Today when I was taking a shower, I just let my voice go where it wanted to go and it came out with one of the most perfectly lovely of melodies,, totally freeform and inventive. There was not one note that was out of place or off-key. It was just beautiful. .This got me thinking that this is a perfect example of getting out of the way. .Everything of beauty, every bit of true thought, all of the creative energies of the human potential are unleashed when one gets out of the way.,,
The question is how does one create an ability to get out of the way at will? There are many ways of cultivating that ability. The spiritual understanding is there is a God-force or for those uncomfortable with the "G" word, a "greater source of wisdom and knowledge." If that force is allowed to flow through our inner mind and out through the mouth or the fingers or the body action, it will produce perfect thought and action. Of course, there is no proof that such a source exists. It is a very useful construct though. The mind works well when fed such useful constructs. The real question, though, is once that construct is adopted, how does one go about doing it? Just how do you "get out of the way?",,
A more basic question might be, just what has to be gotten out of the way to allow this pure thought and action to flow? The "what" is the outer (conscious) mind. When it is out of the way, that pure thought and action generated by the inner (unconscious) mind is allowed to flow. The inner or unconscious mind is in charge of all those things that we do automatically. It keeps us from bumping into things when we are walking. It keeps us in lane and guides us around road hazards that suddenly appear in front of us on the freeway, long before the outer mind realizes they’re, there. Incidentally, that is a good example of a situation where the outer mind is out of the way and the inner mind delivers. I have been in near accidents at high speeds on California's freeways and what made them "near" accidents, instead of catastrophes was that my inner mind did what it needed to do to guide my hands to steer through the chaos. My outer mind caught up to what had just happened two miles later!
In the realm of mind things, the outer mind is a minor player and mostly is a performance inhibitor. It is the part that says, "What should I do next?" and "If I were to do that, what would people say?" It also provides bits of useful information like reminding us that the next freeway exit is ours and that our fly is unzipped. It also can be a huge negative player when it is questioning one's abilities especially when it wants to direct what needs to be an inner mind or unconscious process. A good example is the process of learning an instrument or learning to type. The outer mind wants to make sure that it is being done right, so it takes charge of where the fingers should be placed. The problem is that the outer mind will never be able to think fast enough for the fingers to be able to achieve proficiency. Proficiency can only happen when it is directed by the inner mind. Comparing the computational speeds of the outer vs. the inner would be like comparing half the speed of sound to four times the speed of light. That is why the outer mind needs to get out of the way.
So how can one purposefully learn to get out of the way? Here are some of the ways I do it:
1. Someone in New York City once asked for directions to Carnegie Hall, one of the major concert venues of the time, by asking, 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall? The answer he got back was, "Practice! Practice! Practice!" Although not too useful to find the place, it is quite useful to get to the point where the outer mind feels it can relinquish control, get totally out of the way, and allow the musical abilities to flow out at a concert hall level of expertise. Whether it is playing an instrument, playing sports, doing crossword puzzles, singing, public speaking and acting or being a verbally proficient helping professional like a life coach, practicing to the point where the skill becomes an automatic internal process is an essential first step.
2. Even with lots of practice and even after the skills are almost automatic, sometimes the expected expert performance does not happen. This is usually due to the outer mind getting in the way. If you ever learned to type you have had this experience. There is a point where your fingers know what keys to press to produce the right result but you are still looking at your fingers because you consciously want to make sure they really know where to press. Once you resist all temptation to look and type a passage flawlessly and repeat that a number of times, the outer mind will be convinced and stop monitoring. Only then will your typing speed make dramatic increases.
3. There are times when the outer mind refuses to stop its monitoring and controlling functions and sometimes even produces negative behaviors to sabotage the whole effort. What can be done to get it to cooperate or to do an end play around it? These problems are usually caused by “inner game” issues. There is some part of the inner personality that has serious reservations about the course of action that the person is undertaking and is slowing down or stopping the process in an effort to protect the person. My assumption when talking about this process is to understand that all actions of this nature by the inner personality are done with positive intention and never with malevolence. Unfortunately, sometimes the behaviors that are chosen to carry out that intention can be pretty lousy.
So if you are doing everything you can with the first two suggestions and still come up with inner game impedances like anxiety, stage fright, procrastination, or a hesitancy to play full-out, the first course to deal with them would be to use the self-help techniques of creative visualization and self-hypnosis. If all the tools you have are not working, then it is probably time to call on the services of a professional to guide you through the process. Those professionals who are most qualified to do this are coaches who also have Neuro-Linguistic Programming and, even better, hypnotherapy skills. With that assistance, you will be on your way to mastery.
Further note: If you are curious about how these principles are applied in real life, you might just review my older newsletter #JW17 on “The Benefits of Personal Writing.”
A final note for 12-Steppers: a spiritual way of viewing this process of getting through performance issues comes under the banner of "let go and Let God." The letting go part is where you consciously put aside any and all considerations that the outer mind can come up with and, as Nike says, Just Do! trusting that God will deliver good results. My 3rd Step way of saying this is to accept that God has the responsibility for the results of my footwork. If I do 100% of the footwork in front of me and I turn over 100% responsibility for the results of that footwork to God, nearly all anxiety will vanish. How come, you ask? Because anxiety is fear of future results, and if I trust that God will deal with the results then I have no fear, hence no anxiety. By the way, if I am spending 100% of my energy on doing what's in front of me, the chances are that I will get better results than if I spend lots of wasted worry time speculating on the results.
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