I don’t often look at my feed on Instagram or Facebook.
When I do, it can sometimes feel like watching an old friend drifting day-by-day into dementia and insanity. Maybe it’s just my feed, and I’ve done something to taunt the algorithm. A lot of what I see is made up by AI. And then there’s the brazen out-of-the-box, never-been-seen-before self-promotion.
Yesterday, I did slip into a little scrolling. I confess.
Hi, I’m Marcy!!!!!!!! came a voice, pumped up to the max on projecting C. O. N. F. I. D. E. N. C. E!!!! I used to be lonely. I used to long for love. Then I discovered the magic trick that will make you irresistible to every man. Click below for my free….” I scrolled on. One after another I came across people announcing how they’d cracked the code on making money, looking young, finding mind-blowing sex, or lasting love. Their words conveyed expertise, knowledge, confidence. But if you felt the underlying energy, a different message came through. It was more along the lines of Listen, I’ve got myself into a bit of a mess. I’ve overcommitted on my expenses, and honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to make the rent this month. So I’ve created this product, and I really, really want you to click and buy it. Please!! I mean, seriously, I’m kinda desperate.
There is a principle that applies across the board to so many areas of life. Needing anything from anybody, in any way, originates from a state of desire, from believing that there’s something you don’t have, and that you want.
Sometimes that is intelligent and necessary. If you’re hungry and you haven’t eaten, it’s healthy to feel desire for food: that will motivate you to take steps to eat. It’s healthy to feel desire for loving embrace if you haven’t had that for a while. Desire is good, healthy, and helpful… when it is simple and direct.
It’s important to also recognize that there are many arenas of life where communicating from a place of deficiency, or lack, or feeling inadequate, can push things away. There’s a big difference between communicating because you need something and showing up because you’ve already got everything you need and want, but you have something to give, to offer. You’re not forcing anything, you are available if it resonates.
The most obvious example of this is dating. I often coach people who are single, and who want to find lasting love using the principles we have created. A lot of times, when someone is feeling lonely and thinking they want love, they go fishing. They are hungry. That means dating sites, singles events, bars, wherever they think they’re gonna catch a fish.
But here’s the catch. The very disposition of looking for the right someone who can give you something you don’t already have means that you are stepping onto the playing field from a place of deficiency. Like attracts like, particularly in intimate relationship. So if you step into the world of dating from a place of deficiency – feeling incomplete – you will almost certainly attract someone who also experiences themselves to be not enough, and needing something from the outside.
That’s more or less how we create codependency. I’m not enough, I need something from out there meets another incarnation of I’m not enough, I need something from out there. Now two deficiencies are meeting each other, both trying to get something from the other that they each think they are missing. It doesn’t work out very well.
Usually, after a few months, one or both people feel betrayed. I was missing something, I thought you were going to give it to me, and now you haven’t delivered, and I still feel empty. That’s how relationships often break up, because we feel let down or betrayed.
People who have the easiest time getting into relationship are often those who are feeling amazingly good for no reason. They’re feeling healthy, abundant, well resourced, and grateful. They go about doing their life, and then they are likely going to meet somebody else who’s also feeling abundant, healthy and grateful, also having a great life. Then overflow meets overflow. That is much more likely to lead to a healthy relationship.
That’s the approach I take with coaching single people. Maybe instead of going fishing on dating apps and at singles events, (or maybe as well as) just keep amplifying your energetic overflow. This is where Taoist practice is so helpful. Keep amplifying the felt sense of having extra: extra love, extra energy, extra sexual energy. Find real ways to build up energy from within.
Then you could say I want to share this overflow of love with someone, but even that I want to share it… can become a veiled desire for something missing. Sometimes it works best just to cultivate feeling great, and walk around in that state of contentment. Then all you have to do is to make sure that you’re not holding any disposition of being over-boundaried, or keeping people away. Practice openness. If you’re getting out and about and living your life, and you’re not pushing people away, you will meet people. That’s where relationships generally get off to a great start: when an overflow of well-being is meeting an overflow of well-being. That’s when a relationship becomes an amplification of love, instead of the codependency of shared need.
Just the same principle holds through in many other areas of life, but particularly when it comes to the play of money and creativity.
Often you can feel when someone has something worthwhile to offer, they are sharing it out of overflow, and it doesn’t smell of any need. This is particularly true of writing a book, making music, making art, or any other creative act. If you’re doing it because you love it, because you want to share it, because you’re in devotion and service to that kind of beauty, it will find its own way. You don’t need to push.
Sometimes just before a woman gets pregnant, she senses that she can feel a spirit trying to come in, wanting to take human birth. Then she realizes that she has a destiny to be the mother to that being. Just the same can happen with a creative project. It’s coming through you, so you show up. You’re not thinking about how you can make money or get famous, you are in service to the life which wants to come through you. A mother naturally wants to take best care of her baby when it’s born. The best organic baby food. The best Tempur mattress for the crib. It’s not to get something, but in a spirit of service and devotion. In the same way, you can bring that same disposition of devotion and excellence to a creative act.
I was lucky enough to know Leonard Cohen as a friend when he was alive. He was meticulous about quality. I think he once told me that it took him two years to perfect the lyrics of Hallelujah. When we first met, he was working on Ten New Songs in a little recording studio behind his house. That project also took a couple of years. Layer upon layer upon layer of improvement. Many artists and musicians are fanatical about quality: it’s all in a spirit of service and devotion.
Remember what I was suggesting about dating? You don’t need to go fishing for something to make you whole: just show up, without hiding or pushing away. It’s the same with creativity. Take all the time you need to create your offering, and then let it go where it goes. It used to be that you sent it to a publisher, if it was a book, and then your work was done. The publisher did the rest. Not quite the same now, with the possibility to publish directly to Amazon. That’s not a bad idea, but it is also where the purity of the creative act can get mixed up with the desire to make money, and even with worry about paying the bills. It shifts from overflow to how can I get something for me, and often people can feel it.
I would suggest that a good reason to create anything, whether a book, or a painting, or music, or a new way of having relationships, is because it’s joyful. You’re overflowing with it, you can’t stop yourself, you’re in service to something which consumes you. Out of that exuberance, you let people know. The easiest way to do that is to share it with your colleagues, and other people who are in the same field, and to let word spread. If you have really taken the time and dedication to create excellence, word will spread. If the work is good, and you have friends with a podcast, they will invite you as a guest. Personally, I’d much rather take that approach than get involved with clickbait, paid ads, countdown clocks and exaggerated claims.
It’s a very similar principle with dating and with sharing your creativity. If you’re looking to get something that you’re missing, it can be counterproductive. If you can find a way to share your exuberance and overflow, it becomes infectious.
That’s more or less the situation I find myself in with this massive and ridiculously long book I’ve just finished. It’s going to end up about 550 pages, probably even longer with illustrations. Turned out that’s just how long it needs to be. It’s a disastrous “sales tactic” to write such a long book, when we have an epidemic of short attention spans. I’m writing this book because it felt needed, I saw no one else had done it, and it didn’t look like anyone was planning to. So, I thought to myself. OK I can do this. It needs to be done. It was a feeling of being of service to something that needed to happen. I wasn’t thinking “oh there’s a niche, I can fill the niche and make a killing.” Not like that. I could just see that no one had put these two fields together, they could really enrich each other, so let’s do it. It may be in service to some couples. Once I said yes to this possibility, I took it on myself to do it well. I interviewed every expert I could find who had something to say in this arena, I read and annotated every book written on the subject. I bring the highest quality of excellence to this creation, and then I’ve done everything I can. The rest is not in my hands. Who knows? Maybe ten people will benefit, maybe a hundred, maybe a thousand, maybe more. I don’t know. That’s not my business. I know by now that if you focus on following the calling, where the Great Spirit asks you to make a contribution to the collective evolution of humanity, and you do it out of service, something will take over that can be much more powerful than attempts to manipulate the market. If the final offering truly has value, if it’s really brilliant, if it’s really going to make a real difference to people, it will find its way.
That’s the spirit in which Leonard Cohen wrote these words:
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
He is singing in service to the Great Spirit.
So there it is. Same situation pretty much with dating and with sharing your creative gifts. Best not to go fishing, because it’s so easy to become desperate, and people feel it. Best thing is to keep amplifying quality, energy, bring the best of you to all of it. Then, just make sure that you stay open: no pushing… and no closure.
That’s what I found works best for me.
