What do you see?

Storytime!

One day a Sociology Professor entered the lecture hall and instructed his students to open their computers and get ready for a surprise exam. They nervously waited in their seats for the test to show up in the student portal, and in one minute, a chorus of email notifications broke the silence in the hall. The subject line read: Focus on what you see. 

The professor cleared his throat and said, "you may begin." To everyone's surprise, there were no questions in the email, just a single black dot in the center of a white page. Seeing the expression on his student's faces – told them, "you have a half-hour. I want you to type out an explanation of what you see on your screen." The confused students – still mumbling – got started on the strange and unusual task. 

 Thirty minutes had passed, when the professor began receiving their replies and started reading each of them aloud in front of all the students. All of them, with no exceptions, described the black dot. Trying to explain its position in the middle of the screen, its size, shape, color, etc. 

When he finished reading the last one, the classroom was, again, silent. The professor began to explain, "I am not going to grade you on today's exam, but I did want to give you all something to think about. Each one of you had your own point of view. You described the dot in excellent detail. Some of you even correctly guessed which font I used. However, no one wrote about the white part of the page. Each of you focused on the black dot, and we do the same thing in our lives. We have a clean, white space to observe and enjoy, but we always focus on the dark spots.

This modern-day parable of sorts really seemed to resonate with me. As you may have heard me mention on the CYD Podcast, I'm an Enneagram: Type One. Often labeled as a perfectionist or a reformer. I have tendencies to pick out the flaws I see and dig at them obsessively until the object I'm fixated on meets my level of "right" – Imagine Steve Jobs but without the turtlenecks and millions of dollars. This, of course, can cause severe issues with my ability to see the white page.  

Now, whether you identify as a perfectionist or not doesn't mean you should stop reading this and go back to watching videos of ice being broken on TikTok.

I want you to ask yourself two questions.

• Do you have the ability to purposefully shift your focus?

• Are you able to listen to another point of view, even when you think it is wrong?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, then it may be time to explore the philosophy of dualistic and non-dualistic thinking. 

We are all called to experience a transformative, expansive, non-dualistic consciousness, and we usually get there through great love (Rohr, 2011) or great suffering (Allison & Setterberg, 2016)

One of my favorite resources on this philosophy is the book 'Falling Upward' by Richard Rohr. In this book, Father Richard writes, "We all become a well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. Most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot." 

So if we spend too much time focusing on the dark spots in our own lives and in others, then we may very well become those dark spots, leaving us absent of joy and peace. 

Shifting your focus from an EITHER/OR mindset to a BOTH/AND mindset frees up the mind to questions we haven't asked ourselves before.

Ex. You can EITHER see the black dot OR the white page > You can see BOTH the black dot AND the white page.

• You can EITHER be a loving and forgiving father OR discipline your children. > You can be BOTH a loving and forgiving father AND discipline your children.

• You can EITHER have chicken wings OR tacos > You can have BOTH chicken wings AND tacos. 

BOTH/AND invites opportunities to hear other viewpoints, question beliefs, see people for who they are, and most importantly – to have tacos and wings. 

 The same premise goes when we only fixate on the happier things in life. Getting wrapped up in individual emotions and only dwelling in their singular feelings is damning. 

In order to drop our toxic masculinity and see our world through clearer lenses, we have to make a shift into the non-dualistic side of life. 

Mark Manson expresses this well in his book 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck' He writes: "A fixation on happiness inevitably amounts to a never-ending pursuit of "something else" – a new house, a new relationship, another child, another pay raise. And despite all of our sweat and strain, we end up feeling eerily similar to how we started: inadequate. Psychologists sometimes refer to this concept as the "hedonic treadmill": the idea that we're always working hard to change our life situation, but we actually never feel very different.   

 I'll throw one more analogy your way to drive this point home.

Imagine yourself trapped in a giant silo of corn. – fun, right? – If you need visuals, you can watch a perfect representation from the 2018 movie 'A Quiet Place' here. You are suspended in the kernels of corn, and with every inch of movement you make, it sinks you deeper and deeper down the silo. You become fixated on moving upwards, and the only direction you actually move is down. But if you broaden your vision and see the perfectly placed and – not at all plot armored – flat surface beside you, you can pull yourself up, see the bigger picture and create a game plan. Think of being in the corn as dualistic (EITHER in OR out) and being on the flat surface as non-dualistic (BOTH in AND out). 

 Shifting your focus to see BOTH the white page AND the black dot begins broadening your scope on the world. It can take a tremendous amount of effort, but the peace that is waiting for you is mind-blowing.

We all know that practice makes perfect, so throughout the rest of your week, try taking a non-dualistic approach to your decisions and conversations. Be open and aware of the situations you're in and where you can apply this approach, and let us know how it goes in the comments.