Here we are the day before Halloween – a time when all the scary ghosts and goblins are set free. More traditionally any departed souls still wandering the earth have one last chance to visit the living before being carried to the other side on All Saints Day, November 1st. In any event the whole month of October is filled with the ending of the autumn. The harvest season draws to a close and people begin to prepare for winter. Winter is the fearful time of year where survival is challenged and death is near. Perhaps this is why there are so many scary movies premiered in October.
Scary possibilities bring up concerns for our safety. Safety is a primary need in life. Establishing safety can become an overriding concern for many people; a prime driver in their lives. Unfortunately, this kind of driver triggers huge stress responses in folks and this is bad for their health. Stress is one of the main causes of ill health in people. What can we do about this seeming conflict in goals? We need safety to survive, but pursuing safety is so stressful that it inhibits our survival.
The answer to this is simple to say, but very difficult to do. The key lies in understanding a bit about how the human mind works. In a greatly simplified version, we function with two basic parts – the head and the heart. The head contains our outside world interface tool, the ego. It sees life from an antagonistic perspective with itself as the center, but empty and needing to be filled with outside stuff to meet its needs. The heart feels connection to life and seeks to be one with life. It sees the connection between all things. The head sees all things as separate and needing to be controlled in order to get its needs met. It is not that one is right and the other wrong, but understand that each is striving for something slightly different. The head wants safety while the heart wants ease.
When you don’t know the difference between these two parts of yourself, you end up pursuing goals in ways that can’t be met. Let me give you a classic example – money. If you are dirt poor and don’t have enough money to buy food, you are not safe and this feels bad. You form the belief that if you just had enough money you could be safe and feel good. Notice how the head goal (safety) and the heart goal (feel good) get mixed together. The goal of more money seems perfectly logical, and it is to a point. But when you look at people that have made millions of dollars, you see that they are not happy, so they strive to keep making more money to fill that “need.” The truth is that the need for safety was met about the time they achieved an average income. They had food, shelter, and everything that realistically offers safety. Studies on happiness show that there is indeed a jump in happiness with income up to the average salary level. Beyond that point no amount of money makes you any happier – often quite the opposite. The heart goal of ease cannot be met through money; only the basic physical need for safety can be met.
Too often even the pursuit of physical safety gets conflicted by lies the ego develops while it is young. The most common I find is the lie that getting my way will lead to safety. In the imaginary magical thinking world of a child’s mind, this view seems logical. If I could get my way in the world, then I would be safe. Anything I might want or need would be mine. This works in imagination only. In the real world getting your way means denying other people their expression of their own will and creative process. You want them to put you first and you also want them to think and feel like you would so they will create for you just what you want in the way that you want it. All that really gets you is a lot of resentment from those around you and that makes you very unsafe. Your demise frees them from your tyranny so they don’t work real hard to keep you safe, assuming they don’t simply blow you off from day one leaving you alone and without support.
Safety with ease is the real goal, because that way both the head and the heart are getting what they want. The head is designed to create physical safety through its creative efforts with life. Eons ago safety came from being a good hunter-gatherer. In today’s complex world safety comes from participating with others in a sustainable way. You provide a product or service they want in exchange for receiving goods or services you need or want. This is the win-win exchange of the free marketplace. It is positive connection that creates safety for a communal species like us humans. It is positive connection that generates the ease our heart is looking for.
Our heart also has to work its way through lies and perceptual conflicts to reach the positive connection it wants to feel ease. The most common lie I find with people is the misperception that attention is the same thing as connection. From the head they may look the same, but from the heart they are very different. People gain attention by “standing out” in a manner that provokes either positive or negative anxiety. Examples might be sexual attractiveness provoking a positive anxiety and drama/victim provoking a negative anxiety. These are ways of demanding attention that force connection without an easeful win-win transaction. Anxiety based connections do not produce the ease the heart is looking for.
To summarize, safety is about getting physical survival needs met in the present, not about feeling good. Ease is the good feeling that comes with an abundance of positive non-stress based win-win relationships with life. We want both goals met, but one will not substitute for the other.
So be safe this Halloween. Spend it relaxing with loved ones. If you are going to be watching scary movies, do it from the safety of your living room couch curled up with loved ones so both halves of your brain can be happy – safe and at ease.