A momentary interjection—In that I write what I write here, I feel a responsibility to report my own vulnerability to unproductive choices even as I work out the details of this writing. A number of things happened just after I finished the above, and in response to those situations which I felt as demands, I briefly chose an invitation to rush which lead to the choice of frustration which lead to a choice of anger which led to a choice of dumb. Happily, I managed to choose to stop relatively early by choosing to act in such a way that belied hurry and belied frustration. I acted in my own benefit and thus the benefit of everyone else involved. The situations quickly resolved, and my becoming self, the balance of my whole being returned to a process of balance much to my ultimate relief. In that I write what I write, I managed to go through this without unnecessary punishment or damage. I didn't like it, and I haven't made such a choice for a long while. I do wish to suggest to all of us that any momentary return to past behavior, meaning perspectives rather than conscious perspectives, doesn't mean failure, just humanity. Loss doesn't come in such cases unless we choose to see it as loss. Our achievements in our quest of aspiration do not fall away from us. They belong to us even if we return to old choices and meaning perspectives for short or even extended periods. Once we have seen and felt a new place in our quest, it forms a permanent part of our being to which we can return when we feel ready and simply choose to return.
When working with many people in recovery, I have heard them report that it often feels like, "two steps forward and one step back." That serves as a meaning perspective that keeps us from feeling and celebrating our advances. When we reach such a point, I ask them to do the math. If we take two steps forward, +2, and one back, -1, we still wind up a +1. Even if we take two steps forward, +2, and two steps back, -2, we still find ourselves at the start point rather than two steps back, ending at -2. No matter how we count in the mathematic of living and developing, we cannot lose any advance. Every advance becomes part of us part even as we step back as many steps as we count forward or more. It seems the power of the affirmations and actions we make in life never leave us. We can always make up the steps we have lost, but we can never lose the steps we gain. I find this sort of awareness perspective quite reassuring.
However, we live with a meaning perspective that prevents us from seeing and feeling this everyday mathematical awareness perspective. This meaning perspective repeats the judgments we have felt all of our lives, the one that keeps us trapped in the world of the highly conditional state of regard to ourselves and others. It counts and concentrates on a very different mathematic. I have offered this hypothetical situation and asked many students and others this resulting question:
Let's say that in a single day you engage in fifty actions of one kind or another. Of that fifty, 20 you accomplish splendidly, 20 you do with solid competence, nine you get done with some struggle, but they all work out. One you just miss getting resolved, but understood why and how, and will do better next time (I just had one of those myself). Later that night, when you may not be sleeping, you think the day over. What are you thinking about, the forty-nine or the one?
The answer I have always heard—the one.
If anyone else did that to us, we might feel hurt, some resentment, and even anger. When we do it to ourselves, we find it quite natural and fair. That's the very odd mathematic of that meaning perspective, the one that deprives us of our achievements and recognition of the daily affirmation of our lives. We said "Yes" forty-nine times, and even said "Yes" to the one as a learning experience, but the meaning perspective turns the entire day into a "No."
When we speak and act in the affirmation of "Yes," we act as a primary if not an essential part of all of life. The mental and spiritual processes we have developed over human time, as our human consciousness developed over time, shift toward the positive, toward the affirmative. When we recognize that within us, we can choose to act on that belief even if we don’t feel it about ourselves, and we can return more fully to our quest of aspiration, to our search for the becoming self.