Reluctance = Resistance
I’ve been going through something lately. Something big. Its beating me up, and teaching me a great deal. I’m not really going to describe the details, but I am going to dwell on the process. I’ve found that as I get older that the process of integration, that is happening, brings me up against some of my life-long patterns. When that happens I usually don’t respond very well. I am reluctant to let myself feel the conflict, disappointment, and grief within. I guess it is only natural. I’m human, and much of what confronts me, are patterns of belief and behavior that have clearly defined me in the past. Life doesn’t seem to care. At least in no way that I have considered caring. What I’m finding is that Life is impeccably ruthless. It rubs my face in the messes I have indulged in making. There is some kind of impersonal and highly idiosyncratic love at work. I’m being shaped up despite myself. The process is reliable, painful, and grace-filled. Life seems to know how to evolve a better me, and very slowly I’m learning how to trust that process and cooperate with it. I think it was the developmentalist Robert Kegan that first impressed me with the realization that resisting Life is painful. I do it all of the time. And, I am paying for it. But, as I get older, I’m more prone to notice what is at stake, and to suffer more honestly. That means I am more likely to admit to myself, and others, that I have succeeded again in getting in my own way, and making it hard to change. I would rather fight anything than fight myself. Despite my resolve, Life keeps finding the blemishes in my character that need attention, and calling my attention to them. Right now, I’m being faced with my own well-designed falseness. I’ve lived out a kind of arrogant stance that I know has hurt me, and especially those I professed to care for. That’s a hard awareness to be confronted by. And I’m really grateful that I’m being confronted by it right now, when I can still do something about it, rather than in my last moments of life. Life seems to have a bucket list for me, that if I handle some of these items, I’m going to rest easier when I die. That seems like a kind of compassionate justice I could never imagine. The problem of the moment is that I have such a reluctance to face the music. It is humiliating, admitting one’s shortcomings; facing how unloving, and self-protective, one is (I’m not past anything yet). I’m not collapsing into shame, although I can feel the temptation. I am standing forlornly in front of my own humanity. I can see that my own reluctance to see what a schlemiel I am capable of being has been a form of resistance. I didn’t want to know myself that well. This kind of self-knowing is a painful gift. Life cares about me enough to make me really uncomfortable with what I am capable of. And, it’s giving me a chance to find out where integrity lays in my life. In some kind of strange twist of fate, my gratitude grows as I open up to the hurt I have participated in perpetuating. With all of that kind of awareness cascading into my life like an avalanche of wakefulness, I am enlivened and chagrined. My reluctance before awareness is clearly putting off the inevitability of the gift. Am I resisting, or merely crouching in anticipation of the loving blow? I really can’t say. I know that I have resisted, and that my reluctance has abetted my resistance. I am that human, stubbornly determined to have things my way. But, lately, aging has softened me up, and provided more perspective. I now walk towards what diminishes me, in an effort to cooperate more with the wholing process I now perceive. Reluctance is turning out to be a faithful scout, a little scraggly, deceptively anxious, but unerring in noticing that something is coming. And, I’m finding that even a broken life is an incredible gift. At 77, Old FW couldn’t agree more. So if you, like millions of US voters, are feeling some ‘reluctance’ this political season, see if you don’t find some peace in ‘the wholing process’ Lucky and many other elders can now perceive… Love, FW PS: If you’d like to see how ‘The Growth Curve” has evolved into “The Wave of Transformation,” click here. www.FatherWilliam.org ================================================= 2. THE DONALD, SACHA BARON COHEN, DYLAN, FREUD, OPRAH AND THE GROWTH CURVE… BY THE YOUNG MAN, APRIL 12, 2016





FLEXIBLE PERSISTENCE
“But there is a special skill to great performance, and that is, as Kenny Rogers sings, “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em/ Know when to fold ’em/ Know when to walk away/ And know when to run.” The outstanding performer knows when to hold to course, when to change course and when to quit the race. “In his study of peak performers in business, Charles Garfield found one of their traits to be the ability to change course when appropriate. More importantly, he found that peak performers know things never stay perfectly on course; they expect changes (course deviations) and can enjoy making the corrections and using them for gain.” Quite simply, what this means is if The Donald is going to succeed as a Charismatic/Transformational Leader, he will have to adjust, along the way, to allow for more people to become comfortable with both his ability to lead and the message of his leadership. In this instance, it is also quite likely those who are already on board with Trump will have to adjust their visions of the future, largely because of their faith, and psychological investment, in their leader. As a possible “for instance”, for the longest times, people, on the left, have been perplexed by the fact many people, who identify with the right, are actually some of the very same people who would benefit greatly by the policy proposals offered by the left. This is exactly the sort of paradox one would expect to encounter in the Unforming Phase of the Growth Curve. A Charismatic/Transformational Leader can quite possibly make inroads with this cohort of people, where other leaders have been unsuccessful. While this bears some resemblance to Nixon going to China, or the Reykjavík Summit between Reagan and Gorbachev, which culminated in the INF treaty between the two nations roughly a year later, it is much more like Johnson getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and then Medicare in 1966, passed on the heels of the death of President Kennedy.(3) If we don’t get it accomplished this time around, at least at the national level, as I’ve stated before, we will likely continue on into a version of the societal Unforming President Roosevelt confronted when he was elected in 1932, even if it is not an outright economic depression. And please, let’s put aside the question of whether Roosevelt went to war to start the “correction.” For our purposes, this is virtually irrelevant. What’s more important to note, however, is how long the United States can remain in a state of Unforming, or Transforming, and still come out the other end and move into the Transforming or Reforming Phases. Right now, it is impossible to predict what will happen next. For those who already support Trump the answers are much easier, although they will be confronted with The Donald modifying his message as we move into the general election. For those on the left, what I would say is this, in the language of my former profession: There exists a rebuttable presumption Trump is not the Charismatic/Transformational Leader this country needs at this stage in its history.



Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA * npr.com / CC BY 2.0

