Wait! Don't Throw It Out

Most of us in our culture are perfectionists, we are taught to judge.  As we look around we think this is good, this is bad.  We may get more sophisticated and judge “this is better”, “that could use some improvement”, “that should not be like that”.  We can also turn it on ourselves and judge “if only I was”, “that was stupid”, “I am too…”, “I am amazing”, “I know how that should be”, ...  And we turn it on others too, family, spouse, kids, everyone…From a philosophy of judgment everything falls on a scale from good to bad.When we judge from the good-bad spectrum the stronger we believe in it, the stronger the energy is in either direction.  This is how extremism is created.  This is the source of all war, conflict, argument, and division.When we use it on ourselves it creates depression, shame and guilt, as well as ego, arrogance, and righteousness.From the perspective of inquiry we begin from a different place.  We start with “I wonder”.  We get curious.  We look at something and wonder how it got that way, what is the purpose of that, what can I learn, how does it work, how do they feel, what do they want, what do I want, what is the best way, how can we work together, what do you want, what can we do with this, how can we make it fun…?Instead of a life full of judgments it is a life full of curiosity, play and creativity.In inquiry, instead of good and bad, we have preferences.  We are not extremists.  In any situation we may have an outcome that we see as preferred and we may look for the best way to achieve it but we are not putting things into categories.  We are interested in the most effective way based on “what is”.  We are interested in skillful means, not right and wrong, good and bad.I will give you a silly example:My son and I were walking on the beach the other day and someone had left their kite string strung down the beach.  The perfectionist in me thought: “Those litterers!  How dare they leave this trash on the beach!  I will be a good person and pick this up, I hope someone sees me being good”.Fortunately my perfectionist has become much weaker in my system with my self inquiry and the voice of wonder took over.  “What can we do with this?”  The string was a couple hundred feet long, so I told Henry to take one end and I took the other and we started walking down the beach.  It was interesting to see other people’s reaction to seeing the string coming toward them, but we were polite and put it on the ground so they could step over it.  Everyone got a sense of wonder and play from it.  For an hour we came up with all sorts of games and fun from this beach litter.Your world is full of strings all around you, in your office, in your family, in your town.  All you need is to ask “what can I do with this?”, or “how does this work?”, or “how are you feeling and what do you want?”.Every problem with every employee is a string full of possibilities.Every problem in your relationship is a string if you have the courage to pick it up and play with it.Everything you judge about yourself is the beginning and opening for your personal freedom and on the pathway for happiness from the inside out.