Riding the Rapids

To be in the world but not of it.

What does it mean?

Well, it's been about two or three weeks since I decided that will be my birthday motto.

And since I made that decision, it appears that my life has completely fallen apart.

In a lot of ways. There are parts in the parts hospital in every direction.

There's been a massive shift in my inner world that I really did not expect.

There's something extremely dangerous, powerful, and profound about making any kind of commitment to a vision.

It reminds me of once, many years ago, I was standing in the kitchen and I was talking to someone who means a lot to me.

He was a teenager at the time.

He was just entering high school and he was a student of mine 'cause at the time I was a private tutor.

And he was saying to me that he felt really afraid to go to high school.

And as he stood there, I thought to myself, I'm not the person I need to be to guide him and shepherd him and be what he needs me to be to get through high school.

That's what I was thinking as he was speaking and he was being really vulnerable and sharing that he was really concerned about moving from middle school to high school, which is a reasonable concern.

And the reason I didn't feel that I was ready and the reason I felt that he was reasonable in his concerns is that he's a super ultra extremely creative person who was an enormously bad match for the locked down managerial education system we have.

I thought, "I'm too managerial. My managers are going to add the managerial load that he has on his system, and it's not going to be what he needs.

We need more access to our firefighters because teenagers are firefighters.”

And so I made a commitment right then and there.

I said to the universe, "Please make me who I need to be for him -- basically by September 1st." It was the end of the school year so it was around June so I had a couple months to become the person that I needed to be on his behalf.

I didn't know anything about setting intentions.

I had no idea that you if you add a deadline to an intention you expedite a process.

It's kind of like making a contract with the universe and I didn't know that you could let's just say destroy your life by doing that.

I got what I wanted.

By September I had gone through the most harrowing, horrible, destructive summer of my entire life as an adult.

Oh, too horrible to explain.

But one of the things that happened that summer was that it was so horrible and my managers just made mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake that they finally got so tired and so worn down they were willing to let the firefighters run our life.

That is a risk.

There was this one day in particular when the managers were just so exhausted.

And we firefighters said to them, "Listen, just let us run things for the day.”

And they were like, "Oh, great. You'll spend all the money and fuck all the people."

Pardon my language, but I mean, that's what they said.

And we firefighters were like, "Well, exactly how much damage can we do in one day? Just give us one day. Just see what happens."

And they were so tired, so tired, because they'd done so many, "good on paper," but bad in life things, that we were so exhausted that they finally said, "Okay, we'll give you one day."

And so we went about our business of getting our chores done and we had some work we needed to do so we went to a cafe and we sat and we wrote and we did the work.

And then when we were done we, oh my God, shocking to behold, we left!

Unlike the managers who would have been like, "Great, we're getting work done. Let's get more work done and more work done and more work done," and murdered us with all the work they wanted to get done.

No, we got it done. We're finished.

We live in Chicago and there was this toy store called Uncle Fun's and it was nearby someplace that we had to pick some other things up so we're like oh let's go to Uncle Fun's for a minute.

So we made getting our chores fun instead of just "get it done get it done get it done."

So as a result, we (firefighters) showed the managers that we could actually do work, but also make some time for play, and also work but not work ourselves into a nubbin.

And they were totally shocked that we didn't do anything berserk that day or spend all the money or anything else.

And so they decided that they were so tired they would let the firefighters be in control of our system.

And my experience, this is me personally, I'm not saying this is true for everyone is that firefighters who are not berserk, right, firefighters you can trust, you could - another way of thinking about this is that in your internal system there are - you can think of there's parts and there's a self, right, but you can also think that every part has a self.

So if you have a self-led firefighter, one who isn't interested in spending all the money and all the other crazy things most firefighters are interested in, a self-led firefighter will probably do a better job of running your inner system than a self-led manager just because managers are by nature very uptight and controlling and not as much fun as firefighters. That's not a dig on managers it's just how they are. So we the firefighters started to lead our system. And we were so much more capable of supporting a teenager through high school from that place.

It was a huge shift and it really made a difference in helping my student who I cared about so much.

I mean, he was afraid he'd get kicked out of school because he's a jokester and gets in trouble in class and stuff like that.

And here's a guy who never once was even remotely in danger of that happening throughout his high school career.

And I think there's a good chance that my shift helped that because he was able to express some pretty firefightery things to me and kind of shake that out of his system at home instead of at school.

So that's the story of how our system became firefighter-led instead of manager-led.

But in a Self-led way, like a Self of the firefighters-led way, and gradually the firefighter (who the managers gave leadership to that summer) evolved into the one who is the leader of our system now that people call A.

A was originally a firefighter but is now definitely not so recognizable as a firefighter.

As Sharky, the leader of the firefighters, I guess what I'm noticing in this conversation is that if A can, for lack of a better word, ascend or somehow get promoted to and then live into being not just a self-led firefighter but really fitting the definition of Self...

What's to stop me from doing that?

If A can do it, I can do it.

And I think we accidentally set an intention by saying that this is the year of becoming in the world but not of it.

I think what happened is as cataclysmic (and I don't use that word lightly) as what happened way back over decades ago when I stood in that kitchen and I said I've got to be a different order of person because I saw this vulnerable human being in front of me who I cared about so much that I wanted to be different for him.

And in this moment, what I realized is that now I'm that vulnerable little person.

As if our entire system is that person and on my birthday I wanted to make a commitment to this person (me) to be a different order of person on my own behalf and so I accidentally set an intention that I didn't intend, with a timeline (because it's a year, right). I played with fire -- I didn't know what I was playing playing with and now I'm reaping the cataclysmic and disastrous effects!

Be careful what you wish for!

I have plopped myself down into a timeline called a year of becoming in the world but not of it.

And I will tell you that this first few weeks has been about as bad as I could possibly humanly imagine it would be.

I've never had more inner structures fall down.

I kind of feel like I'm living in a place where buildings I counted on -- I wake up and they're gone. The bottom feels like it's dropping out of my life. So I would say it's off to a pretty horrible start! I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, I'm not going to participate in toxic positivity or sugar coating mysticism because it's not a path I recommend for everyone.

All I can say is that now that I'm realizing what I've done to myself, I need to lean in and use my inner capacities to ride the waves because another way of putting what I've done is I was kind of going along on a nice river -- like a little river rafting --my life was like doodle-e-do river raft inner work, it's kind of beautiful, I'm down at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, it's lovely, that's kind of my life before I set this intention. Now that I set this intention suddenly I'm on a category four river rapids ride and and I'm like, "Uh, uh, uh, uh, what?

How did I get here?

And this conversation is making me realize: "Oh, you did this to yourself. You said to the universe, 'Oh, hey, will you take my little happy, friendly river raft and put me on a category 4 river?"I did that to myself.

Ahh, oh, hmm, great!

I'm on a category 4 rapids river now and I am clinging on to my inner work abilities for dear life day by day.

It's really hard. But I do have powerful built-in times when I do inner work.

When I wake up I have a whole morning ritual and now I have a whole night ritual.

And I've got at least two, if not three hours a day to ride the rapids and I guess you could say build up the muscles to ride the rapids going forward.

Because inner work is always a workout.

One of the things that happens is that the more inner work you do, the more inner work you can do.

And then the more inner work you do and you can do, the more information you get every time you do it.

And then the more information you need to process and integrate and metabolize.

And then the more time you need to process and integrate and metabolize that!!

*sigh* So.

I'm on the rapids now.

And that's all I really can say about it.

That's the update.

That's a lot of information to actually take in at one time.

I had no idea why my life turned into a hurricane, a cataclysm, what feels like a total disaster with the bottom dropping out.

And now I realize, ah, I made a contract with the universe to "become in the world but not of it" in a year.

And that is a very short timeline.

In this moment I am both shocked and surprised that I did that without realizing, but you know -- F around and find out as they say!

And I'm also so grateful that it's a year because the last time I did this it was three months and that was violent and brutal.

It makes me think okay this was a big ask but maybe not bigger than the one I made before where I said I needed to be a different order of person or it's hard to say what's a bigger ask -- all I can say though, which is kind of a blandishment to kind of calm my nervous system down, realizing what I've done which I can't take back and I'm not going to take back -- I mean everything is already in play -- a lot of things have already happened that can't be taken back (I mean a lot of things in like two or three weeks). I've been like, "Why is this happening? What's this what's this what's this?!" and now I understand. So I'm in for quite a year.

But it could be worse.

At least I gave myself a year.

So I'll take it.

And that's the update.