Deliberate Receiving Read online

  Anger is the emotion that takes us out of powerlessness. When you’ve had enough of the hoodlums beating you up, of allowing them to use and abuse you, you’ll stand up and fight back. You’ll scream, ‘No more!’ And you’ll, at the very least, run away. By removing yourself from the situation, you’re withdrawing your permission for them to beat you up. You stop subjecting yourself to the situation that’s causing you pain. This is generally the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenarios happen when destructive, uncontrolled anger explodes forth, after the pressure has been allowed to build for too long. This is when people lash out at others, either verbally or physically. This is when rage and the need for revenge lead to manslaughter and murder. But before you get scared of anger (or more scared than you already are), let me remind you that this type of expression of anger isn’t actually anger; it’s suppressed anger. If you want to avoid these kinds of outbursts, you’ll need to make friends with it and embrace it, instead of running away from it. My point?

  Fighting back is more empowering than sitting there and taking it.

  In order to stand up and shout, ‘No!’ and run away, or even fight back, you have to believe that whatever life is about (and you may still not know what that is), it simply can’t be about getting beaten up and just taking it. It can’t be about being used and abused. It can’t always be about the needs of others. This belief system requires you to ask, ‘What about me for a change?’ And THAT point of view requires you, for the first time on the Spectrum, to actually value yourself.

  When you first enter into any kind of real empowerment, you begin to say things like ‘I don’t deserve to be treated this badly!’ and ‘This shit isn’t right!’ You have the realization that you just can’t take it any more, and that you’re simply not going to put up with your situation any longer, screw the consequences. In fact, one of the beneficial properties of anger is that we stop caring so much about how others will be affected (this is not detrimental when anger is released constructively, as I’m about to show you).

  You see, when you care 100 per cent about other people’s feelings and 0 per cent about your own, you will never do anything that’s good for you until everyone in your environment agrees. And while those who need you to put their needs above your own are surrounding you, you will never get their agreement. In fact, you won’t have attracted any other kind of people from a powerless state, since they wouldn’t mirror back your own propensity to put them first. Another powerless person in shame and guilt would be doing what you’re doing – trying to give you all their power, while you’re trying to give them yours. You’d only end up fighting over who gets to put the other first (‘No, YOUR needs come first!’ ‘No, YOUR needs come first!’). The mirror to someone who gives away all their power in order to feel good is someone who needs to take power from others so they can feel good.

  When you give away ALL of your power (DEPRESSION), you’ll never do anything for yourself. In the SHAME group, you begin to value yourself a little more. You don’t ask for anything, of course, but you learn subtle (and not so subtle) ways of manipulating others around you into doing you favours. At the bottom end of the Spectrum, just to the right of DEPRESSION, these manipulations will be mostly about survival – you appease others so that you can continue to exist. This is, incidentally, where people in abusive relationships usually hang out. In the higher part of the SHAME group, you begin actively to manipulate others in order to get not only what you need to survive, but also some of what you want. As you move higher up the Spectrum, these feelings of deserving turn into anger. At this point, you actually start placing your own needs above those of others; you begin to take care of yourself.

  It’s at this point that I tend to lose people a little. A lot of you will have read that last passage and bristled at the idea of putting your own needs above those of others. After all, isn’t that why we’re in the mess we’re in today? Isn’t this the height of selfishness and isn’t selfishness the root of all evil? No, no and straight up, no. Here’s where the explanation of the Spectrum comes in handy. You see, putting your own needs ahead of everyone else’s doesn’t mean that you stop caring about others. It doesn’t mean that you now have to walk over bodies to get what you want, become a heartless bastard, take ice cream from children and kick puppies. Serving others from a place of powerlessness is very different from serving others from a place of empowerment. In other words, an activity performed in the lower part of the Spectrum will be very different from that same activity performed in the upper part of the Spectrum. You can’t ever truly give to anyone if you’re not giving to yourself first.

  Think of one of those big, round fountains you can find in old town squares, especially in Southern Europe. The water spurts out of the top and fills up the highest reservoir. It then trickles down into the next largest reservoir and so on until it fills the basin at the very bottom. People who want to drink from the fountain take the water from the bottom reservoir. The fountain continuously fills itself up and then gives and gives and gives from the overflow. If the fountain tried to give people water before filling up those reservoirs, they would never get filled. It would run dry. When you take care of yourself first, you have so much more to give others, but without becoming depleted.

  Remember that self-care is not the same as selfishness.

  Although, when you shift from SHAME into ANGER, it’s important that you allow yourself temporarily to be a bit more selfish in the name of self-care. It means being willing to stand up for yourself and stop the unhealthy giving you’ve been practising for so long. It can often mean severing relationships and walking away from people who gain their power from using and abusing you. This isn’t about slinking off into the night to lick your wounds, only to have them inflicted upon you again the next day. This is about stomping off in broad daylight, spitting defiantly and kicking up dirt, so that all may know they can no longer fuck with you.

  Anger is also about taking all that blame you’ve been placing on yourself and pushing it outwards, onto others. Again, I know that many of you will bristle at this idea, but hear me out. We’re still working in the lower part of the Spectrum at this point, so we’re still powerless to a degree. In total powerlessness or DEPRESSION, we see the power as lying with an outside source. In SHAME, we hope to get some scraps from that power, even if we don’t deserve them. In ANGER, we begin to demand that some power be given to us. And, in order to do that, we have to have someone of whom we can make those demands. Someone or something has to represent the power structure if it isn’t within us. Whereas in the lowest end of the Spectrum we want to appease this power structure, in ANGER, as we move more into empowerment, we begin to demand more justice, more fairness. We want the power to be distributed more evenly. The higher you climb on the Spectrum, the fairer the world becomes.

  In moving into ANGER, we still believe that someone else has what we want (they have the power), but we no longer believe that they’re more deserving of our stuff than we are. We begin to believe that if they have more power than we do, it’s due to some kind of error. It’s unfair. This is not the way it’s supposed to be. We shift the blame. Instead of our pain being our own fault (it’s just because we’re so unworthy), we see it as being their fault: ‘them’ being whomever we’re assigning the power to, be it our boss, neighbour, the government, the 1 per cent, corporations, those who disagree with us, etc. And this is perfectly natural. There’s nothing wrong with blaming others, as long as you do so constructively and don’t get stuck in that emotional state. Of course we’ve all seen the angry grumps at the bar, bitching about whose fault it is that they are in the situation they’re in, blaming the government or the other sports team for the fact that they’re miserable. Does this look constructive? Does this look like healing to anyone? Of course not. These individuals are blaming others, but only to the degree that it makes them feel slightly better. They never allow themselves to move fully through the ANGER Spectrum and on up to the next group (FRUSTRAT
ION). They’re actually stuck in the cycle of doom, moving from DEPRESSION or SHAME to ANGER and back again, precisely because they never fully let their anger out. Like the pressure cooker that just goes off in order to release some steam, these individuals bitch and complain in order to release some of the pain, but never remove the cause of it. They never take the pot off the stove. Again, I’ll explain exactly how to avoid this scenario in Chapter 11.

  Those grumps at the bar may be displaying a type of destructive anger release, but they are demonstrating the natural progression of the Spectrum. When we are feeling powerless, we naturally and automatically move into ANGER. The key is to go from blaming yourself to blaming others and then taking responsibility. Responsibility and blame are not the same thing, which should become clear as I explain the upper range of the Spectrum. But you can’t move through and past ANGER if you’re unwilling to spend at least a little bit of time blaming others (in a constructive way, which I will show you how to do in Chapter 11. This natural propensity for blame is also why people in the lower part of the Spectrum become so easily offended. After all, it has to be someone’s fault, and if it’s not mine it has to be yours. When someone becomes defensive, when they do the equivalent of screaming, ‘It’s not my fault, it’s your fault!’ they’re actually doing their best to move from SHAME to ANGER. They are empowering themselves. Again, most of the problems in our society are not due to people experiencing these emotions, but rather because they’ve become stuck in one of the lower emotional groups due to limiting beliefs, and have allowed the pressure to build. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water; let’s not demonize these emotions just because people often engage in exaggerated and destructive displays of those feelings.

  You’ll have seen anger in its natural state if you’ve ever watched a toddler playing with something he didn’t have the dexterity for; joining two small building blocks, for example. The toddler wants to do something he can’t do. He then feels a moment of powerlessness – something unwanted is happening and he can’t do anything about it. He experiences a rush of anger and throws the building blocks down in frustration. He may even cry for a few seconds. But before you know it, he’s moved on to something else, and is happily playing again. The building blocks have been forgotten.

  This is what anger is supposed to look like. The toddler moved from powerlessness (he couldn’t do something he wanted to do) to anger (a release of that powerlessness) easily and quickly, and then on up the Spectrum. The reason that anger usually doesn’t look like that is because most people will not allow themselves to experience or express anger. So, it festers. We stay in a powerless state. We stay in the alley and let the hoodlums beat us up, while we get angrier and angrier and angrier. Finally, we explode and rip their faces off. Or yell at someone at the grocery store for seemingly no good reason. When we ‘overreact’ and anger comes flying out at an inopportune moment, it’s always because we’ve kept ourselves imprisoned in a prolonged state of powerlessness (‘I’m in a situation that I don’t like and for whatever reason, I can’t get out’), and the strain has become too much. That pressure cooker is going to blow, eventually. It has to.

  As always, this can be observed on an individual level, as well as a collective one. Have you ever noticed that people in our society are really, really angry? Generations of powerlessness have created a pressurized situation that can’t help but explode every once in a while. This doesn’t solve the problem, but it does keep people from sinking into DEPRESSION. Even some anger will help to keep us from sliding down the Spectrum further.

  Belief systems of emotional group 4: FRUSTRATION

  Emotions: Frustration, discouragement, pessimism

  Spectrum location: Between ANGER and HOPE

  Level of empowerment: The power lies with some outside source, and it is actually a fair one (more like a machine), we just have to figure out how it works. If we can crack the code, we can get what we want (or at least something in that direction).

  This is the last level of powerlessness before we cross the threshold. Getting something wanted is possible, but it comes at some kind of price. If we can figure out what the price is and pay it, we can prosper.

  In the FRUSTRATION group, we feel that we’re close; what we want is just out of reach, like something we can see behind a glass window. This is usually the point at which we’ll try everything. We’re pretty sure that we can get what we want, and we’ve moved past SHAME and ANGER, for the most part. We’ve walked away from the hoodlums and have begun to make our way out of the nasty neighbourhood. Things are looking up and we can observe them getting better. Most of the pain has gone (we’re nearly at the neutral point) and we’re eager to experience pleasure; we know it’s out there, but we just don’t quite know how to get it.

  There’s actually quite a bit of empowerment at this level – you believe, at least to some degree, that you can and should get what you want, you’re just not yet sure that you actually will. When compared to the DEPRESSION, SHAME and ANGER belief systems, this one seems downright swimming in empowerment, which is why so many people accept this as the last stage before they’re ‘done’. And, if the goal was to simply become pain-free, to get to the Zero Point, they’d be right. Only, zero isn’t as good as it can get. And deep down, we know that, which is why we feel so frustrated when we get close to that threshold. We feel the pressure to cross it. This is the first time in the Spectrum that we can experience positive pressure – although most people won’t interpret it that way. This is the feeling you get just before you do something really big (like bungee jump off a bridge). You’re scared, but you really, really want to have this experience. Our innate knowledge of what’s on the other side of that Spectrum (empowerment) pulls us towards it, but our remaining resistance is still blocking us. Again, it’s like looking through a glass window; we’re so close we can practically taste what we want, but it’s just out of reach.

  Feelings of frustration come about when we’re pretty sure that we can get what we want, but don’t yet totally believe that we will. We make statements such as ‘I don’t know… maybe… I mean it’s got to be possible, right? But how? Arrrrrgh!’ As we entertain our doubts, we feel frustration. Keep in mind that the amount of time you spend in each emotional group is a very individual thing. It will vary not only from person to person, but also from situation to situation. Someone who’s just had a huge anger release, for example, could blow right past FRUSTRATION and even the Zero Point (neutral) and swoosh immediately up the Spectrum into HOPE, or even ENTHUSIASM. When you effectively block your own, powerful energy from flowing, the pressure will build behind that blockage. When you bust through the dam, which is what a release of anger is, when you break through the blockage, the energy that’s been stuck behind it will flow. The more energy you’ve suppressed, the faster it will flow. So, someone who’s been in misery for a long time can actually be catapulted forward quite rapidly as soon as they change their limiting beliefs.

  Others will go through each stage at a slower pace, exploring each one thoroughly before moving on. And while neither is wrong, you can speed up your progress considerably by understanding the Spectrum and deliberately shifting your emotions.

  Zero Point: the Void

  Emotions: Seeming lack of emotion, feeling numb

  Spectrum location: Zero Point, smack dab in the middle

  While the Zero Point isn’t technically an emotional group, it is a stage that deserves a mention, especially because it does have the tendency to freak people out. You see, when you move from the lower part of the Spectrum to the upper one, you move from a pain-motivated way of living to a pleasure-motivated way of living. In other words, you stop doing all the stuff that hurts you, and start doing the stuff that actually feels good. But, in order to make that shift, we have to be willing to let our pain receptors recover and switch over to become pleasure receptors.

  Imagine that you’ve been spending the last couple of minutes pounding on your thumb with
a hammer. You’ve given your poor thumb some pretty good whacks and it’s red and sore and in a lot of pain. Now imagine that you stop doing that, and instead, you begin to caress your thumb with a feather. Do you think that feather would actually feel good, or do you think your thumb would need a little time to recover before you could feel such a subtle caress? Of course, it’s the second one. A callus doesn’t form from something purely pleasurable. It forms because of something that’s irritating or damaging. The callus doesn’t just numb out the irritation and pain, though, it also numbs out potential pleasure. When the irritation stops, the callus has to be allowed to heal before the more sensitive pleasure receptors can do their job.

  This area of the Spectrum is what I call ‘the Void’. It can feel like numbness, like total lack of emotion, like you’re floating. It’s not bad or painful, it’s just a kind of blah, nothing feeling, which is precisely what causes people to freak out. They mistake this numbness for the numbness that comes from severely repressed anger. They wrongly interpret the blah and listless feeling as the unmotivated state of depression. But DEPRESSION and the Void aren’t anywhere near each other on the Spectrum. There is pain in DEPRESSION. There is no pain in the Void. Misinterpreting the numbness of the Void as a bad thing (instead of a holiday from pain), however, can cause us to slide right back down the Spectrum. The thought that something has gone wrong is always a powerless one.

  You can find yourself in the Void anytime you’ve let go of a painful belief – anytime you’ve stopped hitting yourself with the hammer. But don’t despair. Like I said, nothing has gone wrong. You’re simply taking a breather, a break from feeling bad. This seeming lack of momentum – nothing much seems to be happening, which can feel boring – is also a great time to make the massive shift of changing your focus from one of pain minimization to pleasure maximization. It’s a lot easier to change your direction when you’re standing still (or moving very slowly) than when you’re rushing in the opposite direction as fast as you can. The value of the Void is that it’s a great opportunity to focus differently to how you have been doing. It’s also the perfect time to rest and recover from all the damage that the resistance did – to let your thumb heal now that you’ve stopped pounding it with a hammer.