“The more time we spend in this twilight realm the greater our need for an internal guide. Fortunately, such an instrument is available.”
Navigating Life’s Chaos
Even the most confined and structured existence is visited, with or without warning, by life transforming surprises – illness, death of a loved one, aging, children, disasters, and so on. These surprises, whether welcome or not, are fraught with ambiguities, turbulence, transitions, and a bevy of chaos inducing unknowns that draw us away from our comfort zones. They cause us to be emotionally and psychically at sea for at least brief periods.
There are as many strategies for coping with the risk of chaos as there are people. At one end of the spectrum are the attenuators, committed to minimizing the risk of experiencing unmooring incidents. These people cautiously stick to the comfort of known territory constructing choreographed, familiar existences. They remain in the same neighborhood, keep the same friends, work for the same company, engage in the same recreational activities, for a lifetime. While surprises and the associated chaos are inevitable, these folks are committed and work hard to keep a lid on it. You know people like this. – the mail person who has travelled the same route for forty years; the octogenarian who has never travelled more than fifty miles from home; the middle aged assembly line laborer that eats the same lunch every day of the year.
On the other end of the spectrum are those committed so deeply to self actualization that they purposefully seek out uncharted territories, cranking up the associated ambiguities and chaos, embracing the unknown. I call these people, who continuously push the edge of their personal and professional capacity, personal development (PD) warriors. In the interest of full disclosure I fall into this category, having participated in a multitude of wisely structured and a few spectacularly stupid transformational events and long-term processes. To give you an idea of PD warrior fare, some of the edge pushers I have participated in include taking assignments work beyond my capabilities, attending transformational seminars, extended martial arts training, dance intensives, running marathons, completing graduate school, vision questing, taking dangerous work assignments, and the list goes on.
Regardless of where you sit on the spectrum you will face periods of ambiguity for which you will have no clear mental map, no clear directions for proceeding. Ironically, the preponderance of life’s most treacherous emotional and psychological terrain lies in that arena of the unknown. It is critical to have support through these transitions in order to navigate the dangerously unpredictable shoals of these periods. All but a very few of us have others around us – friends, confessors, healers, Sherpas, and gurus – that help us through these times. Thank goodness for them. We all get by with a little help from our friends. However, to truly be persistently prepared for these transitions we need to be girded with internal support. The more time we spend in this twilight realm the greater our need for an internal guide. Fortunately, such an instrument is available.
Before you jump out of this blog post to start shopping for this magical item I should warn you. It’s not to be found on Amazon, eBay, or Overstock.com. Not even Etsy offers such a thing. For better or worse, a life compass must be custom assembled by and for the user. Yep, you have to make your own.
Seeking Guidance: Establishing a Point of Reference
Before we explore what it takes to develop an internal guide we need to draw a more complete picture of how and where we establish our point of reference for garnering support. When seeking support we reach out to one or more locus, (originating point, person, venue), for that support. When we reach out to other people, entities, or publications we channel our attention to an external locus or loci. When we seek within ourselves we channel ourselves to our internal locus. We reference a locus or loci to validate ourselves and/or seek guidance when unsure or confused. The locus, with its critical content, is the source of support. Referencing is the act that we take for checking in with that locus.
Referencing an External Locus
When one references an external locus she tests and validates her reactions, decisions and responses with external sources. Friends, family, experts, ministers, counselors, doctors, military leaders, cultural norms, laws, religious doctrine, and the like, are all examples of potential loci for external referencing. There is an inherent efficiency in accessing readymade guidance that saves you the effort of reinventing the wheel as you evolve your own values. Additionally, external referencing allows you get a read on the social acceptability, legal ramifications, expert positions, and opinions of those around you. You get access to the entire evolution and underpinnings of cultural norms and social values. We are social animals. Unless you live in an isolated cabin in the mountains making your own food and clothing, you exist within a social context. It is powerful to understand the social ramifications of your choices. If you choose to ignore those ramifications you at least know what to expect. The downside to external referencing is that decisions you make are at another entity’s behest. External referencing relinquishes both personal accountability and personal empowerment. A dramatic example of abandoning personal choice is a soldier that commits atrocities at the orders of a superior. The average, (non-psychotic), person would never consider committing atrocities. Yet during virtually every military conflict atrocities occur. In the aftermath the justification is almost always based on external reference. “I’m not responsible because… I was ordered to do it… everyone else was doing it… It was God’s will.” External referencing makes you a tool of external forces. Additionally, those external forces will not always be there every time you need to make a decision. From my personal experience making decisions via a series of external inquiries and directives is existentially pretty dissatisfying. Anecdotal reporting from others confirms most people feel dissatisfaction as a common experience when externally referencing.
Thinking about referencing conceptually can be a bit daunting. Let’s bring the discussion down to earth. How many times has a close friend come to you complaining that their boyfriend/girlfriend sucks for a whole host of perfectly rational reasons? Then they utter those trepidation ridden words. They might go the demure route. “What should I do?” or the more direct route, “Tell me what to do.” Either way, you have just been established as an external locus. Your friend is referencing you and seeking clear direction. If you proffer an opinion it will be based on your values, feelings for your friend, and assessment of that particular situation. That opinion is valid for you. And, you may have your friend’s best interest at heart. However, it may or may not be appropriate for your friend. If you give your opinion and your friend follows it without further consideration you have set up a dynamic in which the best case scenario is that your friend is no better prepared for the next time a relationship problem arises. If your friend is not building an internal locus while going through the deliberations then next time relationship issues evolve your friend will need direction again. Do you want to be in charge of someone’s life? Well, OK… some of you do. I hear lots of parents out there yearning for that power over their teenagers. Regardless, there is a serious rub for both you and your friend. My experience with those seeking advice is that, whether or not I disclose my opinion, the seeker almost never acts precisely in alignment with view. Since the way my friends act is different than my advice would have them act, referencing me and then acting on that reference would undoubtedly leave them dissatisfied. In the dissatisfaction who do they blame, little old external reference me. In this case, as it often is for all sorts of scenarios, the friend using the external reference is left dissatisfied and in no better position for making future choices.
Referencing an Internal Locus
Internal referencing seeks answers from within based on one’s own established values, commitments and expression. The upside to internal referencing is that you carry it with you at all times. The inimitable Buckeroo Banzai, in the 1984 cult classic movie bearing his name, said it best, “Where ever you go, there you are.” Additionally, a mature internal locus, (read highly developed as opposed to aged,) makes for a streamlined referencing process. In other word, a highly developed internal reference allows you to make rapid choices that withstand the test of time. The down side is that developing a mature internal reference is no small task. You have to think through, feel into, research, and test for yourself all of your core values, develop your life commitments, and settle in general terms on your expression to the world. Then, for your trouble, you get to spend the rest of your life refining those attributes. This journey of developing an internal reference is as varied as the individuals creating them. However, the areas to develop are relatively common.
Now if that friend we talked about above has a mature internal locus that includes all considerations required to provide guidance for making a powerful relationship choice then all referencing will be internal. She will be able to, in a relatively rapid way, identify a path than resonates with all that is important to her. The double bonus in this scenario is that your relationship remains unstrained by that process.
You can probably tell that I have a strong bias toward internal referencing. Being a PD warrior I spend a great deal of time in those tumultuous, ambiguous states. So having an established internal locus makes my continuous referencing activities relatively painless. That being said, because I spend a lot of time pushing my boundaries, I regularly encounter situations for which I have not established an internal locus. At those points I have to reach out externally. However, I do not make my choices referencing the external locus. Rather, I integrate the new knowledge and information and then reference my updated internal locus.
Now, back to my external referencing caveat. There is value to an ongoing external review if it is used to hone your internal reference. To put it in simple terms, I do not reach out to others to validate my feeling or perspectives. By validate I mean tell me that it is alright, appropriate, acceptable, or otherwise OK. I do reach out to others to get a reflection of myself and refine my values, commitments and self-expression. In fact I regularly recruit others to serve as a mirror. Additionally, I provide the same for others upon request. I know that I am doing my job as a mirror if my opinion does not enter into the dialog. In this way I continuously refresh and refine myself from external sources but remain empowered by my internal navigator.
Let us return to our relationship advice seeking friend. She has a mature internal locus. However, her current relationship conditions may have ramifications outside of her developed framework. She may reach out to you and others to gather perspective and additional knowledge. But, in this scenario she draws that new information into and updates her existing locus. Then she makes the call on her relationship. While she reaches out externally she remains self accountable and empowered by ultimately internalizing her locus then her reference. In the short run she will be satisfied, at least until she experiences the results of life after her choice.
Up until now I have been referring to the contents of the internal locus in vague terms. What is the stuff of internal locus? Is it magic? Is it esoteric wisdom? I will parse that out in the next section, (post).
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