Healthy Death

[Questioner]

Chuck, thanks for a great reminder and an incredibly cool picture.

I've been finding these ideas coming at me from a variety of directions recently; they must be what I need to learn. I'd like to share two long passages from very different authors, that I feel shine light from two directions onto the very same concept.

Melanie Anne Phillips is co-creator of a unique system of storytelling. The system was originally intended for screenwriters, but I think its psychological insights go far beyond that. After all, the best storytelling is true to nature. From a recent post on her personal blog:

I've divided my life into two stories. Story one, everything up until this year. ... Story one is all about my realizing what a self-centered, self-justifying, self-righteous ass I was and they trying to make amends. And how did I try to make up for these things? By seeking to fix all those old relationships on my own terms. After all, to do any less wouldn't be fair to me, would it?

What's story two? That is when I finally realized I can't fix the damage I've done to others. ... And in story two, I have to say - "I can't fix story one." ... Story two is when you write off story one. No, I don't mean write off friends, family and career. Rather, you say, "That story is over. Time to move one." When you do that, you take stock of how things stand today - what really IS your relationship with wife and kids, right now this very moment. Forget about what it USED to be or what you WISH it could become. What really IS it today, as if you were starting from scratch.

For story two to begin, you have to end story one. You have to hit the cosmic Reset button. You have to forget about the wins and losses as if your whole previous life was one football game and how you are on to the next.

In this frame of mind, it doesn't really matter if you won or lost in story one - that was last week's game. What matters is that you are just starting story two.

Let me say this one more way to make sure I'm clear: Imagine that somebody else lived the first part of your life and did what they did. Now, their soul is recalled to heaven and you are sent in to take over. You step into the role and everyone thinks you are the same person. But you aren't (how could you be).

And so the first thing you do is take stock of the assets and the liabilities. You look at relationships and see who you like and who you don't and in what ways - and who likes you and who doesn't and how. You see the financial situation you inherited from your predecessor, much like a new president taking over in the white house from a previous administration.

In some ways, you feel like a cad because you are no longer bound by any loyalties or commitments - those were made by that other person, and you are in charge now in story two. They still think you are the same person and expect you to honor those promises, both logistic and emotional, just as other countries expect the USA to honor its treaties, even if we have a new president.

But you aren't that person and don't feel responsible or obligated to continue policies of the past, no matter how much others have come to depend on them.

So, am I saying you should trash everybody? Far from it! The idea is to say, "Maybe I felt about person X a particular way in the beginning and kept nurturing that relationship for years. But how do I feel about them and our relationship right now, this very moment. What really IS the nature of our true relationship - not the one I had or tried to make or wished for, but what really IS it?

You need to open yourself up to true honestly and clarity when you take stock. And then, if you are like most people, you can cut away all the presumptions and warped perspectives and see things as they truly are and how you really feel about them - not in terms of all your hopes and dreams and the work you put into things but in terms of "what have we done for each other lately."

Take a snapshot of your life as it is (as the person who has stepped into your life as New Management). List up your assets and detriments. Assess each aspect of you life as to whether it is worth maintaining, building, or eliminating. Set new goals based not on what you wanted to achieve for all those years, but on what you'd like to achieve now if you were starting in this life from scratch with no responsibilites, obligations, commitments or rationalizations.

Until you are willing to do that, you can't start story two. Until you are willing to say, "Even if I have been unfair or even awful to others in the past, I don't have to make up for it. Let me see what our actual relationship is right now and determine if I want to put any more into it or not.

Now, more that likely, whatever germs of love and desire to bring joy to other were real and not imagined will still be true today. But the infrastructure you built of costs and dividends - how much you expected and how much you were willing to sacrifice - all that is gone and needs to be reassessed.

So, most likely you won't dump anyone or hang them out to dry. But you may really change your idea of what you have to sacrifice for them, and shift instead to building a brand new relationship with them based on the raw truth of how things really stand.

Look - we all hope to change our mates when we marry (at least in all live short of fairy tales). How successful are we? Not at all. People are who they are, and you can't change their nature, only their behavior. And so any uncomfortable alteration that you hammered into place in the past is forced on the relationship from the outside. It isn't real. It is just pretend. It never really existed.

Who IS that person at the core? And who are you this very day - stripped of all your plans and dreams, freed from trying to save things or turn them around.

Like a systems analyst in a hostile take-over, look at your life and determine who to keep, who to can, how to adjust the emotional wages you are willing to pay, what infrastructure has to go, what new infrastructure needs to be brought in, and what infrastructure can be reworked.

Like saving a company, save your life! Allow yourself some happiness free from regrets!

Now, keep in mind that nobody else will see you as somebody new starting over. They will see you as the same old person singing a new tune. So while to you this is a whole new beginning of a whole new story, to them it is a different meloday set to the same old story.

All the years you've known people becomes intertia in the way they feel about you. You may now be free of it, but they aren't. Eveything you do now (from your perspective) is the first step of a new journey. For them, it is just one more drop in a very big bucket.

As long as you try to fix story one, you are trapped by that same inertia of the past, trying to steer your life into a new course while fighting not only other people's gravity to the past but your own as well. When you finally break free into story two, you eliminate all your inertia, but still have theirs to move.

So, don't expect instant results. It will take a lot of time, and a good manager knows that about a company being re-organized. But as long as you aren't bound by those shackles, you can put all your energy into building something new as an ALTERNATIVE to the life you had before - not a remedy for it.

And, in time, people will see a new consistency to the new life structure you are building. They will begin to see the pattern, the shape of things to come. And, in time, they will begin to trust in the new you and join you in a whole new paradigm for your relationships.

After all, now matter how much water has gone under the bridge, everyone has the capacity to say, "That was then, this is now" but first you have to prove it to them.

... The only way out is to put an end to trying to maintain what was, see what truly is, and use that as a starting point with a clean slate to build something new that is free from all that happened and all you hoped would be.

The second excerpt is from a metaphysical book by Henry Thomas Hamblin in 1923, but it seems to be saying exactly the same thing as you, Melanie, and the New Testament ("the old man of sin has died...").

It is not exactly an easy road which you have chosen. No path that leads upward ever is. The path of victory is always thorny; but when the thorns hurt the feet most, we can console ourselves with the thought that the path really does lead somewhere, and we know definitely that it leads to Success, Achievement, Happiness and Satisfaction. Difficulties there will be, disappointments, failures and set-backs, but to him who sets his face towards the light, and will keep steadily onward, there must come success and accomplishment and victory, above all expectation. ...

You may have failed in the past, but this time you must, you will, and you shall overcome every difficulty and weakness, and achieve dominion over yourself, victory over your circumstances and complete control over your life. ....

THERE MUST AND SHALL BE NO FAILURE THIS TIME. THIS TIME YOU ARE GOING TO SUCCEED THROUGH THE POWER THAT IS WITHIN YOU. ....

It is a well known fact that when a man turns his face round and determines to fight his way to success, or to overcome evil habit, or to raise himself in any way either mentally, morally, physically or spiritually, then everything seems to happen to thwart his new intention and to throttle his new desires.

So long as he goes on in his old way, drifting with the tide, floating about helplessly, the sport of fate and the prey of outside circumstances, so long as this goes on, nothing unusual happens. But directly a start is made in an upward direction, then all kinds of psychic powers seem to be let loose, whose object appears to be to prevent the student from making any progress in his new life.

When a man realizes his own interior powers and understands the vastness and wonder of his subliminal forces, and determines to make use of them, and thus become a king among men instead of a slave, then such a disturbance takes place that unless he possesses Hope and Faith he will be tempted to turn his back on the new life and to sink back again into the old sluggish drifting existence, which leads to disappointment and despair. .... Even the health is affected in a curious way, friends are peevish and irritable, little things go wrong in business, and generally one is out of sorts and all things awry.

When this experience comes to one, then is the time to exercise Hope and Faith. First of all remember that the condition is only temporary. After a few days, in some cases it may be weeks, the health will improve, friends will become genial and harmony will again reign in your life. When the entities that cause the disturbance realize that you mean to keep on, and that you cannot be bullied into going back to the old life, they will quickly leave you.

In any case there is nothing to be afraid of, because these entities are helpless if one does not fear them. In other words, if you have Hope and Faith you can win through. Hope for better times although the present may be discouraging. Faith in the sure belief that soon all the disagreeable symptoms will disappear.

Hope on; by Faith, hang on, and keep hanging on and you will win through. Do not be discouraged by seeming failure, nothing was ever won without effort. What can be had without effort is not worth having.

Take encouragement from the fact that this disturbance in your life proves that vital changes are taking place within, that the vast powers of your subliminal mind are beginning to awaken, and that the entities of your old erroneous beliefs and habits are taking their departure.

Believe now that you can conquer and win through, and you will conquer and win through. What you believe you can do, you can do, because all power is within you. There is nothing in all the world that can stop you, except your own doubt and fear.

I want you to trust me to the extent of doing something, the underlying principle of which cannot be explained in this first lesson. I want you to make what is known as an "affirmation," I want you to affirm the following: "THE OLD LIFE IS DEAD AND BURIED. I HAVE SEVERED MYSELF FROM IT ONCE AND FOR ALL. HENCEFORTH I LIVE THE NEW LIFE OF SUCCESS AND POWER, OF SELF-MASTERY AND ALL ACCOMPLISHMENT." ....

Strive to realize all that they mean and address the words to your inner mind. It is your submerged mind that you are influencing, so address the affirmation very earnestly to it. Do this for several minutes, and finish by making the affirmation into space. Hurl it out as a message to the Universe and by so doing you will come into harmony with innumerable invisible forces, who will help and strengthen you. ... This will give you a sense of power and confidence and hope, such as you have never experienced before. This is not "imagination," it is your hitherto unsuspected interior powers being aroused into activity.

All these states and many others are within you; they can be called forth by meditation. You can call forth either good or evil, success or failure, strength or weakness, happiness or woe, everything is in your own hands.

So, to me these all seem to be the very same message that you are bringing today.

I feel that my explorations of the Enneagram have led to exactly the same conclusion. Each state of consciousness it describes is merely a tool to be used when useful, and then set aside in the next moment to be discovered anew.