The Success of Monkey & Banana
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(Found this fun shop name passing by Chinatown in Singapore. I'd like to be a metaphysics consultant!)
Hello from Singapore!
I haven't been back in this Lion Countrycity for 6 years, so it's exciting to be back. I'm here for collaboration & friendship (here's the fuller intention - Khuyen visits Singapore), so if you know of anyone interested, please introduce us!
This week, I want to share some writing from David Hawkins' book, "Success is for You", as recommended by my friend David.
I know what you are thinking "What a cheesy title... Khuyen are you still the one I used to know???"
Well, I'm taking risk to be out of my comfort zone... It has been a while since I read this kind of thing, and it was quite an uncomfortable experience reading this book. The language seems wishy washy and at times condescending to me, plus the foreign context of 1970s America for its self-help movement... But there are some good gems.
Here is one parable of the monkey getting the banana that I am quite fond of
In a well-known experiment, a monkey was put in a cage and bananas were placed outside the cage on the opposite side from the door, just beyond his reach. Once the monkey spotted the bananas, the door was opened. What happened was that the monkey stretched his arm between the bars. He struggled and practically dislocated his shoulder, frantically trying to grasp that which was just beyond his reach. He could struggle there for hours, weeks, or months, and it was always going to be just beyond his reach. To get the bananas, he had to turn his back on them and walk through the open door.
We know that the minute he got that “aha” and saw the open door, success was automatic. It’s only the manifestation of what had already happened. The minute the monkey saw the open door, in effect he already had the bananas.
While I'm highly skeptical of pseudo-scientific writing like this, I do enjoy the author's point about "looking at the right place" rather than keep trying hard one way. What wowed me though is how the metaphor continues:
In a way it’s unfortunate if the monkey reaches one banana out of the bunch, because now he’s a real goner. Having once had that experience, he’s going to be certain that the way he gets the bananas is by straining against the bars. Now we understand the state of world and why it is the way it is. It would be a very lucky monkey indeed if he struggles and falls down exhausted, and in his exhausted state he looks out the door and a light goes on for him. Most of the world has gotten just enough of the bananas to permanently trap themselves right where they are.
While being fully aware of the danger of taking the metaphor as an instruction for life, I did have a lot pleasure in seeing a point well made.
He was right. Sometimes getting some banana is worse than having none. Once the monkey sees the open door, he can choose to walk outside and pick as many bananas as he would like to, but he may rather be trapped inside with some hard-won bananas.
(Better to have no banana)
It made me reflect on my last relationship, which was challenging, full of learning and compassion. I was very much like that monkey: I worked hard to reach the good experience, and I did get it sometimes with my effort.
Yet the very effort made me nearly blind to how much I was reaching too much. Trying to make it work from a place of proving to myself that I could and had done the good work. Letting go of that was attitude was a painful but eye-opening process.
In hindsight I considered it was a successful time:
Self-help circle is fond of saying "There is no failure, there is only learning" I've been trying to unlearn this. Too often it's serving the self-flagellating, self-hatred agenda that many of us hard-working earnest folks are raised in.
I think it's more important to stress that we learn more from success than from failure, but not in terms of what the causal sequence of the outer world A → B → C is (i.e the 5 step success formula gimmick) but more in terms of what is the inner attitude and motivation that allow us to act and serve life well.
We can use the process of elimination to find out what we don't want for a long long time, but only by choosing and taking the unknown can we get what we truly want.
On the last note,
Success is neither something that we have nor something that we do. It is the automatic consequence of what we are. Accordingly, the place to look for it is within and not outside ourselves in the world. If it is the inner ABC that results in outer A→ B→ C, then we see why success can be elusive, because everyone is looking externally outside themselves and trying to manipulate the world without knowing where to look.
Practices:
In your next After Action Review, ask yourself kindly: what was my motivation throughout? What was my motivation in some important moments?
Happy new week,
Khuyen
Beyond Blame
Quite a big jump from "my feelings" to "their fault"
(from my FB here)
Recently a friend was telling me about a challenging relationship she had. After a long lament, she concludes that her ex just wants to make her feel miserable, i.e "the evil boyfriend" assessment. That was sad to hear. 😢
I understood the impulse to make the conclusion, so I let her calm down and only after a while did I share my reflection.
It's one thing to empathize with someone's hurt, and it's totally another thing to support in the result judgment. I find the conclusion "I feel angry/upset/hurt, therefore you (or the world) intends to make me feel so" to be so strange.
The gap between your feelings and someone's intention is severely underestimated. My invitation for us is to contemplate on the vastness of such gap.
Alas, what if 99% of all the hurt in the world is accident, and only 1% is actually intentional? What if we are attributing a bit too much of agency into some "evil" people? What if most people are indeed too busy to make life difficult for us?
Before you jump in disbelief *"How dare you think that way that that guy is not my enemy!?"*, take a breath and bring your attention to the bottom of your feet.
Do it. That will give you some clarity.
Then just try putting on this perspective and see what it is like. Keep the "that guy is evil" on the side, you can always pick it back up 😅
Experientially, blaming is like scratching our itch. It feels great as a temporary relief, but it's too easy to over scratch and make it worse.
Meanwhile, accepting that people don't intend to hurt us is like clenching teeth and just sitting at the itch. It's so uncomfortable at first, but slowly it goes away.
*The question is what makes this blaming conclusion so tempting?*
Perhaps we don't know how be with our own pain and suffering that we need to justify it with a reason? Or perhaps we just cannot stand the accidental meaninglessness of it all, especially in tragic situations? As such we have to project an intentionality and agency on other people to avoid this scary randomness.
Assuming someone's motivation as an act of sense-making seems so wired to our sense of self that we'd rather sulk & suffer than to lose the coherence of our story of world, in this case *"this guy is evil".*
I think the issue is that most of our story vocabulary is rather limited: nearly all we have is hero vs villain, which Marvel doesn't help.
After all, we cannot know for sure whether there is malice from the other end. Forcing certainty here ("That guy must be evil") soothes our story-telling mind, but it will just perpetuate the myth of good vs evil.
Before slaying the dragon, how about taking some times to know how the dragon became what it is? Or if empathizing with the dragon seems a bit too much, how about just staying in the non-story place?
Yes, that place exists, even though momentarily. As Rumi writes, *"Out beyond the idea of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."*
The work is to remember this non-story place, through stillness, silence and solitude, even as we go about our days. I'm making that as a daily sanity practice. It has helped. 🙏
ps: The flip side of this *"that guy is evil"* story, which is surprisingly just as common, is *"I'm terrible".* If someone is the enemy, then I must be the victim, right? That's for another time, but suffice to say now that blaming oneself or blaming other is still blaming. Still the victim & oppressor, good guy vs bad guy story. Maybe there's a new story altogether.
pss: If you haven't read this new Wait But Why series, be prepared for a treat! https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/stories.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/stories.html
Sharing is sprouting.
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Quotes I'm contemplating this week
We will strengthen within ourselves the identical things that we strengthen in others. - David Hawkins from Success is for You.
A nice reframing: support the goodness in others is the way to support the goodness in ourselves. As I'm slowly developing the coaching attitude, I'm becoming more and more aware of this truth.This is not fawning flattery but really choosing to see with generous eyes .
"On Sacrifice and Commitment
The path to happiness in a relationship is not just about finding someone who you think is going to make you happy. Rather, the reverse is equally true: the path to happiness is about finding someone who you want to make happy, someone whose happiness is worth devoting yourself to. Given that sacrifice deepens our commitment, it’s important to ensure that what we sacrifice for is worthy of that commitment." - Clayton Christensen from How Will You Measure Your Life.
I keep coming back to his brilliantly reframed advice as I go about looking for people. Who attracts me? Who do I feel invested in their success just because of their shining goodness? Given that commitment is not the easiest thing for me, being deliberate yet still open about it has been really helpful.
Lastly..
Do reach out for the Inner Critic Assessment or general conversations about life. I'd love to be helpful.