In the self-improvement/self-help/spiritual growth circles that I’ve moved in and had the opportunity to observe, I’ve noted a common theme of “growth takes a lot of hard work.”

This is true, as far as it goes, but I think that in our particular North American, Puritan-derived, Protestant-work-ethic-GO culture, too much emphasis is placed upon the work, and not enough on the easiness of growth, the playfulness of it, and the effortlessness of it.

You can think about it this way: when was the last time you saw a tree putting in extra hours to its growth? How often do you see kittens attending workshops to learn to develop properly? Do you ever see a flower breaking a sweat when preparing to bloom, worried that it might not?

Looked at this way, working to grow makes no real sense. Growth is something that simply happens in living things of its own accord, without any special concentration or striving. Does that mean I think we should stop putting energy into our growth? Obviously not! If a tree, a kitten, or a flower stopped putting energy into growing, it wouldn’t survive for long. At best, it would be outcompeted by those organisms that are still growing. At worst, it would simply die from lack of energy and nourishment.

As human beings, we are possessed with the peculiar and endlessly fascinating ability to consciously and willfully direct how we expend our energy (at least to some degree). The way in which we grow through life seems to be something that we can steer toward and away from, but not something that we can cease altogether. We’re growing if we’re alive, because that’s what life does.

Have you ever noticed that, when learning a new skill, the amount of work that it takes to get just the basics down seems huge, but after a time, it gets easier? Of course you have! That’s what learning is! Beyond just the exercising of the skill, though, have you ever noticed that it gets easier to motivate yourself to do the work needed in order to learn or grow your skill as you build the habit of practicing? Beginning an exercise program starts out difficult, but as the habit becomes ingrained, it becomes easy to get moving and do the workout. It becomes less exhausting and more energizing as it becomes a part of how you live your life.

This is the art of effortless effort. Choose the direction you wish to grow in, take action, and sit back and relax and enjoy for a minute. Your growth is already happening, it’s already on its way, stop and notice it, savor it, soak it up before you start pushing yourself onto the next step. See how easy taking bigger and bigger steps becomes. You’re already there, you’re already growing, just bring the energy and watch!

Recommended Reading:

Relax, You’re Already Perfect, by Bruce Schneider

For the past few days I’ve been helping my mom unclutter her house. Throughout the years, with a husband and three kids, she’s accumulated a lot of things that she just doesn’t need. At one point during the process I thought of something that I read in The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, that is, people often believe that more money and more possessions will lead them to happiness. Research shows otherwise.

Many people with little money and few possessions tend to be happier than their wealthier counterparts. In a recent study of the world’s happiest countries by the University of Leicester and the Perspectives of Psychological Sciences, the United States, one of the world’s wealthiest countries, ranks 16th. Long term data shows the level of happiness in the U.S. is stagnant. Denmark was ranked first and, along with Bhutan, consistently ranked very highly in the happiness scale. According to the University of Leicester, Puerto Rico and Colombia were second and third this year.

According to the United States’ culture of consumerism, the more we buy, the happier we will be. Arguably, consumerism is our national religion. However, Denmark, Puerto Rico, and Colombia are poorer countries whose level of consumerism is far less voracious. Clearly, the more we buy, the more we have, does not make us happy.

Of course, we all have necessities and all do need to consume. However, the case remains in our society, that we consume far too much because we think it will make us happy to buy and to have certain objects. And, for a short time, it does. This kind of consuming is unconscious and heavily ego-induced. We are trying to find happiness in identification with an object or trying to have an object that someone else does not in order to elevate our status, to feed our ego. Then, after that short lived happiness has subsided, we must buy something else… the ego is hungry again and must maintain its illusory status. In truth, objects will fulfill basic needs of survival and comfort, but will not provide for lasting happiness. Lasting happiness can only come from and be sustained by the self.

Next time you’re out shopping, ask yourself why you want to buy a certain item. Are you going to purchase that 4,000 square foot house because you actually need that much space or are you doing so because it will be bigger, and therefore, better than everyone else’s house at work? Do you want that new Hummer H3 because you actually are going to go off road, through snow, water, and wilderness, or are you doing it because it shows a level of status as both an expensive car to buy and to fill up with gas? If everyone had a Hummer H3 would you still want one? Are you going to buy a specific brand of shirt because you actually like the look and feel of it, or is Hugo Boss telling you to buy it so you’ll be better in some way than others who can’t afford it?

Consumerism is a necessity in our country. However, we can bring consciousness to it and stop using it to perpetuate a false sense of ego and of being better than others. Not only are we harming our personal and collective sanity with it, but our entire planet is suffering due to our incessant appetite to have more.

It goes almost unquestioned in business culture that a consistent delivery of a consistent product is one of the primary hallmarks of a successful business plan. We can see how successful this model is quite clearly: McDonald’s was built on the premise of delivery the same McDonald’s experience in every store in the world. Wherever you go, it’s always the same quality of food, it tastes the same, it looks the same, it’s delivered in the same fashion. It works because of the predictability of it; you know that if you like a meal at McDonald’s, you’ll enjoy what you get at all of them, because it’s the same experience.

It’s no different within healthcare in general or chiropractic specifically; there is a strong impetus for healthcare practitioners to be able to deliver the same service to every patient or client every time. On the surface, it certainly seems like a wise decision: you can rest assured that if you’re delivering the same service every time, patients who have the condition you’re trained to treat will get better in a predictable fashion. It’s just good business sense.

As an artist as well as a healer, I have a few questions and qualms about this assumption, however. The gist of my questions comes down to this: how much do I want to ensure for myself that I get the same experience over and over again? My answer is unequivocally no. I can think of a few circumstances where I want to know exactly what kind of experience I want to have in advance and know that I’ll get it exactly, but for the most part, I recognize that desire within myself as being entirely based on my fear of the unknown.

Is the guarantee of a predictable experience worth the loss of variety?

What if the Internet had no users? Can you picture it? Can you imagine what the Internet would be if there were no user input on it? To be sure, there is some implicit structure or form to the Internet that arises from the fact that there are these large domain name servers that figure out that when you type www.anadiholistics.com into your web browser, you should get content from some particular server at some particular physical location, and there are technical documents describing how languages that are used on the Internet (like html, php, etc) are designed to work and interact with each other and with your browser. Without the content, what are we talking about beyond the implicit, though?

It’s not until people put stuff on the Internet for you to interact with that the internet has any real meaning. And conversely, imagining the content without the context of the Internet is similarly meaningless. All of its meaning is derived, either directly or indirectly, from the fact that it has someplace to be in the first place!

When I started studying Eastern Philosophy and Religion (indirectly, through Scott, who is getting his PhD in just that!), I abruptly realized that the internet-without-content is an excellent metaphor for understanding the concept behind the Hindu God, Shiva.

Say what?

Shiva is, at least in some traditions, the God who represents the Implicit forces of the Universe. He is the Unmanifest becoming Manifest. He represents the very ground of being, from which all of our experiences of physical reality arise. He undergoes this Becoming through his Divine Union with Parvati, sometimes referred to as Shakti. Shakti is the Feminine Principle, the outsurging of Life from the Unmanifest into Form.

The concepts are peculiarly analogous to the Empty Internet, the field upon which we play, and its “divine consort” the user Input.

Understanding this led me to realize that the mythology that Joseph Campbell has claimed our society is so sorely needing to put us into accord with Nature and the world is, at last, emerging in a way that we can recognize. The way to view mythology, both according to Campbell and to some Hindu texts that he cites from as early as 900 BCE, is to see all of the Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Powers that move through those stories as being reflections of psychological Powers that are in you. Shiva, as a Yogi and renunciate, can be read as being meant to show the path to spiritual liberation. Identify yourself with the entire field of consciousness, and you are free. Identify with the forms of the world, and you are stuck in the cycle of life and rebirth.

The Internet has no features except in the context of its content. Mythologically, for the sake of this experiment, it can be read as the formless ground of being, the field of consciousness itself.

The next time you find yourself becoming angry or emotionally unsettled at something someone on the Internet says to you, ask yourself this simple question: How would the Internet feel about this?