When I was 16 and a half, I went off to college as a drama major with a serious commitment and definite goal of being trained for acting and directing in legitimate theater. Bennington College in Vermont, then a very small (360 students) non-traditional, avant-garde women’s college of some considerable reputation in the arts–as well as academics–was absolutely my first choice. And, there I went with the help of a very substantial scholarship.
By mid-way into my second year I’d become totally disenchanted with the Drama Department–the weird students I couldn’t much relate to, the flaky faculty and especially the nutty, claustrophobic sexual politics. After a very intense and appropriately dramatic confrontation with both my Academic Counselor and the Department Chair, I made a choice that we all agreed would involve my resigning from the Theater Arts Division.
Semester by semester, as I progressed through abnormal into experimental coursework and research seminars, I found I was actually quite delighted with my seemingly accidental major in psychology. The faculty and my classmates were bright, interesting, inspiring and thoughtful. The material, often incredibly fascinating. The sexual politics that seemed such an irritating a part of almost all of the Arts divisions seemed either invisible or absent in the Social Science Division. By junior year I was deeply and passionately involved in the research project for my senior thesis.
During our yearly winter non-resident terms and our summers, we all tried to find temporary work in fields related to our majors. The professor who was both my Academic Counselor and Major Advisor found me a very special placement with one of his colleagues for the summer after my junior year. I got to work as research assistant to a well-known, highly respected researcher in the same field as the one in which I was writing my thesis. For ten weeks this dedicated, interesting, kind man–also the Chairman of the Graduate Program in Psychology at his university–was an important mentor to me.
I returned to the job during the winter non-resident/work term of my senior year. Then, I stayed on working with him throughout the spring as I completed my last semester for Bennington "in absentia," taking a couple of graduate classes at the New School for Social Research. Still, my plans were to try studying at one of the professional acting schools after I’d completed my degree work and graduated from Bennington.
Sometime during that spring, the man I’d been working for and being mentored by invited me for a meeting with himself and two of the other faculty members in the Graduate Program. They praised my work highly–my resourcefulness and my creativity as a thinker and a researcher–and offered me a guaranteed place in their incoming class if I would consider it
I was surprised and disoriented. I had never even considered going to graduate school, much less graduate school in psychology. "Psychology" had been just what I was doing till I could get on with my "real life" in the theater. While working at the lab, I had been busily gathering and comparing brochures and information about drama schools. Yet, oddly enough, their offer and their respect for my talents in the field set me to wondering.
I found myself wondering about whether the people or the process in professional drama schools would really be that different from what I’d found in Bennington’s Theater Arts Division. I realized that it could all be the same and maybe even more so. I thought about how much I’d been enjoying my work and my colleagues in this graduate psychology department. I realized that being "invited in" by a faculty that I already knew and that already knew me–not having to go through the usual rigmarole of applications and interviews–would mean that I would come into the program without any pressure to "prove myself." I would be free, if I chose it, to just explore the possibilities of this path for a while with nothing at stake. It seemed like a good idea to do it as a one-year experiment. Knowing that if it wasn’t feeling right, I could always drop out and go on with my theater training plans.
So, I began life as a graduate student in the doctoral program in psychology at Yeshiva University/ Albert Einstein Medical School. Faculty recommendations helped garner substantial fellowship support for the journey. The first year was a mixture of fascination with the material and frustration with the self-important, arrogant snobbery of the "great name" professors who came as "distinguished visiting professors" to teach us. There was safe space to engage with my mentor in frank dialogue about this frustration. That he could acknowledge the validity of my perceptions and that he could promise me intermediate and advanced seminars with more inspiring mentors made it possible to consider staying on and continuing to explore.
I started out in the Experimental Psychology program, a logical progression from my absorption with research process. But, as one year led into the next, I drifted into taking all the Clinical Psychology coursework as well. Without ever having had it as a particular goal, I went all the way to getting my Ph.D.–always in a year-by-year "curious to see what happens next" fashion. As I came to graduation I realized that while my Doctoral Dissertation had been in pure research, I had clearly moved toward intending to work as a Clinical Psychologist. And, I realized–finally–that I was no longer interested in heading off, post-Ph.D., to any professional acting school after all.
Over these 37 years since I graduated, I’ve truly loved my work. At some junctures, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by its intensity, I’ve needed to take time outs for a year or two. Over the years, my work has been transformed by both my learning-by-doing and by my own continued inner healing journey. The work has continually become more and more rich and meaningful and fulfilling. It no longer overwhelms or exhausts me. I know and feel unequivocally that I am doing not only what I love but, indeed, just what I came here to do this time around on the planet. That I got to where I am in such serendipitous and seemingly accidental ways has been a powerful lesson/teaching for me about "having goals."
My early, intense commitment to the goal of becoming an actor/director was born of the life experiences and deep yearnings I had as a young adult. When I started out at college, my sense that I was on the right track was unshakable. Yet, life repeatedly moved me away from that goal in series of unbidden and totally unpredictable/accidental seeming baby steps. Had I, out of a commitment to my original goal, resisted the nudging in different directions, I wouldn’t have found my way "home" to what now nourishes my deepest self.
The pressure to have and to strive toward the realization of tangible goals in all aspects of our lives is very strong in our culture. From early on in our lives we are pushed to have goals, to choose our subject major, to focus our energies toward particular careers, to clearly define our direction, to articulate our 5-year and 10-year from now "where we want to see ourselves" pictures. The general "party line" seems to be that if we don’t have and committedly push toward very definite goals we would never get anywhere at all.
For those of us who are committed to a spiritual healing journey there is yet another overlay to this sort of pressure. The equally insistent weight of New Age prescriptions for "manifesting." The process by which we are supposed to facilitate bringing our deepest dreams into physically manifest realities. The counsel: First, precisely articulating the images of where/what we want to get/draw into our lives. Then, repeatedly writing our affirmations of–or consistently re-energizing our visualizations of–those sought-after outcomes as if they were already existing in our reality.
When we engage in affirmations, visualizations and goal-setting of the very specifically focussed sorts we are encouraged to undertake, we are assuming that the person we are in this moment is truly capable of choosing rightly for the who-we-are-becoming. Part of the assumption seems to be that who we’ll be down the road is pretty much who we are just in this moment. As if the experiences we’ll have between here and there may not change us, may not make these "goals" outdated or too limiting or even utterly irrelevant to the who-we-are-becoming!
Along with this assumption that our vision of ourselves at any moment is valid and appropriate for all time to come there is yet another underlying vision of our beings that seems both false and undermining of our true nature. That’s the assumption that our mind’s focussing in this very structured, narrow way is all that will ever move us forward in our lives/journeys.
None of this feels so or right to me! I trust and believe that we are changing and growing in every moment, even (and perhaps especially) during the times when we seem to be doing absolutely nothing "of any redeeming value." I trust and believe that change/evolution continues to unfold in us whether or not we consciously effort to make it happen. Sometimes it even seems to me that consciously efforting can actually interfere with the natural, organic flow of our evolving selves.
I DO believe there is value and help in having open-ended intentions of a broad sort. Here intentions like "I am ready and available for my next step to reveal itself to me" or "I am needing this process to slow down for a while so that I can better assimilate/incorporate all the changing" seem like good examples. These consciously but loosely articulated requests/prayers to Spirit/our deepest selves have a way of framing the ESSENCE of what we feel we need.
When we get very specific and detailed about what it is we want that next step to look like or to be, we run the risk of being too narrowly focussed on the appearance of only that specific thing or outcome. This restricting vision can leave us utterly blind to the arrival of something that answers the ESSENCE of our request. It often seems that in becoming so obsessed with, occupied by and invested in reading/eating the menu we may actually fail to notice that a perfectly delectable dinner has arrived at our table.
As I continue on the journey, I seem to be being taught almost daily and in the most minute ways to give up any thinking that might be goal-like. I repeatedly learn that having a "plan" or agenda usually means having to disengage from this "menu" before I can fully to show up for what is arriving unbidden as a gift from Spirit/my deepest self. I learn daily to defer to what comes into my life from that place. To trust where the energy pulls or leads me, rather than where my mind might have me go. This allows me to live fully in the center of what is "just right" for me in each moment.
The more I help my mind not to argue or interfere with where I seem to be being led by the energy/Spirit/my deepest self, the more trust I grow in this authentic, organic process. Then my mind is an extraordinary resource I can always call upon to support my belly-led unfolding.
Consider exploring how life feels and unfolds when you frame broad open-end intentions instead of investing in detailed goals, highly specific affirmations and very carefully articulated visualizations,
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
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