What you scan for is what you create
You might not know it, but you are a powerful magician and conjurer.
About a year ago, I was committed to becoming an Evolved being. That meant being Radically Responsible at all times, which meant that not only did I need to be able to know what I wanted, say what I wanted, never adapt to others, be nonlinear, use magic, be grounded, be open love, feel my feelings, avoid Low Drama, and have control of my Underworld, the other people in my life needed to do this too.
You could tell how committed I was to this because if you were around me, you would experience a whirring coming from me. The whirring was my brain (very large and muscular from years of study, and analysis, and pattern recognizing) continuously scanning for targets to destroy. I trained my vast attention and perception on finding out what “wasn’t working” in the space, and then? Like a good man raised in America, I did something about it. I spoke up. I put my fist on the table. The closer you were to me, the more I was on your team for you to be perfect. No one benefitted from this more than my partner. For her, I was a feedback and coaching machine. Whatever slightest hesitations, vaguest unclarity, and smallest assumptions she made were chomped up by me. I told her to shift what she was doing and try again. I was molding her into an Evolved being.
Did it work? Well, work for what? It worked for creating Hell, that’s for sure.
Did it work for creating Evolution? Was I being Evolved? Was she being Evolved? Was it creating what I wanted?
What did I want anyway? I thought Evolution would lead to something like Fulfillment and Happiness and Being Alive… that’s why I was doing all this anyway.
What I was doing didn’t create that. You know that already, but it was awfully difficult for me to realize that.
It was difficult because who wants to admit they are not having fun in their life? Not me. I did not want to admit that. Definitely not. Somehow I realized that denial was not going to change anything. I had to let my desire to have fun become more important than my being Wrong.
Ok, ok. “Somehow” is not a satisfying answer. I realized this because I got feedback at the dinner table once (while living at the Magic Cow BridgeHouse) that the feedback I was giving my partner didn’t seem to be doing anything. Maybe it was worth trying once or twice — my tone, the specific feedback, my insistence on it — but after that my purpose seemed suspect. I was far too smart to not be able to see that it wasn’t creating “Evolution”. Then, the big question: If I wasn’t really after Evolution, what was I after?
In a Radically Responsible Universe, your purpose for your every action is actually very close to what you are creating. So I had to admit I wasn’t after Evolution after all. I seemed to be after anguish, and disappointment, and fighting with my partner. I looked carefully, and I realized the only thing I “enjoyed” about giving feedback was feeling like I was doing “good” at school, like making sure I was catching all the grammatical mistakes in an essay. I was not really enjoying how things were going. Admitting this was the first step.
For making meaningful progress for anything in your life, you have to know where you are first. I had vaguely understood that I was not quite in the Evolved state of my life I thought I was in, but rather than take a hard look at where exactly I stood, I let myself believe that if I just tried harder and kept pushing through, then where I was would quickly align with where I wanted to be. Then, I could avoid the slow process of starting from where I really was.
As anyone who’s ever been with a father who refuses to ask for directions despite being terribly lost, this is not actually the fastest, or smoothest, or most fun way to go. Once I let go of being somewhere else, once I relaxed my grip on pushing through, I got to take a deep breath and then I got present with my situation.
I was not having fun. I was not having enjoyment. I was not having Love.
Getting really present with my situation meant also to not swing all the way into a equally wrong image of how terrible I was. What I was doing did not mean that I was useless or bad or unloving. It did not mean that I did not have skills and knacks and abilities and brilliance. I did. I had lots of those things. Getting present to where I really was freed me up to apply my brilliance. All of a sudden there was room for my tremendous ability to scan, notice, and observe.
I stopped viewing my partner as her actions and inactions. I started seeing her as Potentials and as Forces that Were Already in Action.
So many of her moves are about connection, intimacy, love, and community. When she speaks in ways that seem unclear or indecisive, she is pausing and inviting me into the conversation. I started being able to see that she actually loves talking with people rather than at them or for them. I once got angry for her because she decorated my room for my birthday. I thought it was a waste of time and frivolous because I don’t care about celebration. I saw suddenly that if I had opened my heart, I would have felt love that was definitely not frivolous. And that this kind of celebration nourishes and changes the quality of the communities we’re in to have it be a part of the energetic fabric that we spend time to create and celebrate for others. It does something to community to see streamers, flowers, colors, and energetic beauty. And the way she stops to be with others’ pain? These moments are not about her being enmeshed; these moments come because her heart hears the talking of other hearts in ways that I know nothing about.
What I was seeing in her shifted completely. When you make a shift in what you scan for, in what you see, it is not something gradual. It is a discontinuous change. Or, it can be, if you let it be.
I know the shift was sudden because she was shocked and told me so. How I was being with her was different, and now it was possible to have fun together. It was possible to create together. Instead of only seeing what she could improve at (which will always be endless for any person), I was all of a suddenly free to wonder about what we could create together. I started thinking “Gosh, this person is a lot of fun to be around” and then I started wondering how I could team up with her to make even more fun. I moved completely from working against to working with.
The people around me even noticed my different looking. It was truly like I was seeing a different person, even on the physical level. I sat next to my partner on a couch one day and was gazing lovingly upon the beautiful woman sitting next to me. My friend couldn’t help but blurt out, “Daway, gosh, I am so delighted looking at how you are looking at her.”
When you make this kind of shift, it will manifest itself outwardly.
There is one last important note. I did not just stop scanning for what was wrong. I could feel it come back again and again. Habits and addictions are hard to break. I consciously practiced not just scanning for my partner’s brilliance and her Upperworld, I also kept practicing scanning for literally anything else other than what she was doing wrong. I wanted to fill the space of my scanning so the old habit could never have room to come back. I sat with her and scanned for colors, shapes, smells, sounds, visions. I scanned for where her attention was. For things that could break. I scanned for her joy and anger and sadness. I scanned for Love.
So here in an experiment for you:
Look at your relating. Admit to yourself how things really are.
Notice what you are scanning for. Notice what your attention is trying to grip onto.
Practice scanning for literally anything else. Do this neurotically. See what else takes its place.