The Direction of Intention

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I am still meditating on how achievement and self-love are connected in our culture – and how central this idea is to every client I have ever worked with (individuals and organizations). It is certainly a Puritan notion. Self-love is also anathema to the Puritan notion; you get to heaven through a lifetime of hard work and self-denial not self-love. Hard pews and stiff collars seem counterproductive. It’s always been an oddly self-destructive concept to me.

I’ve understood since I was little that negating myself can only lead to negating others. When I look on the world as filled with either angels or devils (dualities) and they are having a tug-o-war over my soul, then I am fundamentally creating a split consciousness. If angels and devils are the context through which I see (the circumstance of the story I tell), I will see dualities and splits everywhere. Temptation is the name of the self-denial game and I will be suspect of myself and therefore suspect of everyone I meet. I reinforce the split and not the unity. Why would I do that? Why would I create through the eyes of separation? Why would I reinforce within myself a split consciousness?

So what does this have to do with achievement and self-love? We identify ourselves through our doing. Every client I have is asking questions about the quality and value of their doing: comparisons, expectations, perfectionism, investments in stories of validity, questions about being enough, questions about doing the right life’s work; questions about voice, about creativity,… are questions of doing. All of the judgments and self-criticism are about doing enough or doing “what I was meant to do.” We are asking questions of doing and missing the questions of being. What about the quality of your being? This is akin to asking the question “How?” before asking the question, “Why?”

And so I ask myself, am I capable of loving myself if I never again paint another picture, teach another class, write another story, or achieve another thing? Yes. I believe the self-love comes first; achievement is only useful if it serves a greater community and service is only useful if it begins from a source of love.

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