Don't Take It Personally

We are such ego-driven creatures. We take so many things personally when really, nothing is about us except our own experiences. This is one of the main teachings in don Miguel Ruiz's beautiful spiritual book The Four Agreements: don't take anything personally. The reason for this is that every Human Being on this planet perceives the world in their own unique way, through their own unique filters, based on their own unique perceptions, experiences, agreements and beliefs.

don Miguel Ruiz calls the agreements and beliefs we hold in our unconscious mind our personal Book of Law. This Book of Law is what our brain uses to dictate our behavior based on past experiences. It contains all the rules we have learned to live by - those that we created ourselves and those that were passed down to us through the adults in our lives. It says things like "To be loved I must be good" and "To be safe I must not have fun" and "If I do the wrong thing I will be punished" and "Other people's perceptions of me matter."

These rules are things we learn as children and then carry forward into our adulthood. They rest in the unconscious part of our Being and we live by them whether they continue to apply or not as we grow up. Since we are unaware of them, we can't know if they still apply or feel true for us as adults unless something brings them to our attention. And the truth is, unless they are brought to our attention by some kind of event, we don't care if they apply or not because we don't even know they exist! But they are our unconscious Book of Law and we follow our Book!

Usually it is when something happens that makes us question some part of our lives that we begin to look at the things in our Book of Law and decide if we still believe them, agree with them, and want to keep living by them or not. This is no easy task. Questioning the things we've lived by since we were a youngster takes courage. The things in our Book have been the foundation of our life. To question them means questioning our fundamental beliefs and agreements about life in general and how to survive it. This touches into a deep, primal part of our Being.

When we take someone else personally, it's because some part of us believes them or fears that they may be right about us. We fear that others will discover just how awful of a person we really are and will abandon us. We fear we won't be loved or that we are too broken to be saved. We fear the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves that we try to hide from the world will be revealed... and then, we will die a lonely death. This may sound extreme, yet it is surprising what hides beneath our brave and strong and righteous masks when we dig down really, really deep.

I first began to explore my personal Book of Law following a difficult and painful breakup several years ago. The ending of that relationship brought what was left of my crumbling life down. It seems that for me, my life had to disintegrate before my eyes for me to take a closer and deeper look at what I had created of it. And when I looked, I was shocked to discover that the life I'd worked so hard and followed all the rules to create had simply fallen apart around me, leaving me with nothing but my own wounded heart.

 I was even more shocked to discover that the old life I'd created hadn't really felt the way I'd intended it to, even with check marks by all the right rules in my Book of Law. I'd played by the rules my whole life - graduated from high school, worked hard, gone to college and graduate school, gotten a Ph.D. and started a career. I invested my energy into a professional job and my heart into an intimate relationship with a person I loved deeply. I built my life around my career and my partner.

One day I woke up in a cloud of heaviness. I dreaded going to work; my job was a nightmare. I dreaded going home; my partnership was a vacuum. Neither was inspiring or fulfilling despite my greatest efforts. In those days I described myself as the walking dead. I knew there must be more to life but I didn't know how to get it.

When it all came crumbling down in unexpected and dramatic ways, I was forced to take a radically honest look at my life and what I had created of it. The bottom line: I had not honored myself in my own life. I had listened to and done all the things that others thought I should do, the ways they thought I should do them, and had slowly but surely abandoned myself to the approval and love of others.

I learned a huge lesson about love from that: Loving others from a place of emptiness is not really love; it's need. And when we believe we are so empty within ourselves that we need the love of another to feel full and whole, we become willing to surrender ourselves to get their love. And when we surrender ourselves for love, eventually we lose ourselves to it - like a drug addict seeking out their next fix.

Today I believe (and it is just that - my belief) that we are all whole and divine Beings; we just forget who we are. We get wounded in life and we forget our true, loving and joyous natures. We forget that as children of a Divine Source, however you label that Source - as God, Great Spirit, Allah, Buddha, Creator, etc. - we are divine and whole and beautiful just as we are. We don't need anything from anyone else to be whole; we are already whole. We just have to remember that we are whole.

I like to say that we are all perfectly imperfect. And like drops of water in a divine ocean, we cannot separate ourselves from our divinity. We may forget our divinity, yet we cannot separate ourselves from it any more than we can separate the blood of our ancestors out of our bodies. We can turn our minds away from it and believe that we are somehow separate from the Divine and less than whole just as we are, but that is what spiritual mentor Marianne Williamson calls "error thinking." Forgetting who we are is not a condition; it's a mental mistake.

This past week I've been focusing on the old "don't take it personally" teaching. Today I send gratitude and love out to those who questioned my choices over the years because it gave me the space to deepen my connection to and trust in something bigger than me. Today I have faith in and trust that things unfold and evolve in a perfect way for the highest healing and good of all Beings, even those events that are scary, painful or uncomfortable to our human be-ing.

Today, this belief is in my Book of Law. It doesn't mean that it's true for everyone or even that it will be true for me forever; it only means that it's true for me today because I choose to believe it. No one has to agree with me for it to be true for me; it is true for me because I believe it to be true.

And as it's true for me, I find both Grace and Love interwoven in the dramas of my silly little life.

GNH: Yes!

There's a small country in southern Asia named Bhutan. Recently, the 50-something-year old leader "passed the leadership torch" to his 26-year old son, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. The son is well educated and brings a fresh perspective to the politics of Bhutan. His desire is for Bhutan to be a notable player in world politics without compromising it's culture. In his view, this means strengthening Bhutan economically and keeping up with technological advancements without sacrificing the country's heritage.

In his wisdom, Jigme Singye Wangchuck did something brilliant: he borrowed the USA's concept of Gross National Product as a leading principle for Bhutan by changing it into Gross National Happiness. He defines Gross National Happiness as "inner contentment for all people living in Bhutan" and offers four pillars of what it means:

1. Good Governance
2. Balanced Economic Development (high standard of living for all, free education, etc...)
3. Environmental Preservation and Sustainability
4. Preserving and Promoting Culture (maintaining a national identity that distinguishes them from other countries)

Wangchuck says things like:

"Imagery leads to thoughts, thoughts lead to actions and actions create our world" (referring to imagery from the USA on televisions and the internet, which were only recently allowed into Bhutan) and

"Human progress does not equal economic growth" and  

"Happiness does not come from 'more'" and  

"Economic growth at any cost is not acceptable."


He believes that happiness is achieved by taking the middle path, balancing the needs of man with the powerful spirits of nature.

So, he is allowing technological advancements in Bhutan, yet in balance with their cultural traditions which are founded in Tantric Buddhism and the principles of peace, an end to suffering, wisdom and joy. Both pieces - technological/economic expansion and traditional cultural ideals are promoted and maintained; growth with integrity and balance; authentic happiness... Sounds like a great way to live from a place of love to me...

I might have to live there...