No one’s journey through life follows a straight line. Every path wends through a metaphorical topography of mountains, valleys, cliffs, rivers, buttes, streams, box canyons, oceans, and the occasional Eden. Sometimes an aspect of landscape leads around in a circle until it feels more like a carousel than a trail ride. Sometimes the path zigzags abruptly and continuously until you want nothing more than to cut a few corners.
Circles
In this issue, I’m going to focus on these two attributes of the life journey. Let’s look at circles and continuums as important aspects of the landscape.
By definition, a circle has no end point. If you are moving around in a circle, you will pass the same series of points again and again and again.
In empowerment work, many cause-and effect relationships form a circle: energy produces results produces energy produces results, etc. Last week, I addressed this in the way beliefs and emotions coexist and co-create. In any circle, it doesn’t matter where you start, once you’re in the circle, you’re in. There’s no definable beginning, and there’s no definable end. Round and round and round. If you act in habitual ways, you will get habitual results.
Any circle, however, is not immune to influence, and influencing factors can come from others–in today’s world we are continuously exposed to the attitudes, beliefs, emotions and actions of others. We also influence our belief-emotion cycles from within as we observe, process, internalize outside factor, and when we listen to our own intuition.
In my article titled Mindfulness, I explored the relationship between being, having and doing. In this important circle, the three aspects lead from one to another and inform each other, and it doesn’t much matter where you start. I can make a pretty good case for starting with being, but through doing we have and become, through having we be and do, by being we do and have.
And yet, it’s not a never-ending loop. The journey is more like circling a screw with a tight thread. We go around, and at any given point we can look out on a landscape we’ve seen before, but even though the upward progress may be negligible, each revolution takes us incrementally higher. With each revolution, we take in slightly different information. With each revolution, we process the information in a slightly different way. At any time, the information and the processing might bring us to an exit point. Quite suddenly we reach a new perspective; the landscape changes, we get a new view of the world, and we can step off the spiral path and move in a different direction.
I call this the “revolution to revelation.” We hear the same thing over and over and over, and eventually we hear it as if for the first time. Suddenly, we have the ah ha moment, and nothing looks the same. Understanding hits us between the eyes. A new light illuminates an old experience. Insight skewers us. We gain wisdom. But we could not have gotten to this transformational place without all those revolutions, that hammering of experience into our awareness.
Also, some circles, such as the one for being, doing, and having, have lots of cross-movement.
Sometimes we focus on one aspect, and that aspect then informs the others. Sometimes we neglect one aspect, and that diminishes the others. This, then, brings us back to the circle: all three aspects are necessary to keep the whole healthy, to keep us progressing well on life’s journey.
Continuums
So, let’s take a closer look at the zig-zag effect.
On a mountain trail, it’s called switch-backing, and it’s the easiest, most efficient way to get up a steep slope.
On life’s journey, you often don’t realize the long stretch you’re on is actually moving you further along. And when you swing back, apparently in the opposite direction, it’s often difficult to tell you’re gaining elevation. You might think you’re in a rut, or swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to another. In a way, the pendulum is a better metaphor since it seems there’s always a range of conditions along the way.
Even better is that of a continuum. So let’s explore that for a bit, then put it in the context of a switchback.
A continuum is an idea or concept that stretches out between two extremes. A life continuum, for example, stretches between birth and death, and in between you have days, years and significant events. The moral continuum stretches between good and evil. A temperature continuum stretches from cold to hot. Etc.
The more I explore personal power, the more I see a number of important continuums, starting with the Modes of Power model. I presented the model as a hierarchical diamond, but for this discussion it works better as a horizontal line with Victim on one end and Creator on the other.
Since this model provides a way to think about emotions, you might find yourself at three or four or eight different places along the continuum on any given day, depending on what you’re doing, who you’re with, how challenged you feel, how rested you are. For instance, if you’re look at your bank balance and considering the bills you owe, you might be feeling apprehensive. Apprehension is an Interpreter emotion, so you’d be somewhere in the Interpreter section of the scale. Twenty minutes later you might be sharing a joke with a good friend and enjoying a moment of hilarity, which puts you firmly in Partner mode.
For any specific area of your life, however, you might stay pretty level: work might be fun or dreary; money might be steady or rare; your health might be challenging or easy.
In the areas of your life you find challenging, what you learn about yourself turns each monotonous “not again” leg of the journey into a switchbacks that moves you steadily along.
When you master your emotions, you also access your power, determine your direction and regulate your momentum.
Power:
Victim mode emotions have great force, but they tend to consume all available power. Generally this motivates in one of two ways. The individual becomes self-destructive, or becomes extra aggressive. The first hurts you, the second hurts others. Either way, the emotion wins and you lose.
Interpreter emotions won’t strip you of all power, but they are very wasteful. They create difficulties, they exaggerate the need to struggle, and they keep the breaks on. No matter how much gas you give the engine, it can’t perform well against so much resistance.
Observer emotions are neutral. The engine’s on, but neither the transmission nor the brake is engaged. Whenever you’re ready, just shift into gear and head in any direction.
Partner emotions are like putting a tiger in your tank. They empower you. They help you transcend any constraints that might otherwise slow you down, such as fatigue, time, finances, uncertainty and other people’s fears.
At the Creator level, you exchange your car for a jet pack. Creator emotions put you in alliance with the unlimited energy sources of the universe.
Direction:
We know the sun is the original source of all energy, yet we make distinctions between the types of energy, such as hydro, atomic, fossil fuel, wind, etc. When we think of emotions as energy, we may know the original source is within ourselves, but we tend to associate our emotions with whatever triggers them. For instance, I might be walking along, minding my own business, when someone slaps my face. The assault triggers a reaction and is therefore the source of my emotion. Or I’m walking along and someone hands me $1000. Again, the gift triggers a reaction and is therefore the source of my emotion.
Except my responses depend far more on my level of personal power than on the outside events.
A person in Victim mode is totally susceptible to outside events. The helplessness that results from these emotions provides no protection from outer influences and has no inner strength with which to push back. Certainly, those in Victim mode can–and often do–attack and retaliate, but the motivational force of emotional energy is always from the outside in. They made me do it. They deserve everything they get. I’m just playing by their rules. If I don’t reign, they will conquer.
In Interpreter mode, outside influences still motivate your responses. The emotions of this mode are judgment-based, and the measuring stick is always a comparison of some kind: good vs. bad; beautiful vs. ugly; rich vs. poor; productive vs. lazy, etc. When you internalize energy from an outside source and direct it outward again, you become judgmental of others. The energy can keep you aloof, bored, suspicious, hostile, etc. When you direct an outward source inward, you judge yourself. This may keep you immobilized, or it may be self-motivating. Self-judgment may keep you in an unproductive spin of what’s wrong, why you can’t, or how many roadblocks you face. Or it can drive you to gain knowledge, skill, proficiency, efficiency. However, if you remain in an energy such as ambition, envy, greed, pride or certainty, what you gain intellectually, physically or professionally will not offset the burdens and barriers imposed by those emotions.
When you move into Observer mode and achieve neutrality, it’s like picking up a “Get out of jail free” card. You release judgment and gain perspective. You see yourself as yourself rather than as a reflection of what you see in others. Your energy not longer pushes you in a direction you didn’t choose.
In Partner mode, you find yourself more in tune with the inner source of your power. Your energy is like a robust, rambunctious teenager–strong, and thriving on good nutrition. You welcome the nourishment you receive through the exchange of positive energies with others. Your relationships with others become cooperative rather than competitive.
When you enter Creator mode, you become like the sun, the source. You radiate out. Your energy enriches and empowers others.
Momentum:
The emotions of Victim mode are not slow. They are voracious consumers and the energy they consumer is yours. They drain power from you, making you feel more and more helpless. They take you in the direction of poverty, illness, war, famine, and other catastrophes. (In other modes, you may experience catastrophes but you will never be made helpless by them.)
Interpreter mode emotions won’t hurtle you into an abyss, but they keep you stuck. They congest, they complicate, they mess with your mind, they generate accidents, they put up roadblocks. Some momentum words that often illuminate this mode are: trying, fighting, confronting, struggling, worrying, controlling, insisting, and obeying.
When you move into Observer mode, you become neutral. You’re quiet, ready, willing; your motor is humming. You’re in Idle. Some people are perfectly content to remain in idle. Some people use the idle state to prepare, establish traction, gather their thoughts and center their emotions. As a rule, idle causes no harm.
When you move into Partner mode, you know where you’re going (even if you’ve simply articulated it as toward your best good), and you pick up speed. The energy your emotions generate open the throttle and hurry you toward your destination.
In Creator mode, you transcend speed. At this end of the continuum, what is already is. Sure, you may still have to compose your music (master the triple toe loop-double axel combination, absorb Grey’s Anatomy), but the journey becomes the destination.
Welcome the Switch-backs
If Creator mode is the ideal, if those are the emotions you want to exercise, employ and master, it helps good to recognize that everything you experience is an opportunity to practice. When you’re moving steadily toward Creator mode, you become more finely tuned, you polish off the rough edges, you share with others more easily. When you hit some snag that sends you tumbling back toward Interpreter or Victim, you can learn where you’re vulnerable, you can recognize parts you didn’t see before, you can ask for help, you can allow others to share with us.
The trail up the mountain (to enlightenment? to personal power?) is never straight uphill. You must switchback occasionally, apparently heading in the wrong direction, to gather the skills, knowledge and wisdom that make life satisfying–and fun.
