It’s all well and good deciding to expand our connection to something greater. Something other than ourselves. Trusting in the unknown. Giving up control. Giving up ‘self’. It’s all very well saying we want to serve a greater purpose than our own self interest and desires. It’s all very well saying we renounce our ego, or ‘shadow’, and that we choose to act from a place which is mindful of the bigger picture.But how does that translate to actions?
For me, this is the life’s journey, figuring out the balance between giving up control and sidestepping our responsibilities. Simply giving everything up and hoping a ‘higher power’ will look after it for you is too simple and very extreme. We’re back where we started in a sense, in danger of the self-centredness of detachment.
Some force must be exerted, some decisions must be made. We have to make choices daily, hourly, even secondly! Based on what we think is the right thing to do. This gets to the heart of all existential matters. ‘What ought I to do?’ is the question driving the biggest arc of the human story.
My walking with a pack of dogs over many months gives me a good understanding of where this balance lies!In this way:The objective is to serve them, to facilitate their walk, to give them the freedom to sniff and roam. 5 or 6 other beings need my servitude. Sometimes I pull them, this way and that, telling them where to go, what to do, getting annoyed if they don’t do what I want, raising my voice so that my needs (above theirs) are met. My walk, my way!
So that could be seen as the analogy for the ego, for self-will, self interest, CONTROL. Forcing, bending, manipulating the world around me to be the way I want it to be. Joseph Campbell’s fine work on mythology pulls that all together in his symbolic depiction of The Tyrant.Having choice and exerting willpower in life and in situations with others seems like it’s the natural thing to do. We all do it, we all need to. It’s only when we see the extremities of that approach the; the catastrophic individual or collective suffering captured so well in Myth, that we see there should be at least some drawback from self centredness. How far we go is the question.
So we try the other way. This is similarly stereotyped and mythologised in it’s extreme form as the hero, the one who is guided my the Logos, whose quest arrives at some greater truth by confronting tyranny and serving the community.
So, applying this to the dogs….The other way of going about it…..is…..actually…..NOT to let them do what they want. Completely take my control and will and selfishness out of the situation? No, it’s not that. If I was to just allow them to pull me this way and that, do whatever, then they each actually get a poorer quality walk, because they are all attached and the unmanaged behaviour of one affects the other. Some wilful actions must be chosen. I am a responsible agent. Some will has to be exerted, to keep the balance right. Enough so that there is the maximum amount of quality walk for all of the dogs.
So, I can still have choice, I still have responsibility, but the difference is my choice and decisions are informed by a sense of duty to something bigger or other than me. My own preference is not the guide.
Thus it can be seen that the opposing approaches of selflessness and self will can co-exist.
You don’t have to believe me on this one. It’s not actually my idea. It was all communicated to me by the dogs themselves when we stopped for a drink. I can arrange a debate between you and them if you so wish 🙂
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