A Takeaway for 2022: Being Pulled Toward Our Best Self
Dear Upbuild Community,
Another whirlwind year has gone by. There are many things to celebrate and many things to mourn, as always. I try to be daily in touch with the bigger picture which helps a lot, but at this time of year especially, I become contemplative about where I’m at in life. How am I doing? What have I learned? Where do I need to go from here?
How Am I Doing?
To answer the first question, many close to me would tell me in the words of our Enneagram teachers, Don Riso and Russ Hudson: I’m doing better than I think. My schedule and responsibilities somehow feel increasingly unmanageable and yet I feel called to all that I have the privilege to do. Even my guru, Sacinandana Swami, was puzzled about what to do with me! When we got to be together in person for the first time in three years due to the pandemic, he marveled that I’m doing all that I should be doing and it’s so wonderful. And yet he understood that the stress is just too much. He could not advise where to pull back because there’s something so right about things.
Yet I’ve suffered a major toll to my digestive health (previously it was back issues), and I know it’s not unrelated. I’ve therefore revamped my life in very surreal ways with a new Ayurvedic diet. I’ve become more committed than ever to certain sacred habits, capitalizing on the early morning hours that are a linchpin to my well-being. And I continue to serve every way I can to my heart’s content with my wife, this Upbuild team, and our community…Except that my heart is never content! I always want to serve much more and much more deeply. This is all a great honor and also an intense growing pain I experience constantly. Hopefully I can at the very least live up to the idea that I’m doing better than I think!
What Have I Learned?
To start, I’m carrying a lot of weight! I guess I always knew that, but I’m seeing it more acutely as well as the effects of it. So then I’ve had to determine – what’s the source of that weight? With all good intentions to do more and be a better version of myself, I’ve discovered that the source is one thing: the notion that it’s all on me.
I have to figure everything out. I have to move move move. I have to do. And if I don’t, things fall apart. I better get to it. Nonstop. It never ends. And it’s never enough. And then one day it will end. And it will have to be enough. But with this mentality, even at the time of death, it won’t have ever been enough. That’s a wake-up call!
When I spoke to my guru about this, he made a startling observation that has remained burned into my consciousness for many years: Hari Prasada, you’re a pusher. You always push yourself. And you act as if that is the best way to live. I know because I was a pusher myself…
It resonated intensely. And you can see the effect of that pushing on me in what I’ve shared here. But I could not seem to understand the alternative for how life should go except as some ethereal idea.
When I’ve asked Sacinandana Swami about how to flip the switch to the way he now so beautifully operates, he’s told me that this requires deep spiritual experience. It’s not an overnight job. It’s a “rewiring.” But I understand that the rewiring has to begin now.
The challenge, as I also expressed to him, is that whenever I try not to push, things don’t happen. Things really do fall apart. I have evidence! If I don’t push myself, it’s not good. Maybe you’ve experienced the same thing yourself or would never want to try lifting your foot from the accelerator for fear of that same thing. Yes, this is why it’s not so easy!
And that brings us to the third and final question.
Where Do I Need to Go from Here?
I’m faced with a crucial choice: To continue pushing or to be pulled somehow toward my best self.
Currently, my mindset carries the momentum of the ego’s limitless self-centeredness. It’s all up to you, Hari Prasada. You’ve got to do everything. You have responsibility to everyone. Don’t let them down. You have to make things count. This life better amount to something. Make it happen.
There’s a place for this mentality outside of the ego’s reign. We do indeed have to be responsible and not offload that to others or avoid. We have to take our lives seriously. We have to take the people in our lives seriously, the roles we get to play for them, and the contributions we can make. No one else will do that for us. And it is our precious chance to make something wonderful out of this life! Who would want to argue with that or squander it with casualness?
To live the most meaningful life, we do indeed need strong aspiration, dedication, determination, and action. Without goals, strategy, and resolve, we won’t get anywhere. And likewise without proactive adaptation and iteration, we won’t get anywhere. Hence, it’s not so easy to just stop pushing and actually get somewhere worthwhile!
But there’s something more here. There are unseen forces at play that have shaped our lives into what they are beyond our own ability to do so. We cannot even will ourselves to breathe, or as I’ve learned bitterly, to digest food. We are very small. So little is really within our control at all. If we actually recognize this, a door opens up.
Through the spirit of humility, we feel our dependency. We feel our insignificance. We feel our hopelessness. And why would we want any of these things that sound completely negative? Because they’re the truth. And it’s not helpful to choose illusion over truth. Moreover, in this spirit of humility, there is uncharted possibility. It is only through humility that we can be pulled.
The self-oriented pusher carrying the weight of everything knows no peace. There is a fundamental lack of humility in the approach. It’s a mythical hope to gain control over the uncontrollable. To somehow miraculously tame the tides of life before we leave the planet – an event also tellingly beyond our control.
As we close on another year, I want to change my approach. I’m determined to do so. But not with the pushing mindset of “I will pull myself!” That would be antithetical to what I wish to achieve. To achieve what is most precious in life – deepening connection to my best self – I must get in the mindset to receive.
I have to stay with the recognition that I’m not so great, I’m not so special, and I’m not capable of doing any of this myself. I also can’t turn that into the ego’s inferiority complex which is just the flip side of the same coin. I’m so down and frustrated because I’m not so great, I’m not so special, and I’m not capable of doing any of this myself, but I should be!
Rather, the spirit of humility is a grounding release of the pressure I put on myself to be everything at all times and have things under control. It’s a voluntary giving up of the weights I carry without giving up or making someone else become the carrier. It’s a deep internal shift.
By admitting my lack of control and my inabilities, I don’t have to hold myself to unreasonable standards and live on the treadmill of life. This is the secret I observe in my guru. He’s as productive and dynamic of a force as anyone I’ve ever seen. He often doesn’t get enough rest because he gives so much of himself to people in the same vein that I aspire to – writing, teaching, coaching, counseling, serving, and being with people. But he never feels he’s pushing. He always feels pulled.
Sacinandana Swami doesn’t think – look at what I’ve done, look at what I’m doing, or look at what I have to do in the future. He thinks – look at what an instrument I’ve gotten to be, try to be currently, and get to be in the future, by some grace. This takes all the weight off! He feels incapable of doing anything himself while paradoxically using his nature and skills to contribute to the world by helping us realize our best selves. There’s a pulling force he feels beyond himself that is electrifying.
When I’ve tapped into this pulling force myself, which I did for the first time in my monastic days, it’s been intoxicating. There’s nothing I love more. It’s really the best, and I could always tell that there’s so much more where this came from! I’m only scratching the surface…
I have vivid memories of hosting events and taking care of our community by giving talks, serving sanctified food, and spending time with people, experiences that have been out of this world. Being in flow. Feeling I’m not doing anything and yet things are happening. Feeling that I get to be an instrument.
Honestly, by some grace, I feel this way at our Upbuild events practically every time. And this gives me great conviction that the approach can be ported more and more into all aspects of my life. For example, when I’m very stressed about cooking for guests, making sure everything is tasty, nourishing, and on time, I offer a simple prayer, resolving to give my best, eager to satisfy the bellies and hearts of all, and I trust it will somehow come together. When it doesn't go the way I’d like, I get to learn from what could be better and to accept what’s not meant to be. This works wonders! And I see how the same experience can apply elsewhere in my life. Everywhere in my life.
There is a flow that’s available to all of us. There is a pulling force that is bigger and more fulfilling than our little efforts to push ourselves. That experience awaits us all. We have the crucial choice: to push or to be pulled.
To increasingly receive this freeing feeling of flow with life, as we wrap up 2022, I’m committing to the following steps, and I sincerely hope you will too:
1. Recognize I’m carrying the weight of “it's all on me”
2. Admit that things are beyond my control
3. Set the intention to simply be of humble service to the people in my life
4. Trust that when I give my best it will be enough and I will be pulled to keep growing
Accompanied by daily spiritual practice, this formula becomes extremely potent. Over time, it will dismantle the ego that harasses us, making everything a struggle or dangling one carrot after another for us to chase. This formula will undoubtedly bring us to being our best self more and more, as we all crave. I have evidence! Start the rewiring now.