More, no more

the lure of false desire

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I am so tired of more, more, more - the grip that it has over our nation, our economies, and imaginations. I am weary of its powers of temptation and seduction. I am bored with the lie of hustle and accumulation.

I don’t want more beauty, more status, more power, more money, more adventure, more stuff, more credit, or more clout.  I have grown suspicious of the desires my culture has instilled in me, and no longer want the things I am supposed to want.  I don’t want to accomplish more.  

Ego desires can so easily disguise themselves as callings.

I’ve given up on the notion that I should apply myself to becoming a bigger, better person. I’ve unhooked from the idea of accruing wisdom, knowledge, as if it is personal property and not something I received from others and am merely passing onward. I do not aspire to enlightenment, and I am not working toward it.

But still, more sneaks back in strange ways, sometimes wearing a disguise of guilt or obligation: I should produce more, share more, get more support to more people.  The truth is I share as much as I dare to, sometimes even more than I can afford.

I give what I get and get what I give. What good is more?

More is always insatiable and insidious, a sneaky and hungry ghost. Nothing - coming in or going out - is ever enough in a world built on a foundation of more.

Sometimes more creeps in the back door dressed up as influence. I scatter a few idea-seeds about and some, tended and watered by others, begin to take root and bear fruit and some do not. But I secretly count the harvest as belonging to me somehow, assigning myself credit in my internal bank of virtue: “I made that happen” when in fact many beings, other humans, plants, animals, sun, wind, and all contributed to the positive outcome, and I never claim all the seeds that never sent up sprouts.

I am sometimes driven by the call to be more efficacious, more indispensable, more useful. Be more useful is the bait that gets me to swallow the hook every time.

Inflations, all.

Sometimes it is fear that tricks me: What if no one registers for my workshops? What if the “by donation” model I’ve been riding on collapses out from under me? What then?  Internal insecurity can set me scrambling for the kind of more that will never become enough. Social media platforms in their various forms amplify these fears: More followers, more subscribers, more monetization, more reach.

More ideas, more thoughts, more transformation, more community, more reality.

I am just shy of sixty and I can still be tricked into chasing some big MORE or imagining that it is coming toward me.

More opportunity.

I can still fall for it in a lonely, or empty moment, when I am not thinking clearly or watching myself closely.

But I have learned, even when I don’t catch it as quickly as I could, that ambition masked as service is still just an inflation, an insatiable more.  

More opportunity for what?

Jung considers our addictive natures to be misplaced desires for the Spirit and theologian Olivier Clément speaks of such yearnings, and dissatisfactions as “the quickening of a flash of the godhead which seizes hold of humanity, draws it along, and will not leave it in peace.”  

There is nothing on this earth which can satisfy the relentless culture of more that surrounds and infuses us.

When I fall for the temptation to reach for more in these ways, nothing ever comes anyway. It has always been this way for me. Anything I hustle for remains out of reach. More only comes when I sit still and watch for the subtlest signals of fulfillment.  Sometimes it barely leaves a trace. More arrives in ways that I don’t expect, and often don’t even recognize because I am in the grips of the next more and the next and the one after that.

I think of such desires like the Star of Bethlehem, shining and spectacular in the night – I imagine I will be led to something earthly that will be as bright and glorious as the light in the sky. Instead, I am led to something else entirely: A shit-filled stable. A family without a home. A newborn baby wrapped in rags.

Less turns out to be more, and while we search for more, we miss what is completely. Fantasies of more are less likely to lead me away from my assigned spot for long, because I’ve discovered that is where more emerges on its own or it doesn’t.  

Like everything real, it simply comes to us. It simply appears as an unexpected gift.

~ James Finley

Now, instead, I try (and often fail) to stay close to the empty, to the need, to powerlessness, to the rags, to the shit, to the naked humanity of it all, in myself and other – to see what more lurks deep in there, hidden away. When I sit in this spot and sit still the overlooked, subtle, mystical underlying more reveals itself.

And when it does, only then am I filled and find that I have more to give.

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Today’s Business:

• Accepting applications for a 5 week/10 hour Dream Workshop will be starting at the end of April on Saturdays 10:00 Pacific, 11:00 Mountain, 12:00 Central and 1:00 Eastern

• I am hosting a panel for a Community Discussion on Saturday April 29th, with four thoughtful mental health clinicians at 12 Pacific, 1:00 Mountain, 2:00 Central and 3:00 Eastern, (and available by recording) focused on the dilemmas for licensed clinicians who have focused on individual practice who are looking toward community-centered work in an era of collective crisis. Check this page for more information and to register for the live Zoom conversation or recording.

• I am accepting applications for both the Friday mid-day and the Thursday evening Vocation and Discernment Group for Helping Professions who are re-evaluating their relationship to their professional life and models of care and cure.

• I have freed up additional hours in my schedule for individual consultations. Please visit the home page on my website for more information about the individual services that I offer.