I want to take a moment to dive into a concept that I find radically challenging,
Total experiential accountability.
And of course,
As I go into this,
Just understand that I'm talking to myself,
Attempting to communicate what appears important for me to see,
And possibly,
It might resonate with you.
I don't feel like I need to go into a whole bunch of backstory about this concept,
But I can just go straight to the point of it.
And that point being that I cannot escape the insight that what I experience in this life is to experience my own creation.
And I'm not just saying some of it,
Or most of it,
I'm saying all of it.
And this is,
Of course,
A conclusion that I came to over some years,
Starting from a tiny bit,
To a little bit more,
To half,
To most,
To all.
Everything I experience in this life is to experience what I am creating in the moment I experience it.
And we can start by looking at the nature of experience.
What I see as experience is interpretation.
This is what's different between us as human beings.
Our different experience is different interpretations.
And then that interpretation is felt through every aspect of our being.
For example,
I was talking with someone today about a persistent health struggle that they have.
And we were exploring how what appears to be this obstacle,
This something in the way,
As we broke it down,
What we realized is that it seems that way,
Because that's how you see it,
As something in the way.
And therefore that colors your entire experience with that thing.
But,
Oh,
This is happening to me.
It's coming from the outside and coming at me.
And I find that interesting,
Too,
Because this illness is happening to something that we call a body.
Okay,
Fair enough.
But what's your relationship with it?
What do you think it means about you?
And that's a really profound question.
Am I really experiencing this that I think is happening?
Or am I experiencing what I turn it into?
And a great analogy here is if you have a car that breaks down,
Do you see the many,
Many different interpretations that could arise?
Interpretations that bring you to a place of suffering and interpretations that bring you to a place of,
Oh,
Well,
I guess I'm not going anywhere today.
Because do you see the interpretation that brings you to a place of suffering is to see the car breaking down as against you.
This is happening to you.
It's in your way.
And if only it wasn't what it was,
Then I could be where I'm supposed to be.
Then I could be who I'm supposed to be.
Do you see this play of identification with the car?
You think that what happens to the car is happening to you.
And the same with the body,
What happens to the body is happening to you.
But as far as I'm concerned,
When I get super still,
It becomes quite obvious that what I am is not the body.
This body is simply a vehicle being used.
And you can see very directly that my experience of the body,
Much like my experience of the car,
Is determined by how I see it,
What I think it means.
If I'm suffering over the body or suffering over the car,
The total experiential accountability is to realize that whatever appears to be my experience,
I'm experiencing my interpretation of it.
This is quite wild for me.
Because in moments like this,
Where I take some time to just drop into the reality of that,
I have to question everything.
Everything that I think I'm experiencing my whole life,
The challenges,
What is or is not going,
How I think it should be going,
And just how much there can be a narrative that things are happening to me.
And the more I see through that,
It alters the way that I perceive this human experience.
It shows me in a way that if I'm experiencing my creation,
Then I am everything that I see.
Even as I sit here with this small little group and I can see your faces,
I'm seeing what I turn you into.
Beautiful human beings hanging out with me.
Just as easily I could say,
These fucking human beings demanding that I say something.
In the realization of this,
It's almost like everything on the outside fades away.
All of the perceived obligations,
All of the tasks,
All of the responsibilities,
To just take a breath and let all of that drop and come back to what I really am and to question,
What is it that I think is happening?
What is this life?
And if that is true,
That it's all just my creation,
I cannot come to any other conclusion than that I'm here to play.
I'm here to create,
Intentionally.
My goodness,
There's this message that I want to get across to you and I don't know if I can.
Maybe we can say that this whole journey of being human to create what you experience,
Just because it's playful in nature and you're creating,
Doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
In fact,
I would say if that's the way it was set up,
That it's supposed to be easy,
It wouldn't be any fun.
It wouldn't be worthwhile.
What I see for myself is this discovery demands a great sense of,
I hesitate using this word,
But self-responsibility.
Where I have to realize that what appears to be lacking cannot be blamed on anything outside of myself.
And the more that I see that,
The more that I see there's nowhere to go,
It becomes quite obvious the ways that I'm limiting myself,
The ways that I'm hiding.
And again,
Not as an opportunity to judge myself,
But to just look at it and be radically honest.
Because if we don't be radically honest,
What happens?
We blame something out there.
You see,
Because this isn't going away.
If you're not living,
Again,
I'm using these silly words,
But if you're not living your full potential,
Something in you knows that.
And if something in you knows that,
You're either going to own up to it or blame it on something you imagined to be out there.
In the spirit of that,
Can we own up to it in the most playful way?
Be like,
Yep,
I am really good at making excuses.
I am really good at hiding.
I'm really good at avoiding difficult conversations.
I'm really good at not taking risks and staying safe.
In the play of things,
Additionally,
What I want to point to,
And maybe it's still under development in my awareness,
But the concept of trade-offs.
All I see are trade-offs.
I don't see solutions.
I see trade-offs.
For example,
Every once in a while,
I get angry messages from people.
Why don't you reply to my message?
You're so unavailable.
And the mind might ask,
What's the solution?
Well,
Be more available.
What's the trade-off?
I don't get to focus on what I feel is important.
You see that?
Like,
I have to decide.
For me,
Where am I going to put my time and energy?
Trying to make sure everyone else is happy and pleased with me?
Or am I going to consciously ignore messages so I can put my time and energy somewhere else?
There's no solution that just fixes everything.
Of course,
This goes back to the creation thing,
Experiential accountability.
I guess we can play with this.
We can say,
Didn't you just say you're creating your experience so you're creating other people being irritated with you?
Not so fast.
What I'm creating,
At least in my situation,
Is an opportunity to see that it's okay for me to focus on what's important.
And also what I see is that if I'm irritated about somebody else not replying to my message,
I see very clearly that it's not about them.
That's about me.
That's just such a brilliant example.
Things are happening.
Objects in form appear to be moving around.
Someone expresses something about something.
What you experience is what you turn it into.
Oh,
Someone's mad at me.
It means I'm not enough.
That's my experience.
I disappointed someone.
That's my experience.
I guess I probably shouldn't be myself.
That's my experience.
Is that what's really happening?
Or is that just another way you found to hide?
Practically speaking,
In the journey of what I do,
The more I do it,
The more messages I get.
And I remember early on being super available to reply to all the messages.
But then it gets to the point where it's like,
I can't answer all these messages.
I don't get anything done.
I've got to decide what's really important for me.
And let the world be the world.
Let other people be other people.
In this invitation to decide what's really important for me,
My goodness,
This is such an inquiry into your own deepest sincerity for your human.
And it's going to be different for everyone.
And what I want you to see is that whatever it is for you,
That's okay.
The real question is,
How honest am I being with myself?
If we ask the question,
What do I want to create?
And early on,
As one is still running around trying to be seen in the world,
We might say,
Oh,
I want to create something where other people approve of me.
I want to be seen in the world.
That's fine.
Go do that adventure.
And guess what?
You learn.
That's actually not what I want.
That's exhausting.
Okay,
Great.
Now what's sincere?
You see,
You can't get it wrong.
It's an issue of what's sincere.
And you start there.
You see,
This is an empty playground,
This thing called life.
There's nothing out there.
It's just you.
Experiencing you everywhere you go.
You want a great exploration into what it is to be human.
I don't care if you say,
I want to make a billion dollars,
Or you say,
I want to have a pretty garden.
It doesn't matter.
As all of this noise out there begins to fade away,
It becomes that much easier to get honest.
If your sincerity says,
Wow,
I don't know,
Then that is a great place to start.
Because if that's the case,
In the most understandable way,
You probably spent a lot of time doing what you think the world wants you to do.
So now it's time to take a breath and feel into the raw sincerity of what you are.
I promise you,
What you're going to find is some sort of adventure.
Some sort of exploration.
It's almost as simple as asking,
What am I genuinely interested in?
What do I genuinely enjoy doing?
What do I genuinely want to learn?
What do I genuinely want to get better at?
Or that thing that I want to explore,
What do I need to learn in order for that to happen?
You see,
It's not this thing where you just get a picture of it,
And it magically appears.
You have to participate.
And the participation is going to be a playful labyrinth through all of your hidden fears.
Because you're going to realize that that's something that you long to play with.
That experience you want to go explore.
As soon as you take the first step,
You'll find that you get a little bit afraid.
And that's on purpose.
This is what brings you out of your shell.
This is what invites you home to see what you really are.
Because as you've experienced through your life,
All of these fears that you've already moved through,
You've seen that that fear isn't what you really were.
It was a misunderstanding.
An assumption that you weren't capable.
An assumption that you were small and separate.
And you walked through that fire and you found out that's not true.
I am much more than I thought I was.
Do you think your future fears are any different?
One way you can playfully explore this,
And please don't use this as a way to judge yourself,
But in asking the question,
What's really possible?
And I say this because it's so easy to look at ourselves and see ourselves as incapable.
Yet if the circumstance was different,
If it was life and death,
You all of a sudden have new capabilities.
If it was to save someone that you love,
You're all of a sudden now stronger.
We can say,
Oh,
I just don't feel like doing that.
What if it was life and death?
What if it was important?
What if there are real consequences to me not stepping in to a deeper fullness of what I am?
Have we not experienced those consequences?
I mean,
What happens when you delay moving through the things you fear?
Do you think it just goes away?
It's like not dealing with those things that we might call the problems of being alive.
We're in relationships,
Not having the difficult conversation.
Do you think the issue just disappears?
Are you just delaying an inevitable pain?
Separating yourself from a deeper opportunity to experience more connection and more love?
Yeah,
But I just don't feel like having the conversation.
Okay.
Okay.
I just don't feel like being uncomfortable.
I don't feel like looking like I don't know what I'm doing.
I don't feel like failing.
Okay.
I understand,
Again,
I am so talking to myself.
So many times I hear that,
I don't feel like it.
And then three months later,
I suffer the consequences of my,
I don't feel like it.
And I look back and I say,
I wish I did that thing.
And that's beautiful because what is that?
That's called learning.
We,
As human beings,
We are so good at staying comfortable,
At not challenging ourselves,
At not asking important questions.
Please see this playfully,
But also sincerely.
Because in one way,
It doesn't matter at all.
And in another way,
This is your opportunity.
You're here in this glorious thing we call life and being human and exploring the depth and the miracle of what you are on your chosen adventure.
So you're invited to embrace that and choose the adventure you want to go on.
