The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
The chase and the hunt craze people’s minds.Wasting energy to obtain rare objects
only impedes one’s growth.The master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
He prefers what is within to what is without.~ Wayne Dyer version
Chasing Rare ‘Objects’
The part of this verse that first jumped out at me was “wasting energy to obtain rare objects only impedes one’s growth“.
It resonated with me because, in my own way, I’ve placed a high value on “rare objects” – sometimes to the detriment of my energy and growth.
For me it’s rarely been about rare “objects”, but more about rare people.
Since my teen years I have often been drawn to enigmatic, hard-to-get-to-know people. And in those teen years I tended to see these people as a challenge to my skill of being able to break through the emotional defenses they put up, win their trust, and subsequently, their friendship.
I found such people fascinating – like a puzzle for me to figure out.
Don’t get me wrong, I was genuinely interested in getting to know these people, and in a number of instances I established deep, incredibly fulfilling friendships with them.
It’s just that, in reading that line from the 12th verse, it seemed to encapsulate my pattern, and also confirmed what I already know – those types of relationships take a lot energy and, in my case, they did impede my growth in some ways.
In others they escalated my growth, so it probably evened out!
What I see now is that I did see these people as a puzzle to solve and as a more exciting and interesting prospect for a relationship than less enigmatic, puzzling people.
I saw them as “rare objects”, and in my attempts to win their trust and get into their inner sanctum (their mind!), I sometimes sold myself out.
I wanted so much for them to like and trust me, or for me to ‘succeed’ in getting beyond their tough exterior that I became a chameleon.
I became very good at reading what these friends wanted/needed from me, and I gave it to them.
At the time I wouldn’t have said I sold out in any way. I had pretty strong principles and values, and I wasn’t willing to budge on most of them, but what I can see with my 20/20 hindsight is that I spent a lot of extra energy trying to please these friends to the detriment of other friendships and to being true to myself – my true, spirit self.
Like I imagine it must be for gem miners, it was an adrenaline buzz to win these friendships.
But in certain cases – not all – the buzz came in the form of intermittent reinforcement, where you never quite knew when the next piece of positive reinforcement was coming.
These people tend to be withholders of affection (for various reasons), and don’t give compliments easily. They are often sparing with their confidences and trust few people.
So when you happen to get a positive show of affection, a compliment, or a shared confidence, it’s like a hit of some sort of drug.
I think it truly did give me a hit of dopamine in my brain, like any intermittent reinforcement does (eg Poker machines). One article I found confirmed that “The feelings of desire that accompany being in love are due to an increase in dopamine.
But as with all types of intermittent reinforcement – where you never know when the next ‘win’ is coming – there were sometimes long periods of me giving, giving, giving to the friendship without getting much back.
But when I got it, it was so worth it! It boosted my ego no end!! 😉
I’ve reflected on this pattern of mine for many years and see that it is not unlike an abusive relationship, just without the physical abuse.
The emotional abuse is very subtle, so I hesitate to call it abuse, but it’s definitely not a positive emotional experience – especially if you strike the people who withhold communication (aka employ radio silence).
In my teen years my ‘targets’ had less years to shut their emotions and communication down, so back then I didn’t get the radio silence response much (also no mobile phones, Facebook, internet etc, so even if it was employed it wasn’t as noticeable).
I realise I’ve wasted a lot of energy going after people I perceive as ‘rare objects’ over my lifetime.
Some of these ‘rare objects’ have been well worth having in my life, and I’ve learned so much from my deep connection with them. But I also see that I can easily lose myself in these types of relationships.
Fascinating, intelligent, enigmatic people are often brilliant in an almost genius way, but with that there also comes a manipulative, narcissistic aspect and often a sense of superiority.
My sense of superiority was found in breaking down their defenses – ego versus ego!
But when I did that, I sometimes found myself in a trap of my own making – the people pleasing! – that impeded my growth, and in later years, sent me back to the pattern of my teens that I thought was long gone.
In my teens, I see that focussing my energy on so-called ‘rare objects’ sometimes led to me not valuing the true friendships I already had.
I remember telling one boy I was very close friends with that he was too nice to go out with.
We were best friends, and yet I got crazed in the ‘chase and the hunt’ for more ‘enigmatic’ friends and missed out on the opportunity to have a great, open, honest first boyfriend.
Thankfully I did break the pattern at 19 to make way for my first husband who I was with for 15 years, so maybe I did grow. He, in his own way though, was quite a rare object – just not the hard-to-get-to-know type!
The master allows things to come and go
I am getting better at this – once again we get back to “allowing” – but I have always had a propensity to want to ‘capture the moment’ on camera or video.
And memorabilia still fills too many boxes in my house. Hardly the poster child of allowing things to come and go!! 🙂
In recent years I’ve put the video down a lot more and just enjoyed family celebrations in the moment. Ditto the camera.
But I do find it a constant battle within myself not to want to video every speech or photograph every occasion.
Smartphones make this trap even easier to fall into, with their built-in cameras and video.
I don’t think I’ll ever fully stop taking photos or recording video. Photography and videography are true passions for me that bring me a great deal of joy.
I guess it depends a lot on what’s driving the desire to capture something on camera or video.
Is it because I love my family and friends, and like to have recent photos of them to look at and/or to share with other family/friends as a gift to them.
Or is it because of a fear of losing a moment? A fear of not having something physical/digital to look back on to remember an occasion? A fear of certain people one day not being around, so I need to capture their image or story before they go?
Or maybe it’s because I think the photo will impress my Instagram or Facebook friends? Or fear of missing out (FOMO) on the “perfect picture”? (many a sunset has seduced me like this!)
I guess it comes to down to whether I am truly valuing the moment, or whether I am valuing something else (eg fear, ego, status … notice it’s our Facebook Status that we post!).
Sometimes it’s nice to share a moment of my day on Facebook as a way of connecting with my family and friends who are spread around the world.
But if that’s the only filter I’m looking through – “how many FB photos can I take to share? Oooh, that’d make a good post on FB, Instagram, Twitter ..” – then I’m missing the moment and am not being present to the people around me.
And in trying to ‘capture a moment’, we are not allowing ‘things to come and go’. We’re effectively trying to stop time in a photograph or a video.
Being fully present at a celebration or at a restaurant dinner with friends is getting rarer and rarer.
We not only have a camera and video with us, we also have a phone, email and a whole computer!!
As well as consciously choosing to take less photos etc, I also consciously try to turn my phone on silent and not place it on the table if I’m out to dinner (recently I heard some research that found people’s connection and communication are adversely effected even if their companion just has their phone sitting on the table in view – presumably as they see it as a possible interruption to their conversation at any given moment).
I think we all know that distracted feeling of hearing a text message come through on our phone and not looking at it immediately.
I’ll certainly own up to being as conditioned as one of Pavlov’s dogs to hearing a text or the ding of my FB Messenger – I don’t quite salivate but it’s definitely a distraction and often a dopamine hit to the brain.
“Letting things come and go” without reaction in these cases takes discipline that we are all still learning to manage – all generations at once! (It’s not like we can look to earlier generations for guidance on this one!)
That’s why I’ve started to put the phone on silent when I’m with someone or ignore a call/text if I have forgotten to silence the phone.
I guess in this way I’m choosing to honour my face-to-face relationships over electronic/telephonic communication, so it’s sort of valuing “what is within (more than) what is without”.
I thought I’d write more about letting physical possessions come and go, and letting relationships come and go in this post, but once again my inner self (or writing hand) had other ideas.
I’m learning to do both a lot better than I did even 5 years ago.
Being single and not even looking for a partner for over 2 1/2 years has been such a healing time for me – letting go of the ‘need’ to have a partner, and taking that time to really be ok with being on my own and getting to know myself has been both surprising and enjoyable.
I truly never thought I’d get to that point in my life.
Regarding letting go of physical objects – decluttering can be so emotionally healing. My cousin and friend (same person!) has been recommending a book to me that had a huge impact on her life, so I’ll share it here – The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
I plan to read it, but haven’t got it yet.
For some reason – don’t ask me why, but maybe because of the way it links the physical with the spiritual and emotional – a book that also comes to mind as I write this is Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth.
I saw it ages ago while at a friend’s place and the title grabbed my attention. I got so much out of it that I then got the audiobook AND my own personal paper copy (perhaps not necessary once I read the decluttering book!).
The fact it suddenly came to my mind may be a sign to revisit it.
Similar to the way our relationship to our goods and chattels is reflective of our emotional ‘stuff’, Genneen Roth explores how our relationship to food connects with our relationship to everything else, including universal energy (as I recall, she uses the term God in the title but uses universal energy/love more in the book).
Letting go of relationships and people in our lives will have to wait for another day. I have become quite an expert in this process in some ways – by necessity! – but in others I am far from a master!
I’ll finish with a couple of quotes from Wayne Dyer re the 12th verse:
“You can’t arrive at a place of peace and inner satisfaction when your entire existence is motivated by not having enough …”
“In silence, sustenance is enjoyed beyond the dictates of the palate … From an inner perspective nothing more is needed”
Namaste
Louise xx