Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The second chapter of James Hollis' book, WHAT MATTERS MOST: LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED CHOICE addresses this challenge:  that we learn to tolerate ambiguity. 

I have heard Jim say many times that one of the challenges of daily life is, in fact, learning how to deal with ambivalence, ambiguity and anxiety.  Sitting in class on Tuesday nights with people I like, listening to this wise teacher and knowing I'm going home to a house that is warm, safe and comfortable, that idea sounds good.  I'll go along with it!  Why not?

The challenge comes when the theory and good idea must be integrated into daily life that quite literally bombards us with opportunities to learn how to tolerate those very things that won't fit into neat categories.  I can accept Jim's counsel until I am caught between competing needs and value systems in my own life and am struggling in the places of life where easy answers and quick fixes only serve to exacerbate our problems. 

In a world that is in constant flux and change and in a world where terrorism, pandemics and tsunamis seem to be escalating, wouldn't it be nice to have an authority figure who will say, "I will take care of you"?  Don't we all want to follow a leader who has ultimate answers and certainty?  Aren't we all wanting the comfort and ease of security, familiarity, the status quo, the predictable?   And yet, complex problems cannot be solved with simplistic answers, and numbing out in our various forms of addictions not only doesn't solve anything, but those mind-numbing practices and substances ultimately fail us. 

Indeed, there are professions and processes in which precision and exactness are necessary; there are times when we have to choose either this or that.  There are tasks we must do that depend on being right and following correct procedures, but when it comes to the way we think about life and our attitude toward ultimate truths, the hard way of accepting and tolerating ambiguity is, in the end, an easier way.

Life is filled with irony and paradox, and the mature mind has the opportunity to keep on asking, seeking and knocking on the doors of the unknown, not so much to find THE ANSWER, but to stay in the process of becoming more fully alive, aware and engaged with life.

I'll never forget the time or the place when I was invited into giving up my attachment to a mind-set of either/or answers.  I was young and impressionable, and as I listened to the lecturer talk about that mental shift, it felt as if some of the windows and doors of my mind suddenly opened up to possibilities.   Instead of scaring me, the idea of living with a mind-set that allows both/and  felt expansive and liberating to me. 

Jim Hollis says that we often live lives too small for our souls and that we are constantly being invited into the largeness of our lives.  I have learned from Jim Hollis' teaching how much more interesting life is when you take the chains of either/or thinking off your mind, when you give up looking for that person who has THE ANSWER and live into the large questions of life as it is.

In his book INTO A LARGER WORLD, Howard Hovde quotes George MacDonald who has one of his characters explain, "I had come, like a toad out of a rock, into a larger, therefore truer universe, in which I had work to do that was wanted."

The invitation into the larger world comes when we can open our minds and hearts to the truth that life is much too big to be crunched down into a tiny box of small answers.  The need to be right keeps me from the abundant life.  The need for an authority figure to keep me in line and tell me what to think prevents me from growing up.  The demand for ultimate security ultimately imprisons me.

Ambiguity is part of daily life, and so I tell my daughters that life is neither black nor white, and it is rarely even gray.  Instead life is a rich, multi-textured plaid with varying hues and colors, and now and then there is a thread of gold.  And it's all important.

In what areas of your life are you being called to move out into a larger world?

Where do you insist on certitude, certainty, being right? 

How comfortable are you about living with unanswered questions?  

Can you say, "I don't know" about something and not be scared by the not-knowing?

How does a belief that life must be lived from an either/or position inhibit your spontaneity, creativity and joy?

What risk do you need to take?

What will happen if you don't take the risk you know you need to take?

Moving through the fear of all we don't understand and can't control, we discover the joy of the journey.

Life's a risk; life is full of grace.

So, live the grace -- with courage!

Jeanie

 (This is the second in a four week series of reflections based on Chapter Two of the book WHAT MATTERS MOST:  LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE,  by James Hollis.    You can order Jim's books from here -- http://www.junghouston.org or from http://www.amazon.com.     You can also order CDs of his lecture from this course from the Jung Center in Houston.           Previous posts from this series can be found by clicking "What Matters" on the home page of this website.)