Mistake #5: Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and study. It seems that when we finish our formal schooling, we have completed our development of the mind. We have adopted the credo of reading and studying for the purpose of taking the examination and earning our merit badge in the form of a diploma or an advanced degree. Once the certificate is in hand, the need to study and refine the mind is terminated. Cicero must have noticed this same tendency among his fellow Roman citizens and warned them that it could be a prelude to the downfall of their empire. And so it came to pass.
Our lives are greatly enriched when we immerse ourselves in literature and spiritual writing, not because we are going to be tested, but purely for the sake of personal enrichment. You will find that daily reading and study provide you with a deeper and richer experience of life in all ways. This is particularly gratifying when you know that you are doing it out of choice rather than as an assignment.
Mistake #6: Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do. Obviously we are still guilty of this sixth mistake. Too often we feel victimized by those who are imposing on us their views of what we should be doing and how we should be living. The result is a high state of tension and resentment. No one wants to be told how to live or what to do. One of the specific traits of highly functioning people is that they have no desire or investment in controlling other people. We need to remind ourselves of this truth, and take the advice of Voltaire in his last line of Candide, “Learn to cultivate your own garden.”
If others want to grow cabbage and you choose to grow corn, then so be it. Yet there is this propensity to peer into the lives of others and insist that they believe and care in the same way as we do. It is a common mistake of families to impose their will on everyone else in the unit. It is also a common mistake of government officials who are determining what is best for everyone. If Cicero’s six mistakes are an unwelcome part of your life, consider the following six suggestions:
Put your attention on your own life and how to improve it. Catch yourself when you are engaged in the habit of verbally crushing others, and stop instantly. The more you become aware of tearing down the buildings of others, the sooner you will shift to constructing your own tall building.
Ask yourself as you experience worry, “Can I do anything about this?” If it is out of your control, then let it go. If there is anything you can do, then shift gears and work on that strategy. These two questions will get you out of the worry habit.
Any time you confront a problem that you feel is impossible to solve, remind yourself that this is nothing more than a solution waiting for the right response. If you can’t see the solution, begin the process of investigating who can. There is always someone who can see it from a possibility rather than an impossibility perspective. Remove “impossible” from your vocabulary entirely.
Give yourself assignments to work on what you consider the most significant issues facing all of us. Give up some of your self-indulgent activities in favor of these greater tasks, and remind yourself that in some small way your contribution to the resolution of major social problems is making an impact.
Give yourself time every day to read spiritual books, or listen to tapes in your spare time, maybe while driving. Make a habit of attending self-improvement seminars or lectures in your community on all sorts of mind-refining subjects.
Cultivate your own garden and let go of your tendency to examine and judge how others cultivate theirs. Catch yourself in moments of gossip about how others ought to be living and rid yourself of thoughts about how they should be doing it this way, or how they have no right to live and think as they do. Stay busy and involved in your own life projects and pursuits and you will be far too busy to care, much less compel others to believe and live as you do.
From ancient Rome Cicero, the great statesman, orator, writer, and philosopher gives us all a lesson in living. Don’t make these same mistakes that mankind has been making throughout the centuries. Instead, vow to eliminate them from your life one day at a time.
Except ye be converted and become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom
of Heaven.
JESUS OF NAZARETH
(C. 6 B.C.–A.D. 30)
Jesus Christ is one of the world’s major religious figures, regarded by Christians as the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament prophets.
Recently, while preparing to give a lecture in a town far from home, I had the strange experience of looking directly into a wall mirror while sitting at a desk. The entire wall was one gigantic mirror, and every time I looked up, there was this body looking back at me while I was writing in a notepad. Finally I just stopped and stared back. I couldn’t grasp the fact that this was actually me reflected in the mirror. I remember saying to myself, “That’s an old man who is renting my face.”
As I stared back I thought of the invisible being living inside each of us. This being is without boundaries or form, thus no beginning or end. This is the silent invisible witness that is ageless and unchanging. This is the eternal child inside each of us. It is as ageless children that we become synonymous with heaven, which represents that eternity where forms and boundaries, beginning and ends, ups and downs are all meaningless.
Heaven is not a place with borders, perimeters, edges, and precincts. Rather, it represents that which transcends demarcations. It is the same as that little child Jesus speaks of in this telling observation. In there, always with us, never aging, yet watching, always watching. Noticing the drooping of the eyelids, the wrinkling of the skin, the silvering of the hair. Indeed, it is an old man who is renting my face these days!
The ageless child in me, my eternal unchanging observer, knows nothing of judgment and hatred. There is nothing to judge, no one to hate. Why? Because it doesn’t see appearances, it only knows how to look with love on everything and everyone. It is what I call the absolute “allower.” It simply allows everything to be as it is and only notices the unfolding of God in everyone it encounters. Being without shape, size, color, or personality, this ageless child inside fails to notice such trivial distinctions. Not living on either side of any manmade border, it cannot indulge in ethnic or cultural identification, and thus warfare over these artificial terminus points is impossible. Consequently that invisible ageless child is always at peace, just witnessing, just observing, but most important, just allowing.
Recently I had the experience of running early one morning and feeling so exhilarated that I hurdled over a three-and-a-half-foot fence as I came back to the hotel at the completion of my run. My wife, who was observing me, let out a scream and said to me, “You can’t do that! You don’t jump over fences when you’re fifty-six years old. You could kill yourself.” My immediate response to her was “Oh, I forgot.” That invisible, ageless me who is my eternal observer forgot for an instant that it was living in a body that has been here for over half a century!
To me, this passage of Jesus’ from the New Testament speaks to the process of forgetting about our bodies as our primary identity—forgetting about our ethnic identity, our spoken language, our cultural label, the shape of our eyes, or what side of the border we grew up on, then making the conversion to become as little children, who are impervious to such compartmentalizing. Jesus was not saying we should be childish and become immature, undisciplined, and uneducated. Instead he was referring to being childlike, which is non judgmental, loving, accepting, and incapable of placing labels on anyone or anything.
When we are able to be as little children we realize that in every adult there is a child who desperately wants to be known. It is the child who is full and the adult who is usually empty. The fullness of the child is evident in