Late Night Reflection: Of Self-Improvement, Structure and Freedom

Self-improvement is a very interesting concept. After all, what exactly is it about the self that we're trying to improve?

It seems to me that when we talk about wanting to pursue self-improvement what we're really saying is we feel the need to have a mentor or a teacher whom we perceive to have more wisdom in some area than we do ourselves.

At least that was what motivated my own journey, which started with a bit of a crisis in my late 20s.

Having been loosely attached to the self-development industry for better than 30 years the sad thing is that most people who go forth and enthusiastically look for a teacher instead encounter what amounts to little more than "spiritual snake oil salesmen." And that can really leave a sour taste in your mouth.

Often we end up getting unexpected wake-up calls of our own because we discover that these purveyors of spirituality - claiming they can help us live our best possible selves - claim to be free of the system we might feel has trapped us and yet they are such an intricate part of a trap of their own making. In other words, they're just as attached to fleecing the person next to them as anyone else!

It's interesting to consider how we often end up "losing our way," or at least feeling like we've lost our way. As children, what do we love the most? We love to be told fantastical stories, fairy tales or what you might essentially call "mythology."

Then we become indoctrinated into the ways of the "industrialized world" and we lose touch with those things. What's even worse is that we're often told that these mythologies we pursued as children are "absolute nonsense."

But why are they nonsense? And why are we willing to spend $800 for a 3-day retreat to be told something we already know?

In most cases childhood mythologies are labeled as "nonsense" because they don't conveniently fit on a 9-to-5 schedule, and they don't conveniently fit within a prescribed formula of behavior in which everybody is in compliance with a single way of doing things.

Schedules and structures seem to apply everywhere in this world of ours. Heck, it even applies in the context of spirituality. If we're simply "spiritual" as a way of being in our daily lives, we get labeled as woo-woo, and the only "officially endorsed" way to be spiritual is to sit in a church for one and a half hours on Sundays. According to a schedule, right?

Similarly, all these structures end up defining what we even consider sacred in the world. I used to cause a lot of raised eyebrows because I was living in fairly conservative Texas and when asked I would tell people that "nature is my church." Didn't take me long to learn that that was an unacceptable answer!

But do we really gain anything from trying to live in a world where everything is controlled and structured? Isn't that the very thing that's making us feel like we're not sure that the way we're living is even the right way?

Yes, we humans seem to try to structure absolutely everything. Heck, we even choose to go to the zoo to see nature as opposed to actually getting out in nature! Even something simple like enthusiasm gets described as "childishness" unless it is expressed according to a specific formula deemed appropriate for an adult human being.

What prompted me to write this post was something I read earlier about freedom.

We talk a lot about freedom here in the USA, but what kind of freedom is it? Even the freedom is structured! Our desire for freedom is expected to look a specific way but we can't actually live the authentic version of freedom that means we don't feel like we are restricted and harnessed by fences and barriers, both real and imaginary.

What's UP with that?

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!

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Created at 2023-12-15 00:59PST
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