Transforming feelings and concepts about love and wisdom into actions requires specific skills and awareness normal life does not offer. In this book, you will learn how to think for understanding, master internal needs and potentials, and build bonded relationships. These internal developments provide the foundation for becoming loving and wise.
The Internal Development Necessary to Become Loving & Wise
By Paul HatherleyBalboa Press
Copyright © 2011 Dr. Paul Hatherley
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4525-3915-7 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
Connecting Love & Wisdom With Internal Happiness
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 emotional bonds.
It is important to notice that mental and emotional development takes time and effort, as well as repetition and practice. Because we learn some things quickly and easily, we often assume we should learn all things quickly and easily. Internal development is one activity that I have never seen anyone (including myself) learn quickly or without focused effort. If you engage this process with a purpose to become loving and wise, you will create a clearly defined and life-affirming goal that provides a renewable source of energy and inspiration.
By the way, even if you are a person who unconsciously protects your right to be anxious, critical, or chronically discontent, it is important to note that even this set of attitudes and behaviors can be changed by education, time, and effort. Just because you were trained to be neurotic (anxious, depressed, conflicted or divided) does not mean that it has to be a life sentence. Quite the contrary, you can start from wherever you are now and build a new and life-affirming character, or improve the old one by acquiring information, practicing new habits, and developing internal skills.
Defining Internal Happiness
To begin, internal refers to every experience that takes place in our minds and emotions. This means that thoughts, feelings, beliefs, ideas, theories, desires, fears, expectations, etc. all qualify as "internal" experiences that occur inside our heads and hearts. (Just as a matter of interest, emotions and thoughts both come from our minds; the "heart" we often refer to as the source of feelings is just a metaphor.)
The second word we need to define is happiness. This word is difficult because it points to complex experiences that are both subjective and objective. As a result, one person may be happy spending his life as a teacher, while other people may want to be a forest ranger, fireman, doctor, welder, etc. These preferences are subjective and unique to each person, so there is no better or worse. In the past, people have assumed that happiness is an entirely subjective and unique experience, and then used this assumption as an excuse to avoid exploring the issue to discover whether or not there may be objective and truly universal aspects to internal happiness that can be defined, taught, and learned.
Over the past thirty years, I have explored the experience of internal happiness and discovered certain universal requirements. For instance, two requirements necessary to become mentally and emotionally (internally) happy, are that we must develop consciousness and caring. The purpose for this development is to replace the normal tendency to obsess over feelings with consciously learning how to observe, think, and learn.
You may ask, "What makes consciousness and caring universal requirements for internal happiness?" Well, can you imagine being internally happy when you are chronically hungry for experiences you cannot even define, much less provide? Or, can you imagine being internally happy when your emotions are divided and you feel anxious, confused, or needy for approval?
By contrast, one consequence of internal development is that we become competent to feed needs and fulfill potentials. In the process, we also become whole-hearted, so our caring is focused. In addition, we build genuine self-worth, so we no longer waste time obsessing about how we feel about ourselves, or what other people think about us, but instead, create the satisfaction that comes from being both internally and externally competent. If you had this degree of development, does it seem that you would also create some degree of internal happiness?
Now, take it a step further and ask, "Can I imagine that anyone who masters internal development and becomes loving and wise would inevitably experience some degree of internal happiness?" If this seems reasonable, and you test this insight by observing people in everyday life, as well as in books and movies, you will see that consciousness and caring are universal requirements for building happiness.
Next, if you use this process to define and fulfill your internal potential to become a satisfying mate, nurturing parent, and real friend; is it obvious that you will expand and enhance your experience of internal happiness? On the other hand, can you see that if you pass through life unaware and uncaring, unable to fulfill yourself, satisfy a mate, nurture a child, or care for a friend, then you cannot be internally happy?
Mental Requirements for Internal Happiness
Happiness is built; it does not just appear spontaneously because you are a "good" person. Instead, happiness is built on understanding, and understanding is built in your mind—one observation, question, and insight at a time. We can all imagine "epiphanies of awareness" creating a spontaneous rush of cosmic enlightenment! No work and no waiting. It happens immediately, and without effort. Sounds great to me! Only problem is that spontaneous rushes of cosmic enlightenment do not, and cannot happen.
Everyone's mind can be developed, but incrementally, not instantaneously. Translated, this means our minds grow slowly via one observation, question, and insight at a time, or not at all. This insight may be disappointing, but check it out against your actual experience before you avoid, argue, or explain it away.
What makes understanding so critical is that internal happiness can only be built on feeding needs and fulfilling potentials. This means that our potential to be conscious and caring, the pre-requisites to love and wisdom, are internal developments that require a genuine connection to real-world experience.
How do you consciously connect to everyday experience? The most direct way is to pay attention to every small and ordinary event, and make accurate observations. Then, you need to ask intelligent questions and create useable insights. If you fail to pay attention and make accurate observations, and instead define reality in terms of beliefs and feelings—then you remain forever unaware and disconnected from actual experience.
It is true that we can become competent to make a living, but remain inadequate to see reality accurately in our personal and relationship lives. Sadly, this uneven development happens frequently in our culture. One reason is that we all acknowledge the need to survive, and often rely on the rational process of observing, thinking, and learning to function at work, but in our personal and relationship lives unconsciously rely on the normal neurotic process of obsessing, feeling, and fantasizing.
Building internal happiness and becoming loving and wise requires that we explore everyday life until we understand what is true and master our needs and potentials. This is what makes observing, thinking, and learning so critical; that is, we need to observe reality accurately so we can build internal happiness in every part of life—personal, professional, and relationships.
Emotional Requirements for Internal Happiness
With normal training, our energy goes into controlling security, self-image, success, and enjoyable entertainment—rather than wholeheartedly wanting to explore the mystery of being alive so we can become loving and wise. This means that in normal life we are soon taught to pursue control over pain and pleasure and rarely develop any real interest in exploring life so we can master living; in part, because the reward is not immediately obvious, and none of our friends are doing it!
On the other hand, if we care more about exploring life than controlling pain, then we create a source of energy we can use to master internal needs and potentials. With the insight from exploring, and the energy from caring, we are prepared to work as hard as necessary to become loving and wise.
Not wanting to work is the next biggest obstacle to internal development. We often believe that internal development and happiness should just happen, so we should not have to work to develop our minds and emotions. Try challenging this common assumption by observing ordinary people in your acquaintance, as well as famous people you read about, until you see how seldom, in spite of external success, anyone becomes conscious, caring, competent and internally fulfilled, (much less loving and wise) and it will be apparent that if you want internal happiness, then you must work for it.
One source of motivation to do the work necessary to master internal development is to observe that without the meaning that is a natural consequence of becoming loving and wise, then external success quickly becomes empty and unsatisfying. The reason is that at the end of the day, we all have a painfully short life span and need to experience the ultimate satisfaction of a truly meaningful life. No meaning, no happiness.
There are more emotional requirements necessary to pursue internal development, but these three are sufficient to begin. That is, all development requires whole-hearted caring, an innocent desire to explore life, and a conscious commitment to work. Of course, as we continue to grow, we also need the courage to acknowledge facts, tolerate uncertainty, and risk change.
Sensual Requirements for Internal Happiness
The source of all connection to experience is our senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell). To verify this statement imagine what it would be like to have all your senses suddenly and completely shut down. What would be the effect? Or imagine an infant who has never known life and has no memory, but does have a mind and is deprived of all sensory information. Can you imagine this infant's experience? Sounds like a nightmarish plot for a "can't get it out of my head" horror movie, doesn't it?
If you think about the critical role your senses play in just making everyday experience possible, it may become obvious that your senses also play a critical role in internal development. Now, we must ask the obvious question: "What are the sensual requirements for internal development?"
The two most important sensual requirements are simple; we must receive and remember our sensual experiences. Consciously receiving and remembering sensual experience is necessary to create multiple points of contact between ourselves and the experience of being alive. One sign of internal growth is when we expand the number and quality of our points of contact to ourselves, nature, and other people.
One technique for learning how to expand your points of contact is by reading about people who made consciously connecting to everyday experience their life's work. For instance, read the work of the poet, Emily Dickinson, or the teenage diary of Anne Frank, or the American naturalist, John Muir, and you will discover that each person had many points of contact with both nature and other people.
Also, John, Anne, and Emily used every point of contact to observe, think about, and learn from the sometimes delightful and occasionally horrifying experience of just being alive—and then artfully described his/her unique experiences in an original and creative manner. If you study the work of these three people, you may discover that each in his/her own way was internally happy, even though the external circumstances in each person's life were far from perfect.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Internal Development Necessary to Become Loving & Wiseby Paul Hatherley Copyright © 2011 by Dr. Paul Hatherley. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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