The purpose of life is to discover who we are and then bring who we are into harmony with life. The two halves of this journey involve very different skills. I want to focus on the second half today and offer a very simple understanding that makes harmony much simpler to achieve. The understanding involves taking the need for harmony down to the core where the feelings of disharmony start in everyone. This is not a complete answer, but it addresses the root of the problem.
Where does disharmony begin? Feelings of disharmony begin the moment we are born. We move from a feeling state of complete safety and nurturance where every possible need we have is met before we even think that we need it. Suddenly we are popped out into a harsh environment full of abusive bright lights and sounds where it is too cold or too hot and we actually have to struggle to breathe each moment to stay alive. Then there is the terrible feelings of hunger we have never experienced before followed by nasty rumbling gut feelings that are no fun at all. We are in a state of distress from the moment we land in this world. We feel seriously out of harmony with this new place. In the womb all was peace and harmony – now, not so much.
Everyone has these feelings of disharmony with the world burned into our very first memories of life – everyone. Life becomes a constant struggle to try to resolve these feelings from that moment forward. We want the pleasant feelings of being in the womb back again; the feelings of everything in harmony without our having to participate on any level. But we can’t go back. We can’t go back ever. It is those desires for that womb state that fuel most of the wish fulfillment fantasies in our lives. They form the basis of the reward we seek in the afterlife when we create religions. And this drive is the basis for why humans create civilizations, instead of remaining individual wandering nomads.
While we can never return to that womb state in which everything we need is provided for us before we even know we want it without our participation, we can create the situations where our needs are met through participation. Everyone is in the same boat down here. We all want the same feeling that we can’t have so we try to work together to create as much of it as we can. Through mutual participation we are able to generate the comfort, safety, and feeling ease while getting our fundamental needs met, much like we had in the womb. What we don’t get to have is non-participation. We don’t get to curl up in a ball and do nothing and expect everyone else will make us ok because that is exactly what everyone else wants also. Someone has to make dinner – who will that someone be when everyone wants to be the baby in the womb?
The answer – we take turns meeting each other’s needs and wants. Half of the time we are the producer and the other half of the time we are the receiving consumer – at least in an ideal world. The problem is everyone wants to have it all. They want to be the center of life and have everyone else do the work to meet their needs and wants without their having to do anything. In short, they want to reproduce the wonderful feeling experience of being in the womb while in their current life. It is this desire that creates the struggle for power and control that in turn creates most of the disharmony we experience here in life. It is all very deep and subconscious and in all of us.
Armed with this understanding about ourselves and everyone else, we can approach the puzzle of how to create harmony from an entirely new level. When you deeply appreciate that most every conflict has deep subconscious desires for safety, ease, and getting basic needs met at it’s base, it becomes easy to relate to others from a different place. You can cut through the stories and dramas and ignore the insanities and relate directly to the real core of the trouble creating the disharmony. We all want and need to secure basic needs and feelings to be ok.
When we are born and inundated with all the uncertainty about our survival once we have popped out into this world of struggle, a couple key things were vital to our being ok. We had to be noticed, heard, and valued enough that someone would respond and tend to our survival needs. We are no different today. We have an extended period of non-participation as infants where someone is willing to care for us in spite of our being generally obnoxious. Mother Nature drugs our primary care takers with oxytocin to make them want to take care of us. This is the same drug that drives the “falling in love” feeling – probably the most powerful brain drug known. This allows for support without participation for a while. But in the adult world this is usually not in play and people reluctantly accept this.
But the real essence to harmonious human interaction begins in the primal interactions we needed as an infant – our first interactions that made us ok. We all need and want to be heard from a place of positive regard so that we can negotiate getting our needs met. We all have needs all the time, and we are all seeking to get those needs met, usually by somebody else. That means we desperately need to feel that we are being heard; that we can attract the attention and positive participation necessary to get those needs met. When we feel we have this, we feel in harmony with the situation. The feeling of harmony is really just the feeling that one is ok in a situation. We are not omniscient enough to truly see harmony, because we can not know if everyone around us is feeling ok. But we assume that if they appear to be happy then they are likely ok.
So, how can we create harmony? We can listen deeply to what others are saying with interest and care and then honestly see if we can create a win-win participation with them so that we can both get our needs met. That means we have to respect that their needs are valid even when they make no sense to us. We have to accept that they are not us and have different needs and wants from us. It is their difference that makes commerce and human transaction possible. I like to use the analogy of an open-air marketplace. If we were all the same then we would all be selling the same thing in our booths. No transactions take place in that situation.
I have to deal with this respect for difference constantly in the office every day. Patients don’t come to me to have me tell them that what they want is wrong; they come to me to have me support their desires. So when they come in with their low back out because of falling down while skiing, it is not my job to express my belief that skiing is a death sport designed to create broken bones, but rather to help their back feel better so they can get back on the slopes. I generate a win-win in that I support their goals and they support my desire to pay my bills. I find that this stance generates harmony.
I simplify my stance as simply being in service to life. When I seek to serve while still seeing to it that my own needs are met, I am in harmony. I found over the years that when I tried to make other people be my way that disharmony resulted. So even though I was certain that if everyone did things my way that harmony would be the natural result, it did not work that way. Eventually I accepted that they were different than me and could never be happy doing things my way. Without their happiness, there is no harmony. Sameness can produce order through conformity, but not easeful happy harmony. As much as I was uneasy with the general chaos inherent in the mixing of everyone’s differences, I had to accept that that is the only route to actual harmony.
So my simple answer to creating harmony is to be of service… not a self sacrificing, co-dependent, give till it hurts kind of service, but a mutually empowering everyone wins type of service. Seek first to serve and then receive the blessings for that service with gratitude.
Take care,
David