Today we continue with the series of posts on Aliveness Theory by regular guest columnist, Dale Swinburne.
There is living and then, there is living. Chip Anderson’s Aliveness Theory describes the 3 levels of living which we discussed in the last post. The three levels are Fully Alive, Mere Existence, and Deadness. Ideally, we want to live our lives fully alive. This is what Chip labeled the “Alive Drive”. He taught that the result of answering the Alive Drive and achieving full life resulted in true joy. It is this joy we all seek for. The pathways to it are having a life of meaning and purpose, feeling integrated and whole, and experiencing real love. When these pathways are followed it results in the level of aliveness we are desperate to experience.
The world we live in, sadly, does not play along. Instead of being a willing helpful partner on the path to aliveness we are met by a world that appears to be opposed to us. Very often, we are dissuaded by the world we live in. In fact, we are offered pupose, wholeness, and love only if, and when, we submit to the conditions.
Conditions like -
“You are wonderful WHEN ___.”
“GOOD boys/girls ALWAYS ____.”
“I’ll love you IF you ____.”
The sad truth is this. Every single time we are told that our value is conditional, that love will only be spent on us when we conform to another’s ideals, that our acceptance is based on how well we fit into the expectations around us, and that who we are is a disappointment our level of aliveness sinks. It may be only a small amount at a time but the effect is cumulative. If this cycle continues our aliveness levels will sink past mere existence and eventually to deadness.
But, as a result of this cycle, not everything decreases. There is an increase….in insecurity, in fear, in anxiety, in self-doubt, in feelings of violation. Chip described this process, though at time invisible, as emotional incest and social rape. Strong words that highlight the deadly severity of this downward spiral.
So, how do we survive? Easy….we build a facade. We build a facade that perfectly matches every conditional demand, every example of love with strings attached, and every expectation that we become the thing that society demands. We’re not very good at first and it has many flaws. But, with years of practice, and negative reinforcement we become pretty good at mask making. Enough at least to get by and hopefully silence the critical voices all around us. We replace the natural drives for purpose, wholeness, and love with the drive to compensate and the drive to control. These new drives mix to alternately obey (compensate) and silence (control) those voices telling us how failed we are. We become who they want us to be in violation of our true self.
The picture isn’t pretty but it is one that is framed in many of the lives that are around us and maybe, even, in our own. We each have such a beautiful potential that can be drowned in such a terrible quagmire of discouragement. But, as Chip has charted the path down for us, he has also charted the path out. Next month we will discuss how low we can sink and the light at the end of the tunnel that Chip called, Big Arrow Experiences.
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