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The Internal Development Necessary to Become Loving & Wise

Balboa Press

Contents

Foreword..........................................................................ix1. Connecting Love & Wisdom With Internal Happiness...............................32. Defining the Potential To Understand...........................................153. Understanding Perspective—...............................................234. Understanding Love, Wisdom & Identity..........................................375. The Internal Potential For Real Caring.........................................436. The Internal Potential For Mastery.............................................517. The Internal Potential To be Creative..........................................618. The Internal Potential To Contribute...........................................679. The Need for Primal Experience And Quintessential Moments......................7310. Developing Self-Worth In Children and Adults..................................8111. Developing an Adult Perspective...............................................8712. The Need for Truth............................................................9313. The Need For Beauty...........................................................9914. The Need For Meaningful Work..................................................10315. The Need For A Life-Affirming Legacy..........................................10716. Thinking for Understanding The Basic Process..................................11517. Learn How to Concentrate—One Issue at a Time............................12318. Make Accurate Observations & Ask Intelligent Questions........................12919. Define Words In Terms of Experience...........................................13720. Details Versus Generalizations................................................14321. Similarities & Differences....................................................14922. Describing the Content Of Each Experience.....................................15723. Understanding Process.........................................................16124. Building Bonded Relationships Introduction & Overview.........................16925. Personal Conversation.........................................................17526. Conscious Touch...............................................................18327. Sharing Reality, Purposes, & Quintessential Moments...........................191

Chapter One

Imagine that you wake up on the first day of your long awaited and much anticipated ski trip in a comfortable condo with glorious mountain views, a stone fireplace hosting a crackling cozy fire, a hot cup of coffee, and 12 inches of fresh powder outside the window that promises perfect skiing. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? (Feel free to substitute a sun saturated beach in the Bahamas if that is more to your taste.)

Now, imagine you are alone, but really want to be in the company of someone you love. This discontent may introduce a degree of sadness, and perhaps anxiety. Or, imagine you are with someone, but the relationship is conflicted because both of you want more attention, energy, or approval than the other has to give. Or imagine that you are very insecure about your skiing, and are just competitive enough to be anxious about how you will perform on the slopes.

What you can see is that internal conflicts, anxieties, and discontents are quite capable of diminishing or even ruining externally perfect experiences. Everyone knows the powerful ruining effect that internal anxieties, hungers, conflicts and disappointments can have in daily life. What everyone does not know is how to create the satisfaction, meaning, consciousness, caring, and competence necessary to become genuinely and completely happy—whether the external circumstances are perfect, or not!

This example offers a powerful insight into one reason that real and enduring happiness is often so elusive. That is, most of us expect something external will make us happy, and never do learn that no matter how perfect or controlled we make our external surroundings, real happiness requires we also define and master our internal needs and potentials.

The problem in normal life is that almost all our attention and training focuses on mastering the external. Our training begins early. We often start by learning in a peewee league to compete to win in soccer, baseball, football, or even ballet class. In high school, we compete for grades, usually so we can get into a good college and go on to a high paying job, or become a successful entrepreneur. It is normal to assume that success in our professional lives will inevitably lead to also being happy in our personal and relationship lives.

Nowhere in normal life are we taught to acknowledge internal needs and potentials, and then receive direct, specific, concrete, and effective training in how to be a conscious and caring person, satisfying mate, competent parent and real friend. Real happiness requires having enough external wealth to feed our material needs—and enough internal development to master our mental and emotional needs so we can become loving and wise.

Internal development is the pivotal issue for human beings at this juncture in our history. Right now, every critical external issue requires a degree of internal development that as a group, human beings simply do not have. One consequence is that the problems and needs of our times overwhelm our ability to accurately observe the facts, consciously think about what they mean, and painstakingly discover what is required to solve our problems and feed our needs. This is as true for the large global issues threatening our political and economic stability and prosperity, as well as the small individual issues that diminish or destroy our personal fulfillment and significant relationships.

What most needs changing is our purpose. When we are taught, and subsequently believe that happiness will occur as a result of becoming externally successful, we make it our purpose to acquire control over creating a pleasant and comfortable life. With this normal purpose defining our priorities, we do not even try to understand and nurture ourselves and other people. Instead, we try to control every pain and pleasure.

Creating internal happiness requires a totally different purpose. The conscious purpose we need is to respond to the mystery and marvel of being alive by wanting to explore and understand all the positive and negative experiences that life offers. With a conscious purpose to explore and understand, we expand our attention to include all the external and internal facts, needs, potentials, problems, and responsibilities that life inevitably drops into our unsuspecting laps.

Internal happiness has been a rare experience for human beings, in part, because few people adopt the required purposes. In addition to lacking conscious purposes, there is no training in normal life for how to develop our minds and emotions so we can build the love and wisdom necessary for internal happiness. Simply put, internal happiness requires that we first adopt a conscious purpose to explore life in its entirety; then we must master our internal needs and potentials, the seven mental tools, and the process necessary to build...