The “box” is whatever situation we’re in
and can’t see beyond.
and can’t see beyond.
Field training calls it “immersion,” and notes that it is our nature to live in boxes, to be immersed in situations, and that this in itself is not a problem. It’s when we draw conclusions against our desires that problems arise.One common example of this is concluding that, because we can’t see a solution, there is no solution. Such a conclusion is invariably set against desire; consequently it produces suffering in the form of unwanted feelings—perhaps a sense of hopelessness or frustration.
Our conclusions, however, also have a nonlocal reach—that is, they have the inherent power to ripple outward and take form in factual conditions. Thus our conclusions are self-fulfilling.
Clearly, one can help oneself greatly by refraining from drawing unwanted conclusions. This is made easier by simply acknowledging how little we really know. So, while it may appear that there is no solution to a problem we’re facing, that doesn’t mean that there is none—only that there is none we can’t see for the moment.Just this much willingness—in this case, the willingness to be honest enough to admit uncertainty—can be liberating, and further illustrates that it is our conclusions that we suffer and not the facts in which we’re immersed, even though there is no question that factual conditions can be painful.
By retaining our creative authority, however, and refusing to give ourselves to unfriendly conclusions, we come to see for ourselves the profound difference between pain and suffering, and that while we may have nothing to say about life’s inevitable moments of pain, we have everything to say about whether or not we suffer our pain.
It also helps greatly to remember that every box has an outside. There is always more than we see, more than we know, more than we have allowed for in our conclusions, which are by definition closed systems.Life, however, is not closed. While our reality is informed by our beliefs, it ultimately is not limited by them, and stands ready to demonstrate often surprising ingenuity and creativity the moment it has the permission provided by our willingness simply to remain open to something pleasantly surprising.
Such changes can come in both ordinary and extraordinary ways—a conversation, phone call, or chance meeting, a synchronicity, happy coincidence, or seeming miraculous turn of events. Life, as Dostoevsky tells us, is greater than any idea of life, and things can and often turn quickly and dramatically for those who refuse to give quarter to self-contradiction.
The next moment can change everything, and we can find ourselves outside the box of unfriendly conclusion, and conveyed to an unexpected solution by nothing more than an unwavering commitment to self-friendship.
