The “Right” Choices for You & The Group
This is a tough one! This is the inner landscapes meeting the external landscapes! Here’s the big secret that’s really no secret at all—separate landscapes don’t really exist; they are intricately and DEEPLY connected. Some believe they are the same exact thing. Throughout this entire curriculum, in almost every practice in every course, I merely ask you to look at yourself as an individual self rather than as a social self, but indeed, you encompass both, each influencing and interacting and “being with” the other. I have repeated several times how self-study will greatly improve your relationships with others.
You don’t “DO YOU” in a vacuum. You are a social being, and that is a critically important and substantial part of how you are who you are–that is, in relationship to other people. These courses work from the premise that many modern people experience an imbalance between how much and how often we focus on others and the external world, whether that means fixing others, blaming others, being responsible for others, helping others, or being manipulated by the world of social media and super-corporations, versus how much we focus on ourselves and our realization and actualization.
In this practice, you are being asked to observe your personal, individual experiences as a human being, and thus being yourself and “doing you” includes making choices in line with your values which could certainly include deciding to do collective, social and political action and making choices about family, communal, and spiritual life.
In the practice below, observe, reflect and
write about yourself as a group member.
Reflect on relationships you choose and those you did not choose.
Write about your group membership(s) and values.
Write about who you are in terms of the groups you belong to and those you do not. How do you qualify to be in those groups?
Are the values of the group, the same as your personal values? Are there some values that are the same and some that may be different? Is there conflict there or not? If not, why not? If so, why? Explain.
Write about your membership in the human race. How do you qualify as part of the human race?
What groups would you like to be part of and why?
What groups would you like to leave and why?
The QUESTIONS are more important than the ANSWERS
How do YOU do the right thing– right for you AND that will not harm others– that will make things better and not worse for you and others? THIS IS SO CHALLENGING! Describe an example. Note your emotions as you respond to this prompt.
How do YOU make the healthy choice that fosters wellness and peace and balance for you AND for the group? This is the same question, written slightly differently. (My point is to get you to ponder the question not to provide “the” answer.)
Reflect on and write about fairness and harm and what those terms mean to you. Notice how you FEEL, emotionally and physiologically, as you reflect and/or write about these topics. (Notice which terms you use to describe your emotions, e.g. guilty, ashamed, resentful, angry, hopeful, etc…)
How do YOU make the correct choices in your life i.e. to make your interior self thrive as well as the social self thrive? Explain and include examples.
Perhaps you think you are making the “right” choices for yourself, but that turns out to be false. Perhaps you think you are not making the “right” choices, but that turns out to be false. *Find out what you are really up to with your personal choices and choice-making that impacts others. It will take courage to accept the truth of what you discover while also noticing any resistance that comes up.
Negotiation, Sacrifice, Balance
(Give a little, get a little, sometimes, and it depends…)
You have to negotiate within yourself—amongst your inner impulses, desires, needs, thoughts and feelings, and negotiate and cooperate with others which means making compromises and sacrifice. It’s a tricky balance. Just as within you, aspects of yourself must “die” for others to grow and flourish, so too with “letting go” of desires or beliefs to allow the social body to flourish and grow. And, as you have been learning all along, this is a difficult process requiring courage to notice and manage resistance (to change, loss) and honestly accept the truth.
Reflect & Write
Try to notice yourself in terms of choice when it involves you and a group and how you sacrifice or refuse to, compromise or not, let go of your ego’s desires or not, let go of a belief or not, cooperate or not.
You might want to think of how you are a good playmate or teammate and when perhaps you have not. Reflect on those experiences to understand yourself as a person who failed and/or succeeded in negotiation and sacrifice. Did you give a little and get nothing? Did you get a little and not give so much?
(Pro) Social Playmates
When people behave in the extreme or pose a serious threat to the group, the group collectively decides upon discipline to maintain the balance and survival of the group organism. It behooves each individual in the group to discipline themselves, to become a good parent to themselves, which will allow them more personal freedom and play a heathy part in the larger whole. Union within and without! Internally and externally! If people struggle and fail to do “play fair” and pose a threat to themselves or others, the group provides help, support, and discipline, ideally, as a good parent (not an authoritarian brutal dictator!) This is the ideal, of course, which in reality is imperfect and inconsistent.
Finally, the group, parenting, mentors, and elders all model both healthy and unhealthy human choices. They model responsibility, courage, and other aspects of character and virtue as well as vices and failures, abuses of discipline, and lack of insight etc…You get to choose which models to follow, and you will be held accountable for your choices by the group.
Obviously, ideally, we’d like to make decisions and choices that are good for us rather than harmful, individually and collectively. And, ideally, since we are social creatures and our relationships with other humans are such a HUGE part of who we are, our choices should, ideally, benefit the group or at least not harm the group or make its health worse! We are a constant work-in-progress, continually swinging between yin and yang. REALISTICALLY, where do you fall on the social wellbeing spectrum?
Reflect and Write.
Balance within the individual and within the Group
As you may have already experienced in your life, humans are imperfect, health is a spectrum, and thus balancing your choices as an individual who lives among other humans is challenging! What I am suggesting here is “relative balance” which happens within the human group– some people get more, some less; some people must give up something, and others get something; and on and on it goes with extremism as pathological. If we completely abolish the political left or ignore it entirely, the whole political organism becomes dysfunctional, just as if we completely ignored the right– same outcome. When we choose to believe that all republicans are bad people and all liberals are good, that dichotomous all-or-nothing thinking polarizes us further and further away from cooperation and unity. As social selves, we need each other for our individual health and fullest actualization, whether we like it or not.
Just as I explained the relative balance and imbalances that happen within you in your organism, the same is true for the social organism. There are plenty of examples in modern life that shows how many people are unwilling to make sacrifices within themselves for their own growth, health and actualization. There are also many example of how people are also unwilling to let go or make sacrifices for the group’s vitality. As well, there are examples of willingness, cooperation and sacrifice for the wellbeing of the group. Reflect on yourself and locate these aspects within yourself. Write them down!
Reflect & Write
How groupish are you?
How much of relationships or life within a community define who you are?
Reflect on your feelings and emotional life as it relates to relationships and groups.
What important emotional, mental, and physical needs are met by your group membership?
Write about a time where you sacrificed for the sake of “the group” (you define the group).
Write about a time when the group sacrificed for your benefit.
Write about one time when you were unwilling to “let go” a part of yourself when the group demanded it.
Write about one time when you were demanding someone in the group let go of something for you or your group.
Reflect in writing about your emotions, physical sensations, and ideas in response to the prompts above. Even though these are memories, notice both the more visceral and rational qualities of your experiences, as you remember them, and write about them. Just notice your responses.
Perhaps you could sit quietly within a group of friends or your family or a church group or a yoga class or academic course with others and just notice the group dynamic, without judgment and only to learn more about the nature of groups and social selves interacting.
Managing the Influences Inside and Out
There will always be distractions and pressures pulling you away from your path toward values, and even the various urges, impulses, and thoughts within your own inner landscapes will seemingly be distracting and tempting you to go off course. If you are aware of them because you are paying attention, because you are practicing being mindful and know yourself, you have a better chance of coping and managing than if you are oblivious and unconscious.
Super-corporations including the social media companies and conglomerates are reaching deeply into your inner landscape and manipulating your emotions, your physiology, and your mind in order to keep your attention, energy, desires, and self-awareness glued to their targets FOR PROFIT. They are manipulating YOU in unhealthy, nefarious, and negative ways, while also providing you with an amazing, progressive, useful tool that can be used for good health, healing, and wellness (individually and socially!) AND this is the conundrum of our modern time. THIS problem and the disconnection from ourselves as emotional, embodied beings is why I created this Self-Study curriculum. Our best defense is to know ourselves better than others ever could. Once you notice how much of you has been determined by these external powerful forces, the challenge will be to reclaim your true identity.
The action you can take to defend and protect yourself & those you love is to
know thyself.
Yes– being a healthy human– both individual and part of a larger whole is a delicate and demanding balancing act on a constantly changing landscape. It’s the challenge we face as modern humans living in an artificially constructed social world. Your best defense is a good offense.
Make yourself and the world, both inner and outer landscapes, a better place through self-study.
