative of the feminine, how deep into the ocean can you go? There was a time when we couldn’t go more than, say, 100 feet deep. Now, we go thousands of feet deep, because we’ve chosen to. Will you reach the bottom? Yes. But even the bottom of the ocean is created by the shifting of plates and the magma in the mantle below the earth’s crust. How deep do you want to go?

Again, masculinity and femininity are knobs that both men and women have, with a new set of knobs in every context of living. Men may choose to explore the depths of their own femininity just as well as women. At the drop of a hat, how long does it take for you to break out into dance? Do you need music? Or will you feel the movement of life and the universe itself channeling through your body? The same movement of life that’s always there, pervasive, ready to be observed if we so choose to look in its direction…

What, particularly, is feminine depth?

Consider it this way: the feminine is oceanic, constantly flowing and moving, filling the space surrounding it…it doesn’t move with the tides, it is the tides. Just as you may have a calm day on the ocean, deeper feminine forces are always at work further below…currents and undercurrents, heat sources on the ocean floor bubbling up, plates shifting and causing tsunamis… The feminine is not only moving, it is movement.

Think of the feminine women or men in your life. For simplicity, place them into two categories, those who are directed and moved from their depths and those who are directed and moved by things happening on the surface.

“On the surface,” continuing the metaphor, might be the waves crashing on the beach (a momentary occurrence), a storm system coming in (external forces/life situations), or simply the wind blowing and causing choppy waves.

Let’s look at “depth” as the deepest currents moving below the surface of the ocean…strong and powerful (after all, there’s no destruction that any masculine force can create that would compare to massive amounts of destruction from flooding, etc). These are the currents that can both destroy a country with tsunamis, but also allow the world to be more connected through shipping, etc. But, make no mistake, the deep feminine can not be controlled. It is something to move with. It can be directed only through the deepest masculine, carving the empty space to be filled with the flow of the feminine (imagine how Puget Sound was carved by glaciers, then filled to become a part of the ocean).

For the feminine, the more connected you are with your own depths, the greater the force you will be in your life. You’ll support and fill the rest of the world and the world of the masculine, and you’ll also have the power to destroy it…if the mood strikes from your depths.

The shallower you are in your feminine − with everything occurring on the surface – the more “nuts” you’ll seem – to both men and women -, as you shift and move with every little change that happens externally in your life.

Another way of putting this is: Are currents moved by the waves, or are waves moved by the currents?

When I tell people that there is great strength in the feminine, and that it’s much more powerful than the masculine, peoples’ eyes glaze over. They simply miss it, it just doesn’t make sense in our culture.

Our culture has become so directed and focused on valuing the masculine, that we required a decades-long social revolution simply for women to have basic, human rights. By the time the feminist movement came along, it was so directed by masculine energy that parts of it became misguided to the point that femininity was sometimes lost and replaced with masculinity. To maintain the balance of polarity in relationships, many men cultivated their feminine nature. It’s where the hippie men and metrosexuals (and other forms of men who lead more with their femininity) came from. And, asking most women who are deeply feminine, that’s not the kind of man they’re looking for to balance the polarity in their relationship.

This isn’t bad, per se, as achieving the ability to switch between the masculine and feminine can lead to a fuller, more whole and complete life during this short time we have on earth. But to lose touch with your own core (again, not all men are masculine at their core and not all women are feminine at their core) leads to a deep and confusing dissatisfaction. The most common laments I hear from men and women are “Where are all the real women?” and “Where are all the real men?”

They’re still here, they’re simply disconnected from their depths.

Everyone is as you are.

…

Everyone is this same boundless openness, although anyone may act to close and feel separate. Whenever you do the act of separating from another, then your heart and theirs suffer, and you create suffering in the world around you.

At heart, you are openness, as is everyone. The idiot on TV that you find so disgusting is the same openness that you are. The rapist you despise is as you are. The foreign dictator you abhor is as you are. To pull away from someone, to feel different at heart, is to enact a lie of separation.

…

Certainly, some people are disgusting. At times, everyone is. If people could see all of you, inside and out, they would see radiant beauty and repugnant ugliness. You might not act out your inner twists as loudly as the cretin on TV, but you are surely twisted. There are moments when you even disgust yourself.

…

To grow spiritually, to deepen the openness of your heart, you can practice being disgusted without pulling away. You can learn to become nauseated without closing down. The truth is, pulling back in separation is the source of deep suffering in you and others. If you can stay open and feel everyone fully, even those who actively disgust you, then love endures.

…

Disgust may be your natural response to some people all the time and to everyone sometime. But closing down and pulling away is an act of unlove that creates suffering in you and the world. Your separation is the deed of unlove, not your loathing or judgment.

…

When you look into the eyes of those who most disgust you, practice feeling the openness behind the face of their fear and distress…

David Deida, Naked Buddhism (Later released as Blue Truth)

I’d never been more angry in my entire life.

But, somewhere, for some reason, I thought to myself, “I know I’m angry, but if I want anything to change in the future, I must take responsibility for everything that has happened.” I really don’t know where the idea came from, I just knew I had to do it.

It wasn’t pleasant. It was painful. Looking at two of these main situations and, to the average person, I’d been screwed pretty hard. I’d poured my heart and soul into both a relationship and a business that were both being ended sloppily, inconsiderately, abruptly and in some of the most careless ways possible.

Imagine the time when you’ve felt most taken advantage of, go to that place of hurt and pain, wallow in it, then take responsibility for everything that happened. Stop the blame, no matter how “obvious” it is. Stop your anger. Stop your frustration. Look at the situation and say to yourself that everything that happened was within your responsibility.

Switching from anger and blame to responsibility and compassion is like trying to make a fully-loaded freight train stop on a dime.

Taking responsibility for everything in your life is a difficult task. I started this practice more than five years ago and still struggle with it on a daily basis…sometimes big, sometimes small.

The good news is that it’s becoming much easier. It’s as though, through the practice, I’ve unloaded some of the cargo in that freight train of anger and blame. It’s still difficult to stop on a dime, but it’s much easier and continues to progress as such.

What’s made this easier is to continue accepting that I’m not taking as much responsibility as I could. That I’m blaming others more than I should. Or even my own “habits” – or other things that I might unconsciously blame as being just beyond my immediate control and something to work on “later.” Every day, no matter what happens, as soon as anger or blame comes up, it’s now a practice to say “ok, what did I do to make this happen?” And with that moment of accepting responsibility, comes freedom.

Responsibility and freedom are one and the same.

(I didn’t intend to make a political statement with this, but consider the political parties and which promote the greatest individual responsibility. Now consider which preach the most about freedom.)

What is Responsibility?

Responsibility, contrary to common belief, is not to accept “fault.” “Fault” is when you are the direct and most immediate cause of some effect.

Being responsible is to see how you contributed to a situation’s ability to play out.

Here’s an example to demonstrate the difference. You accidentally leave the stove on and your kitchen partner unknowingly touches the burner, burning themselves. Who’s at Fault is your partner and their carelessness around a dangerous situation. But you are able to take Responsibility, by acknowledging that your own carelessness contributed to, but maybe did not cause, the situation.

How that conversation might play out is that your partner might say “That was my fault, I should have been paying more attention.” And you might say “I’m sorry for not turning the burner off or leaving something on it so it might be harder to get hurt.”

Responsibility also has a second component. If what was described above is the “thinking” about how to take responsibility, it must also be followed up with action. Another way to consider this is that when you apologize and take responsibility, you’re also making an unspoken commitment of “I am also going to change my future behavior in this situation so that this doesn’t happen again.”

This second part, the followup action, is where I see myself and others actually struggle much less, though it’s not always easy. Where I see most people struggle is identifying how they were responsible for some particular outcome. Once you do this, if you’re truly taking responsibility, your actions much more easily evolve.

Where the followup action becomes the most difficult, however, I see in my own and others’ emotional responses. It’s as though our emotions have a gravity of their own that must be overcome in order to discover where responsibility can be taken, then how we can modify our actions in order to prevent an irresponsible response from coming up again.

Here are some obvious, and not so obvious, examples of where I’ve seen myself and others struggle taking responsibility.

• Romantic, business and personal conflict and/or breakups/separation. The closer the relationship, particularly romantically, the more complicated things get. If you really want to take the greatest amount of responsibility possible in your life, start here. It’s very worth it.
• Blaming habits, beliefs, values, etc. These may be deeply ingrained, but they are not permanent.
• Family. Enough said.
• The people you get along with the least. Here, the stereotypical “catty” girl image is easily conjured. Who frustrates you the most on a regular basis? This is another great place to start.
• Excuses, defensiveness and “explaining” yourself. It’s a trap that I see people fall into all the time, including myself.
• Customers, The Market, The Economy, etc. Always know that whatever the situation is that surrounds you, there is always a way to stack the odds in your favor. There’s no better reminder of this than Man’s Search for Meaning. The author, Viktor Frankl spent years in concentration camps. If you haven’t, go buy it right now so you can read it every year like I do. Even in a concentration camp, there were ways to stack the odds in your favor.
• Anything and everything about your “situation” in life.” There are obvious exceptions here, such as those who are born with disabilities, etc. Even still, I know some people with some of the most crippling diseases who are infinitely happier and more fulfilled than the “average” person. That’s taking responsibility.
• Not accepting death. Death is our single greatest fear. Blame, irresponsibility and conscious ignorance is our coverup for avoiding it. When you accept your death – your final unlucky moment – you accept that life is responsible for death. No longer are you a slave to its grip, but in that acceptance of your own death lies the greatest freedom.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
– Einstein

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci

Perfection is achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Restraint and grace of style.
– def. Elegance

Seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement, form, or proportion.
– def. Grace

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty and folly are old companions.
– Benjamin Franklin

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
– Leo Tolstoy

Apple’s products may have been beautiful, but they were first elegant.

There’s a challenge that businesspeople face that requires restraint. Like the lines and shapes and colors in Kandinsky’s paintings, or the complex emotional layers and range of Mahler’s symphonies, it’s easy to add a multitude of features to our products or services. Kandinsky and Mahler produced beautiful works of art that will continue to live on for centuries, but they are not elegant and they require a great deal of time and energy to digest.

Editor’s note: I’m particularly fond of both Kandinsky and Mahler.

Common (complex) beauty in art works because the appreciation lies in taking the time to unravel its complexities.

Complex beauty in business does not work for the same reason. Consumers (b2c) and businesses (b2b) don’t have the time to sit there and unravel the nature and beauty of your product. Beauty is short-sighted…it’s attractive, but does not sustain.

Compare an elegant black dress with simple lines to what a 20-something might wear one Friday night out. They both might be beautiful, but imagine which might better facilitate a long-term relationship vs. a one-night stand.

Study Modrian’s use of color and shape, Vivaldi’s Largo movement of Winter in his Four Seasons, the first cd of John Digweed’s Global Underground 019 in Los Angeles, the timeless architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright…notice how the design is pleasing, but not the point…the experience from within his architecture is the point. Nothing more needs to be added to any of those works and yet nothing can or should be taken away.

Italian cathedrals, Gaudi’s architecture, Las Vegas…they all grab your attention and are beautiful in their own ways. But the beauty overtakes function.

Elegance, on the other hand, displaces beauty to facilitate function.

The belief that life has meaning comes from three places:

1. The desire for all of “this” to not be wasted or coincidental; hence, the desire for it all to mean something.

2. The inability to accept the power of our true natures; if we place meaning as a decision that falls outside of ourselves, we hand over a heavy responsibility for a portion of our own lives.

3. As humans, we are biologically designed as a hierarchical species, and we hand down orders (directly or indirectly) to others, it certainly makes sense that orders would be handed down to us.

Unfortunately, none of those is “proof,” however influential they may be to our beliefs.

But, all is not lost. There is another solution: Accepting the responsibility of committing to the meaning we choose to place upon our lives.

To accept that there is no meaning in life is to accept responsibility for creating meaning in our own lives, then to commit to following through.

The challenge that most people have is in the commitment. It’s difficult for anyone to make a decision, right now, of “What is the one thing I wish to commit to, above all else, for the rest of my life?”

The simple act of asking ourselves the question brings us closer to our answer.

And here’s a bit of relief: It changes. Very few people make the decision and are fortunate enough to have the clarity of seeing it and the fortitude to see it through for the rest of their entire lives. For the rest of us, know that it’s ok for this to change. The point is to commit to something, now, that is at the deepest core of your existence. As you grow and evolve, so will your sense of purpose. Allow that, too, to grow and evolve.

It’s easy to recognize when someone is living their purpose and when someone isn’t. There’s a depth and richness that’s there where it’s lacking in others. If you’ve been feeling out of it, misaligned with your work, lost or otherwise unfocused, take some time to turn inward and shine a light on some of those dark corners.

I also find that most people don’t understand they have a choice as to what their beliefs are. Sure, a deeply-seated belief may be hard to change or shift, but I’ve found that the choice is always there.

Moving from a context of Scarcity means that there’s “never enough.” Your salary is never enough. There’s not going to be enough money coming in next month. You worry about putting food on your table. No matter if you have more than enough in your bank account, you’re driven by the sense that it’s simply not enough. There aren’t enough opportunities for you to get a job, to land a new client, etc. The things you have, tangible or intangible, you covet out of fear.

Moving from a context of Abundance, on the other hand, means that there’s “always enough.” Lose a client or your job? Ok, you’ll get another. Slow month for income? It’s ok, there’s probably another big project coming soon. Run out of ideas for a new startup? It’s ok, the idea will come to you.

There are dangers and benefits to both mentalities. But, we have a choice, so lets look at what it might be like to have one or the other.

Living in a context of scarcity means fear pervades your being. It leads to a dictatorship over your life and lifestyle. It can be useful to feel that fear and scarcity whenever you need to take action, leveraging it to drive you toward production. A lot of leaders move this way and accumulate fear-based power.

Living in a context of abundance means that everything is easy. You’re easy-going through the hard times and the good. And sometimes that can be bad when you really need to buckle down and get shit done. A lot of leaders move this way and accumulate a different kind of power, one that’s grounded in opportunity.

The challenge in discovering how to consistently move toward productivity and results, I’ve found, is to discover how to move from that context of abundance while also maintaining a firm grounding on reality. If your emotions move toward fear and scarcity, check those and bring them back. Chill out a bit. If they move toward ease and abundance, check those, too, and bring them back. Direct your focus again toward real consequences, situations and patterns happening around you.

If I had to choose one or the other to work with (outside of legal or accounting), I’ll always choose someone with a mentality of abundance. Recurrently battling fear and scarcity to move forward an inch is simply too resource-expensive for any company that relies on innovation to survive.